Derek Kieper, The Anti-Seatbelt Advocate Who Died In A Car Accident
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Derek Kieper was one of three people in a car that overturned, but he was the only fatality — because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
In 2004, University of Nebraska-Lincoln senior Derek Kieper published an editorial in the Daily Nebraskan titled “Individual Rights Buckle Under Seat Belt Laws.”
In the article, Kieper wrote, “I’m from the school of thought where everyone should have the right to do as they please as long as they are not infringing on the rights of other people… No law, or set of laws, has made the government more intrusive and ridiculous than seat belt legislation. Nothing is a bigger affront to the ideas of freedom, liberty, yada, yada, yada.”
Kieper’s argument was that Democrats and Republicans should “stand together” to stop legislation requiring seat belts. He argued that seat belt laws could become a “slippery slope” that might lead to things like “helmet laws for walkers” or “kneepad regulations for office government interns.”
While his examples were far-fetched, Kieper made it clear that above all else, he strongly believed that he should have the right to choose how safe — or not — he wanted to be while driving.
He concluded by writing, “I just wish we could keep the government out of our pocketbooks and out of our personal decisions.”
There are likely many people who could agree with the core of what Kieper was saying — that we should be allowed to make personal decisions regarding our own bodies. Unfortunately, seat belt laws may not have been the hill to die on, for lack of a better term. After all, data from the U.S. Department of Transportation shows that seat belts saved nearly 15,000 lives in 2017 alone.
Kieper’s story took a morbidly ironic turn just four months after his editorial was published. In January 2005, the Lincoln Journal Star reported on the 21-year-old’s death. He was ejected from a Ford Explorer that rolled several times in a ditch after veering off of the road due to ice.
The driver and another passenger survived with non-life threatening injuries. Both of them were wearing seat belts.
