Danny Rocha, the BOLT member in L.A. showed Stephan, a NMA contact the BOLT of CA website, and he sent me this email:
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Mark,
I got to your website through my friend Danny who is active in fighting
against the California helmet laws, seatbelt laws, etc. You sound like a
lawyer. I am Stefan Schreier, founder of the Safety Choice Coalition,
www.safetychoice.org and I have been fighting this fight since 2003,
mainly against seatbelt laws since I got a seatbelt ticket in Washington
state. I am an aerospace engineer and scientist, not a lawyer.
I had to laugh at your citation of a decision where the judge said
"vague law is no law" with regard to motorcycle helmet standards. You
don't know the half of it. The entire FMVSS (Federal Motor Vehicle
Safety Standards), CFR 49, is meaningless gibberish. The lawyers don't
understand this because they are not technically trained. What happened
was that NHTSA put together a bunch of committees of citizens, none of
whom were engineers or knew anything about it, to write these standards.
What they came up with is utter nonsense. Then they hired a bunch of
engineers and told them to write it up and make it look good. The
engineers must have been goggle eyed when they saw what they were being
asked to do. But they did the best they could to make it sound good
enough to make a layman think this crap was written by experts who knew
what they were doing. Of course it wouldn't fool an engineer or
physicist for a minute, but I haven't seen anywhere in this process
where engineers, especially automotive engineers, were ever consulted.
Of course the auto industry objected when they saw these "standards",
but the government beat them into submission. (I am summing up in a few
words here what was really a twenty year long fight).
I am still trying to get someone to fight a seatbelt ticket and invite
me to testify as an expert witness. So far as I know, no one has ever
appealed a seatbelt ticket on the grounds that wearing a seatbelt in an
automobile puts you at risk of severe injury or death if you get in an
accident. All previous cases have been appealed on the basis of the
right to individual liberty, and this has been rejected by the courts.
I've read some of these cases, and the ignorance and stupidity of all
concerned is mind boggling. They've all been bamboozled by government
propaganda. I wish I could do the cross examination in some of these
cases. It would only take me about five minutes to reduce the government
witnesses to tears.
Anyway, if you are a lawyer, or know of a lawyer who would like to take
on a seatbelt case, let them know that they can call on me as an expert
witness. The government's case for seatbelts is so preposterous and so
absurd that it wouldn't take long to demolish.
Sincerely yours,
Stefan Schreier, PhD (Aerospace Engineering)
