As a parent, former elected official, homeowner, and business owner, I know that there are inherent risks associated with a lot of things we do in society.

Every time you cross a street or go anywhere in your car, you are risking your life. I have taken my 5 year old daughter on over 20,000 miles of just purely road trips in her short life, on top of the regular driving of everyday life. Every mile in the car I risk her life. As we know, any one of millions of things could go wrong which could lead to a loss of life accident.

So my choice is to keep my daughter at home where she might be safer, or take her on the road to learn first hand about many things in society. Examples are seeing an orange tree in person, vising a Spanish fort from centuries ago, touching a stingray, and witnessing the grand opening of the first suspension bridge built in America in 40 years over in Tacoma, WA.

I prefer having the freedom to make this choice and being able to balance the risks versus reward. It appears that if these “safety preachers” had their way, we would put limiters on all motor vehicles so they couldn’t go over 10mph. After all, wouldn’t travel be safer if we didn’t go faster than 10? What these “safety preachers” don’t seem to comprehend is that life is a balance of many different things.

Concerning the specific issues raised in this article, I am opposed to government telling me that I need to keep my kids in a booster seat from 4 to 8 year olds. I know of no kid that can properly sit in an adult seat under age four so I am ok with that law. But as a parent of a 5 year old, and as someone who has owned over 50 vehicles in my lifetime and currently owns 5, there are some vehicles where she does need a booster seat to fit the seat belt system properly but in one of my vehicles she does not and in fact the belt ends up in the wrong place and too low with a booster seat. Thankfully in Minnesota, I can make that determination rather than a one size fits all situation like the writer proposes.

Concerning the restrictions on teen drivers… that is my responsibility as a parent. If parents don’t exercise that responsibility to regulate their kids driving, then put the parent in jail. When my kids get to that age, I will make a determination as to how responsible they are, how good of drivers they are, and whether they have the ability to drive at night, etc. Yes I will spend the time it takes with my kids to make an educated decision. Yes I am a former trained driving instructor. I won’t dump my kids on the behind the wheel instructor and call 6 hours of training adequate.

While the writer considers the parental opt-out in the teen driving nighttime restrictions to be a joke, I would not expect the law to allow anything short of a notarized letter from the parent to be in the possession of the teen driver. Clearly, only the serious parents would go through an opt-out process like that. Again, this should be my right as a parent to make this determination and provide that opt-out letter if appropriate.

On the issue of the secondary seat belt enforcement provision, as a former police reserve officer, I can tell you that several officers I have spoken with over the years have all said that if an officer wants to pull you over for a seat belt violation, they can find something else to pull you over for first. No one is a perfect driver by any means and it is a joke to imply that an officer is restricted from issuing tags for seatbelt violations under current law.

On the issue of losing federal money, it kind of reminds me of the debates in Roseville about how we had to build a pathway around a cemetery or build one just a block away from another one because if we didn’t, we would lose out on all of this so called “free” federal money and someone else would get to spend it. Never mind that some of these pathways get used by 4 people a day. We built things with federal money that defied common sense. So if we miss out on federal money, so be it. “Free” federal money shouldn’t override all other factors.

If the writer wants to preach about safety, why not complain about all the state and federal money that has gone into hockey arenas and hockey programs. This is a violent sport in the opinion of many. How many additional dentist visits have occurred due to this sport. If we all would just simply be content with playing chess, we could have prevented thousands of childhood injuries. I never saw anyone lose a tooth in a chess match.

Thank goodness the writer isn’t in charge of our kids sports programs. Don’t get me wrong, I like chess, but I like to have the freedom to have my kids participate in other after school activities.