>generally

The downsides to have seat belts usage not mandatory outside of reducing deaths/injuries. A few that comes to mind:

1. Parents don't wear them -> kids don't wear them 2. Friends don't wear them -> peer pressure not to wear them 3. Accident happens -> body flies out the window (risk of hitting someone, makes a mess to clean up) 4. Accident happens, person survive but is injured and is now a cost to society

Upsides (I worked with someone who refused to wear it and told me something like that):

1. Anecdote about someone that was wearing one and got into an accident and the seat belt somehow prevented them to escape the burning car and they died 2. It's less comfortable 3. Makes me feel alive (freedom)

He would only falsely wearing it when there was suspected police presence.

Also their families (the kids normalise no seatbelts and spend their childhood with no seatbelts), also first responders (???!!!)

In reality, the worse an accident is (deaths, injuries) the longer and more difficult the clean up process is .. increasing the time that normal traffic flow is impacted and increasing the danger to all those attending who are exposed to potential (and common place) cascading disasters.

The deaths and injuries impact the local health response services - raising costs, demand for resources, and impacting triage decisions (fewer injured non seatbelt wearing idiots to look after, more free resources to devote to other patients).

Have you seen footage of how quickly an unbelted person moves around a car when it crashes? If there's someone in the passenger compartment without a seatbelt they can cause serious damage to everyone else - especially children.