It's especially obnoxious as regards seatbelts because it is impossible to make even the cloying argument that someone else's not "buckling-up" threatens the "safety" of anyone else.

Keeping people "safe" – especially from themselves – is the proper business of the parents of minor children. When it becomes the business of government, the government has become the parent.

That is no way for grown-ups to live.

Seat belts are not objectionable, as such. Although that is how opposition to forcing people to "buckle up" is generally framed. Because it is much easier to shut people up by framing them as being opposed to something that might be reasonable and sensible, as such.

Like seat belts.

They can decrease your chances of being hurt – or hurt more seriously – if you crash your car. Wearing a seatbelt may even save your life, if the crash is severe enough. No one possessed of any sense questions this – because sensible people do not question objectively true things.

But note the italics above.

The words "can," "if" and "may" have been italicized to emphasize another thing that is objectively true about seatbelt-wearing.

Or not.

It is that seabelts are a potential benefit. "Buckling up" can decrease your chances of being hurt – if you crash your car. Wearing a seatbelt may even save your life, if the crash is severe enough.

But if you do not crash, "buckling up" makes no difference. This distinction is important. It is the difference between something actually happening and something that might happen. Put another way, it is a risk-reward evaluation. The kind of judgment call it was once generally understood adults had a right to make. If you choose to enlist in the Marines because you want to receive the rewards that attend being trained and acquiring marketable job skills, you run the risk of being sent into a combat zone in the event there's a war.

You might be killed.