Public Safety and Personal Responsibility

In its September 23, 2005 editorial "It's too risky failing to make residents safe," The Princeton Packet posed some important questions for public officials, such as myself, and our residents:

"What's the difference between a necessity and a luxury? At what point does the level of risk to the public shift from acceptable to unacceptable? Who decides whether a government program to protect public safety is affordable or unaffordable?"

Another way of asking those questions is "where do we draw the line between governmental and individual responsibility?" Still another way of asking those questions is "when should government be the insurer of last resort?"

Where does a person's individual responsibility for his or her own safety end and where does government's responsibility to provide a safe environment begin? Should government bail out fools for the consequences of their irresponsible behavior? Where is the boundary between individual and government responsibility for the risks that people decide to take? And does government inadvertently encourage unacceptably risky behavior when it provides a financial safety net to its citizens?

If someone builds a home in a flood plain without buying flood insurance, should government (translation: the rest of us) bail him or her out when his or her home inevitably is destroyed by a flood? If that person cannot acquire flood insurance (because the home is being built in a flood plain), should government bail the person out when the home is destroyed in a flood? I think not.

If people know that the government will bail them out, are they more likely to build in a flood plain? I think so. But why should taxpayers who are smart enough to build outside the flood plain encourage that risky behavior by subsidizing the person when the inevitable happens?

Should West Windsor and Princeton residents have to bail out the people who built homes on Long Beach Island, when LBI inevitably is overrun by a hurricane? I think not.

Can we engineer our roads to prevent people from killing themselves or others when they drive at excessive rates of speed for the conditions? I think not.

The Packet editorial suggests that government should seriously consider accepting more transfer of risk from its residents when it headlines the statement "It's too risky failing to make citizens safe." Government certainly should address generally recognized hazards to the public health and safety, but it is impossible for government to "make citizens safe."

We can always improve the conditions in which our residents find themselves. But doing so is a never-ending, continuing "work in progress." In a very real sense, government cannot "make citizens safe" under all circumstances all the time. We can "make citizens safer," but we cannot protect people from themselves.

Our residents must accept some amount of personal responsibility for their own safety.