New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine was heavily sedated and breathing with the assistance of a ventilator on Friday after an accident while en route to a meeting with fired radio host Don Imus and the Rutgers women’s basketball team. The Democratic governor was listed in critical but stable condition following the accident Thursday night on Garden State Parkway in Galloway, New Jersey [MAP/SAT], which broke his left leg, his sternum, twelve ribs and a vertebra.
Corzine, who was a passenger in the front of a police sport utility vehicle when it swerved to avoid another car, was not wearing a seat belt as mandated by New Jersey state law. Injuries to ribs and sternum suggest that he was involved in ‘the second collision’ in auto accidents — the collision of the body with the interior of the vehicle. A seat belt may have prevented the severity of ‘the second collision.’
The lack of a seat belt and the failure of police to enforce that seat belt law in the case of the governor while charging citizens for the same offense would be a double standard classified as hypocrisy.