A legislator in New Hampshire called it constricting. A Michigan man said it messed up his look. A sailor in Massachusetts argued the government has no right to force him to wear it.

Though they might sound familiar, those were not the refrains of people rebelling against face masks during the pandemic. Instead, they came from the seatbelt debates of the 1980s, another era when some Americans pushed back against rules meant to keep them safe.

Capitals, legislative halls, petitions and radio shows were the stages for battle over state seatbelt laws, the first of which passed in 1984. Medical workers and police officers gave firsthand accounts of how people not wearing belts died in wrecks. Opponents wondered if it was safe to be strapped into a hurtling vehicle, or complained about discomfort and government overreach.

In Massachusetts, a talk radio host and a sign painter teamed up to repeal their state’s seatbelt law. A state legislator in Michigan was called hateful names. And for decades, bills have floundered in New Hampshire, which has so far lived up to its “Live Free or Die” motto in remaining the only state that does not force an adult driver to wear a seatbelt.

The fight over seatbelt laws in the United States was fraught with trying to strike a balance between individual and public interests. Those concerns have also been reflected in similar matters of health and safety, including vaccinations, helmet laws — and masks.

Alberto Giubilini, a public health ethics scholar who has compared the arguments over seatbelt laws with those of vaccination opponents, noted that seatbelts and helmets are mostly meant to protect an individual, while vaccinations and face masks are also intended to prevent harm from spreading to others.

That gives seatbelt opponents more room to argue for their personal right to imperil themselves, he said. “Many are worried about the state becoming more authoritarian,” he said. “It is refusal to follow certain authority, just because it is authority.”

Since 1984, when New York became the first state to have a seatbelt law, they have continued to be an uneven patchwork. Some have made it a primary violation, meaning officers can pull over a driver only for not wearing a seatbelt. Others made it secondary, meaning a driver stopped for another reason can also be given a seatbelt citation. Only 31 states extend the requirement to adults in the back seat.

Legislative records, government reports and interviews show how the efforts to draft seatbelt laws have pitted grim fatality statistics against personal complaints about comfort, freedom and efficiency.

Here are three snapshots of those efforts and their outcomes.

Massachusetts: Seatbelts by choice

In Massachusetts, the fight over seatbelt laws was spearheaded by a sign painter and a radio host.

Robert “Chip” Ford is a 70-year-old libertarian who wears a seatbelt — but he doesn’t want the government to force him to.

In the mid-1980s, he teamed up with Jerry Williams, a pioneering talk radio host who was once called “the dean of ‘radio activists,’” on a crusade to repeal the state’s seatbelt laws.

Their partnership began in 1985, the year of the state’s first seatbelt law. Mr. Ford had dropped out of college, sailed and restored boats, and turned to sign painting. One day, he was working in Beverly Harbor when he turned on WRKO.

“I used to listen to talk radio when I was out lettering boats,” he said. “I heard Jerry Williams talking about the seatbelt law.”

Inspired, Mr. Ford contacted Mr. Williams, who encouraged him to get involved in efforts to repeal the legislation.

“I had never done anything political before,” Mr. Ford said. “I had no idea what a ballot committee was.”

Alan S. Tolz, a former producer of Mr. Williams’s show, said the host devoted most of his air time in that period to encouraging people to petition against seatbelts. “It was a long civics lesson,” he said. “I think he was looking at this as a libertarian issue — ‘I am an adult, I will wear a seatbelt, and you don’t have to force me to.’”

“And that is how we won,” Mr. Ford said. “I used that argument in every debate, every talk show.”

The law was repealed in 1986, making Massachusetts the first state to do so.

Mr. Williams, who died in 2003, credited what he called the “rag-tag band of citizens who understood what the American Revolution was all about” for the win.

A second law passed in 1993, and Mr. Ford, who went on to testify against seatbelt laws in other capitals, gave up on fighting the Massachusetts law when his effort to repeal the new law failed.

“I washed my hands of that issue and moved on to others,” he said.

But not government-mandated masks. Mr. Ford says he does not see a libertarian parallel with today’s mask mandates, because their purpose is to prevent harm from spreading to others.

“You choose to wear a seatbelt, and you are only hurting yourself if you make the wrong decision,” he said.

Michigan: ‘It makes my tie wrinkled’

More than 30 years ago, David Hollister, a legislator representing Lansing, was working on budget and social services issues when Richard H. Austin, the secretary of state and chairman of the Michigan Safety Council, asked him to work on the state’s first seatbelt legislation.

Armed with research on how seatbelts could save lives and a survey that showed 65 percent opposed mandatory use, he proposed his first bill in 1982. It did not pass.

So he and other safety advocates got creative. Mr. Hollister put legislators in speeding cars at a General Motors testing facility. He erected a slide at the Capitol for people to experience a landing at five miles per hour.

In another stunt, or what Mr. Hollister refers to as a series of “eye-openers,” he and supporters demonstrated impact by dropping pumpkins on the Capitol grounds, where they exploded. “It was the force of a head hitting the windshield at five miles per hour,” he said. “People were sitting around eating sandwiches at lunch hour.”

Gradually, opposition yielded. Michigan’s first seatbelt law took effect in 1985. “The thing that really did it was we started arguing that the opponents were arguing for the right to go through the windshield,” Mr. Hollister said.

“That is where it was similar to the mask,” he said. “It is going to save lives and reduce costs. People eventually are going to come around.”

New Hampshire: No sacrificing some to save others

New Hampshire is the only state that still does not have a mandatory seatbelt law.

In 2018, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, seatbelts saved about 14,955 lives of people ages 5 and older nationwide. If everyone involved in crashes had worn seatbelts, an additional 2,549 people could have been saved, it said.

But just like wearing a mask cannot guarantee protection from infection, wearing a seatbelt has not prevented deaths in some crashes. Belted passengers have died in rollovers, been partly ejected and crushed. Some died trapped in cars in water or fire.

In 2018, opponents of seatbelt laws in New Hampshire seized on those examples in defeating a bill that would have made them mandatory, saying education and advertising would be better than a law.

Testimony from citizens and lawmakers mirrored debates over mask mandates: The “government should not protect me from myself,” one said. Another called them an “example of a nanny state.”

Advocates spoke of soaring medical costs or safety for the greater good.

The bill lost, 10 votes to 9.

In 2020, another seatbelt bill died, not because of votes, but for another reason: The pandemic shutdown legislative sessions. Citizens Count, a nonprofit organization connecting people with elected officials, asked Facebook followers how they felt about this year’s attempt. Most made sneering criticisms of government infantilization, or quoted the state motto “Live Free or Die.”

“Can we finish the debate on masks first, please?” wrote one of the more than 300 people who replied.

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