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Comment by ztetranz | Hacker News Reader

They're optional for adults in cars here in New Hampshire where the official state motto is "Live free or die".

NH doesn't get enough credit for how weird it is. Between the state motto, the lack of sales or income tax, and stuff like this seatbelt rule it's like we're talking about a totally different country.

I also like their Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) record retention period (3 minutes):

> Records of number plates read by each LPR shall not be recorded or transmitted anywhere and shall be purged from the system within 3 minutes of their capture in such a manner that they are destroyed and are not recoverable, unless an alarm resulted in an arrest, a citation, or protective custody, or identified a vehicle that was the subject of a missing person or wanted broadcast [...]

https://law.justia.com/codes/new-hampshire/2022/title-xxi/ti...

This seems absolutely reasonable. Keep the data about people who have committed or you can reasonably suspect might be committing a crime, get rid of the identifiable information for law-abiding citizens and maybe keep the aggregated metadata.

This should be the standard IMO.

The other thing about cars in NH is that insurance is optional. I'm not sure what happens if someone legally driving in NH without liability insurance drives over the border into a neighboring state. I asked a lawyer friend once and he mumbled something about interstate commerce making it legal. I'm not how that debate would go when stopped by a cop in MA and asked to show proof of insurance.

In my state, the arm pit of America, OKLA, auto insurance is mandatory. However, a certain amount of my fellow citizens treat it as optional.

> I'm not sure what happens if someone legally driving in NH without liability insurance

... Wait, you don't need _liability insurance_?!

"New Hampshire motor vehicle laws do not require you to carry auto insurance, but you must be able to demonstrate that you are able to provide sufficient funds to meet New Hampshire motor vehicle financial responsibility requirements in the event of an at-fault accident."

https://www.nh.gov/insurance/consumers/documents/nh_auto_gui...

It's also often incorrectly thought of as heavily democrat or liberal, perhaps due to association with neighbors like Massachusetts and Vermont. It's somewhat true, but the balance is much closer to 50/50 than those neighbors. And the largest newspaper is very Republican centric.

If it wasn't for our former governor John Sununu, (father of the current one), the US response to climate change might have been quite different.

Should it not be ”Live free and die” then?

Or, y'know, both, in this case.

(Huh; I had no idea there was anywhere left in the developed world where they weren't mandatory.)

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