My liberal brother i must disagree. As part of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", you must have some form of transportation to meet all of those needs. I am pretty damn sure the gov't didn't intervene much with people riding carriages in comparison to the amount of legislation towards automobiles now and days. Privilege gives the impression the you can only drive at certain places and times.
To me driving is a revocable right that you can have taken away from you if you break certain laws (DWI, driving thru hostess stores, etc...) or proven incapable of doing so (terrible reaction time due to effects from old age or from inexperience).
In addition, the gov't shouldn't have to mandate seat belt laws. It legislation against your own stupidity. That should never be a ticketable offense. Simply put, it should just absolve the other driver if you get hurt from not wearing a seat belt.
IMO, too much legislation of driving allows for too many cops to collect overinflated salaries for running radar traps. Simply put, they could actually cut part of the deficit in NY by consolidating down the number of state troopers.