Born To Be Wild
Aug 15th, 2008 at 6:21 am by Susie
As someone who’s actually seen a decapitated head after a bike crash, I think the anti-helmet movement is the stupidest damned thing I’ve ever seen. Since the people who actually survive head trauma after a bike crash quickly tap out their health insurance (if they have any) and end up on Medicaid, yeah, I’d say we should get a say in whether they have to wear helmets:
WASHINGTON — The number of motorcyclist deaths jumped in 2007, accounting for nearly one in eight motor vehicle deaths, government safety officials said on Thursday.
Deaths of people in cars and trucks, on bicycles or on foot dropped by nearly 2,000 last year, pushing the overall death rate to a historic low. But deaths of motorcyclists surged 6.6 percent, to 5,154; 2007 was the 10th straight year of increase.
[...] And, safety officials say, many of the riders are middle-age or older men who rode when they were young, gave it up as they raised children and have recently gone back to the bike. “They think they still have the same reflexes,” said James Port, the safety agency’s deputy administrator.
Yet ridership has probably become more dangerous mile for mile. One reason is a decline in the number of states requiring the use of helmets. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, in 1975, 47 states required all motorcycle riders to wear helmets, but now only 20 do.
At the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the organization that conducts independent vehicle crash tests, Russ Rader, a spokesman, said motor vehicle deaths would probably continue their decline into this year. “A drop in highway deaths is always the silver lining in a down economy,” Mr. Rader said, with fewer trips to work and discretionary trips.
“We are the only industrialized country in the world where there is an organized effort to weaken or repeal motorcycle helmet laws,” Mr. Rader said. “That definitely is a factor in the increasing deaths.”
I say let them go without helmets if they want to. It’s nature’s way of weeding out the stupid.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
I just stay off the damn things.
If I were crazy enough to drive one, I’d sure as hell wear a helmet. But a helmet isn’t going to help much when a biker slams into a car stopped at a light, the rider pitches clear over the car, slams into the street, and suffers a compound fracture of the tibia.
I got to watch that when I was a bicyclist stopped at the same light, about 30 years ago. That was pretty much what it had to be. The injury was running blood. I could see the bone ends, and I was at least 40 feet away.
I wasn’t a motorcycle fan even then. But the sound of that guy screaming permanently killed off whatever small fascination motorbikes may have had for me in later years.
Good news for people waiting for donated organs–they don’t call them donorcycles for nothing.
Maybe we can talk motorcycle-worshipping McCain (”the sound of freedom”) into actually riding, and not using a helmet.
Why not have a law that anyone who gets into a motorcycle accident without a helmet has given permission to have their organs harvested, regardless of their prognosis?