$20K is nothin'. Ever hear a doctor talk about the "Honda ward" full of mangled young men who'll need another 60 years of expensive care? "There's worse things than dyin'..."

Listen, people who risk their health in such mundane ways on public roads aren't bold soldiers for individuality in a world that doesn't care. Their behavior can have a profound and enduring impact on other people.

The problem is that they DON'T die, offering the rest of us use of their kidneys, corneas, hearts, etc. Medicine has gotten so good at helping people in trouble that it's bad for the rest of us.

Hey, we already did this, and you switched sides:

> a good many in moto accidents are the kind that
> are kept alive as giant turnips for years on end.

This will not get better if the SCOTUS does not overturn the Obamacare legislation. Just sayin'.

I used to agree that it should be up to the rider, but now I see this as something that affects others. If I collide with a guy on a motorcycle, and he dies because he didn't have a helmet on, I'm now involved in the death of another human being.

No helmet significantly increases the chance of death.

Ohio does it that it is two years riding experience or 21. If you get your motorcycle endorsement after age 21 it is an automatic two years. If you are a passenger under 18 you have to wear a helmet.

The one I saw a few years ago was a assumed "dad" driving the motorcycle sans helmet and 12-14 year old daughter riding behind him with one. All I could think "she gets to watch her dad die, how sad."

I've always been of the idea let those who ride, decide.

Hey, we already did this, and you switched sides:

> a good many in moto accidents are the kind that
> are kept alive as giant turnips for years on end.

I didn't "switch sides" at all. Did you read the piece? Here, from the blog item:

As I've said before, I'd like to see a repeal of motorcycle helmet laws, and in their place, a no-helmet option: If you ride without a helmet, either you pay some kind of supplemental insurance that kicks in for your care after an accident, or we just leave you where you fell until the street cleaning guys sweep up what's left of you.

The problem here seems to be that $20K in insurance for something that could be so costly isn't enough. Once again, government fails.

$20k is a drop in the bucket for a head injury. So taxpayers are still paying. Past that, great. Adults should get to decide.

Insufficient Poision:

If I collide with a guy on a motorcycle, and he dies because he didn't have a helmet on, I'm now involved in the death of another human being.

And the failure of the motorcyclist(s) to wear the safety gear has no -zero-, nada, zilch, zed, /dev/null, mitigating effect on your responsibility.

Financial or legal. Might the accident have been your fault? 100% on you that they're dead.

Even if they were breaking other traffic laws. Turn on red on a "No turn on red" intersection, cyclist is going 100 in a 30 plows into you?

100% your fault, legally and financially.

I get tired of the argument that anything that has an effect on others is subject to government regulation. That's quite a slippery slope. If Obamacare stands, we will see this justification expand to cover all sorts of behaviors that used to be considered personal choices. How dare you drink/rock climb/eat steaks? I'm paying your health care!

Colorado has no helmet law. Most of the non-helmeted riders are on Harleys. I guess the helmet interferes with the look.

As it turns out, I am both the safety speaker for the local Southern Cruisers riding club and on the way to a meeting today - and the subject will be helmets.

So there is more, mostly about rider training, which is nearly non-existent. BBL

I'm a helmet wearer on the motorcycle, but my husband isn't.

My husband says without a helmet he's more likely to die. With a helmet, he's more likely to be a vegetable for the rest of his life, as they don't prevent neck and spine injuries. Either way, sucks...but without a helmet he's less likely to become a burden on someone else. I think that most of the time in most accidents, he's right.

"how dare you____, I'm paying your healthcare!"

Know how to stop that argument? Don't have people paying for others' anything. When you dip into the wallets of others, they do get a say in your actions.

> I didn't "switch sides" at all. Did you read
> the piece?

Well, no, not all of it.

> If you ride without a helmet, either you pay
> some kind of supplemental insurance that kicks
> in for your care after an accident, or we just
> leave you where you fell until the street
> cleaning guys sweep up what's left of you.

The fact that no one wants to walk their kids past the motorcyclist's carcass is the larger point as well.

A person riding a motorcycle on a road isn't living a breakout life of daring innovation. The motorcycle and road are both intensely refined products of civilization's coherence and good order... Both required many centuries of development. To sign up (so to speak) for those pleasures and conveniences, and then suddenly decide that you're being oppressed when civilization demands you wear a helmet is ludicrous.

> The problem here seems to be that $20K in
> insurance for something that could be so
> costly isn't enough. Once again, government
> fails.

Amy, that's "stop me before I kill again". Yeah, sure... Maybe the insurance standards should be changed. But it's incumbent on libertarian types to behave in a way that protects others from consequences, whether or not the law requires them to. It's a morality thang.

And on the bright side, medical science has gotten much better at prolonging the lives of people who suffer serious head injuries. Since at least the Vietnam War Americans who would otherwise die can hobble through their remaining days, sure in the knowledge they've lost many point off their IQs.

"My husband says without a helmet he's more likely to die."

This is true, but the rest of your post has no basis in fact.

I don't expect you to believe a stranger, so, please notice as I set you up to learn the facts on your own. Look at the roadracing community. Since most people do not know such a thing even exists, take a look at Superbike Planet. Other terms you could look for are Roadracing World and Cycle World magazines, both online.

In an environment where limits are pushed on purpose, state-of-the-art protective gear is not only routine, it's good business: your company will have to find a new rider, if you are injured, to spearhead their multimillion-dollar racing program.

On the street, the road does not care if you are a passenger or the pilot of any motorcycle. Do you think that somehow if he drops the bike, one of you will not fall off? Blunt force trauma is what will end you. Not "whiplash", not an edge penetration.

Anyone who has an opinion about helmet use has to do just two things to come up with the real story: forget your opinions, and look at the physics.

Stay off forums unless they are moderated by an outfit like Keith Code's Superbike School. The signal/noise ratio is huge among the populace, and you'll get bogged down in arguments about tire pressure and oil qualities - long since settled at the racetrack, the lab for all motorcycle development.

Most street riders just want to have a good time and not look these things up; they are falsely confident because of success in other endeavors, which skills actually don't transfer to riding. Just in case you don't want to wade through dozens of Web sites and decipher countless media distortions: wearing a helmet is safer at all times, at all speeds, in all environments than not wearing a helmet. I am sad that I have to say that, because it should be obvious to anyone who has hit their head on something that having a shield between it and the "owie thing" is a good idea.

Especially after one look at the forces involved. When your head is moving and strikes something solid, the energy imparted to your head goes up with the square of the speed. Your only hope for impacts to the skull is a shock-absorbing structure on the outside.

It's your pick. Break a helmet or break your head. I'll be able to tell what you thought it was worth in the accident report.

"A person riding a motorcycle on a road isn't living a breakout life of daring innovation."

And in my experience, the "cruiser" genre actively opposes innovation if it can be seen. This extends to safety apparel and riding technique.

But the law intends to force good sense. In that, it's like drug laws and, gee, a bunch of other laws. Removing the law does not produce responsibility, though, and I hope we remember that.

A helmet is going to help prevent head trauma that is obvious.

But the neck and spine injuries associated with blunt force trauma are not prevented by wearing a helmet.

Therefore, as opposed to dying instantly not wearing a helmet, a helmet wearer might spend the rest of his life paralyzed.

If you get a spinal injury wearing a helmet, you were going to get it anyway. True, the death from the head injury might have rendered the spinal injury moot, but helmets aren't going to cause an injury that wouldn't otherwise happen. The helmet takes up some force as it compresses-force that would cruch your skull AND force that would mess up your spine.

I'd rather live paralysed than die. YMMV.

I'd rather die

"I'd rather die"

So. Make sure your living will is on file, or you may be preserved until you and your family are broke.

The root of the question is this, after you strip away all the crap:

Does our government, state or federal, have the right to FORCE people to protect themselves...or does it not?

If you believe that the government's use of punitive measures to protect people from the consequences of their own actions, then there is no logical limit to how far that may extend, since there is no formulaic Deaths per 1000 participants ratio or some such that decides our governments right to impose legal restrictions/mandates upon our behavior.

They could use that right to impose virtually any form of law on the basis that it is for your own safety. And indeed that is exactly the rational used to impose the TSA AND Obamacare upon the entire nation.

Its for your own good, is not...apparently, the best basis for law, but it is the best basis for taking away our freedoms.

I think it is stupid to ride without a helmet. But why should it be any of my business if someone wants to increase their chances of removing themselves from the gene pool? Why should it be any of the government's business either? Because it costs them, and therefore us, money?

Well doesn't everything? Tell me something that people do that does not cost the government money? Breathing? They already tax death. Walking on the sidewalk, who paid for the sidewalk? Driving, who paid for the roads, who enforces safety standards for vehicles and factories?

Taking medicine, a government agency spent years testing and approving it, regulating its creation, distribution, and so on.

Literally everything we do will cost the taxpayers money in some form or another. Therefore the justification of "it costs the government money" is again another universal justification for involvement in every citizens lives to mandate any form of safety or remove or restrict any freedom...it is after all, costing the government money, and for our own good.

SO, if the sole concern here is that it costs the government money to treat you if you ride without a helmet. Simply refuse to cover the medical costs of anyone so deliberately reckless.

They chose to be unsafe, let them or their families bear the cost and leave the taxpayers wallets alone.

Does that sound to callous? Well isn't it just as callous to remove people's right to choose what to do with their lives, what risks to take, how to live and how to die? I would sooner live with a neighbor concerned with our respective freedoms and rights, and indifferent to what choices I make...than with a helpful sociopath determined to do me good at any cost whether I want his help or not.

> They chose to be unsafe, let them or their
> families bear the cost and leave the taxpayers
> wallets alone.

That ain't how it works here. Hospitals are forbidden by law from turning people away. Eventually, gravely ill people become the responsibility of the surrounding community. People with cracked heads don't lie on the curb for weeks, and people who can't feed or wash themselves don't starve to death.

> When you dip into the wallets of others, they
> do get a say in your actions.

Yes. Yes. So yes about that, what you just said right there.

"Therefore, as opposed to dying instantly not wearing a helmet, a helmet wearer might spend the rest of his life paralyzed. "

This reads to me as yet another attempt to rationalize away the benefits of wearing a helmet.

This "might" of yours is not supported by evidence. "Whiplash" has been popularized by automotive cases. In case you haven't noticed, motorcycles are not cars. There is no structure holding you in place to be shaken. In crashes, you are simply thrown down the road. No one spins you, and in the case the rider tumbles, repeated violent contact with the road surface can be expected.

But the point here is not what can happen. What does happen is that people who are not wearing helmets and crash are hurt more severely and more often than those who wear them.

Roadracers routinely crash above 100MPH and get up to walk to the ambulance. Street riders routinely crash in parking lot or city street accidents and are grossly injured. Part of it is physical conditioning - fat and weak bikers are easily hurt - but the armor and helmet makes most of the difference.

If helmets prevent injuries and save "society" the cost of caring for vegetablized motorcycle riders, then since a great many car crash injuries would be mitigated by wearing helmets, isn't "society" missing a bigger payback by not mandating helmets for automobile drivers? Easy to say that motorcyclists or rock climbers or whitewater kayakers or whoever should think about "society" first, but the much bigger payoff would come from forcing the rest of us to wear helmets in cars and eat our vegetables. Any takers for the big payoff?

A friend of my family nearly lost his leg in a motorcycle accident. About $500,000 in medical bills later, he can almost walk normally again. $20,000 is nothing.

And this guy was unemployed. He certainly didn't pay that bill.

It's all well and good to say, "Let people take the risks and pay the price," but American culture doesn't work that way. We don't leave people to bleed in the street when we can't find the insurance card or cash in their wallet.

"...isn't "society" missing a bigger payback by not mandating helmets for automobile drivers?"

Yes it is, and the same is true for not changing automobile controls to prohibit the driver from doing other things than driving. The public won't stand for that.

People driving motorcycles: Darwinism in action, so let it be.
People driving motorcycles helmet-free: SUPER-Darwinisn, I like it!!!!

Disclosure: I have been driving motorcycles for ages, love it, would never try that in metropolitan USA. Maybe I'll do a tour one of these days... with an helmet :)

a quick joke: in my country, how do we name a motorcycle driver?

An organ giver.

Chuck asked the right question. If it is important for motorcyclists to wear helmets, then why not people in cars?

Goose, meet gander.

As long as we don't have to pay for you (per the article, is $20K really enough?),

It sounds as if you and Monica P do not understand the concept behind insurance.

As the medical debates continue, especially among those with no ideas other than that "someone else" should pay, there will be continued pressure to prohibit activities the common man finds dangerous.
Well, in the meantime, this might be a surprise:

Having insurance does not prevent injury or death.

Training and protective equipment prevent injury and death.

We do not ask the tightrope walker to wear a lanyard, but that is only because we really suck at identifying risk and being consistent in our thinking. At the same time we watch the tightrope walker, we fail badly to understand the combination of talent and training that lets her do that without dying. We focus instead on the romance of that risk. Not so with bikers.

Well, why in hell would anyone focus on how to pay for medical treatment before, or without even mentioning how to keep people out of the hospital instead?

If you know someone, or have a loved one who rides a motorcycle, ask him or her to attend a riding school. No, not just the Motorcycle Safety Foundations school. One like these:

Keith Code's Superbike School
Jason Pridmore's STAR School

There are quite a few more.

These schools are not just for racers. They train people who ride motorcycles on the street. They are actually the only place you can learn what to do with your bike at highway speeds, and this is in no way the "aim it and hope" method car drivers seem to use. You will encounter resistance, all sorts of excuses, because people do not like it when you so much as imply they do not know how to ride a motorcycle, but if you get them to go, within a few minutes they will know how badly they were lying to themselves about their skill level.

I have spoken to maybe a dozen national champs, and one World champion of motorcycle racing. None of them - zero - will claim they know how to ride a motorcycle. Yet duffers do. It would be good to change that, to get more people interested in learning what to do on two wheels.

These courses are the equivalent of getting time on the PGA Tour with tournament winners. If you go, you will find it to be the best money you have ever spent on motorcycling.

"Chuck asked the right question. If it is important for motorcyclists to wear helmets, then why not people in cars?"

People in cars are required (for the most part) to buckle up. Shall we add straps to motorcycles, or shall we accept they are different than cars and act accordingly?

Jeff, I understand insurance just fine. I also understand that the unemployed and underemployed frequently don't have any, and we still give those people medical care. Even people who have insurance are unlikely to have paid half a million dollars into it. That's where the rest of us come in.

People in cars are required (for the most part) to buckle up. Shall we add straps to motorcycles, or shall we accept they are different than cars and act accordingly?

I'm too lazy to hunt down the cite, but SFAIK, far more automobile occupants than those on motorcycles have suffered serious head injuries.

Granted, quantity and rate are two different things, but there is no getting away from the fact that being in a car won't stop your bell from getting rung real hard.

So, if helmets are good enough for the goose, why not the gander?

Jeff, I understand insurance just fine.

It didn't sound like it. Forcing motorcycle riders who choose not to wear a helmet to pay enough as a group to adequately pool the risk of the group has nothing to do with people who don't get insurance.

---

Interesting history lesson. Helmets were introduced in modern combat by the Brits during the Boer War. Oddly, they found that the helmets increased head injuries.

How the heck could that be? Because of the helmets, more soldiers were surviving impacts to the head. (Also, of course, more impacts weren't causing injury.)

Anyway, don't be too sure that sans helmet motorcyclists will add to health care costs, instead of just giving morticians more to do.