Posted on 02/04/2005 8:21:40 PM PST by FoxInSocks
RICHMOND, Va. - It's been a tough day for highway safety advocates at the Virginia General Assembly.
The House Militia, Police and Public Safety Committee endorsed legislation allowing motorcyclists 21 and older to ride without a helmet. The vote was 12-to-7.
The panel also rejected a series of bills to continue the use of photo monitoring systems at dangerous intersections in six northern Virginia localities and Virginia Beach. Those pilot programs allow police to use cameras to catch drivers who run red lights.
The programs are scheduled to expire July 1.
Another bill rejected by the committee would have expanded photo-red statewide.
The motorcycle helmet bill will be up for a vote on the House floor early next week. Similar bills have failed on close votes on the House floor three years in a row.
Always a bad day for safety; never a good day for liberty.
Live safe or die.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety... -- B.F.
3 weeks for you wardaddy, 17 years for me to crash my STREET bike(dirt bikes are another whole storybook), and like Smokin' Joe says, it was a car driver. And to make this stick even better, it was a woman in an SUV that changed her mind at an intersection and made a turn from the wrong and illegal lane. Down goes the Blue Collar Christian, breaks his right hand and wrist that are very important to his repairing motorcycles, and totaled is his plush ride.
My full face helmet had not even a scratch on it. My leather jacket, on the other hand, shows deep cuts in the sleeve where I hit the rain gutter and hefty scraping where my arms and belly slid along the pavement. My golves were ruined, but except for the broken bones, there was no abrasion damage to my hands. My jeans were ripped open to allow my knees access to the pavement, but those knees have seen a lot of pavement from bicycle incidents as a kid.
People need to learn that when you miss your turn, you miss your turn. Go up another block, off-ramp or light and find your way back to where YOU MISSED YOUR TURN!
Up to the insurance firms to find out. That's why they hire mathematicians, physicians and scientists. And if you add market forces, then we are going to have a real fair system. And Reservists and NGs are on the gov't payroll anyway. But hey, that's my view of the world.
Hey buddy, You make a good point. I hate to be TOLD I have to wear a helmet. I mostly wear one anyway, but a ride without is sweet and I 've done it a bunch. If helmets are good for motorcyclists, then they must be good for those driving otherwise. You do notice how they have been building in head protection to cars now with the side curain stuff, how about some intantly inflating headbands for us normal folks who ride.
Let's invent them Joe, we'll be rich!
He invented it in fact.
I've always known better than to take this one of Franklin's aphorisms as having any deeper meaning than the "You'll always be safe with Allstate" claim.
Did the red-light cameras really make you feel safer? They were only at a very few intersections anyway. I'm glad they're gone, not because the red-light cameras were such a bad thing, but I'm afraid they will lead to speed cameras, which are a bad thing.
Let Freedom Reign!
Ever see one of those really hardcore bikers riding through a cornfield in August ~ Wow!
Funniest thing is that out of the hundreds of thousands of pictures they've taken with those things, almost everybody shown was either running a redlight or speeding.
Why am I not surprised to find someone defending both speeding and running redlights?
Would you defend public spirited citizens acting as snipers at intersections to protect their own neighborhoods from redlight runners and speeders?
Where does government get the right to protect you from yourself?
Seat belt laws should be outlawed also.
If you don't want to wear a seatbelt while driving, go get your own road!
I am ROFLMAO at your post. I wear a helmet because I feel naked without it. Same goes for other safety gear.
Welcome to Free Republic.
And that (road rash) according to what I read is the worst part of an bike accident...the hardest to recover from (other than the obvious brain damage.) The thought of painful skin grafts is enough to keep me in either my Draggin' Jeans or my Aerostitch...
"When you lose control of your car on a public highway because you hit a chuckhole and slid out of your seat"
Anyone that inept shouldn't be driving and deserves to die!
Lets blow away a few misconceptions here.
First, persons who die as a result of head injuries are never "organ donors". At best, they are skin and bone donors. The brain has to be working to keep the organs viable.
Second, if you die in an automobile accident it is nearly always the result of the head injuries you sustained; over 90% of all auto fatalities involve blunt force trauma to the head.
Third, 70% of all motorcycle accidents are caused by the auto driver violating the right of way of the motorcyclist, typically by turning left in front of them at an intersection.
Fourth, all motorcycle injury costs comprise only 0.071% of the national health care costs.
Fifth, states which mandate helmet use have a statistically higher death rate for motorcyclists than states that do not mandate helmet use.
If they're so concerned with rising health care costs and insurance companies' profitability, Nanny State proponents would do well to require helmet use while in an automobile.
Let those who ride decide. If you don't ride, then please STFU and stop spreading your conjecture as fact.
I know one, an Inuit guy who is a very skilled rider. He can pop a wheelie off the light and stay on his rear wheel for a city block while shifting through all gears.
I don't know what it is about Eskimos, either they are born naturally talented, dumbass lucky or they have an angel on their shoulder. He never crashed not on motorbikes,mountain bikes, skiis you name it.
To be fair though he hasn't put in much saddle time in the last couple of years so you're probably right, eventually everyone crashes.
As for me I don't ride motorbikes. I ride mountain bikes and I've turned myself into a meat missile a couple of times in traffic.
Once I did a 40 mph header into a croud of people. Put four people into the hospital and smashed a wooden desk into kindling with my unhelmeted head. That's the closest I've come to spending the rest of my days eating my meals through a straw.
Do you have a source for this? Also do you have numbers for the same state before and after laws were changed?
The only way I could see this being true is the RUB factor of guys buying their Hardleys with no experience, no helmet, and getting themselves killed because of it.
My full face helmet has saved me. At best, I would be missing the skin off half my face if I was not wearing it. At worst, I would be nothing more than a statistic right now. Initial contact point was right on my temple area and there was road rash all the way across my visor and down to my chin area.
I support everyone's right to ride with or without a helmet. I do not support spreading disinformation about helmets that might end up getting some newbie killed. The lies about helmets causing spinal cord injury are a perfect example of this. These types of lies are more than responsible for a large number of motorcycle deaths.
LOL! Very imaginative.
It is quite another thing to drive on streets surrounded by people in a wide range of vehicle types, many of whom have little awareness of motorcycles in the traffic stream, and little or no knowledge of the handling characteristics of the motorcycles around them, not to mention their own vehicles.
On the street, the best defense the rider has is the superior horsepower to weight ratio, maneuverability, and braking characteristics of his/her motorcycle. To utilize this, aside from rider skill, the rider must be aware of the actions of other vehicles around them, and that, frankly, involves looking around. In my van I can do this with a quick eye movement, scanning five mirrors which give me a pretty good view of what is going on around me. On the motorcycle, I have to turn my head. Mirrors like I have on my van would be an aerodynamic nightmare.
I have an old neck injury which makes this really tough to do on a long ride, especially if I have to strap on an extra 3 to 5 pounds. Try it sometime. Wear a motorcycle helmet around the house doing chores. Note decreased peripheral vision, note heat buildup, and note how fatiguing having that lid on is. Keep in mind you are not dealing with a 65-70 mph wind blowing in your face and the extra wind load, either.
I am not saying that helmets are evil per se, for some riders they work just fine. Just not for me. I only want to retain the right to choose what safety equipment is appropriate for me.
Additionally, I am tired of the lousy media stereotype which presents all motorcyclists as lowlife, indigent, and criminal. If you think about owning a $20,000 Harley, or a touring bike made by other manufacturers of similar cost, you don't get one of those without a job. The untermenschen mindset many 4-wheeler drivers have toward bikers makes it easier in their minds to justify their own behaviour which commonly endangers those of us who ride, a means of transportation commonly made more risky by the actions of those around us, actions, ironically, for which we bear the onus.
I have no illusions. I know there is a very good chance of getting hurt if I am in an accident, especially if it is with another vehicle. I am a very defensive driver as a result.
Automobile drivers are often under the perception that they are "safe" with their airbags, seatbelts, and crumple zones, and are less attentive. What would be the effect if you could make everyone believe their airbags would not work? Think the roads might get a little safer as people realized that they had to rely on their driving skills to keep from getting hurt, rather than a gadget?
When our state passed the mandatory seatbelt law, the same day the law went into effect, I was driving my (now ex) wife home from the hospital with a row of staples vertically through where the belt would lay. Driving her without her wearing a seatbelt was breaking the law. Making her wear one would have been criminal.
Laws which do not allow people to decide are ridiculous, and contribute to the knee jerk mindset which has kids kicked out of school for bringing in GI Joe toy guns 2 inches long. Note there is no law which states you cannot wear a helmet. So let those who ride decide.
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