Motorcycle Riders May be Allowed to Ride Without a Helmet

WTOP News ^ | February 4, 2005 | unk.

[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.

[brianl703]

"Leave me free to drive my car without worrying about a nearly invisible motorcycle in my rear blind spot"

Why don't you learn to do a head check before changing lanes, and maybe how to adjust your mirrors?

Or are you biologically incapable of either?

[muawiyah]

Did you know we have a whole host of folks on his thread who didn't think I was funny at all.

Did I ever tell you about the time I was running my Chevy Van (with a 350 cu in Corvette engine) down a road through corn country in mid August ~ had to put the windshield wipers on fullblast and refill the juice box every 5 miles or so.

[muawiyah]

Actually, there's no data whatsoever to show people speeding up to beat the yellow to any greater degree than they ever did. Your best bet, anyway, is to come to a stop IN the intersection and just sit there through the redcycle.

[muawiyah]

PW county is monoethnic by the local standards. Some of the folks around here have "cousins" living out there in Manassas and they report feeling rather "visible" whenever they visit the place.

I've had similar feelings myself. Then, in the good old days, they didn't even understand "Nawtharn" to say nothing of speaking it.

Been here a while.

[muawiyah]

OK, brian, you have your eyes in the back of your head don't you?

Must be why you don't like motorcycle helmets! (ROTFLMAO).

If you'd use your eyes to read, instead of checking out pimples on your a$$, you'd discover I mentioned the "BLIND SPOT" to the left and rear of the driver's position in virtually every motor vehicle. It's precisely the area where bikers get smacked according to lebenteenzillion posts on this thread alone!

Even with all the mirror system the law requires you cannot "cover" that area as well as others, and we certainly wouldn't want to further encumber the law with ever more unenforceable provisions so that folks had mirror systems that would highlight this area, eh?!.

I simply proposed that the law be rescinded that makes a vehicle driver liable for smacking a biker ~ particularly a biker who enters the "BLIND SPOT".

It's just like the helmet thing, even the issue of visibility, turning of one's head, risking whiplash, etc. Every argument advanced for not wearing a helmet while riding a motorcycle certainly applies to this question as well.

It's all about freedom doncha' know.

[Koblenz]

I don't favor this, because it's not just the personal liberties of the motorcycle riders around.

Everyone in life makes mistakes. Some of cause accidents. Under normal circumstances, these accidents require some metal and plastic to be replaced on various cars, and replacement cars to be rented. Sometimes there's injury, even death, but these are a small portion of the total accidents.

When there are motorcyclists without helmets, they are basically ensuring that any wreck will result in death. Now you can say, well, just be careful when you drive, but no one is perfect, and wrecks do result. When everyone is in a car, the chances of any serious injury are relatively small.

Suppose that a bunch of people thought it'd be cool to have gold plated cars. Every time they were in a wreck, it'd cost a million dollars. Well, if that were the case, then obviously, any fender bender would send someone into bankruptcy. So then no one would want to drive faster than 15 mph, lest they hit a gold plated car. I just think that motorcyclists should wear helmets, or they should agree that they couldn't collect anything more in a wreck than they would have had they been driving a sedan. But their flagrant disregard to any sort of safety really does push up the costs for everyone else.

[Osage Orange]

I've got a better idea...all unhelmeted motorcycle riders should be DNR's....As in "Do Not Resuscitate"...Make them post it on their DL...

Works for me....

[muawiyah]

BTW, I have even more mirrors than the law requires. At the same time there remains a small blind spot. Even turning my head all the way around would not eliminate it.

You enter that blind spot you should be held accountable for any injury to my car.

[pageonetoo]

Liberty? You mean I will have to go back to fearing for my life every time I come to an intersection around here.

Yeah, those freakin' communist red light runners are the most dangerous action going! Get a life!

[muawiyah]

Good response.

Hope you noticed I got these Liberty Advocates arguing that the law should hold automobile drivers liable for injuring motorcyclists ~ which kind of shoots their liberty interest argument in the tail.

If anybody is going to be really free everybody has to be free, if you get my drift!

[muawiyah]

Actually, if you'd read further in that particular response, you would have noticed that I suggested I'd have to go armed to each and every intersection now that the government had decided that it was up to the individual to defend his right to cross without getting smacked by a "t-boner".

You took it as some sort of fearful pleading by a little bunny-rabbit type person. What an error!

Think about it every time you come to a stoplight ~ there could be somebody there just waiting for you to slip up and threaten him with your vehicle.

[Smokin' Joe]

Sheesh! The most common accident involving a motorcycle and automobile occurs when an oncoming car makes a left turn directly in front of the motorcycle. Unless your blind spots are out the windshield, you have no excuse.

As for the right and left rear blind spots, loud pipes save lives* ! But car drivers whine about those, too. (*as do convex mirrors, which I have on my van.)

[muawiyah]

Look, the reports did not make that distinction.

This particular maneuver (left turn in front of traffic flowing in the same direction) is also the most frequent cause of the famous "truck squarshes little car like bug killing 7" accident.

The solution is, of course, to eliminate all 4 lane + divided highways and disallow passing.

New Jersey has, of course, taken one further step and they've actually set up "right turn only" intersections with mini-cloverleaf arrangements.

[pageonetoo]

I go through plenty of stop lights. I drive more than 50k miles a year... I don't need a gun for crossing an intersection, and neither do you...! I guess, maybe, I fail to see your humor!!!

Red light cameras are about money, not safety! Theirs must not be as profitable as DC's!

[muawiyah]

Hey, it's not the red-light cameras that're generating the money ~ it's the violations doing that.

Now, if you think the fines should be lower, then propose that, because no matter how enforcement is undertaken, the fines are what they are and are applicable to the situation.

Besides, that's DC. We are speaking of Virginia in this thread. I certainly can't be held responsible for what those people do.

[Smokin' Joe]

I don't know what reports you are referring to. The motorcycle safety studies I have read, when they bother to mention the cause of the accident sure state that the problem is most commonly oncoming vehicles failing to yield the right of way.

"But officer, I didn't see him...." is a tired cliche among those who ride. Maybe they didn't--I have seen an amazing amount of crap suspended from mirrors which probably don't get much use otherwise. If I had a dollar for every time some nitwit had left-turned in front of me, when I had to downshift and brake vigorously to avoid an accident (while trying to not get rear-ended in the process), I'd be able to pick up a new touring bike of my choice and pay cash.

The car crusher you refer to is the result of car drivers not understanding diddley squat about the turning radius of a semi truck. Which boils down to people in 4 wheeled vehicles not knowing diddley about the handling characteristics of the other vehicles on the road. If they were capable of understanding that, the highways would be safer for all concerned.

[pageonetoo]

Hey, it's not the red-light cameras that're generating the money ~ it's the violations doing that.

ROTFLMAO... you must be a politician, or a Lockeed=Martin stockholder!

Local officials want you to think a Red Light Cam is only for vehicle safety but in reality, Automated Enforcement is merely an Automated Revenue Generator.

While local governments are quick to cite red light running statistics, most are also eager to downplay the profits generated from automated violations In fact, the greed became so apparent, an amended Red Light Camera law went into effect January 1st and was inspired after a case in San Diego, where a (former) Lockheed-Martin company was operating under a ticket-based revenue agreement and ruled "untrustworthy and unreliable," by Superior Court Judge Ronald Styn. -from Kalifornia, but the same folk run the program in DC and VIRGINIA!

[muawiyah]

The alternative to this kind of enforcement is, of course, a an armed officer of the law on every corner!

[pageonetoo]

I cannot believe that you are as threatened, as much as you are just afraid! Do you not understand social engineering?

[pageonetoo]