Neat bike. I remember it well . . .
I never had the opportunity to ride one.
Posted on 12/01/2003 7:38:02 AM PST by Holly_P
PRAIRIEVILLE, La. - In the smoky, windowless back room of Gail's Diner on Route 61, eight bikers gathered on a recent Sunday morning for a regular meeting of their motorcycle lobbying group.
A few days earlier, a federal agency had released figures showing the average number of motorcyclists killed in crashes had doubled in Louisiana in the first two years after the state repealed its mandatory helmet law.
The bikers at Gail's - a woman and seven men who roared up wearing denim and do-rags - believe that those numbers will be used as ammunition. "Every regular legislative session, there's been an attempt" to reinstitute a helmet law, said Ollie "Laddie" Elkins, president of the Louisiana branch of American Bikers Active Towards Education (ABATE). "So far, we've managed to beat them in committee."
The regular battle over helmets in Louisiana might just be a look into the future of Pennsylvania, where Gov. Rendell signed a law repealing the state's helmet law in September. The Louisiana debate pits avid bikers on one side against safety officials and doctors frustrated with the number of fallen motorcyclists with head injuries arriving at emergency rooms.
Elkins, his long, gray hair secured in a foot-long braid, said his group expected another challenge next year and feared that Gov.-elect Kathleen Blanco would sign it into law if it passes. A new mandatory helmet law would be just fine with emergency-room physicians, who believe allowing motorcyclists to ride without helmets is creating a public health problem.
They point to a Louisiana safety commission report that estimated that 46 deaths and 73 severe injuries could have been avoided if motorcyclists had worn helmets between 1999 and 2002. The study calculated that those casualties cost the citizens of Louisiana $102 million.
Departing Gov. Mike Foster, a biker himself, signed Louisiana's repeal into law in August 1999, saying it represented a move toward "less government."
"Government ought not tell us what we can do to protect ourselves," he said. "We should have enough sense to protect ourselves."
Under the Louisiana law, bikers 18 and older do not have to wear a helmet as long as they have proof of at least $10,000 in medical insurance coverage.
Pennsylvania now allows experienced motorcyclists over 21 to go "lidless." When the Keystone State's law went into effect Sept. 4, Pennsylvania became the 31st state to allow adult motorcyclists to ride without head protection. New Jersey has had a mandatory helmet law since the 1970s.
It's not yet clear that the Louisiana experience will be duplicated in Pennsylvania, but emergency-room physicians around the commonwealth are keeping a count of motorcycle accident casualties with the possible aim of launching a challenge.
Marilyn Heine, president-elect of the Pennsylvania chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, said she did not expect any attempt to overturn the law for two years, the time the state House Legislative Budget and Finance Committee has been given to study the effects of the repeal.
Even when its helmet law was in place, Pennsylvania's motorcycle deaths rose 42 percent between 1996 and 2002 - outpacing a 35 percent increase in ridership during that same time. After two decades of steady decline, U.S. motorcycle deaths also are up, by more than 50 percent since 1997.
A motorcyclist is now 26 times more likely to die in a crash than an automobile passenger, with 3,141 killed in 2001. Researchers are still exploring the causes of the sudden rise, and possible culprits include more motorcycles, bigger engines, older riders, increased alcohol consumption, and the repeal of helmet laws.
In a report released at the end of October, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said an average of 26 motorcyclists were killed in Louisiana in the two years before the state's helmet law was changed in 1999, and 55 in the two years after the repeal, a 111 percent increase.
The report, which also said motorcycle deaths increased by 58 percent in Kentucky after the repeal of that state's helmet law, did not specify the cause of deaths or indicate how many of the fatalities were not wearing a helmet.
A report prepared for the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission and issued this year showed that in cases where helmet use was known, bikers not wearing helmets and dying in accidents outnumbered those who did, by 1.6 to 1, after the repeal.
Both reports said the number of registered motorcycles and accidents had jumped in the years after repeal but not at a rate to match the increase in deaths.
"You can make numbers look like anything you want, say anything you want," said Travis "Blackie" Lawless, a St. James Parish motorcycle officer who wears a helmet on the job but does not when he is off-duty unless the weather is bad.
"Not wearing a helmet does not cause an accident," said Lawless, ABATE-Louisiana's vice president. "And just because you have a helmet on does not mean you're going to survive an accident."
The Louisiana study said a possible key factor in that state is that most bikers in Louisiana apparently have not taken a safety course needed to get the license endorsement to operate a motorcycle. Bikers without a motorcycle endorsement account for 62 percent of the fatalities in Louisiana, the report said.
Lawless and Elkins, a retired chemical-plant worker, agreed that many bikers do not have the safety skills needed to ride motorcycles.
"If [a biker] doesn't know his limitations, he is setting himself up for failure," Lawless said.
Still, the study said, "there is convincing evidence that a decline in helmet use is the most important factor contributing to death and severe injury."
Jim Aiken, an emergency-room doctor at New Orleans' Charity Hospital, could not agree more.
He said with certain injuries there is a "golden hour," during which emergency doctors can stabilize a patient and set the stage for recovery - but not with head injuries.
"Head injuries are a distinct form of injury," said Aiken, who also oversees doctors in Louisiana State University's emergency medicine residency program. "Once we get them, the damage is done. Brain injuries are immediate. There is no golden hour. There's a golden minute."
People who suffer head injuries in crashes but survive "often are left with a lingering health issues that are an enormous burden to society," the doctor said.
"Few realize what a horrible, horrible life it can be to be incapacitated," said Aiken, also a member of the American College of Emergency Physicians. "Being confined can be very painful not only to yourself but to your family as well."
He said the $10,000 in insurance coverage bikers are required to carry to ride helmetless would come nowhere near covering the cost of a lifetime of care, which often falls to the state.
But to the bikers, getting out on the highway on a Harley unencumbered with a helmet is a freedom issue, one with risk but a matter of choice.
"When it's your time, it's your time," said David Metige, a biker who also is a police officer. "I want to do something I enjoy. It's a feeling you can't match. A lot of people don't understand that."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact staff writer Joseph Gambardello at 856-779-3868 or jgambardello@phillynews.com.
Somebody is the *keeper* of the list, and a request to them will get you added. In the case of this one, the *keeper* is martin_fierro, who I've *pinged* with a note of your request.
Some ping lists also use a *pingword* used as a keyword for FR keyword search for an archive of those posts to which the ping list members have been called. Martin doesn't seem to have been doing that for his FR biker pals, but *Hooligan* would seem to be a usable term should he choose to do so, though we may have to pick through a few reports of Brit soccer troublemakers. Oi!
No way are you going to convince me that a helmet has a lower coefficient of friction against asphalt than the typical hair and skin covered human head.
You are saying that fiberglass is slicker than flesh and blood? I’d rather have a bald spot than a broken neck – but I also never landed on my head either.
Nothing wrong with your pick, though a little heavier than what I care for. I like a face bubble shield [I wear eyeglasses] which seems to give me less distortion than a flat face shield, admittedly handy, and don't care for face bars a bit, even when bashing bush on an enduro bike. Drag racing and grand prix twistyturnies aren't my game, so I'll leave the gear for those games for them what plays 'em.
A long time ago, I found out that the best shopping I ever did for helmets was that done at liesure when I didn't have to, and that when I had to pick up a replacement for one that had been swiped or for a spur-of-the-moment rider without one usually resulted in my worst choices. And it's a great excuse to knock off a coke or two whill kicking the merits of such things around with the dealer.
-archy-/-
Keyword *HOOLIGAN* added to keyword search as Hooligan-list ping article. I may go back and do some of the past classic posts later.
-archy-/-
That was my impression from the start. I find it encouraging that you do advocate personal responsibility. I do too. My various insurance policies include a million dollar umbrella policy, which picks up where the others leave off.
I am an avid motorcyclist. I have enjoyed the two-wheeled transportation of various marques for the last thirty odd years. Contrary to popular belief, I am not "anti-helmet". I currently own three of them. In my lifetime I have "field-tested" three helmets to destruction.
The first (and the worst) was with a nondescript polycarbonate DOT-5 open face model with a five-snap wrap-around faceshield. By the time I was done sliding across the pavement, two of the five snaps were ground completely away and the shield had an abraded imprint of my face which bore an odd resemblance to the Shroud of Turin; my nose, cheeks and eye sockets were clearly visible from the abrasion pattern. My head was fine; my leg wasn't . . .
My second was with a high-dollar Snell-75 approved fiberglass open face model similar in layout to the one previously described. I cracked it completely in half when a rather large Birch tree jumped in front of my dirt bike. The helmet quite literally broke in two (the halves were still fastened together by the chin strap) during a very minor hit (at least it seemed that way). The part that shook me was I couldn't find any damage on the birch tree, not even a mark.
The third (and final to date) was a full-face Bell without the neck cutout that archy alludes to. The neck injuries I received during a slow speed pavement get-off kept me out of work for three months. The Bell had a rubber bead around the eye opening and the bottom circumference that alternately grabbed and released the pavement as I slid, twisting my neck in directions I didn't think were possible.
I still own a full-face helmet. I rarely wear it (only during extremely cold riding conditions). I'll wear one of the open-face models while touring, more to increase comfort and reduce fatigue than to afford protection. None of them have exposed materials that could gain "traction"; nice shiny slippery surfaces only! I do find that wearing a helmet gives me a false sense of security while riding; it makes it too easy to relax and let my guard down.
The more laws enacted to protect bikers the better off they are.
What goes around comes around. I, being a smoker, haven't received much support from those anti-smoking bikers now have I?
How does it go? They came for the Jews but I wasn't a Jew.........
Government intervention is what it is. You are either for it or against it, there is no middle of the road........
To be perfectly honest, I didn't think Gary Busey was wrapped all that tight to begin with. Still, he did seem to self-unwrap measurably after his accident.
I recall a late night talk-show interview (Leno, Carson?) with Busey right after the accident. During the interview the inevitable question came up; "What do you think about mandatory helmet use now?". His reply was (I'm paraphrasing) "No effing way!" Busey was very emphatic about holding this position, standing on the couch ranting to the audience about it at one point during the show.
At least ten years later, I saw Busey doing another interview on another talk-show. The same questions was asked. To my surprise, he had become a strong advocate for mandatory helmet laws. He cited himself as a case-in-point! I was struck by the irony of it all; what he was advocating, and why. "People need government protection from themselves. Why, look at me!" (again, paraphrasing)
Sadly, Gary Busey is the perfect poster boy for mandatory helmet use. Here's hoping the socialists avoid trotting him out more . . .
You are saying that fiberglass is slicker than flesh and blood? I’d rather have a bald spot than a broken neck – but I also never landed on my head either.
I'm saying something hard like a helmet will slide easier than your less hard head. As a test, go out to the street w/ your helmet on, put just your head on the ground and push/slide along. Next try it w/o the helmet. I guarantee the helmet will slide easier. And in accidents where there is enough force to make a flat spot on your skull, I believe the difference in sliding friction will be even more dramatic in favor of the hat.
Woohoo, I'm a hooligan! I'm going out for some smoky burnouts and wheelies now.
No chum, going 80 miles an hour will not hurt you one bit. What will hurt is the part when you suddenly go 0 miles an hour.
Perch? Bent? Not bent in the least, where'd you get that? Just BSing and giving my two cents on helmet usage.. (which I stand by) Maybe I should've sprinkled on some smileys?
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