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the average number of motorcyclists killed in crashes had doubled in Louisiana in the first two years after the state repealed its mandatory helmet law.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.
That is why I, despite my wife being an RN, will NOT allow the state to put the "Organ Donor" sticker on my lisence. I distrust doctors second to lawyers and just ahead of politicians.
It's not enough. There are some who'll go ahead and take what they want, then claim they were unable to contact the family in time due to the haste needed if the organs were to be removed while still viable. I saw it more than once as a deputy coroner, and once attrended a Christmas party where several surgeons so inclined were having a good laugh about the way they conducted business.
One went to jail on a child abuse case involving his daughter, another left town after an incident involving a 14-year0old judge's son, and three others changed their way of doing business when it was made clear that they'd be next. But they weren't real happy to find out about my policy either, especially after meeting one of the guys who'd have been carrying it out. And he was reasonably fair at field dressing what he'd harvested, too.
-archy-/-
It would be reasonable, then, to assume:
-you don't use seatbelts
-you don't have (or believe in possessing) a gun for the purpose of self or home defense
-You don't lock doors
-If you have (young) kids they have ready access to matches and poisons
-If you have older kids they have ready access to MTV, HBO and all manner of programming
-you have no fire extinguisher in your kitchen
-you do not do things to take care of your body (tent) such as exercise or trying to eat healthy foods
-you do not obey traffic signs or lights
-etc., etc., etc.
After all, these are things that people may choose to do, or not do, just as people can choose or not choose to use safety equipment. It is all superstition anyway, just as you have said... Thousands of people fall and die every year in their houses. I'm simply not superstitious about safety equipment. There is no end to where that superstition can take you. When it's my time to die there is nothing I can do to prevent it.
A prudent man sees danger and hides himself; but the simple go on, and suffer for it.
Not my favorite translation of this verse, but I think it properly captures the idea. Oh, and BTW, what if it is not your time to die, but only time for you to become a drooling veggie. LOADS of fun for those who love you... I am not advocating that one become obsessive, but when reasonable precautions that can make a large potential difference are available one is foolish to avoid them, and quite frankly, self serving to use fatalism as an excuse.
No it wouldn't.
A prudent man sees danger and hides himself; but the simple go on, and suffer for it.
The way some people talk Jesus should never have gotten near that donkey without a helmet. The thought is pretty silly to me but there are a lot of people, mostly female, who don't want to see their kids on 16 inch bikes without that bright plastic helmet on their head. If no helmet then God will get mad at them for being careless and strike their child down because they, the parent, didn't love them enough. That is pure superstition, I see and hear it all the time.
Not my favorite translation of this verse, but I think it properly captures the idea. Oh, and BTW, what if it is not your time to die, but only time for you to become a drooling veggie. LOADS of fun for those who love you... I am not advocating that one become obsessive, but when reasonable precautions that can make a large potential difference are available one is foolish to avoid them, and quite frankly, self serving to use fatalism as an excuse.
One man's fatalism is another man's faith in God's soverignty.
The thought is pretty silly to me too.
...but there are a lot of people, mostly female, who don't want to see their kids on 16 inch bikes without that bright plastic helmet on their head. If no helmet then God will get mad at them for being careless and strike their child down because they, the parent, didn't love them enough. That is pure superstition, I see and hear it all the time.
The idea that God would strike down someone’s child because the parent didn't love the child enough to make him/her wear a helmet is silly superstition. It is also a very warped view of scripture. If you see and hear this all the time may I strongly suggest that you associate differently.
I have my daughter wear a helmet (yes, on her 16 inch bike) not because I believe she is in any danger at that riding level, but because I want it to become a habit. My 13 and 11 year old sons go fast through the trails we ride on our mountain bikes. My oldest has already had his helmet save him from some very nasty ripped up skin if not a concussion or worse when he rammed a small stump and did an endo into a nearby tree.
One man's fatalism is another man's faith in God's sovereignty.
Yes God is sovereign. We have also been given freedom to make choices. The reconciliation of these two seeming opposites is something I have studied quite a bit, and will continue to contemplate. At least for now I think it is mystery that is outside of our mental grasp without God’s help. Others have tried to explain aspects of this issue; Ironside's door, for example. Still others have tried to deal with it by denying one side or the other - either God is not sovereign, or we do not truly have the ability to choose. I reject these extremes. We agree that God is sovereign. But if we do not truly have the ability to choose than what is the point of having any proverbs? For that matter what is the point if so very many passages that guide us in our behavior? Why do you choose to homeschool? (congrats, BTW – that is an excellent, uh, choice). If you truly believe as you have portrayed to the full logical extent of your position, then why are you trying to convince me to think differently?!? Your arguments will make no difference, God has preordained what I am going to think!
Amen.
One man's "obsessive" is another's "reasonable precaution," too.
As you know, I used to think a full-face Bell helmet saved my life (landing me in the hospital for three days with a concussion, rather than in a coffin). Much later it became obvious our sovereign God preserved me, not the helmet. Still (or, therefore), I'd be a fool to ride without one. Your mileage may vary.
A very worthy thing to contemplate and much more interesting than ones particular exercise on safety equipment.
At least for now I think it is mystery that is outside of our mental grasp without God’s help. Others have tried to explain aspects of this issue; Ironside's door, for example.
Is this the Ironside of the Plymoth Brethren, which I happen to be? Sort of.
Still others have tried to deal with it by denying one side or the other - either God is not sovereign, or we do not truly have the ability to choose. I reject these extremes. We agree that God is sovereign. But if we do not truly have the ability to choose than what is the point of having any proverbs? For that matter what is the point if so very many passages that guide us in our behavior? Why do you choose to homeschool? (congrats, BTW – that is an excellent, uh, choice). Thanks, I just got off the phone and my wife was almost misty eyed because our kids did so well on their Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Our 13 yearold, one of 8 kids, used to be the one we called non-academic. Today he showed that in the last year or two he has become the most!
If you truly believe as you have portrayed to the full logical extent of your position, then why are you trying to convince me to think differently?!? Your arguments will make no difference, God has preordained what I am going to think!
I was just reading in Psalms last week and it said specifically, though it is said in other ways in other places, that God made our heart. This is interesting when you compare that to the verses about salvation and the condition of the human heart or even the seed and the sewer(sp) and the state of a mans heart. In some verses it looks like man's heart is his own but in many others we see that God controls it and has also designed it. If we were to try and force God into a single point in time of existance, when He made my heart, His infinite knowledge knew everything that went into it, everything I would experience to form and grow my decision process, and every choice I would make. He looks pretty soverign already but then we remember that He doesn't exist in a single point in time as we do.
When I choose to sin, which I do all the time, I know it is because I am weak by design. God holds me accountable for this sin though. That is the paradox that we are told in Romans 9. Many people balk at this as Paul predicted but I accept it completely. I am left to be only thankful that He has saved me from my sin.
I was driving into work today, wrestling with this beam that was blocking my view of the road, and considering what I had written yesterday. Please forgive the pointedness of my responses. It is all too easy for me to remember some proverbs and forget others such as; a soft answer turns away wrath. Thanks for being the example we are called to be (I wasn't). Not a small change from being a killing machine. God bless you and your family.
What a rare and pleasant freeper exchange this has been.
Psalm 133
A Song of Ascents. Of David.
1 Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brethren to dwell together in unity!
2It is like the precious oil upon the head,
Running down on the beard,
The beard of Aaron,
Running down on the edge of his garments.
3It is like the dew of Hermon,
Descending upon the mountains of Zion;
For there the LORD commanded the blessing--
Life forevermore.
I've finished psalms and proverbs again this week, almost, and I've sure enjoyed them. The proverbs are so valuable I don't know how we make it without reading a page of them every day.
The Lord Bless You.
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