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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the average number of motorcyclists killed in crashes had doubled in Louisiana in the first two years after the state repealed its mandatory helmet law.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.
BTTT so everyone will read your comments! If we didn't have socialized medicine, this wouldn't be a public issue at all. People should make their own decisions about their own safety IF they, not the public, are responsible for the financial consequences.
my neighbor lost his 45 yr old brother this summer in FLA. No helmet.
He was motoring down the street on his harley - his street- and his next door neighbor didnt see him and backed up, right into him.
Fortunately, a Church was nearby and the Pastor held him in his last moments of consciousness.
Once in the hospital - he was sustained (though brain dead). His elderly parents and his brother (my neighbor) then had the difficult task of pulling the plug thrust upon them. It was a second death of sorts - Imagine your own child, dying twice. His Father nearly died as well from the stress
I still dont see how you could derive a humorous response from that......
Exactly the sort of non-logic I would expect from an anti-helmet idiot.
Motorcyclists are just as likely to be privately insured as any other road user. As a matter of fact, motorcyclists are slightly LESS dependent upon public funds to pay their hospital bills than the general public. A Harborview Medical Center study reported that 63.4% of the injured motorcyclists in the trauma center relied on public funds while 67% of the general patient population relied on public dollars during the same time period. A study by the University of North Carolina's Highway Safety Research Center reported that 49.5% of injured motorcyclists had their medical costs covered by insurance, while 50.4% of the other road trauma victims were similarly insured. This analysis refutes any suggestions that motorcyclists disproportionately rely on public health-care funds to pay for their hospitalization. Take into account that less than 6/10ths of one percent of crash-involved vehicles are motorcycles, a very small number to begin with.
humor???
I see it as making a point...
I have heard that in Emergency Rooms, motorcycles are refered to as "Donorcycles."
Riding them in traffic is dangerous...
During my 20 years of driving, I have been "hit" by other cars at least three times. None have caused even the slightest injury. Any could have been fatal on a motorcycle.
Riding a motorcycle is dangerous. Riding without a helment is suicide!
That said, I fully support people's rights to do it. I just wish the government wouldn't make ME pay for the consequences of their decision.
FMCDH
The Government ought not — but they will — tell us what we can do....
We should — but we don't always — have enough sense to protect....
Not true for me (I've been riding for 25 years). Without a helmet I'm more aware of the noise that wind makes rushing past my ears and I'm more aware of the bugs and rocks that hit me in the face. Other than those two things I'm more aware of everything else with afull face helmet on.
That being said, there should not be a law requiring helmets. If some idiot wants to splat his/her brains on the concrete that's fine with me.
I think the "study" that found that $103 million taxpayers dollars was spent on 119 people in motorcycle accidents is a bunch of crap. No way roughly one million govt. dollars was spent on each person. The only way this is true would be if they counted 100 govt. HUD workers (do nothing so must be assigned somewhere) on the payroll for each accident.
More nanny-state govt. at work...
From the original story:
The study calculated that those casualties cost the citizens of Louisiana $102 million.
Medicare...Medicaid...Social Security (to people who never paid in.)
I would prefer that bikers wear helmets but it's their choice.
And where the hell do you get off calling bikers low lifes who demand welfare? Most bikers I know are fiercely independent and don't want squat in gov't handouts.
My brother was a Christian and worked 2 jobs. He was also a Vietnam vet. He wasn't any kind of low life and neither are his friends who bike. They're regular working people who just happen to enjoy motorcycles.
my condolences
....I also see the game youre playing -
squished ego's aside, I find most of the whiners, young, ignorant and blind to the fact the will be experiencing road rash at least once in thier experiences....a majority would walk away from it if they wore a helmet
Why do I need to subsidize some rice burning rockets insurance coverage by participating in the same risk pool ?
Those who make statements like this are naive. I had a wreck 7 months ago at 35-40 mph. I was NOT wearing a helmet and was glad that I hadn't been. My head was one of the first things on my body to make contact with the road. As it was, my legs got chewed up a bit and I walked out of the hospital on my own 3 hours after the accident. Not one of the doctors there could believe it. If I'd been wearing a helmet, I'd be dead or paralyzed. When the proposition is 50/50 at best, people should decide their own fate. If there'd been a helmet law in Indiana at the time of my wreck - the likely hood is I would be dead as a result of law - not as a result of the accident. And that is immoral.
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