Posted on 07/03/2011 8:33:56 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
That's for the safety of others.
DRIVING ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE ROAD is an invitation to a fight ~ mano y mano ~ sword tip to sword tip.
Why don't you fight convention and just drive on the left for awhile.
You are apparently unaware of the current state of affairs with regards to gear and technique.
1. If you have enough time to lay it down, unless you’re riding a Harley with their useless ABS and understrength brakes (which is why cops are now switching away again despite low police pricing), you usually had enough time to actually get the bike to a complete stop.
2. The current state of the art in gear is this - if you are wearing full gear, you can drop the bike at 80mph and if you don’t hit anything but the pavement you can get up and walk away. In fact, riders routinely fall off bikes at higher speeds on tracks and walk off.
3. The airbag jacket is now a reality (a la Snow Crash) and the full suit is under development.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX2jc39SLfw&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo9Vlt5tGwY
It’s been in use on tracks for a while now and it’s saved a number of riders.
4. The armor in gear, especially Knox armor, is highly effective; it diffuses impact forces. The problem is sudden deceleration - if you can avoid hitting a car or a pole, you’ll likely be fine. There are also new developments in impact armor in the pipeline which may further resolve the issue.
5. I’ve hit an oil slick and gone sliding down the road in full gear at about 50mph. I’m still here. In fact, I rode the bike home after some field repairs that afternoon.
Should any of this be mandated? No. The right to be free includes the right for consenting adults to be stupid so long as it doesn’t infringe on anyone else’s rights.
Dear Melas,
Actually, those laws have existed too. Part of the public drunkness laws while driving horse carriages were to protect the drunk!!!
In summary though, I DO get the libertarian argument about this being “my body and I can do with it what I want” (with some reservations needless to say.. like the crappy abortion argument)
However, when someone dies/gets injured on a public road, then the “public” is picking up liability on him/her in terms of insurance and health care
In addition a very valid point is that if you have an accident with me and you die, I am now in a vehicular homicide investigation. So for MY safety it is necessary for you to be safe
Shared resources (like public roads) result in giving up of some personal rights. A famous example is the “free speech” example of yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre. Not allowed.
Also, even your personal body has some limits. The courts and our founders have held that suicide is illegal. Now, of course it is permitted, but for many centuries it was illegal.
To me, driving a motorcycle without a helmet is akin to suicide.
Anyhoo, good chat and good thread!
Cheers!
Until the 1970s, that actually was the fastest way to stop a bike because even the best systems of the era, twin leading shoe finned drum brakes were marginally useless. (You may notice that a lot of the left over stupidity, urban legend, and bad advice about bikes is left over from that era.) Brake fade came in early and often, meaning that you could grab a handful of brake at speed, the bike would slow down a little... and that was all. Kawasaki’s H-series were notoriously bad for this, especially as they had undersized drums. Laying it down was actually taught as a valid braking technique by various highway patrols way back then.
Modulation was also difficult with those brake systems. For many bikes, especially Harleys and not a couple of Hondas (culminating in that company’s CB450 DOHC model which reviewed as having relatively good drum brakes for the era) often as not, grabbing some front brake meant that if you didn’t get the “slight deceleration,” you instead had your front wheel instantly lock up, partially due to the low traction ‘highway rib’ tires popular then. This, by the way, lead to the myth that many Harley riders hold today - “Don’t use the front brakes or you’ll go over the handlebars!” Some Harley owners and builders even today remove the ‘useless’ front brake (which is where 80+% of your braking is actually done) and rely on the rear brake alone. Then they wonder why they went into the back of the car ahead of them.
Then the disc brake that Honda introduced to the motorcycling world in 1968 with the CB750 became commonplace in their lineup and competitors began including the feature. Finally, you could have a brake that basically didn’t fade, that was easily modulated, and that didn’t have a binary “locked-wheel-or-nothing” tendency. Oh, and that would actually stop you! Double front discs and improved tire technology increased braking performance. Drum fronts were consigned to small economy motorcycles and the rubbish heap of history for the large ones.
Laying down the bike stopped being the most effective stopping technique as the disc brake matriculated through the industry. At this point, using any non-retro machine made in the past 30 years, laying it down is not a valid technique. It hasn’t been for a long time; hammering your brakes on the street will stop you shorter than laying it down ten out of ten times.
I also agree, how do these people ‘practice’ laying it down? Back when, people used to put these large crash hoops on their bikes and you could see the marks where they did practice (or had to do it for real). These days, you don’t see them doing it. Doing it wrong can result in a high-side and ejection.
Actually, if they die, there is no healthcare or insurance involved...
Really? I hit a stone wall head on with a vintage motorcycle due to equipment failure at a police-estimated speed of about 30. I’m still here - my helmet saved my life.
The rest of my gear saved the rest of me when the bike (which had gotten airborne) came back down on top of me. I walked out of the hospital three hours later considerably sore and bruised and with a pile of destroyed gear that had done its job.
Would I ride a motorcycle without gear? No.
Should it be mandatory? No.
Sweetheart, I’m hysterical about nothing, I just believe that the decision to wear a helmet should be left up to the individual and not the state. It is completely up to the rider; I could give a crap less.
The “hysterical” portion was addressed to Muwa-whatever’s reply to *you*.
You’re totally calm and cool...:D
“Good luck, now find someone with something in common with you to post to, will you please?”
We don’t have a “Psych Ward chat room” on FR.
Hi!
What you doin’ here?
:)
Perhaps the voices in his head are not in total agreement.
No requirement to wear armor, no requirement to tie themselves to the wagon, etc.
That may seem like an odd distinction, but it is a seminal one.
While it is quite credible that one of the just powers of Government is to protect people from the actions of others by reasonable regulation (with, of course, the consent of the governed), the great shift in government's raison d'etre is to protecting people from their own actions, or, more collectively, protecting society from the actions of the individual which primarily affect the individual.
Of course, the case is often made that doing so is justified, if not out of the wholesome human goodness in our hearts, then by the invasion of the State into the realm of individual responsibility and the subsequent 'cost' to the collective, measured in everything from underfunded health care, to lost productivity, to the 'social costs' of impacts on family units which might stem from injuries.
Early motorcycle safety studies harped on the former, that it was safer to wear a helmet than not.
As far as I have been able to trace the tree of references, (for following studies use earlier ones as references), the earliest study was a study done by the Army in the 40s, which said dispatch riders were safer riding through combat zones with their helmets on.
Subsequent studies referenced that study, then those following referenced the studies which referenced earlier studies, etc, building an inverted pyramid of credibility based on the veracity and completeness of the earlier studies.
Of course, it is relatively easy to take quotes out of context or present conclusions as referenced material (conclusions which may or may not be valid or supported, but once stripped fo their context, live on as peer-reviewed data, to support new ideas which may or may not be valid.
When these studies were being done, the internet was nonexistent or in its infancy, and material had to be scrounged by interlibrary loan, if it could even be found. Often, it could not be, and the tedious process of reading the available references to get the context of the quotes was one all but the most dedicated would forego. (My local librarian hated me in those days, for when I walked in the door it meant more work.)
In the late '70s/early '80s, however, the thrust of the studies was no longer one of who used what voluntarily rather than only when required, nor what was effective in what situation, but of the social cost of acting on individual initiative.
Many of these studies were deeply flawed, logically, mathematically, even to the point of not ascertaining whether those involved in accidents had been using a helmet when the accident occurred. The new thrust had become not the safety of the individual rider from their own actions, nor even 'widows and orphans', but the preservation of the public coffers, which had not been involved so intimately in the fate of the individual until the expansion of the scope of government. This was not a protection against dangerously flawed devices, but a protection of 'society' against the actions of individuals which the studies (albeit with questionable validity) deemed a threat to society, not physically, not even at its moral core and fiber, but at its wallet, a wallet which should have only been involved at individual and charitable consent.
Of course, with (state-required) insurance involved, there was a question of whether public policy could be used to 'stack the deck' in favor of corporate profits, at least as the perception (generated by the studies) would make it seem.
Here, however is the danger, not just to a free state and individual liberty, but to the very integrity of research by which opinions and, ultimately, policy are formed.
Of the studies which I examined, not one noted those detrimental effects on the rider except to summarily dismiss them. Reductions in hearing acuity over specific frequency ranges, reductions in effective peripheral vision, weight and fatigue considerations, heat, fogging/glare effects, increased moments of inertia, both when turning to look for hazards and during involuntary movements when in an accident, fulcrum effects in cervical spinal injury, EMS/first responder removal techniques, and effects on identification of trauma-related cerebrovascular events were pretty much ignored, even though motorcycle riders were acutely aware of some of those effects and becoming aware of others.
Despite public perception, one study did cover orthopaedic injuries, only to find that skull trauma was pretty low on the broken bone list--iirc, ninth or tenth place, ocmpared to other orthopaedic injuries, although that may have changed since, with the change in frontal profile of American vehicles which has occurred since the 1980s.
Many of the junk science tactics used in the flawed studies have resurfaced in other venues, especially in the instance of alleged anthropogenic global warming, and in the instance of tobacco villification, also with enormous assumed profit motives lurking in the wings.
While there has perhaps always been agenda driven research, the past thirty years saw a shift from research done to find answers, to research done to prove a point in order to enact more legislation/regulation, often funded by those seeking to enhance profits or power.
Therein lies the danger of allowing government to creep into issues of personal responsibility by making them public issues, something which is far more pervasive than ever in our society, to the point where alleged Conservatives rail against the liberty of others because it might cost them a dime rather than rail against the pervasive invasiveness of Government which wwould demand the dime be paid.
Oh...
*running off in the sunset embarrassed as h*ll.*
(sorry & thanks :) )
Just sitting at my desk with a helmet on.
It’s the law ya know!
;<)
Just making a general point..._via an iPhone_ while sitting in the passenger seat of a Yukon headed for VA.
Not even sure how it got posted to *you*....:D
I had several times when I’d hit “reply” to a post and wind up back at Post #1.
Stupid iPhone.
Except for when you discuss ancient and medieval European history, then you’re hysterical. :P
Mine doesn’t do that; I am inclined to believe it is operator error. :P
Irony is sometimes ironic!
By your “logic”, I have the right to assume then, at any given time, I just *may* be driving on the part “I own”.
The person who got me riding is a truama nurse.
Full safety gear, at all times.
That being said, he thinks that if you choose NOT to wear a helmet, you sign a waiver, releasing the state from responsibilty of care when you get squished....if the state needs to foreclose on your mom and dad’s house to take care of you, so be it...
At the hospital he works at, there are several rooms dedicated soley to scooter wreck permanent comatose vegetative riders, costing us literally millions of dollars.
How fast do you walk or run? 4 mph on concrete is enough to fracture your skull.
He’s had suicide-death-machine-lay-down road rashes come in (shorts, tank tops, sandals), and he lets them know that they are about to learn what a 3rd-degree burn victim goes through...
Icky, isn’t it?
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