Put brakes on efforts to repeal biker helmet laws

USA Today ^ | 7/1/2003

[presidio9]

Archie McGregor, 43, was killed Sunday near Custer, Mont., when his motorcycle veered off the road, vaulted a ditch and rolled. He wasn't wearing a safety helmet. Jennifer Smith, 22, died the previous week, when she was thrown from her motorcycle and slammed into a pole on a country road in North Jay, Maine. She wasn't wearing a helmet, either. Both deaths occurred in states that no longer require adults on motorcycles to wear helmets. Nearly universal in the 1970s, mandatory helmet laws are being repealed by states across the USA, in spite of numerous findings that wearing a helmet significantly reduces the risk of death and serious injury. Only 20 states still require helmets on adults, and Pennsylvania's legislature voted Tuesday to repeal its law.

[Paradox]

Letting bikers be free to choose how they ride carries a cost borne by everyone.

Thats one of the problems in a capitalist/socialist society like we have today. Peoples freedoms can end up costing everybody else.

I say we should do away with safety/nanny laws, but make the individuals fully aware that they alone are responsible for their well being. And then MAKE IT SO.

[presidio9]

Wrong. It is not the government's job to make these kinds of decisions for adults.

[rontorr]

Letting bikers be free to choose how they ride ........


wrong wording, it should be FREE TO CHOOSE HOW THEY DIE!
and don't give me no flack about it, I am one of many whose life was saved by the helmet, more than once, and am happy to be alive to have this stiff neck.

[ThePythonicCow]

Power follows money. When we provide public assistance or group insuruance to bike riders injured or killed for want of a helmet, this puts an obligation on them to watch out for our money.

[SC_Republican]

100% of the people that ride motorcycles will die.

Get over the nanny state need to protect us all from ourselves!

[gtech]

That's one reason 49 states have mandatory seat-belt-use laws for adults.

Wow! What state still lets adults make choices for themselves? I might want to move there if they are as freedom-loving as this little tid-bid makes them appear!

[harpseal]

My view is that if a person wishes to ride without a helmet that is their decision and one may only hope they so their crashing before they have offspring thereby improving the gene pool.

[mgary10]

As a Biker I totally support the use of Helments and the use of all Saftey gear.

Gary

[ThePythonicCow]

If you would renounce the money as quickly as you renounce the helmet law, I'd be more likely to agree with you.

[Wright is right!]

From the two examples at the top of the story, it doesn't appear that a helmet would have made much difference. When you surprise a utility pole (they aren't JUST carrying phone lines) the utility pole is quite often a stubborn winner.

I cannot fathom riding a vehicle such as a motorcycle without a helmet, but I don't see that it's the gubbmint's job to make me. I also cannot imagine driving a car (or my motorhome for that matter) without a seat belt. But I don't need the nanny state to convince me.

Michael

[Tijeras_Slim]

PING

[laweeks]

I don't think it's anybody's business if they wear helmets or not. If they're dumb enough to drive a vehicle with NO safety features, let them. What really outrages me is that people who drive cars get ticketed for not wearing seatbelts. I wear a seatbelt and believe in them wholey. However, I don't think it's ANYBODY'S business if I'm wearing one or not.

Talk about equal protection under the law: How is it that motorcyclists can ride with NO protection, no seatbelt laws, no backup safety features WHATSOEVER and car drivers are themselves drowning in mandatory safety features. If I'm not mistaken, both the cycle rider and the car rider are going to the same place at the same speed, and the bike rider can go with impunity while the car driver has to wear a seatbelt. Heck, here in Ohio, he doesn't even have to abide by "noise" or polution mandates that ALL cars have to abide by.

I'm not advocating "not wearing seatbelts", but if I can get ticketed for not wearing one, then why are motorcyclists responsible for NO similar safety guidelines? Me thinks that the local communities enjoy the revenue from people in cars not wearing seatbelts, not having a quiet muffler, and not having polution controls that motorcylists don't have to worry about. Where's the legal outcry?

[clamper1797]

Letting bikers people be free to choose how/what they ride/ingest/read/dress/think/say carries a cost borne by everyone.

Marx Stalin Mao and Lenin would have been proud

[Riley]

I think I'll keep my helmet if it ever becomes an issue here. Even if you never have an unplanned dismount, getting hit in the face by a yellowjacket at 85 or so is no fun at all. I have ridden through farm country in spring on 160 in the Delta with first a shorty touring helmet, and again with a full-face. The second time, it only *sounded* like being repeatedly shot in the face with an air rifle, rather than feeling like it.

[gtech]

wrong wording, it should be FREE TO CHOOSE HOW THEY DIE!

So be it. It (used to be) a free country.

and don't give me no flack about it, I am one of many whose life was saved by the helmet, more than once, and am happy to be alive to have this stiff neck.

Then you have every right to get on a soap-box and preach to riders to wear their helments. But once you attempt to use the power of government and law to create a nanny-state to conform to YOUR view of the world, you've crossed the line.

[presidio9]

BS. If anything helmets raise healthcare costs, because they leave us with more traumatic spinal injury survivors. When people die in motorcycle crashes it costs us nothing. I have ridden without a helmet exactly once in my life, and I did not enjoy the experience, but this is not the government's decision to make.

[AFreeBird]

I've been riding since 1980, well, actually I started riding a Yamaha 90 at an early age, I didn't get my own cycle until 1980. Anyway, 99% of the time I wear a helmet and it has saved by head on a couple of occasions. That being said, I don't support mandatory helmet laws. There's that 1% of the time that I like to take a slow cruise around the neighborhood or up to the store without a helmet on, to cool down after a sweaty afternoon working in the yard, or just to feel the wind on an unencumbered face. It's nobody's business but my own! I know the risks, and I roll the dice, just like everything else in life there's a certain amount of risk involved, and I'll choose to take the risk, and deal with the consequences (if any) or not.

The Government, and other like minded busybodies, can go to Hell!

[Lost Highway]

[laredo44]

Letting bikers be free to choose how they ride carries a cost borne by everyone.

The "two wrongs make a right" crowd continues its attack on liberty.