:smack: D’oh! Somehow I completely missed the word ‘motorcyclists’ in the OP and was only thinking bikers. As in, on bicycles. (Just goes to show you the power of inadvertent selective reading). I will bow down out of the discussion now, as I don’t drive a motorcycle, but before I leave I will say that the motorcycle changes the whole idea for me, and I certainly do believe there should be *motorcycle *helmet laws. The whole idea of being able to drive as fast as a car and yet not have a helmet is silly and s/b be legislated, since obviously there is a need.
I’m very very sorry for the mix-up. :slinks out of thread:
<bolding mine>
I am sincerely sorry if I gave you any reason to think I was trying to belittle you. It was not my intent. I fully respect your opinion and yourself. As to facts, this is still in GQ so far and most of my info comes from living the debate over the past decades in the discussion in Florida. Meetings and news article and debates in public places.
I doubt anyone could argue the fact that there is some degree of increase in accident severity but I argue the extent as it is often misrepresented, IMO. Some will say that any increase is too much but if you go can back to my original statement of everyone wearing one if safety is the sole motivation. We could reduce the maximum speed on interstates to 55mph to save lives but you see how that turned out.
As to others bearing the costs, I don’t smoke but don’t favor a ban on cigarettes for safety reasons. I don’t drink but oppose Prohibition. I don’t speed to excess but would oppose a 60mph govenor on all vehicles because that is the maximum speed limit. A ban on doughnuts? Don’t get me started!
I think the legislation is profit-driven at it’s core with money changing hands between lobbyist and law makers. The strawman of insurance rates and a concern for the safety of others is a facade put up to smooth over it appearing as such.
In retrospect, there seems to be two questions here.
Why don’t bikers want to wear helmets?
Most bikers I/we know wear helmets most of the time, so this isn’t true.
Why don’t bikers want laws passed requiring them to wear helmets?
Answered by several people.
The unasked question that everyone seems to want to answer seems to be “SHOULD bikers be required to wear helmets?”
I think that as soon as all tobacco and 5 gallon buckets are outlawed, then we can worry about the helmet laws.
Just my opinion, but saving $3000 in hospital costs per incident doesn’t seem significant compared to the costs an insurance company forks over for repair costs for a minor fender-bender.
I’m not an actuary, nor do I play one on TV.
My personal experience - the one motorcycle fatality I know was wearing a helmet. Of course, the major brain damage wasn’t wearing a helmet (and he was drunk). Crashing a bike is bad, helmet or no.
I don’t wear a helmet most of the time (except in bad weather) because I believe them unsafe. When i look over my shoulder to change lanes I see helment instead of the car that I’m about to pull out in front of. I dont hear the cars around me. Some people I know dont have the periphreal vision problem with the same helmet…every body is differant.
I feel the advantages in reduced head injuries are offset by the increased neck injuries. I’ve read studies that support both points of view.
Some people just dont like them. They find its more fun to ride without one.
most people ride a bike because its more fun than driving a car. Its also more dangerous. Driving a car is more dangerous than driving a school bus. Driving a school bus is more dangerous than staying home all the time.
Point is, that its all a risk, and how much of a risk you are willing to take for personal enjoyment is a personal choice.
I don’t know if this is correct but I have gathered that the greatest danger to motorcyclists is being hit by cars. Not “going really fast and then crashing for no reason.” If this is the case, Anaamika, should be equally in favor of mandatory helmet laws for both motorcyclists and bicyclists.
Those with an above average libertarian bent tend to be overrepresented among the ranks of those who own motorcycles (and guns) and thus tend to be very activistic about their rights to do stupid things. Clearly (the difficult image problem of picking people up in bars notwithstanding) the benefits to society incurred from mandatory helmet laws are fairly large. Certainly larger than those gained by other mandated actions in our society. But the noise produced by those whose “rights” would be incurred is loud indeed.
You misunderstood my point. I am perfectly willing to accept these points as facts. What I do disagree with is your conclusion that these facts mean that helmet laws should be passed. We as adults in a free society do any number of things to put ourselves in danger. People die from doing these things. People are crippled doing these things. That is life, and I should be free to take these risks if I so choose.
The points bdgr makes about the possible overrating of how much safety a helmet adds I feel are valid answers to the OP of “Why don’t bikers what to wear helmets”, but irrelevant to the point of “should there be helmet laws” which this seems to have morphed into. It’s simply a matter of freedom from the nanny state.
True, in a sense. There are two issues. One, do helmets really make motorcycle riding signicantly safer. My opinion is that in some cases they do and some they have the oposite effect.
The second, which makes the first one irrelevant, is even if they do should we pass a law to make them mandatory.
The insurance/public burnder argument is nonsense. If everything that causes insurance rates to go up or created a public burdan should be outlawed then there are a hell of lot of things in line before helmetless riding… tobacco and alchohol come to mind, as well as sports cars, jet skis, boats in general, motorcycles in their entirety, bicycles, and anything made by Little Debbie.
I do not ride, but I was told by a teacher of mine who rode a motorcycle that the helmets actually hinder peripheral vision which makes things more difficult.
That and that your spine will probably snap before the helmet will make any difference.
I don’t know how true those statements are, but they sort of made sense to me.
Helmet & seat belt laws are a violation of natures master plan: eliminating idiots from the gene pool!!
But while I wear my seat belt 100% of the time (and not because it’s the law.) and though it’s not the law my helmet 100% of the time (well, only when I’m on my cycle) it still galls me that some people want to legislate everything that is “for our own good”, especially upon adults. For a country that was founded on the ideals of freedom & liberty we are drowning in laws, rules, regulations, and prohibitions, many of them “for your own good” or “for the collective good”.
Another good measure would be for the government to monitor & restrict your diet, sporting activity, sexual partners, or anything else that may be detrimental to your health. Can’t have you living your life the way you fucking want to, can we now?
Especially in a “FREE”:dubious::rolleyes: country!
“I do not ride, but I was told by a teacher of mine who rode a motorcycle that the helmets actually hinder peripheral vision which makes things more difficult.”
Any reasonable helmet has a greater peripheral vision than your eyes go to, so that makes no sense at all really. And I wear glasses and have little or no peripheral vision due to my poor eyesight and survived for 20 years on a motorbike so the idea that peripheral vision is how you really avoid accidents doesnt hold much water for me anyhow.
Theres also tons of accidents where a helmet will save you well before your ‘spine snaps’, the head is really a rather fragile bit of work.
Im torn on this issue in that I can see the ‘people should be able to do what they like’ arguments, but at the end of the day think there are some issues where we do need to go the nanny option. We all tend to go through a fairly brain dead ‘I am immortal’ period of our lives called the late teens/early twenties and sometimes need a bit of help to have a chance of getting through it, and helmets fall into that category for me.
Sorry, but thats simply untrue. I own three full face helmets. An Arai snell approved helmet, a BMW Modular, and a Nolan Modular. All three of them restrict my periphreal vison to a great degree. The BWM is the least restrictive but I still have problems. It totally depends on the person.
I know someone who is blind in one eye and havent had an accident but that doesnt mean that people with both working eyes don’t have an accident avoidence advantage. The fact that you havent had an accident because of it doesnt mean anything at all.
So is your neck. One of my friends was hit from behind (hard)while driving a car and it broke his neck. They were able to save him. I imagine if he had the extra weight of a helmet around his head he wouldn’t have been so lucky.
I’m 40 years old, and I started out riding motorcycles over 20 years ago, and I wore a helmet originally. It was only after I did some research and did my own informal experiments that I decided that I was better off without one. Youtfull imagined imortality had nothing at all to do with it, and still doesnt. BTW, I wear a seat belt religiously…if there was the same kind of evidence to support helmets being safer I would wear one as well.
Given that full-face helmets are standard across most of europe without a significant increase in accidents, it would seem that either peripheral vision is not significant (and you can safely wear your current helmet) or most helmets don’t affect peripheral vision to a significant degree (in which case you should get a better helmet).
It would be interesting to see what percentage of spills from motorcycles/bicycles involve a broken spine and how many a good hard ‘thwack’ of the skull on a non-yielding surface. Certainly in the UK (where there is a helmet law) SOP for emergency responders is to not move a motorcyclist or remove their helmet until they’ve properly assessed for spinal injury, so I would imagine broken/fractured necks must be reasonably common. However despite this there seems to be no debate whatsoever about the need for a helmet law While there are some twits who ride bareheaded, most bikers seem to regard this as being as sensible as stapling a porcupine to one’s scrotum.
Interestingly enough, in the UK it is mandatory for children under 14 to wear a hard hat when riding a horse or pony. It is not compulsory for adults, yet I personally almost never see anyone on horseback without one. What’s the situation like in the US?
So where do we draw the line? What justifies this particular nannyism that doesn’t bother you, but does bother many others? Are you going to require that I install a guard on my table saw? Mandatory helmets on bicycles? Where do you stop?
