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the average number of motorcyclists killed in crashes had doubled in Louisiana in the first two years after the state repealed its mandatory helmet law.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.
The old Harley dealer whose shop I frequented as a highschooler [and dated his daughter's best friend until she graduated and left for college] used to keep a baseball bat near the counter where he kept the helmets he offered for sale. His offerings were high-dollar and he was picky about what he'd sell in his shop.
When he'd get a customer in with a helmet he considered questionable or outright dangerous, he'd offer the customer a free helmet test. They'd buckle it up, and out would come the bat. Usually that was enough to make his point about the sorts of impact these helmets would have to take.
In my case, I took him up on his offer, though with the brain bucket strapped to a fencepost in back of his building rather than on my head. He wound up like Baber Ruth swattung a run home. The fiberglass shell split in half, and I was in the market for one of his Bell fulljets.
Thanks, Mr. Morgan, Willis, my friend and teacher. I hope they've got bikes in whatever corner of Valhalla you're at now, and you still get a leg over now and again, ya ol' coot.
-archy-/-
Nope, I'm not giving it up. I ride a bicycle to work most of the time and I certainly don't wear a helmet on my bicycle. If someone knocks me off the bike I will go after them big time. There are too many people driving that have no business behind a wheel.
http://www.forbes.com/fyi/1999/0503/041.html
The Wild One Dick Teresi, 05.03.99
ABATE, OR AMERICAN BIKERS AIMING TOWARD EDUCATION, is a nationwide organization of helmet-hating Harley riders. Mensa is an international organization of geniuses and near-geniuses. Its members must score in the top two percent of the population in an intelligence test.
The Gator Alley chapter of ABATE challenged its neighbors in the Southwest Florida chapter of Mensa to a whiz-kid test of knowledge. No bikes, no chains, no colors. Just tough questions, such as "What was established by the Lateran Treaty of 1929?"
The showdown took place in Bonita Springs, Florida. It was a seesaw battle, but in the end, the bikers won. To be truthful, Mensa played without the services of its president, Jeff Avery. On the other hand, the ABATE team played without Avery also. He disqualified himself, being president of both clubs. After their loss, the Mensans sat down with their opponents and listened to arguments for the bikers' favorite cause: the repeal of motorcycle helmet laws for bikers over the age of 21. Several Mensans, swayed by the logical arguments, joined ABATE, even some who were not bikers.
I cite the Mensa-ABATE showdown to demonstrate that not all anti-helmet-law activists are intellectually challenged, which is the prevailing media consensus. The TV reporter interviews a helmet-law advocate, a scientist (smart) in a white lab coat pointing to a hard, spiffy helmet. Then she interviews a drunken, tattooed biker (dumb) who screams "Helmet laws suck!" as he falls off his barstool.
It seems intuitive that wearing something hard on your head would help you survive a motorcycle accident. Many state legislatures agree. Twenty-two states and the District of Columbia now have laws mandating helmet use by adult motorcyclists. The laws appear to work. A study by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) indicates, quite conclusively, that motorcycle deaths per 1 million residents are lower in states with helmet laws.
That sounds good, but we could make the same argument for surfing helmets. Let's say Kansas, Nebraska and Wyoming pass laws requiring helmet use by surfers. California does not. The CDC then does a study, finding that states with surfer-helmet laws have fewer surfing deaths per 1 million residents than California does. This would be a ridiculous argument. People don't surf in Kansas, and if they did, it would be relatively safe, helmet or no helmet, there being no ocean.
Similarly, you find a lower density of bikers in helmet-law states. For many bikers, motorcycling with a helmet is like surfing without an ocean. Compare Florida, a helmet state, with Iowa, a no-helmet state. Florida has a beautiful, year-round riding season. Iowa has a long, brutal winter. Yet Iowa has more than three times the number of registered motorcycles per hundred population as Florida. In California, a onetime biker paradise, registrations dropped by 22 %(138,000 fewer bikes) in the first four years after its legislature passed a helmet law. Overall, states with no helmet laws had 2.6 motorcycle registrations per 100 population compared to 1.3 in helmet-law states. In other words, non-helmet states have twice as many bikers.
Let's go back to those CDC statistics that show helmets prevent deaths. If we use the same statistics, but count fatality rates per 10,000 registered motorcycles rather than per all residents, one finds that helmet-law states actually suffered a higher average fatality rate (3.38 deaths per 10,000) than non-helmet-law states (3.05 deaths). This is not sufficient evidence to prove that not wearing a helmet is safer, but it demonstrates that helmet laws do not reduce deaths.
Another way to measure the difference is to look at deaths per 100 accidents. Not even helmet advocates suggest that helmets will reduce the number of motorcycle accidents. The purpose of a helmet is to help the rider survive an accident. The numbers indicate otherwise. During the seven-year period from 1987 through 1993, states with no helmet laws or partial helmet laws (for riders under 21) suffered fewer deaths (2.89) per 100 accidents than those states with full helmet laws (2.93 deaths).
How can this be true? Is it possible that helmets don't work? Go to a motorcycle shop and examine a Department of Transportation-approved helmet. Look deep into its comforting plush lining, and hidden amidst the soft fuzz you'll find a warning label: "Some reasonably foreseeable impacts may exceed the helmet's capability to protect against severe injury or death."
What is a "reasonably foreseeable" impact? Any impact around 14 miles per hour or greater. Motorcycle helmets are tested by being dropped on an anvil from a height of six feet, the equivalent of a 13.66-mph impact. If you ride at speeds less than 14 mph and are involved only in accidents involving stationary objects, you're golden. A typical motorcycle accident, however, would be a biker traveling at, say, 30 mph, and being struck by a car making a left turn at, maybe, 15 mph. That's an effective cumulative impact of 45 mph. Assume the biker is helmet-clad, and that he is struck directly on the head. The helmet reduces the blow to an impact of 31.34 mph. Still enough to kill him. The collisions that helmets cushion effectively--say, seven-mph motorcycles with seven-mph cars--are not only rare but eminently avoidable.
Another reason helmets don't work: An object breaks at its weakest point. Some helmet advocates argue that while helmets may not reduce the overall death rate, they prevent death due to head trauma. Jonathan Goldstein, a professor of economics at Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine, wondered how this could be. If fatal head traumas were decreasing, then some other kind of fatal injury must be rising to make up the difference. Applying his expertise in econometrics to those aforementioned CDC statistics, Goldstein discovered what was happening. In helmet-law states, there exists a reciprocal relationship between death due to head trauma and death due to neck injury. That is, a four-pound helmet might save the head, but the force is then transferred to the neck. Goldstein found that helmets begin to increase one's chances of a fatal neck injury at speeds exceeding 13-mph, about the same impact at which helmets can no longer soak up kinetic energy. For this reason, Dr. Charles Campbell, a Chicago heart surgeon who performs more than 300 operations per year and rides his dark-violet, chopped Harley Softail to work at Michael Reese Hospital, refuses to wear a helmet. "Your head may be saved," says Dr. Campbell, "but your neck will be broken."
John G.U. Adams, of University College, London, cites another reason not to wear a helmet. He found that helmet-wearing can lead to excessive risk-taking due to the unrealistic sense of invulnerability that a motorcyclist feels when he dons a helmet. False confidence and cheap horsepower are a lethal combination. I called a local (Massachusetts) Suzuki dealer, and told the salesman I was a first-time buyer looking for something cheaper than the standard $15,000 Harley. He said I could buy the GSXR 1300 for only $10,500, a bike that could hit speeds in excess of 160 miles per hour. He recommended that I wear a helmet, even in non-helmet-law states. Imagine: a novice on a 160-mph bike wearing a plastic hat that will reduce any impact by 14 mph. It's like having sex with King Kong, but bringing a condom for safety's sake.
Why the enthusiasm for helmets? Mike Osborn, chairman of the political action committee of California ABATE, says insurance companies are big supporters of helmet laws, citing the "public burden" argument. That is, reckless bikers sans helmets are raising everyone's car insurance rates by running headlong into plate-glass windows and the like, sustaining expensive head injuries.
Actually, it's true that bikers indirectly jack up the rates of car drivers, but not for the reason you might think. Car drivers plow over bikers at an alarming rate. According to the Second International Congress on Automobile Safety, the car driver is at fault in more than 70% of all car/motorcycle collisions. A typical accident occurs when a motorist illegally makes a left turn into the path of an oncoming motorcycle, turning the biker into an unwitting hood ornament. In such cases, juries tend to award substantial damages to the injured biker. Car insurance premiums go up.
Osborn sees a hidden agenda. "They [the insurance companies] want to get us off the road." Fewer bikes means fewer claims against car drivers. Helmet laws do accomplish that goal, as evidenced by falling motorcycle registrations in helmet-law states. It is interesting to note that carriers of motorcycle insurance do not complain about their clients. Motorcycle liability insurance remains cheap. Osborn pays only $125 per year for property damage and personal injury liability because motorcycles cause little damage to others.
Keith R. Ball was one of the pioneers of ABATE, its first manager in 1971 and later its national director. What annoys him most is the anecdotal approach taken by journalists who have a penchant for reporting whenever the victim of a fatal motorcycle accident was not wearing a helmet. When was the last time you saw a news item mentioning that a dead biker was wearing a helmet?
Which is not to say that Ball opposes helmets. He thinks anyone who rides in a car should wear one. After all, he points out, head injuries make up only 20% of serious injuries to motorcyclists, but they account for 90% of all car injuries. If Ball's idea catches hold, one day I suspect you'll see angry men stepping out of Volvos with odd T-shirts beneath their tweed jackets. The T-shirts will read: HELMET LAWS SUCK.
I always wear a helmet, and often quip that those who don't have nothing to protect. It scares the excrement out of me that I am at the mercy of cars pulling out in front of me as I tool along at 20 to 25 mph.
Don't think I mentioned I'm talking about bicycles in all the above accidents. Take the MPH up to 60 and give it a go? Not me, pal - helmet or not. It's not the bikers, it's all the idiots in cars that make it way too dangerous. BTW, the quip still applies.
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.
As an ex-biker with more than twenty years on a Harley I have to chime in here.
Much like the move to “safer” cars, helmets tend to give the novice rider a false sense of security.
Why pay attention to road conditions and traffic when I’m “safe”? In a car I have explosive restraints (AKA “air bags), three point seat belts, crushable frame (AKA “impact absorbing”), and great insurance coverage to cover any financial liability.
On a motorcycle I have a helmet – it guarantees my safety no matter how idiotically I ride. After all, anytime a rider is killed when not wearing a helmet the news report always mentions the deceased wasn’t wearing a helmet. They seldom if ever mention the rider was wearing a helmet.
Of course, there is the little thing about restricted vision and hearing …
As long as people have this false sense of invulnerability they will continue to live dangerously and take unnecessary changes.
I’ve made the coast to coast run twice on a Harley before many of the States caved in to the federal green mail and enacted helmet laws. Many times riders of crotch rockets (wearing full face helmets and full leather in warm weather) would ask me why Harley riders mostly rode near the speed limit and never really maxed out. I would always tell them that the ride on a Harley - without a helmet - was the fun (on a Harley), and was far more important than actually arriving in a hurry.
In these threads there is always a big man willing to call a biker a low life [sic] from behind the relative safety of a computer. Laughable.
We have to go to Ill. to crash? And is it only in certain designated areas, or an Illinois site of our own choosing?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.