Senator Tom Wyss (R – Fort Wayne) is about to embark upon another of his personal safety campaigns. Having already claimed victory on .08 DUI limits and mandatory seat belt laws and booster seats, he’s set his sights on studying the need for Indiana to mandate use of motorcycle helmets.
The opportunity to study this issue and raise the public consciousness arose from a report in the Indianapolis Star that profiled a rise in motorcycle deaths. But there’s good news in all of this; the government is going to step in and make sure that cars don’t crash, and when they do, they’re going to pass yet another law that protects people from their own decisions regarding personal safety. Yay.
We’re sure that Wyss’ intentions are good in all of this and he’s done great work on similar issues in the past. However, unlike his campaign for .08 or booster seat mandates, the absence of a helmet mandate does not put others in harm’s way, only the rider. Are there really that many bikers out there who don’t know that injuries sustained in a crash where the rider was not wearing a helmet are far greater than those that involve a rider wearing safety gear? Who does this harm other than the person riding the bike who made that informed decision, however regrettable?
The other question is where does campaign against personal assumption of risk end? Mountain biking? Skydiving? Jogging down the street? Life is full of danger and risk. Some choose to assume that risk by participating in activities more dangerous than others, and they should be free to do so without government attempts to save them from themselves.
Cross-posted from Frugal Hoosiers
Then again, if they are wearing a helmet and their head was decapitated, it could become a dangerous flying object and kill another driver. – AWB
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Did you know that it is more dangerous to ride a motorcycle with a helmet than it is to ride in a car without a seltbelt or airbags? If Wyss was going to be consistent, he would push for a total motorcycle ban.
But riding a motorcycle does benefit the rest of society. Motorcycles use less gas than cars, and motorcyclists donate more organs than anyone else.
Before I go into the typical motorcyclist mantra of “Helmet Laws Suck!”, lemme say I’m being an optimist and hoping Tom Wyss is just stating he will listen to the arguments for and against in a hearing unlike The Hair who just spikes everything he doesn’t personally like. Trust me, we’ll (we being ABATE) be there with facts and figures to support our position on helmet laws.
Now, I don’t think its up to the Government to legislate common sense. Most folks I know, know I ride. I also ride in “full gear” – Helmet, jacket, gloves, long slacks (typically jeans) and usually boots (though sometimes sneakers but NEVER flip-flops or sandals). I do belong to ABATE, I oppose a helmet law, but I choose to wear one because of the idiots in cages out there on four (or more) wheels.
But yet under a helmet law, some idiot can ride a motorcycle with just a pair of shorts, flip-flops and have a helmet on and ride legal. But I would ride with a kevlar reinforced jacket, leather gloves, denim jeans, steel toe hightop workboots, and eye goggles and I’d be illegal. But who would be safer in the event of a crash?
Does anyone have numbers on how many riders are killed as a result of thoracic (that’s chest for those of you in Rio Linda) injuries as opposed to head injuries?
By the way, I bet many of you didn’t know this but it was not written in the NASCAR rule book that stock car drivers were required to wear helmets and drivers’ suits until 2002. It was one of those common sense things that everyone did and was not “legislated” so to speak.
[cross posted above comment to Frugal Hoosiers]
Robert – The likely reason of your first paragraph statistic – SQUIDs that ride with almost nothing on except a smile and a helmet and wrapping their brand spankin’ new Hayabusa around a tree. They think a helmet makes them invincible.
Wyss is just another big Government Republican who wants to pass more laws and take away more of your choices…
Mike Sylvester
I personally know 4 people over the past 10 years who have crashed on a motorcycle. None of them were wearing a helmet. 3 of them were in accidents that weren’t their fault and sustained serious head injuries. The fourth one slid on gravel in an intersection and struck a utility pole and died from a broken neck, a helmet wouldn’t have saved him.
For those drivers at fault, the liability was tremendous. Because of Indiana law, we all pay higher premiums (due to the legal discrimination called “underwriting”) because we don’t require basic safety equipment for motorcycle drivers. Michigan, California and New York are more liberal than Indiana and they have helmet laws.
Maybe we should just have a waiver on the Motorcycle Operator’s License that if another driver is at fault, they are only responsible for medical damages excluding head injuries. Let the motorcycle riders pay the extra premiums and deductibles based on safety equipment.
The only law that needs to be changed (or actually ruled upon by the Indiana Supreme Court) is whether or not the failure to wear a motorcycle falls under the definition of “fault” under Indiana’s Comparative Fault Act. The definition of fault contains the following sentence: “unreasonable failure to avoid an injury or to mitigate damages”. Currently it is unclear whether or not the failure to wear a helment can be construed to fall within this definition. The legislator has specifically excluded from this definition the failure to wear a seat belt.
It the failure to wear a helment did fall under this definition, a jury may apportion the percentage of the damages its feels occurred because of the failure to wear a helment to the plaintiff and he would not be able to recover those damages.
I don’t care if someone wears a helment or not, but the fact that they incurr 10 times the medical expenses and sometimes death because they don’t shouldn’t be the problem of the rest of society.
They’re just laying the ground work for in a few years they will require children in cars to wear helmets. This is just big brother saying we’re to stupid to take care of ourselves they need to do it for us.