[1747]

Re: John Burns: an exercise in contradiction

Where do you get the idea I embrace those laws? Just the opposite, but I understand the reason they exist is BECAUSE of highly visible, highly abrasive groups like ABATE.

I also agree that a lot, if not the bulk, of our freedoms are gone. To pick out "having to wear a helmet" is like complaining about one pebble in a boulder field. Why don't the AMA and ABATE complain about something that would actually help us all, like getting cell phones banned while driving? Whatever happened with the New England Journal of Medicine's report a few years ago which said that was just as dangerous as drunk driving?

 

[1747]

The old slippery slope eh? Look around, we're already at the bottom of the gulch. Do you think we'd be more free riding helmetless? When we already have to keep it below 65mph, with functional head and taillights, turn signals, blinkers, with current registration, insurance, with less than 0.8 BAC, what am I leaving out? Helmet laws are the red cape for the ABATE bulls and other hoofed mammals to stupidly charge.

 

[danch]

Re: Regulations are good for you

That's rotting pigs intestines. Pig's intestines are called sausage casings in polite company - really it's the rot that's problematic, not the guts

 

[1747]

Car drivers don't have to wear helmets because there are like 200 bazillion of them in the U.S., and about what? 0.5% that many motorcyclists you simp. They do have to wear seatbelts (and there was hellacious caterwauling over that).



The majority rules. If you are a loud, obnoxious ant in a room full of cows, expect to get stomped on.

 

[danch]

Re: Democrats and Socialists......

when does all the "You are too stupid to make your own choices, so Daddy Government is going to do so" stop?

Maybe when people stop being too stupid to make their own choices. Really, I think that there should be one simple helmet law: If you mess your cranium in a crash while not wearing a helmet, you're paying your own bills, you're off any welfare lists, and you and all of your survivors get the ole 'snip snip'. We really can't have those genes in the human pool. My real problem with regulating personal safety is that it's slowing the evolution of the human species - people who don't wear seatbelts should also be encouraged to take themselves out, not with a law demanding that they behave as though they deserve to breed, but with a law ensuring that if they don't deserve to survive, they won't.

 

[1747]

Re: Democrats and Socialists......

o shut up man...

 

[banda]

What a beautiful point. I want to expand on it and address some common helmet law supporter hyperbole: All of the "shut up and wear your helmet" types constantly invoke the supposed cost to society of disabled motorcyclists.

So what is the cost to society? Enumerate it. If you don't have a reasonably supportable dollar figure, then your argument is pretty weak.
Can you just add up the lifetime social security benefits for all the helmetless Americans disabled in motorcycle accidents? The answer is no for several reasons:

[*]You can't assume that every helmetless disabled motorcycle accident victim would have been saved by a helmet. This is easy to prove: Many helmeted riders are disabled in motorcycle accidents.
[*]You can't assume that a helmeted rider, once saved from motorcycle accident induced disability, won't become disabled shortly thereafter for some other reason. This too, is easy to prove: Many people become disabled, sometimes through their own stupid, yet non-motorcycle related actions. Whether those people wore a helmet on their bikes or not is a moot point. So, you can't say for certain that a helmetless rider "never would have become disabled" had he worn a helmet. He may just have found some other way to become disabled.

Perhaps it would help us all to remember this simple truth: No matter who you are, or what you choose to do, someone else thinks you are an idiot.

So the guy in the beanie helmet thinks the helmetless rider is an idiot. You, in your Arai, think the beanie wearer is an idiot. Your father-in-law, with the SUV, thinks you're an idiot. There's no end to it. We can't idiot-proof the nation, because we're all idiots. So let idiots be idiots... with any luck, the people that you think are idiots will do themselves in before you do yourself in. Give them that freedom, and you're more likely to retain the same freedom for yourself.

 

[danch]

Full face helmet, shorts, and a tank top

Can someone explain to me why it makes sense to anyone to _not_ have a lethal head injury when your flesh is being abraded from your body. I see so many people with a full face helmet and completely inadequate gear otherwise. Why?

 

[vcs700s]

John,



You should be thankful that you can't hop on your bike and run to the corner store without a helmet. According to the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, most accidents occur within five miles of your home. Many times it isn't on the longer rides. The fact that you throw on a DOT half-helmet really doesn't help much except that you won't get a ticket. I just finished the MSF class and one of the requirements is a DOT helmet. The first night we had class time and the next day we were to come dressed properly and with a helmet to begin the training on the bikes. The last thing we were told is to not show up with a beanie or half helmet. When questioned about this the instructors said, "They don't do an adequate job of protecting your face, jaw, neck, and head." This is even though they are DOT approved. Throw away the beanie, put on the full face, which logically provides the best protection, and then go to the store. By the way, as a side note, you might think about quitting smoking too. My Dad, who smoked for 45 years, had a tumor removed from his lung 7 years ago and just had a malignant lump removed from his voice box. It will catch up with you, just like wearing a half helmet.

 

[1747]

Re: Democrats and Socialists......

Sorry. Let's go the opposite direction with your crusty ass slippery slope solipsism. If all 50 states abandon helmet laws, and thousands more idiots crash their brains out, wouldn't it make it way easier to outlaw motorcycles entirely?

 

[danch]

Misfortune, I'm willing to pay for. Stupidity, no. Of course there's also the case of the stupidity of others causing the misfortune. Maybe cell phone abusers should pay in a couple G a year to an insurance fund for the victims of the accidents they cause.

 

[zx10danny1]

Two months after buying my first motorcycle I wrecked. My own fault. I was wearing a helmet though. And after the nurse finished scrubbing the rocks from my left arm I vowed to only ride wearing "good" motorcycle gear. I wasn't at the time. If it's too hot or too much trouble, I don't ride.



Fast forward 16 years, and I'm involved in my second accident. This time, I get up, take off all of my gear and think, "damn that was stupid!" And that was the extent of any bodily injuries. Bruised pride.



The common denominator in my history were both accidents involved me hitting the ground head first. Both were low sides, followed by a face plant. A helmet prevented me from being a vegetable.



I think anyone that wants to go without a helmet should be required to tend to a brain damaged person. Spend a few days feeding them through a tube, changing their diaper and bathing them. I know someone like this. It's not pleasant to see or be near.



Dieing is not the worst thing that can happen to you. Think about your family. Think about other people having to care for you.



It's just a motorcycle ride. It's NOT a life or death decision. At least it's not supposed to be. Something as simple as putting on a helmet lets you ride another day, and another, and another.



The reason I'm not an AMA member is the same as JB. I can't believe they would waste their members money on a fight that's not worth winning.

 

[1747]

Dang, and to think I though all that stuff was racism. I had no idea the Sierra Club was out to slaughter Jews and Cambodians! Thanks for the headsup Seruzawa. Um, you got guns?

 

[Abe_Froman]

Re: John Burns: an exercise in contradiction

It seems that you are clamoring for more and more things to be banned. The philosphical underpinning of our (original) form of government is that the chief role of the state is to protect our liberty, not our physical safety ("give me liberty or give me death" comes to mind.)

Without groups like the AMA and the NRA (and citizens in general) making a racket when some schmuck in office tries to torment us for our own good, we would be much further down the line to subservience than we already are. Should we simply roll over and line up as sheep to be shorn of our liberty?

That said, my main problem is the federal government sticking their nose into all this stuff. While I don't agree with helmet laws and cell phone laws (and most of the other ones either) at least, when a state passes one, it is constitutional via the tenth amendment. Most federal laws strip the states of their constitutional rights ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.") If the people of a particular state want their bureaucracy to manage their lives, so be it----you can always move.

 

[1747]

Go away. Nobody has those figures including you.

 

[Abe_Froman]

This is precisely why our government is a representative constitutional republic, and not a straight democracy. When "the majority rules" above all else, they might get the wrong idea and pass a referendum that is in contradiction to the constitution. That, theoretically, is where the representatives are to step in and thwart the will of their constituents, thereby protecting their freedom (even if they don't want it.)

 

[danch]

Car people don't have to wear helmets because the automotive industry has been forced to make their vehicles into protective devices for the last 40 years or so. Our national highway safety policy has been "Oh, christ! These people are such morons that we'll never get them to drive safely. We'll just make sure that when they crash, they'll live through it." Naturally, this is bad for motorcyclists: cagers get the 'volvo' mentality of "I'm perfectly safe in my little cage, so I don't have to pay attention to the world around me." Which just might be our national philosophy, now that I think of it.

 

[danch]

No, that's the job of the supreme court. The representatives are there to make the unconstitutional laws that their inbred constituents are asking for. Or that their backing corporations are asking for. Or that their cross-dressing FBI chief is asking for.



Checks and Balances, and all that.

 

[Abe_Froman]

Re: Democrats and Socialists......

I fail to see the problem with the slippery slope argument. It is exactly how we have come to this point with the helmet law in the first place. When was the last time you heard **** Gephardt or Tom Dascle argue that taxes are too high? That the children are finally being fed? That the poor are finally unpoor? That the farmers are doing OK? That a proposed law....any law.....is unconstitutional and an abridgement of our freedoms? When have they thrown up their hands at some issue and said, simply, "this is not the government's job"? For these people, enough is NEVER enough. Their proposals and rhetoric betray their real agenda----that no tax is too high, no program too big, no law too restricting. We are to live by and for the state first----and ourselves, our families, our liberties---second.

 

[danch]

Re: Democrats and Socialists......

On the other hand, maybe it'll stop when we stop being stupid enough to elect the people that write these laws restricting our freedom.

We're running into a little problem in this country where we're way too willing to give up freedom for security.