NTSB recommends states enact laws requiring motorcycle riders to wear helmets

[struggle4progress]

Source: Washington Post

By Ashley Halsey III
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 16, 2010; 10:02 PM

Bucking a tide of resistance in state capitals and a free-spirited breed of motorcyclists, the National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday said states should require riders to wear federally approved helmets.

The recommendation comes after a five-year trend of steadily rising motorcycle deaths was reversed in 2009, when 4,462 riders died in crashes. The most recent data, from 2008, indicated that 65 percent of motorcyclists killed were not wearing helmets.

"Too many lives are lost in motorcycle accidents," Christopher A. Hart, NTSB vice chairman, said in announcing that helmets had been added to the board's annual "most-wanted list" of safety improvements. "It's a public health issue."

The NTSB uses the list as part of its bully pulpit on safety issues since the power to regulate lies with Congress, other federal agencies and state legislatures ...

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/16/AR2010111607266.html

[Politicalboi]

1. Quick buy stock in

Motorcycle helmets, it's gonna happen.

[aquart]

2. Wear the helmet. It really ties up traffic when they have to send for an ambulance

And a crime scene squad. I speak from experience.

[Ian David]

3. I bet the Chinese just want to have a monopoly on organ donations to America. n/t

[saigon68]

4. Another winning stategy for democrats

After watching the Napolitano creature telling everyone its a good thing to have their vaginas fondled by the TSA this shit boils to the surface

WTF do they think the last election was about. There is a very negative opinion going around of government trying to regulate everything you do like feeding your kid at Micky D's or telling you where to take a shit

[COLGATE4]

5. Makes just good sense. My daughter (ER doctor) tells me that

in the E.R., motorcycles are referred to as "donorcycles".

[AngryAmish]

6. Of this I am torn

1. I don't ride motorcycles. I am too bad of a driver to do so safely. But this will save lives. Just compare fatality rates in helmet states to those without helmet laws.

2. This really is nanny-statism. For the same reason that I don't and won't smoke pot if legal, I think criminal anti-marijuana laws are stupid and offend my sense of liberty.

[Winterblues]

7. Live Free, Die Free...

Fuck 'em........Why aren't cagers made to wear helmets as well? How many cagers die from head injuries when they have a wreck? Fuck 'em.

[guitar man]

8. I wear a helmet most of the time

When it gets boiling hot outside the helmet comes off, there comes a point where trying to ride distracted with sweat running down in your eyes and your head on fire and itching is more dangerous than riding without a helmet.

Let those of us that ride make that decision.

[ProudDad]

9. As a motorcycle rider, who seldom rides with a helmet

I'd trade a helmet law for the right to "lane split" at intersections RIGHT NOW!!!

I don't mind wearing a helmet but sitting on 140 degree asphalt behind a line of Q-Tips who couldn't maneuver their cars out of a driveway and who just sit and sit and sit after the light's changed as the heat of my engine brings the temperature of my personal space to about 160 degrees F...

I saved mucho time, wear on my bike and was SAFER when I could get through these idiots in California WITH my helmet on!

As I said, I'd have no problem wearing a helmet if I didn't have to sit behind idiots...

[slackmaster]

10. You could just move to California

We have a helmet law and legal lane-splitting.

[ProudDad]

12. I know...I lived and rode there for over 40 years...

But I just moved from there because the only places in California worth living in have shitty weather (way toooooo cold) and are WAY too crowded...

It was making me crazy to freeze in a long line on the freeway all the time.

If only there were S.F. politics and Arizona weather somewhere -- I'd be there in a shot...

Well, I would if my fucking house wasn't so far underwater... :shrug:

[slackmaster]

11. Congress should grow some gonads and enact a federal helmet law

Motorcycle accidents affect interstate commerce in BRAINS.

[ProudDad]

13. As long as we get a Federal Lane-Splitting law too... (n/t)

[slackmaster]

14. I think a serious argument could be made for that

Bans on lane-splitting waste peoples' time and put undue wear and tear on motorcycles.

All of that affects interstate commerce.

[ProudDad]

16. We should declare some kind of DU holiday!!!

You and I finally agree on something... :evilgrin: :bounce: :party:

[slackmaster]

18. I never doubted that it was possible

Have a good one.

[ProudDad]

19. Nor I...

Maybe the new (more rational) DU rules are working... :evilgrin:

[ManiacJoe]

23. I was wondering how you would tie that to the commerce clause.

[Fumesucker]

15. Forcing people in cars to wear helmets would save far more lives..

The number of car accidents involving head injuries far outstrips the number of motorcycle accidents.

FWIW, I ride a motorcycle and always wear a helmet.

[sweetapogee]

22. of course

there are many times more cars on the roads so there would be more accidents involving cars than motorcycle head injuries, the law of averages hard at work. But your message would have actual value if you could show that the ratio of motorcycle/car accidents resulting in (serious and life threat) head injuries are in favor of riding motorcycles, which is something I seriously doubt you can do.

I do volunteer EMT and firefighter activities and see many MV accidents of all kinds. This doesn't make me an expert but I have insights into the mechanism of injury from a variety different kinds of vehicle accidents. Although I have a motorcycle license you will no longer catch me riding a motorcycle on a road shared with cars with or without a helmet and I would not support making people wear helmets while in an automobile. That idea is silly, you may as well pass a law requiring everyone to wear a helmet while in bed.

Of the literally dozens of motorcycle accidents I have responded to, including some very nasty high speed wrecks on the PA turnpike, the one that I rate the worse involved a man (harley dude) wearing one of those so-called brain buckets. PA is a state that allows MC riders to go helmet less so you could say something is better than nothing from a safety standpoint but this particular accident, involving a tumble at something like 35-40 MPH resulting in a face plant, the helmet simply made it easier for me to contain all of the component parts of the riders formally fully functional face/head assembly. It's like "did anyone see a nose laying around, my patient is missing one! Oh, and can someone please help me find a missing right ear? Oh, wait, found it! Lucky guy was wearing a helmet!"

Another MC wreck that I went to a just a few weeks ago, after we unloaded the patient in the trauma bay I deaconed the rig and gear, then talked briefly to the ER Dr. who informed me that he didn't think they could "salvage" the patients foot. I love word's like salvage because you really get a full sense of the message being communicated. Man in his mid-30s now sans his left foot all for the thrill of feeling the wind in his hair. Not that I care what someone does as long as they don't encroach on my person, but really, if someone feels it is worth the risk fine with me but I have two kids that depend on me so, no motorcycle fun for this chinaman.

There is a guy who owns a motorcycle shop nearby and is the past president of an organization that runs a well attended bike rally. I have twice picked this person up off the macadam immediately after he was enjoying some good air. This person can no longer walk without the aid of a cane and riding a motorcycle is, like forget it. On the other hand, I responded just last week to a automobile accident, a rollover with 3 teenagers inside and none of them were seriously hurt. The car, a Chrysler Concorde Convertible. A rag-top lying on it's "roof". The key to keeping your risk for injury low is actually staying inside the vehicle until it stops. This is the advantage seat belts provide because once you go airborne, you tend to loose the ability to pick and choose how and where you actually end your freestyle flight. With a motorcycle, it is of course almost impossible to avoid ejection. Idea! we need to invent a motorcycle seat belt and pass a law...

I drive past one of those roadside memorials all the time. This one is for a man, I like to call him Blane, who feeling the power of his machine and confident of his skills at the handlebar and moving at a speed of approx. 105 MPH entered an intersection a split second too soon. His timing was a little off that day and so he T-Boned a Jeep. I wish you all could all have seen it, he hit the side of the Jeep, right at the door, his right leg and the bike seat stayed with the Jeep while the rest of his body and the now seatless motorcycle continued on their merry way. Needless to say his bikderr friends informed us on scene that Blane died, doing what he loooovvvveddd. Soo sweet.

I could go on all day but that's all for now.

[Fumesucker]

25. Apparently you don't disagree with my point that more lives would be saved...

Wearing helmets in cars.

And the fact that there are far more cars on the road than motorcycles is a point in favor of my argument, plenty of people in cars die from head injuries that would have been saved if they had been wearing a helmet, even a bicycle helmet. It's the absolute number of lives that would be saved that really counts, not the percentages..

The really ironic thing about life is that so few of us get out of it alive.

I for one have no desire to die in a hospital bed while being kept alive through extreme measures, your mileage may vary of course.

[sweetapogee]

26. did

you actually read what I wrote?

So, do you wear a helmet when you are in a car? Do you understand that the mechanism of injury in most car accidents are due to the head hitting the dash/steering/windshield and could be prevented by wearing a seat belt? Do you realize that a helmet will do nothing to help in the most popular upper body injury, whiplash and C-spine?

As for lying in a hospital bed, might I recommend that you get a living will and a comprehensive DNR.

[Robb]

17. Correlation isn't causation.

I'd suggest another possibility: riders who habitually wear helmets are marginally more inclined to be riders that take safety a little more seriously, too -- refresher courses, skills books, regular practice in safe areas, etc.

If the goal is actually to decrease rider deaths, and the government wants to get involved, a rider safety campaign -- even one with teeth, e.g. mandatory safety course every few years -- would do a ton more good than a helmet law.

Disclosure: I haven't ridden since my daughter was born, and plan to sit out for a while, but I rode for years and always dressed for the crash, not the ride. Helmet and armor every time.

Other disclosure: I can say from experience, helmets help in the slower crashes, but all riders die in the high-speed ones. Every time. The helmet (experience again) makes it easier to find the head sometimes. Not always.

[ProudDad]

20. I would concur that frequent training would be a good thing

early in one's riding career.

But would be a pretty (unconstitutionally) onerous to dump on experienced riders.

I take safety MUCH more seriously when I'm NOT wearing a helmet.

I also believe that youngsters on "rice rockets" with visibility limiting "full coverage" helmets, stupid "crouched" seating, limited experience and raging testosterone are the ones skewing the statistics.

It's the first year that usually does the killing... (and clueless or hateful car drivers)...

[Robb]

21. Probably so.

I find as I age I'm increasingly fond of the phrase "grandfathered-in." :hi:

Statistically, amazingly, it's not the first year. You're actually most likely to get your ticket punched around 5-7 years, goes down a bit again until 15 years, at which point your number starts to be increasingly likely to come up. Age seems to have less to do with things than riding years. Amazingly engine size and bike type didn't affect the numbers on fatalities.

I found a bunch of great stats last year (two years ago?), I'll see if I can dig 'em up.

[leftynyc]

24. If people want to risk their

brains being bashed in, let them (I just hope they're all organ donors). More nannystate nonsense.