Common Sense
COMMON SENSE
VIEWPOINT
JON McKIBBEN
YOU OPEN THE closet and begin donning your riding gear: helmet, goggles, steel mesh shinguards and forearm protectors, chest plate, reinforced high boots and gloves. Lumbering out the door you approach your road bike, bristling with its front and rear crash bars, multisectioned and multicolored lights, handlebar-mounted air bag and giant whip antenna bearing an STP-red pennant.
Mounting, you fasten your seatbelt, release the parking brakes, kick up the dual safety stands, open the primary and safety fuel taps, turn on main and redundant power switches, check both long-range and close-up mirrors and pull into the street. Ten minutes later you return from the drug store. Twenty minutes after that, the bike is properly stowed and you are stripped back down to comfortable clothes.
Sound absurd? Sure, but the real question is how do you react to this hypothetical situation? As a rational motorcyclist, how do you honestly feel about such proposed legislation as mandatory helmet usage for all motorcycle riders and passengers? Are you opposed to such laws? Why? And perhaps most important, how do you intend to respond to this and likely future legislation aimed at motorcycle operation?
THE CONSTITUTIONALITY ISSUE
Much has been written and verbalized about the constitutionality of mandatory helmet usage. Some states have seen laws passed, rejected as unconstitutional, reinstated through appeal—in short, run the gamut of litigation and judicial pondering.
Frankly, I consider the question of constitutionality to be irrelevant to the basic issue. Constitutionality is a highly arbitrary, very delicate interpretative issue. Learned legal folk sit in council and define the “real meaning” of the Constitution of the United States. This definition is dependent upon the mood of the times, the prejudices and biases of the judiciary and, of course, the social and economic implications of the specific decision.
To some motorcyclists, the question of constitutionality became a ray of hope. Those who dislike compulsory helmet usage laws have grasped at this knotty legal definition as a means for delaying, and perhaps killing off, such proposed regulations.
In my opinion, and that of many in top levels of Federal agencies, the constitutionality issue is all but over. Just as suicide is illegal, so one’s right to expose himself to unnecessary risks on public highways will be declared illegal, at least as this exposure applies to wearing of a recognized death-preventer.
THE DISCRIMINATING QUESTION
A far more valid objection raised by motorcycle enthusiasts is that of being subjected to an encumberment which is not consistently applied and enforced. Why should motorcyclists, and not automobile occupants, be forced to wear protective headgear?
Why, indeed? In the Second Annual Report on the Administration of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966, presented in the first session of the 91st Congress, President Richard Nixon transmitted a lengthy document detailing the progress made in highway safety. This report covers in depth the gains made through vehicle modifications, and outlined the areas wherein future effort would be devoted.
Leo Bestgen
On Page A-41 of the report, a chart is presented showing the distribution of injuries to motor vehicle occupants involved in injury-producing accidents. This chart indicates that head injuries were by far the most prevalent injury type, suffered by 75 percent of occupants in statistics heavily biased toward automobile occupants.
How, then, do the standards-makers defend a position of requiring head protection only for motorcycle occupants? I have no answer. The proposed legislation is clearly discriminatory, and cannot be defended by available injury data except for the obvious fact that motorcycle crashes tend to generate more head injuries, on a per crash basis, than do automobile crashes.
An organization whose avowed purpose is to reduce death and injury in highway crashes can ill afford to ignore the high payoff inherent in forcing all motor vehicle operators and passengers to wear protective headgear. Indeed, a great deal of effort goes into passenger cars to remove sharp objects and rigid surfaces that are within the potential head contact zone. Would it not be far more feasible, less costly, and more effective to carry the protection on the head of the occupant?
"IT DOESN’T AFFECT ANYBODY ELSE"
“It’s my head, and if I want to break it nobody else suffers.” I have heard this statement from more motorcyclists than I care to count. Perhaps some of you have used this as a rationalization against helmet legislation.
This statement is false. Sure, it’s your head, but exposing your head to needless injury affects others. How? Let’s take one example, and run it through the logic system.
Suppose you are riding out of your driveway into the street. You see a car coming down the street, but there is a stop sign between you and the car. Besides, the car is moving slowly toward the intersection and apparently stopping.
You pull out, and wham, that driver who was driving slowly toward the stop sign was actually reading a street sign and didn’t stop. You fall onto the street, strike your head on the curb, and are killed. You didn’t wear a helmet, and just falling at very low speed was enough to fracture your fragile skull.
What has happened? A driver who normally is very careful, who never drives in a deliberately reckless manner and who has a lovely wife and three children, now is faced with a charge of involuntary manslaughter. Perhaps he will be freed, or perhaps he will be thrown into prison for a time. In any event, he will live with the memory of your lifeless body in front of his car.
OK, so the driver made a mistake. Haven’t you ever had a lapse in concentration? Have you never made an error in your driving career? Be serious. We all have those moments when we could be the driver in this example situation. And failure to wear a good helmet in this case could mean the difference between a $12 bill for scratches to body and machine and a criminal charge of manslaughter.
Maybe this example is extreme, and maybe not. How about the survivors and friends of the motorcyclist unnecessarily killed because of his negligence? Don’t they deserve his consideration? None of us lives on an island. Our lives affect, on a daily basis, those of our loved ones and our fellow men in ways that seldom are apparent.
if you don’t want to consider this side of “personal right,” there is a more fundamental consideration. 1 am a motorcyclist, and I like nothing more than riding a good machine over some scenic and challenging pavement. I hope that I can enjoy this pastime for many years. Presumably most of you share this attraction to two-wheeled vehicles.
Every time a motorcyclist is killed, or reduced to a vegetable by head injuries, the cry goes up, “Ban motorcycles, get those dangerous things off the road!” The cry is still faint, and perhaps not to be feared. Not yet. But be aware that continued needless loss of life among motorcycle riders will provide all the ammunition needed by the doomsayers and their representatives. We just might wake up one morning and find that motorcycles have been ruled off the roads in our town, our state or even our country. And all because too many thoughtless persons chose to place “their head” in jeopardy.
Your right, and yours alone? Not really. Your rights stop at the end of my nose. And the noses of you and I are likely to be cut off if we fail to do our
best to make motorcycling as safe and inconspicuous as possible.
WHAT CAN I DO?
You, and I, and every rational and responsible motorcyclist in the country have an obligation to ourselves, and to our sport. This obligation can best be summed up in two words, “encouraging logic.” To expend energy, time and funds fighting something as clearly beneficial as helmet legislation is illogical. We should, I believe, demand answers to the question of discrimination between automobile drivers and motorcycle riders. But in the end, I think the case for helmet usage legislation far outweighs the argument against.
What we must fight are other, less logical standards that continuously threaten our enjoyment of two-wheeled vehicles. Absurd proposals such as seatbelts for motorcycles, giant flagpoles on the machine to improve visibility (at what expense in stability in windy weather?), and other ravings of uniformed and incompetent legislators must be fought with every weapon we can muster.
Where effective, logical legislation is proposed, let us be in the forefront of those encouraging its passage. Let’s show the world, made up mostly of automobile drivers and non-enthusiasts, that we are not negative-thinking heretics. Rather, we must demonstrate our concern, and our mature approach to sociological problems. Support those legislators that promise logic in their actions, and defeat those that attempt to drive foolishness through the halls of Congress in an effort to make a name for themselves. Demand publication of data which establishes the foundation for proposed regulations.
Consider the long-range implications of each proposed issue. Stay informed. And, by all means, stay alive to help in this crusade for sanity and preservation of our favorite avocation.
