Vetoing changes to helmet law is a real no brainer
Ben Roethlisberger was injured while driving without a helmet in 2006.
Missouri lawmakers have taken a giant step toward increasing the number of human organs available for transplantation. But, alas, not on purpose.
They did it by voting last week to change the state’s motorcycle helmet law. Riders over the age of 21 no longer would have to wear protective headgear except on interstate highways.
It’s a spectacularly bad idea. And not just because it’s almost impossible for police to gauge the age of a rider racing past at 70 miles per hour.
In states with similar laws, underage riders often ignore the law, with disastrous consequences; fewer than 40 percent of those who suffered fatal injures were wearing helmets. In states where helmets are optional, only slightly more than half of all riders choose to wear helmets.
Motorcycle riders’ groups have been trying to get helmet laws repealed for years. They don’t want the nanny state telling them what precautions they should take.
Some even go so far as to say that it’s safer to ride without a helmet. Nothing to restrict their vision or interfere with their hearing, they say.
The numbers tell a different story. An unhelmeted rider is 40 percent more likely to die in a crash and 15 percent more likely to suffer serious injury. Riders without helmets are three times more likely to suffer brain injuries than those who wear them.
Those brain injuries are crushingly expensive. In Florida, the total medical cost of treating injured motorcyclists more than doubled in the 30 months after the law was changed in 2000, to $44 million from $21 million.
One of the first unhelmeted riders to die was a woman who led a high-profile campaign to change Florida’s helmet law.
We wouldn’t object to letting those who ride decide, if those who rode could pay the costs of their care. But they can’t. Indeed, very few of us could.
Statistics show that nearly half of all motorcycle riders have no health insurance. The average cost of treating injuries to an unhelmeted rider in 2003 was about $67,000. In case you haven’t paid attention, health costs have soared since 2003.
Expensive injuries suffered by insured riders result in higher premiums for the rest of us. Uninsured riders wind up on Medicaid. The cost of their care — which often includes years of extensive physical therapy to help recover from brain injuries — is passed on to the rest of us.
The same lawmakers who voted to saddle taxpayers with higher costs for treating uninsured motorcyclists have refused to extend Medicaid to working parents struggling to raise children at incomes well below the poverty line.
Ghoulish and unintentional though it may be, the law’s only redeeming feature is that it could increase the number of organs available for transplantation in our state. The number of transplantable organs has declined because of improvements in automotive and highway safety.
But that unanticipated consequence doesn’t justify all the extra suffering and expense this new law will produce.
Gov. Jay Nixon shouldn’t have to think twice about Senate Bill 202, the helmet law repeal.
PD “Editorial Board” – Odds are that you are one of the one-in-three morbidly fat gluttons that roam among us in search of the next buffet. Question, can you cover the healthcare cost of your conduct, or will it, too, fall on “society”? [Government] control freaks are more deadly than plain old stupid conduct (like not wearing a helmet). 100m people were killed in the last century by their own leaders that knew what was best for them.