From what I understand, you are much more likely to end up a paraplegic if you do wear a helmet. The non-helmet wearer in the same accident is more likely to be dead. Some people prefer that outcome. Also, that does not apply to bicycle helmets. The lower speeds of bicycles make helmet wearing always safer.
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So the relevant followup question - how did this event move the needle for his colleagues in that organization, if at all?
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If they don’t wear leathers or other full-body protective gear, even that’s not enough. I was working a VA ER when they brought in a guy who went riding with just tank top and shorts and had an accident. There simply wasn’t enough intact skin left to check for tatoos.
Note that his care would have been funded by the government.
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You can suffer a motorcycle injury that renders you paraplegic (paralysis of the lower body) with or without a helmet, but you’re far more likely to suffer some form of traumatic brain injury when your brain is unprotected.
If you ever do find yourself in a position where you find death preferable to ongoing medical care then TBI is not a great thing to have since you generally need to be considered mentally competent to refuse life-saving medical treatments including (but not limited to) feeding tubes.
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I would just like to say that I would be dead several times over if I routinely rode without a helmet.
Wearing a helmet is just sensible.
Campaigning for the right to choose whether or not to wear a helmet is to me, no different to campaigning against seat-belt laws, speeding laws or drink-driving laws.
It’s the same misguided ‘freedom’ bullshit as all that first and second amendment bullshit.
Fuck this dead asshole.
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Exactly. When my wife worked in rehab (as in physical injury, not drug rehab) she was constantly getting motorcyclists who didn’t wear helmets gear and suffered major head trauma. They wound up with varying degrees of cognitive impairment which along with their spinal injuries rendered them permanently unable to support themselves. The expense of treatment and long-term care broke them and their families financially and they ended up on public assistance which the rest of us paid for.
It seems to me that the philosophy underlying all this personal-freedom libertarian bull is the fantasy that every person is an island. I get to do as I please, and if I injure myself I’m the only one affected. This isn’t true in real life of course, so in practice the philosophy becomes “I get to do as I please, and if it injures you, tough shit.”
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Apparently some forms of liberty aren’t either/or options when it comes to death.
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One of my aunts was a social worker who worked with spinal injury victims. Many of her clients were people who would have been fine if they were wearing a seat belt at the time of the accident. We used seat belts in my family from the 1960s on.
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Yup. “It’s all about meeeee!” is the rallying cry of the MAGAt crowd.
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My mom was an emergency room nurse for many years, and they called bikers “organ donors”. Every shift one or two would come in, variously mangled. Her stories cured me of any desire to ever ride one (which I definitely would have otherwise, because it’s the kind of thing I’d love, I’m sure).
I think it requires a certain level of delusion about the risks to ride one. You have to be able to convince yourself that you’re the careful one, the skilled one, and it won’t ever happen to you. If death was the only risk, that’d be fine, but mostly people are rendered paraplegic or worse. Quality of life matters way more to me than quantity.
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Came to say, “Our next Darwin Award Winner is…”
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As someone who is old enough to have been around for the origin of the mandated seat belt laws (yes, I’m old, dammit), I can verify that there were indeed idiots at the time who were advocating for the right to be impaled on their own steering wheels, because ‘freedum’.
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In August, Smith and his girlfriend, Brenda Jeanan Volpe, were riding a motorcycle on U.S. 19 in Pinellas County. They were headed to a memorial service for another biker who had died of cancer.
The bright side: At least they didn’t suffer and go by way of cancer.
Lacking direct knowledge, I can only guess that the needle didn’t budge in any meaningful way. They already knew that helmetless motorcyclists were at much greater risk at getting killed.
BTW: I only hope his girlfriend didn’t compromise her own fears and belief and was “forced” to ride along sans helmet.
There’s also the risk of having to encounter drivers who abhor anyone riding on two tires.
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Indexes quite nicely into the “Learn [insert] in just…” marketing gimmick.
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I had a motorcycle accident in 2001 - pretty low speed as these things go, around 30 mph. If I hadn’t been wearing a helmet I would not be here to write this. The last thing I remember before passing out is crawling to the side of the road and removing my helmet - which was cracked like an egg. I woke up in the ambulance and the guy asked if I minded if he cut my jeans - but there wasn’t really a lot of material left to cut.
I still ride sometimes, but only out in the country and only in full leathers + helmet.
Last time I was in Chicago a guy passed me on the highway without a helmet like I was standing still. Amazing that anyone would take that risk.
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Maybe. I’ve always loathed ABATE. They present a ton of misleading, disingenuous, and just plain false information to drum up support for their anti-helmet campaigns.
If they wanted to make an honest argument that people should get to choose how much risk they want to bear, I’d be okay with that (although there are still issues with that as others have said). But that really doesn’t get their agenda passed, so they usually instead publish information that wearing a helmet makes you more likely to be injured.
Growing up in Indiana, helmets were (and, I am pretty sure, still are) optional. I rode for a number of years without a helmet in my younger, much more foolish days. These days, the idea of going helmetless freaks me out. Full face only. ATGATT.
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Horrid “instructor” at a (horseback) riding day camp wouldn’t let me grab my helmet before mounting because I was late. She put me, a rank beginner, (and at least one other kid) on a big, spirited horse who’d been on stall rest for a year. This was done without having given him pasture time to run around & blow off that year’s worth of built-up steam, nor any work with skilled riders. When he took off on me at a gallop, which of course he did, I fell off, which of course I did. I hit my helmetless head, of course, but somehow avoided concussion or worse.
We should have sued, despite the boilerplate release form.
ETA: Mom and I assiduously wore helmets, for obvious reasons.
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This sort of balloneyshit was done to kids all the time in the 70’s and 80’s. It’s a friggin’ miracle any of us survived.
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Amen!
I certainly hope that after my mishap, they had everyone wear helmets. The next owners were “safety first” in all regards, and took better care of the horses.
Helmet-wearing has become increasingly accepted and even required in equestrian disciplines which had never used 'em.
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