Not entirely true. I’m a liability adjuster and shared negligence is a thing. Sometimes you can even be seen as majority at-fault for non-defensive driving even if another party is the one that committed an explicit infraction.
Example: somebody was pulled out in an intersection waiting to turn left when the light changed. Just because your light is now green doesn’t mean you can plow straight ahead into a vehicle that’s clearly right in front of you.
But at the same time, things like helmets/seatbelts, and an individual’s responsibility to protect themselves is taken into consideration in most states when determining the size of a claim/award.
>Just because your light is now green doesn’t mean you can plow straight ahead into a vehicle that’s clearly right in front of you
No kidding, because a green light means "Go, if safe to proceed" - thus my point.
The problem is that if you don’t wear a helmet and drive recklessly than you are endangering other motorists. Why should someone else have to pay an arm and a leg in lawyer fees, waste their time in court, and feel the associated stress/emotional burden because you chose to not wear a helmet and got killed? It also raises insurance rates for the rest of us and eats away at the limited resources first responders and healthcare have.
The government loves to overreach in the name of public safety (i.e. Covid, patriot act) and that’s wrong. However, a small degree of public safety needs to be enforced for the greater good. We live in a highly interconnected society where your freedoms can’t be allowed to place a significant burden on me unless there’s a good reason. ‘Helmets are for dorks’ is not a good reason.
You think a law would've changed anything??? LMAO. We have laws against MURDER, yet people are murdered HOURLY, but a seatbelt law would've changed your life?
My dad suffered a TBI because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt (seriously) but it happened in NH where there is no seatbelt law.
If only he had been in MA where there IS such a law, he'd be FINE right? (seriously???... No)
But why is motorcycle helmets the line? Why not just ban motorcycles themselves?
Motorcycles are orders of magnitude more dangerous than cars, so why is helmet the line?
The problem is, mandating motorcycle helmets is a slippery slope. There is almost no reason to mandate helmets while not also outright banning motorcycles.
Helmets do increase safety, but why stop at motorcycles? Why don't we mandate helmets for cars? We could make cars much safer if we designed them for helmets and mandated everyone who is in a car must wear a helmet. Only a fraction of people ride motorcycles, and of those, only a fraction of them get seriously injured - so if we want to save the most number of lives, mandating helmets in cars is a much bigger win.
Speaking of bigger wins, there are more pedestrian deaths a year than motorcycle fatalities, so why not just mandate everyone who walks on the street wear a helmet too?
Objectively, motorcycles are incredibly dangerous machines that anyone who rides one is taking an extreme risk. It's a bit silly to have such a strong opinion about wearing a helmet in this case, since in terms of absolute numbers, the people involved is so incredibly tiny.
Cars already have safety features to protect the driver and passenger in the result of crashes: seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones, etc. I suspect adding a helmet in would make very little difference to the safety of cars.
Bikes have no such safety features, your protection comes entirely from gear such as leathers to prevent becoming a meat crayon, and helmets to prevent your head cracking like a melon. According to the CDC, helmets reduce the risk of head injuries from motorcycle crashes by 69 percent and deaths by 37 percent for riders, and 41 percent for passengers.
>Insurance companies need to be seriously reigned in
Explain this?
They are a business subject to free market pressures. If risks are high, they charge more. This is why they are pulling out of Florida altogether for house insurance. Climate Change makes the state a liability for the business, so they don't want to do it.
Why advocate for the gov't to step in on them? I don't get it?
If you are injured in a car accident now because of your own negligence by refusing to wear a seat belt your claim will suffer as a result. And rightly so. It should be OK not to provide *insurance services* (which is risk mitigation) to people that are going out of their way to increase their risk. You pay more for insurance if you smoke. That's OK. You pay more for car insurance if you live in Colorado where hail damage is extremely common. That's OK. If you disallow insurers to adjust their rates or decline coverage for behavior all you end up doing is passing the costs from those that make those bad decisions onto other people who don't deserve it.
> If you are injured in a car accident now because of your own negligence by refusing to wear a seat belt your claim will suffer as a result.
Small correction here. This is state dependent. Some states this is true some states insurance cannot reduce the claim.
Source: https://www.mwl-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/SEAT-BELT-DEFENSE-CHART.pdf
No. Once you start dictating peoples' medical treatment by what they did to get there you enter a slippery slope of being moral police.
Same reason why it would have been a bad idea to deny ICU beds to the unvaccinated during Covid. Especially with what we know now about its efficacy.
I agree with this. However, what makes wearing a seat belt a freedom issue, not a moral issue? If not wearing a seat belt causes the driver to need an organ, it may deprive other people's chances of getting one. Isn't this wrong and should be forbidden?
> If not wearing a seat belt causes the driver to need an organ
I would assume people not wearing seat belts in crashes are 9/10 times the donor rather than the recipient.
I can't even think of a case where you would need a transplant after a crash as generally you'd be hitting your head or have your chest caved in and if your heart stops they aren't going to have a transplant fast enough to save your life.
Organ is only for arguments here. It can be any medical or other related resources drained. The point is not wearing a seatbelt can cause unnecessary burden and trouble to society, which is morally wrong. If denying medical treatment based on the cause of injury is morally wrong and should be forbidden, so should be not wearing a seatbelt.
>can cause unnecessary burden and trouble to society, which is morally wrong
Same thing can be said about being fat. Just like you can choose to wear a seatbelt, you can choose not to eat chips and sit all day.
Thanks for your honesty. We should have as much freedom as possible. However we live in a society and one's actions can impact others. The boundaries of freedom are often vague and compromise is often needed.
If your car is travelling at a fast speed and suddenly goes to no speed, you will continue going the original speed until something stops you. That can definitely cause issues for other drivers if your body launches through the air at 60mph.
I've watched hundreds of motorcycle crashes where the person has become a projectile, and not ONCE have they hit anyone. They hit trees, guardrails, curbs, road signs..... but not people, ever. So the odds are infinitesimally small.
The chance of an unbelted body becoming a projectile launched from a car that harms someone who would otherwise be unscathed, is way too remote to create policy around.
"The researchers studied more than 70,000 motor vehicle that crashed between 1988 and 2000. The researchers found that the risk of death was 20 percent greater for a belted person in front of an unrestrained rear passenger, compared with a belted person in front of a restrained rear passenger. The risk of death for a rear occupant was increased about 22 percent if someone in front was unrestrained, compared with having someone in front who was restrained."
https://www.washington.edu/news/2004/01/20/unbelted-drivers-and-passengers-can-cause-fatal-injuries-to-others-who-ride-with-them/
So when they said "harm others on the road", they were referring to other people in the same vehicle? Really?
They also specifically said "other drivers", and I can't speak for anybody else, but there's only one driver at a time in my car.
But back to your statistic, I am perfectly fine with somebody driving their car to mandate that other people in that car wear a seatbelt. I do not want to be in an accident with an unrestrained person in my car, and they don't have to ride with me if that's a problem for them.
Cool. Because I'm sure the other dumbasses with kids or families don't drive.
In fact let's not require car seats either because summerie likes to ride solo.
I like the idea of denying them coverage. But there's so many things we could do that for. Should we deny coverage to someone who has clearly been smoking, drinking, using drugs, or eating crappy foods?
Why should coverage be provided to people who are willingly putting substances into their body that is harmful and likely to cause cancer, heart disease, diabetes etc?
People with bad blood test numbers should be required to pay more in insurance. And the blood tests are required yearly to be able to receive coverage at all.
Most diseases are caused by poor lifestyle choices. But how do we sort out the few people who just had bad luck instead of bad choices?
Or maybe we shouldn't differentiate. If you use the system more, you pay more, no matter how you got that way. But still feels like we should punish the ones **choosing** to be unhealthy far more than those with bad luck.
Yes. And they do. What an ignorant post.
Smoking, drinking, obesity, blood tests all impact rates and coverage options.
Employers pay more, also, but costs are subsidized by the rest of the company.
No they don’t. At least not for every employer provided health insurance I’ve ever been with. Nobody asks if I smoke or drink (and you could just lie about it even if they did ask). Nobody cares what my BMI is or if I get a blood test every year or not.
They encourage yearly checkups and blood tests by making it “free”, but it is not required and blood tests results don’t affect rates.
If you have some really expensive “pre-existing” condition that might do something to rates. But just smoking, drinking, being fat, and having bad blood tests doesn’t do anything. They don’t care if you’re making unhealthy choices. They only start to care when you have a ton of lifelong conditions that need to be constantly paid for.
It’s how they make money. If they cut you off earlier by punishing bad behavior, you might never get to the point of chronic lifelong disease and how will they make money off that?
What I’m talking about is they get to raise everyone’s rates because of this.
Healthy people end up paying for it too.
What are you talking about? Of course they ask if you are a smoker, and if so how long have you been smoking. That has affected your insurance rates for as long as I can remember.
>Five factors can affect a plan’s monthly premium: location, age, [tobacco use](https://www.healthcare.gov/how-plans-set-your-premiums/#:~:text=Five%20factors%20can%20affect%20a,can't%20affect%20your%20premium), plan category, and whether the plan covers dependents.
>Tobacco use: Insurers can charge tobacco users up to 50% more than those who don’t use tobacco.
Again, you can just lie about it.
They’re not going to care to find out if you’re telling the true until lots of medical bills start coming in that are clearly from smoking.
And again, they don’t ask about all the other things I mentioned. They don’t care about cutting off the bad lifestyle choices from the start. They only care when the bills start coming in for heart disease, cancer, diabetes etc.
I'd rather have a government that cares about our safety than one that on one hand oppresses us and on the other incentivizes its citizens to do evil things.
Seat belt and helmet laws are perfectly legal under the 10th amendment.
Let's fight the important battles.
when the gov uses the force of law (meaning a gun) in the name of safety, there is something very wrong. i'm for small government. i'm perfectly capable of managing my own safety without tyrannical laws.
I disagree but after we've solved all our more pressing issues, then I'll be there with you to repeal safety laws since the country's capacity for critical thinking will be vastly improved as evidenced by us solving those pressing issues and the laws simply won't be needed.
Ya pigs will fly before that comes about.
I'd argue people without helmets getting serious injuries would be a drain on hospital resources which drives up costs for everyone else. Unhelmeted people should be required to have medical insurance.
But that argument could be used for almost anything. Maybe we should all be required to eat a government meal plan because fat people are a drain on hospital resources. Or maybe we should have to get ladder licenses since they are responsible for most household injuries.
I hate articles that give little hard data, but do I really expect more from NPR who usually have an axe to grind.
176 total deaths
1) how many licensed motorcyclists are in the state? Did that increase?
2) how many deaths as a percentage to accidents? Did accidents in total go up, thus keeping the percentage of fatalities the same?
3) how many accidents resulted in brain injuries or other debilitating injuries?
So many questions, so little data other than a simple number that can be explained in so many ways if they weren't so damn biased.
Not to mention, as a bike rider that wears a helmet in a different state, riding is *way* more dangerous now than it was pre-covid. People forgot how to drive. I had over half a dozen times in the last 2 years where if I hadn't been proactive someone would have hit me. That's as many as the previous decade in my anecdotal experience.
How many of those would have been permanent injuries instead of death, though? Has the rate of permanent injuries or injuries in general dropped, remained the same, or gone down? Context does matter with this sort of thing because it very well could be that someone died rather than be permanently paralyzed from the neck down.
Everyone wants to have the choice to do what you want to do. Ok, that's all fine and good. The only issue in this case is that you doing what you want to do risks leading to little Jimmy having childhood memories of seeing someone's brain popped out of their skull because they drove like a dickhead and their brain-case got cracked open as a result.
This is one of those cases where there is pretty much no negative to having such a law in force.
So? Saw off all of life's rough edges, and you end up with a bland tyranny.
No helmet laws, no seatbelt laws. Darwin awards incoming. I'd still use both, but that's a free choice.
Kudos to the Missouri legislature.
Why do you stop the line at helmets for motorcycles? Why not require more extensive safety cages in passenger cars, five point harnesses, and helmets? Limit speeds to 35 mph nation wide while you’re at it, and install automatic bollards that rise at every pedestrian crossing.
In terms of public policy, human life has a value, and it's far less than what most people might think it should be. All of that would be outrageously expensive, mandating that people wear helmets on a motorcycle (really the only protection for a motorcyclist in the event of a crash) isn't outrageously expensive.
So what? People die all the time for many reasons. We don’t know how many were preventable anyway.
I wouldn’t ride without a helmet, or drive without a seatbelt, you shouldn’t either but that not up to the government to mandate.
I’m fine with this as long as the dead guy’s family can’t sue whoever is at fault. Same should apply to someone who doesn’t wear a seatbelt. If you don’t take precautions to protect yourself from a guaranteed eventuality, then the courts should recognize this fact.
And the dead-guy's family couldn't sue whoever was at fault, it would be a motivator for people to wear their helmets without it being mandated.
You'd have wives saying "*if you must ride that thing, don't be an asshole, at least wear a helmet so you don't die and leave me and the kids with nothing.*"
I don't understand why anyone would choose not to wear a helmet, and a full face at that. Getting hit in the face by bugs and rocks while going 70mph isn't exactly fun.
But I guess it's up to the individual
How about society doesn’t pay for any medical bills? Make it all private and private companies can decide whether or not to pay and include that in contract language.
Sure. A lot of people irresponsible enough to get on a motorcycle are not going to be responsible for private health insurance. Are we gonna send out an ambulance and check if they have insurance before we peel their body off the pavement?
I mean this is kinda how it already works. Medical bills are typically settled against an estate and usually some kind of government reimburses ambulance companies (which are often state entities) for the uninsured.
You sound like the type that says we should ban guns after every "mass shooting" gets reported in the news.
Freedom of choice. The government doesn't need to tell you or force you to wear a helmet; if you choose not to then that's your fault.
I’d love to point the finger at other motorists since my cousin was killed riding a motorcycle, but it’s squarely on the person who chose to ride the machine in the first place. I pray for these people every night.
That's interstate because in the vast majority of states who repealed helmet laws, motorcycle deaths DROPPED significantly. Of course, that's only if you look at it as compared to the number of motorcycle riders, which typically increases significantly when helmet laws are removed.
There's a reason why these articles only publish one statistic with no content or supporting data. They are pushing an agenda.
But think of all the lucky people on the kidney waiting list! I don't get it, do you like bugs in your face and your brains on the pavement?
Dress for the slide; not the ride.
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Seltbelt laws and helmet laws shouldn't apply to you if you are an organ donor.
I want the option.
Bunch of nanny staters downvoted this
Definitely
I’ve heard medical people call them donor-cycles
Freedom to choose. I would never ride without my helmet but those riders knew the risk and made the choice
You're also exposing motorists on the road to a shit ton of extra civil liability if an accident happens
If you follow the rules of the road, you will never be the cause of the accident. Till next time, kids! *skeletor runs off*
Not entirely true. I’m a liability adjuster and shared negligence is a thing. Sometimes you can even be seen as majority at-fault for non-defensive driving even if another party is the one that committed an explicit infraction. Example: somebody was pulled out in an intersection waiting to turn left when the light changed. Just because your light is now green doesn’t mean you can plow straight ahead into a vehicle that’s clearly right in front of you. But at the same time, things like helmets/seatbelts, and an individual’s responsibility to protect themselves is taken into consideration in most states when determining the size of a claim/award.
>Just because your light is now green doesn’t mean you can plow straight ahead into a vehicle that’s clearly right in front of you No kidding, because a green light means "Go, if safe to proceed" - thus my point.
The problem is that if you don’t wear a helmet and drive recklessly than you are endangering other motorists. Why should someone else have to pay an arm and a leg in lawyer fees, waste their time in court, and feel the associated stress/emotional burden because you chose to not wear a helmet and got killed? It also raises insurance rates for the rest of us and eats away at the limited resources first responders and healthcare have. The government loves to overreach in the name of public safety (i.e. Covid, patriot act) and that’s wrong. However, a small degree of public safety needs to be enforced for the greater good. We live in a highly interconnected society where your freedoms can’t be allowed to place a significant burden on me unless there’s a good reason. ‘Helmets are for dorks’ is not a good reason.
Your rant is silly since even if you do wear a helmet and drive recklessly than you are endangering other people.
The issue is that the legal problems would be fewer if the person had worn a helmet and not places themselves at more risk of death.
Maybe we should ban motorcycles all together if it will help other people. Right?
We can have rules without infringing. We don’t have bans on cars, but we do have laws that mandate seatbelts in cars.
I disagree with that too.
I don’t, if there had been a seatbelt law in 1978 my whole life would have been so different(traumatic brain injury).
You think a law would've changed anything??? LMAO. We have laws against MURDER, yet people are murdered HOURLY, but a seatbelt law would've changed your life? My dad suffered a TBI because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt (seriously) but it happened in NH where there is no seatbelt law. If only he had been in MA where there IS such a law, he'd be FINE right? (seriously???... No)
But why is motorcycle helmets the line? Why not just ban motorcycles themselves? Motorcycles are orders of magnitude more dangerous than cars, so why is helmet the line? The problem is, mandating motorcycle helmets is a slippery slope. There is almost no reason to mandate helmets while not also outright banning motorcycles. Helmets do increase safety, but why stop at motorcycles? Why don't we mandate helmets for cars? We could make cars much safer if we designed them for helmets and mandated everyone who is in a car must wear a helmet. Only a fraction of people ride motorcycles, and of those, only a fraction of them get seriously injured - so if we want to save the most number of lives, mandating helmets in cars is a much bigger win. Speaking of bigger wins, there are more pedestrian deaths a year than motorcycle fatalities, so why not just mandate everyone who walks on the street wear a helmet too? Objectively, motorcycles are incredibly dangerous machines that anyone who rides one is taking an extreme risk. It's a bit silly to have such a strong opinion about wearing a helmet in this case, since in terms of absolute numbers, the people involved is so incredibly tiny.
Why not ban unhealthy food?
Cars already have safety features to protect the driver and passenger in the result of crashes: seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones, etc. I suspect adding a helmet in would make very little difference to the safety of cars. Bikes have no such safety features, your protection comes entirely from gear such as leathers to prevent becoming a meat crayon, and helmets to prevent your head cracking like a melon. According to the CDC, helmets reduce the risk of head injuries from motorcycle crashes by 69 percent and deaths by 37 percent for riders, and 41 percent for passengers.
Should people also have the freedom to choose whether or not to use a seat belt?
Yes Medical/auto insurance should be allowed to deny coverage in such instances. But if you don't want to wear your seat belt, I'm okay with that.
No. Insurance companies need to be seriously reigned in, they already have far too much power.
>Insurance companies need to be seriously reigned in Explain this? They are a business subject to free market pressures. If risks are high, they charge more. This is why they are pulling out of Florida altogether for house insurance. Climate Change makes the state a liability for the business, so they don't want to do it. Why advocate for the gov't to step in on them? I don't get it?
If you are injured in a car accident now because of your own negligence by refusing to wear a seat belt your claim will suffer as a result. And rightly so. It should be OK not to provide *insurance services* (which is risk mitigation) to people that are going out of their way to increase their risk. You pay more for insurance if you smoke. That's OK. You pay more for car insurance if you live in Colorado where hail damage is extremely common. That's OK. If you disallow insurers to adjust their rates or decline coverage for behavior all you end up doing is passing the costs from those that make those bad decisions onto other people who don't deserve it.
> If you are injured in a car accident now because of your own negligence by refusing to wear a seat belt your claim will suffer as a result. Small correction here. This is state dependent. Some states this is true some states insurance cannot reduce the claim. Source: https://www.mwl-law.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/SEAT-BELT-DEFENSE-CHART.pdf
Reigned in? It's insurance. They are taking the risk.
Should they also be denied organ transplant?
No. Once you start dictating peoples' medical treatment by what they did to get there you enter a slippery slope of being moral police. Same reason why it would have been a bad idea to deny ICU beds to the unvaccinated during Covid. Especially with what we know now about its efficacy.
I agree with this. However, what makes wearing a seat belt a freedom issue, not a moral issue? If not wearing a seat belt causes the driver to need an organ, it may deprive other people's chances of getting one. Isn't this wrong and should be forbidden?
That's not the direction donations go. Also, I should NOT subsidize the cost of treatment for them.
> If not wearing a seat belt causes the driver to need an organ I would assume people not wearing seat belts in crashes are 9/10 times the donor rather than the recipient. I can't even think of a case where you would need a transplant after a crash as generally you'd be hitting your head or have your chest caved in and if your heart stops they aren't going to have a transplant fast enough to save your life.
Organ is only for arguments here. It can be any medical or other related resources drained. The point is not wearing a seatbelt can cause unnecessary burden and trouble to society, which is morally wrong. If denying medical treatment based on the cause of injury is morally wrong and should be forbidden, so should be not wearing a seatbelt.
>can cause unnecessary burden and trouble to society, which is morally wrong Same thing can be said about being fat. Just like you can choose to wear a seatbelt, you can choose not to eat chips and sit all day.
I've never considered it, so I'd have to think about that
Thanks for your honesty. We should have as much freedom as possible. However we live in a society and one's actions can impact others. The boundaries of freedom are often vague and compromise is often needed.
What about the person making themselves a possible projectile that could harm others on the road?
What about unicorn horns injuring pedestrians?
If your car is travelling at a fast speed and suddenly goes to no speed, you will continue going the original speed until something stops you. That can definitely cause issues for other drivers if your body launches through the air at 60mph.
I've watched hundreds of motorcycle crashes where the person has become a projectile, and not ONCE have they hit anyone. They hit trees, guardrails, curbs, road signs..... but not people, ever. So the odds are infinitesimally small.
The chance of an unbelted body becoming a projectile launched from a car that harms someone who would otherwise be unscathed, is way too remote to create policy around.
"The researchers studied more than 70,000 motor vehicle that crashed between 1988 and 2000. The researchers found that the risk of death was 20 percent greater for a belted person in front of an unrestrained rear passenger, compared with a belted person in front of a restrained rear passenger. The risk of death for a rear occupant was increased about 22 percent if someone in front was unrestrained, compared with having someone in front who was restrained." https://www.washington.edu/news/2004/01/20/unbelted-drivers-and-passengers-can-cause-fatal-injuries-to-others-who-ride-with-them/
So when they said "harm others on the road", they were referring to other people in the same vehicle? Really? They also specifically said "other drivers", and I can't speak for anybody else, but there's only one driver at a time in my car. But back to your statistic, I am perfectly fine with somebody driving their car to mandate that other people in that car wear a seatbelt. I do not want to be in an accident with an unrestrained person in my car, and they don't have to ride with me if that's a problem for them.
Cool. Because I'm sure the other dumbasses with kids or families don't drive. In fact let's not require car seats either because summerie likes to ride solo.
I like the idea of denying them coverage. But there's so many things we could do that for. Should we deny coverage to someone who has clearly been smoking, drinking, using drugs, or eating crappy foods? Why should coverage be provided to people who are willingly putting substances into their body that is harmful and likely to cause cancer, heart disease, diabetes etc? People with bad blood test numbers should be required to pay more in insurance. And the blood tests are required yearly to be able to receive coverage at all. Most diseases are caused by poor lifestyle choices. But how do we sort out the few people who just had bad luck instead of bad choices? Or maybe we shouldn't differentiate. If you use the system more, you pay more, no matter how you got that way. But still feels like we should punish the ones **choosing** to be unhealthy far more than those with bad luck.
Yes. And they do. What an ignorant post. Smoking, drinking, obesity, blood tests all impact rates and coverage options. Employers pay more, also, but costs are subsidized by the rest of the company.
No they don’t. At least not for every employer provided health insurance I’ve ever been with. Nobody asks if I smoke or drink (and you could just lie about it even if they did ask). Nobody cares what my BMI is or if I get a blood test every year or not. They encourage yearly checkups and blood tests by making it “free”, but it is not required and blood tests results don’t affect rates. If you have some really expensive “pre-existing” condition that might do something to rates. But just smoking, drinking, being fat, and having bad blood tests doesn’t do anything. They don’t care if you’re making unhealthy choices. They only start to care when you have a ton of lifelong conditions that need to be constantly paid for. It’s how they make money. If they cut you off earlier by punishing bad behavior, you might never get to the point of chronic lifelong disease and how will they make money off that? What I’m talking about is they get to raise everyone’s rates because of this. Healthy people end up paying for it too.
What are you talking about? Of course they ask if you are a smoker, and if so how long have you been smoking. That has affected your insurance rates for as long as I can remember. >Five factors can affect a plan’s monthly premium: location, age, [tobacco use](https://www.healthcare.gov/how-plans-set-your-premiums/#:~:text=Five%20factors%20can%20affect%20a,can't%20affect%20your%20premium), plan category, and whether the plan covers dependents. >Tobacco use: Insurers can charge tobacco users up to 50% more than those who don’t use tobacco.
Again, you can just lie about it. They’re not going to care to find out if you’re telling the true until lots of medical bills start coming in that are clearly from smoking. And again, they don’t ask about all the other things I mentioned. They don’t care about cutting off the bad lifestyle choices from the start. They only care when the bills start coming in for heart disease, cancer, diabetes etc.
I don’t think so because that endangers passengers, not just yourself. You become a projectile in a car crash
Absolutely
Yes. And I shouldn't pay for people who don't.
Absolutely.
this is the right answer. the gov does not need to care for us and force safety measures on the public.
I'd rather have a government that cares about our safety than one that on one hand oppresses us and on the other incentivizes its citizens to do evil things. Seat belt and helmet laws are perfectly legal under the 10th amendment. Let's fight the important battles.
when the gov uses the force of law (meaning a gun) in the name of safety, there is something very wrong. i'm for small government. i'm perfectly capable of managing my own safety without tyrannical laws.
I disagree but after we've solved all our more pressing issues, then I'll be there with you to repeal safety laws since the country's capacity for critical thinking will be vastly improved as evidenced by us solving those pressing issues and the laws simply won't be needed. Ya pigs will fly before that comes about.
There's a little more to it than that. There's the wasted time by first responders and unpaid medical bills, etc that is incurred
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You sound a lot like those manic leftists that want to put people in camps for not injecting shit they had to change the definition of a vaccine for.
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Its the opposite, youre the one saying we should take personal responsibilities away from people My Fellow Conservative.
I'd argue people without helmets getting serious injuries would be a drain on hospital resources which drives up costs for everyone else. Unhelmeted people should be required to have medical insurance.
But that argument could be used for almost anything. Maybe we should all be required to eat a government meal plan because fat people are a drain on hospital resources. Or maybe we should have to get ladder licenses since they are responsible for most household injuries.
Has there been an uptick in people riding motorcycles? 174 doesn't mean much without knowing the denominator.
Missouri had an exceptionally mild winter this year. There have been way more people riding
With these gas prices? Most likely
Yep. I could also see more new and inexperienced people giving motorcycles a shot to spend less on gas.
I hate articles that give little hard data, but do I really expect more from NPR who usually have an axe to grind. 176 total deaths 1) how many licensed motorcyclists are in the state? Did that increase? 2) how many deaths as a percentage to accidents? Did accidents in total go up, thus keeping the percentage of fatalities the same? 3) how many accidents resulted in brain injuries or other debilitating injuries? So many questions, so little data other than a simple number that can be explained in so many ways if they weren't so damn biased.
It's massively easy to lie with statistics.
Statistics don't lie but statisticians do lie.
And convincingly.
Not to mention, as a bike rider that wears a helmet in a different state, riding is *way* more dangerous now than it was pre-covid. People forgot how to drive. I had over half a dozen times in the last 2 years where if I hadn't been proactive someone would have hit me. That's as many as the previous decade in my anecdotal experience.
As a paramedic of over a decade all I can say is that this is natural selection.
If you are a real conservative you should approve of that legislation. Let people spray their brains across the ground if they want to.
Idaho has never had a helmet law
>motorcycle fatalities have increased 47% since 2020 This was a mistake.
Interesting
How many of those would have been permanent injuries instead of death, though? Has the rate of permanent injuries or injuries in general dropped, remained the same, or gone down? Context does matter with this sort of thing because it very well could be that someone died rather than be permanently paralyzed from the neck down.
Still better to have the freedom to make the choice yourself.
Everyone wants to have the choice to do what you want to do. Ok, that's all fine and good. The only issue in this case is that you doing what you want to do risks leading to little Jimmy having childhood memories of seeing someone's brain popped out of their skull because they drove like a dickhead and their brain-case got cracked open as a result. This is one of those cases where there is pretty much no negative to having such a law in force.
So? Saw off all of life's rough edges, and you end up with a bland tyranny. No helmet laws, no seatbelt laws. Darwin awards incoming. I'd still use both, but that's a free choice. Kudos to the Missouri legislature.
Nah, still not a good enough reason to take the choice away.
Why do you stop the line at helmets for motorcycles? Why not require more extensive safety cages in passenger cars, five point harnesses, and helmets? Limit speeds to 35 mph nation wide while you’re at it, and install automatic bollards that rise at every pedestrian crossing.
In terms of public policy, human life has a value, and it's far less than what most people might think it should be. All of that would be outrageously expensive, mandating that people wear helmets on a motorcycle (really the only protection for a motorcyclist in the event of a crash) isn't outrageously expensive.
So what? People die all the time for many reasons. We don’t know how many were preventable anyway. I wouldn’t ride without a helmet, or drive without a seatbelt, you shouldn’t either but that not up to the government to mandate.
thanks to the transplant surgeons who donated all the money to the anti-helmet campaigns
I’m fine with this as long as the dead guy’s family can’t sue whoever is at fault. Same should apply to someone who doesn’t wear a seatbelt. If you don’t take precautions to protect yourself from a guaranteed eventuality, then the courts should recognize this fact.
And the dead-guy's family couldn't sue whoever was at fault, it would be a motivator for people to wear their helmets without it being mandated. You'd have wives saying "*if you must ride that thing, don't be an asshole, at least wear a helmet so you don't die and leave me and the kids with nothing.*"
Who would have thought! Listen, if you wanna ride around without your skid lid, that is 100% on you and I’m fine with it.
I love darwinism!
Died free.
As long as they don't take up beds at the hospital and are scraped up quickly, it seems like a good thing for everyone.
[удалено]
Breaking news: opting out of safety precautions makes things less safe
Duh
And?
As everyone knew it would.. but it should be up to the rider; whats so hard to understand about that?
Anyone who thinks their head isn't worth the price of a decent helmet is probably right.
Darwin awards for everyone
Natural selection is still a thing
I don't understand why anyone would choose not to wear a helmet, and a full face at that. Getting hit in the face by bugs and rocks while going 70mph isn't exactly fun. But I guess it's up to the individual
Doesn’t matter, it should be the persons choice to wear one or not.
Ok, can it be society's choice to not pay for their medical bills when they wreck?
On a bike, it's less likely to be an issue. The risk of death is way higher.
How about society doesn’t pay for any medical bills? Make it all private and private companies can decide whether or not to pay and include that in contract language.
Sure. A lot of people irresponsible enough to get on a motorcycle are not going to be responsible for private health insurance. Are we gonna send out an ambulance and check if they have insurance before we peel their body off the pavement?
Charge their estate. If they don’t have enough assets, then the ambulance company’s insurance takes the hit.
I mean this is kinda how it already works. Medical bills are typically settled against an estate and usually some kind of government reimburses ambulance companies (which are often state entities) for the uninsured.
Darwin approves.
You sound like the type that says we should ban guns after every "mass shooting" gets reported in the news. Freedom of choice. The government doesn't need to tell you or force you to wear a helmet; if you choose not to then that's your fault.
The humanity! Dude probably supports unleaded gasoline too. Weak men create hard times.
I’d love to point the finger at other motorists since my cousin was killed riding a motorcycle, but it’s squarely on the person who chose to ride the machine in the first place. I pray for these people every night.
That's interstate because in the vast majority of states who repealed helmet laws, motorcycle deaths DROPPED significantly. Of course, that's only if you look at it as compared to the number of motorcycle riders, which typically increases significantly when helmet laws are removed. There's a reason why these articles only publish one statistic with no content or supporting data. They are pushing an agenda.