Helmet laws and their effect on organ donors...

[PowellB]

Just saw this over at Hell for Leather. New study from Michigan State entitled "Donorcycles" claiming that helmet laws reduce the number of available organ donors.

From Hell for Leather Magazine:

Describing its purpose, the paper states, "This paper investigates the possibility of an offsetting societal benefit of riding without a helmet: do helmetless riders increase organ donation rates? If helmets reduce the number of deaths from severe brain injury, and if these deaths often involve viable organ donors, the repeal of helmet laws may increase the overall number of donors."

There are links to another source article in the above link, but the actual study is here. It concludes that repealing helmet laws "would be ineffective in isolation, primarily because over 80 percent of organ donors die due to circumstances unrelated to motor vehicle accidents. Our preferred estimates imply that nationwide elimination of helmet laws would increase annual organ donations by less than one percent." (Disclaimer: I breezed through it, so there might be more meaningful stuff in there that I'm being ignorant to.)

I've always supported helmet laws in the hopes that stupid people would be forced to wear a helmet long enough to develop the common sense to want to wear one. Even with the small impact the study predicts, I find myself questioning my place to help 'parent' other riders on the topic. I've never really thought about it from this perspective and I hate to help open the door for other people to make potentially fatal mistakes, but a few (hopefully) deserving people's lives could be saved with a helmet law repeal. At the cost of some riders missing the common sense necessary to pass the next round of natural selection, is the trade worth it?

Tough one, especially when you consider the hit the motorcycling community as a whole would take if the safety statistics stack up against us even more.

Thoughts?

 

[keira]

i am a supporter of helmet law, but at the same time feel that they shoulg be unnecessary. we have people riding helmet-less around here more often than fully geared. i always ask myself why they dont see the need to protect themselves.... one of these days i will ask them.

 

[reiobard]

if they ride without a helmet all the time aren't they technically brain dead already?


Also this is a rather morbid view on the situation, I half expect the next article to be:

"Helmet laws making Funeral home business Decrease"

 

[Bruce McCrary]

While I support the use of helmets, as well as any other safety gear that can be worn by a rider, I personally disagree with a mandatory helmet law. In fact, I disagree with any law that puts government in charge of protecting us from ourselves. IMHO is is simply not the role of government to do so.

There is a battle being waged currently in my state to repeal the mandatory use of helmets by riders over age 21. Supporters of this movement are going after it from all angles including saying that FMVSS 218 is a sham and the DOT doesn't approve helmets (which technically speaking, they don't). Claims are being made that helmet usage restricts hearing and peripheral vision and that due to the weight they can cause spinal and neck injuries beyond whatever good they might do in impact protection. They also use statistical evidence that the majority of severe injuries, especially those that lead to death involve trauma to the body, not the head (which makes me wonder if the info came from a state with a mandatory helmet law... ) which doesn't support the theory of the article mentioned in the beginning of the thread. Heck, I've even heard some of them quote statistics that make claims of the number of injuries and fatalities decreasing in many instances when a mandatory helmet law is repealed.

I think realistically in our state their chances of making this happen aren't good. The safetycrats have recently pushed one of the worst pieces of legislation I've ever seen through and made it law in the form of the NC ATV law. The idea of the law was to "protect children" and one of the many, many reaches of this legislation includes mandatory helmet use (and noise restriction, just thought I'd mention that ) . The rub in it though includes an exclusion for hunting and farming use. At any rate, getting a repeal on a law, that is included in another law so to speak, just doesn't seem very likely to me.

Personally, I think if their right to go lidless cause my insurance rates to go up then I have a real problem with it. Otherwise to me it's Darwinism at it's best, but that isn't really the concern of government.

Bruce

 

[necrotimus]

Otherwise to me it's Darwinism at it's best, but that isn't really the concern of government.

Bruce

Took the words right out of my mouth.

Not to mention the fact that if a squid on a motorcycle is going to crash anyway I'd rather they weren't wearing a helmet... less property damage. :spank: