And here we see the fruit of long years of a "nanny state." Our government has managed to convince (many of) us we need protection from ourselves...
Should we enact laws to prevent irresponsibility if the result of that irresponsibility affects only us personally? Where does the idea of laws to govern behavior come from? Many experts agree our system of western law comes from the Bible, and while I don't consider myself a religious person, I've realized a lifetime of relative harmony in dealing with other people abiding by the so-called golden rule of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The additional guidance found in the Ten Commandments (those restricting personal behavior as it affects others) also provides a wonderful roadmap for blissful coexistence with our fellow man. Throw into the mix people's strong desire for personal freedom and liberty and you get such documents as the Magna Carta and the US Constitution including it's addendum, the Bill of Rights.
I encourage you to think critically about these ideas, precepts and documents which form the basis for developing societal law. Show me, if you can, the part where it says a government's role should be to make laws to protect me from acting irresponsibly in a way that impacts no one other than myself. Please tell me how not wearning a helmet presents a danger to anyone other than myself.
Because we live in a free society, people are free to act in any number of strange and ridiculous ways. People smoke, drink alcohol to excess, over-eat, have unprotected sex with strangers, skydive, scuba dive, cross the street without looking both ways, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Yet my government has written no laws to prevent me from killing (or permanently injuring) myself engaging in such follies -- this despite the fact that healthcare costs associated with these activities far, far exceed those associated with unhelmeted riders. Why do we demand laws to prevent irresponsibility in one area but not another?
Statements such as "...there is NO REASON anyone should ride a motorcycle without a helmet..." allow advocates of such laws to believe they argue from the heights of intellect. People who don't wear helmets are ignorant, uninsured, dirty, law-breaking bikers who need to be put in their place! And while we sit in righteous superiority after enacting a law protecting dumb bikers from themselves, we are completely oblivious to the fact we've chipped one more stone off the wall founded in the Magna Carta, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights that protects our personal freedoms and liberties from excessive (which eventually becomes abusive) government power.
Let's talk about healthcare costs for a moment...
The basic argument is by not wearing a helmet I place the burden of my healthcare costs on society -- the so-called Social Cost theory. Let's examine that for a moment.
The costs associated with motorcycle accidents is but a tiny, tiny fraction of the total we spend in this country on healthcare. The results of studies are all over the map, but some (
click here to read one) suggest that costs of injuries for non-helmeted riders are on average 60% higher than those for non-helmeted riders. Statistics vary widely across the board, but the studies I've found show that in states without helmet laws, around half of riders still use them. So let's do some math.
Let's say the total healthcare costs for motorcycle-related injuries is $10 million (a nice round number, completely arbitrary of course, making for easy math). Let's further assume half those involved wore a helmet, half did not. Continuing, let's assume the costs for the helmetless half were 50 percent higher. That would mean costs for helmeted riders would be some $4 million, while costs for the ignorant, helmetless riders would be some $6 million. That means unhelmeted riders cost $2 million more, and if everyone wore a helmet, costs would be $8. So, unhelmeted riders increase the total healthcare costs associated with motorcycle injuries by 25 percent (two is 25 percent of eight).
But in reality, only the uninsured motorcyclists would place the cost burden on the government. So, continuing with our hypothetical, although uninsured motorist rates vary widely from state to state, according to
this article from last year in Insurance Journal, the national average hovers around 15 percent. 15 percent of $2 million is $300,000 -- or .03 percent of the original $10 million.
So if I did my math correctly, here's the bottom line: Of the total we spend on healthcare in the US, motorcycle injuries account for about one tenth of one percent. We can save .03 percent of .1 percent by enacting a helmet law, or 0.003 percent.
I'll ask the American riders here on the forum: Is that .003 percent savings worth the loss of personal freedom and liberty?
What about the continued societal cost of survival? Let's face it folks, we all die eventually. But those of us who survive into old age place a continuing financial burden on society. How much higher is that cost with helmet laws allowing more riders to live into old age?
In our country there has always been a line between government and personal affairs. Government intrusion into personal affairs has almost always been confined to situations where a person's action (or inaction) places another person or another person's property in jeopardy (there's that do unto others thing again). In 1966 our government took its first step over that line when it threatened to withhold federal funds from states without seatbelt laws. And it made perfect sense, who would be crazy enough to argue against wearing a seatbelt? After all, people who don't wear seatbelts place a higher cost on society when they are injured in a motor vehicle accident -- why should we continue to pay that higher cost when we can simply mandate seatbelt use? What was somehow lost in the debate, however, is the fact by making it a law to wear a seatbelt we lost a personal freedom. And the distance our government intrudes into personal affairs continues to grow, year by year...
One of the reasons free societies come together is to share certain risks and costs such as the cost of growing old, the cost of natural disaster, the cost of accidental injury, etc. We call it security. By sharing costs and risks, individual members are free to make personal decisions regarding their own welfare absent the tyranny of governement or nature.
With that step over the line into curtailing personal liberty in the name of "social cost," however, our government successfully argued we should not SHARE the risks inherent in a free society, we should instead ELIMINATE them. But in its argument, however, our government failed to mention (and we didn't notice) that along with the elimination of risk comes the elimination of basic freedoms and liberties -- chief among them, the right to choose.
Many years ago, a very wise man named Benjamin Franklin warned, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
We better decide soon if we, as a society, want to share risks, or cheaply sell our freedom and liberty to the false notion of "safety."
Regards,
Mark
oes anyone really think we all ought to be able to choose which laws we want to abide by?
just my two cents
