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Tuesday, 27 June 2006 15:24 |
 | | Mark West |
In most areas, I argue that the government should stay out of our personal business. But I recently found myself in an argument with a friend about whether or not the law should require that motorcycle riders should wear a helmet.
My friend suggested that laws requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets were similar to ?®click it or ticket?∆ laws, laws that require automobile drivers and passengers to wear seat belts. I was probably the wrong person to try that argument with, since I have been told twice by highway patrolmen that seat belts had saved my life; but I think his analogy between the two is probably apt. And so, the question is, why should the government be able to tell people to do things that make them healthier?
First, a few statistics. Motorcycle riding is dangerous. According to
the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, motorcyclists were,
per vehicle-mile traveled, 34 times as likely as passenger car
occupants to die in a crash in 2004. For the last seven years,
according to NHTSA data, the number of motorcycle fatalities have
increased, with the number of alcohol-related fatalities in motorcycle
crashes at 27 percent, compared with 22 percent of automobile crashes.
But helmets save lives. The motorcycle passenger or driver is
ill-protected at best, with only clothing between them and the pavement
to dissipate the impact of a fall or a wreck. Helmets can help prevent
the ghastly cranial injuries that so often lead to death or to
permanent injury. In 2004, the Motorcycle Safety Foundation estimated
that helmets saved 1,316 lives; if all motorcyclists had been wearing
helmets, the MSF estimated that another 671 lives would have been saved.
Of course, everyone would acknowledge that helmets save lives. The
question is whether or not a government has the right to enforce that
they be worn. I would argue that the answer could be found in the
existence of another right ?± the right of motorcyclists to be hauled,
after a wreck, to a hospital and get stitched back together.
In some ways, I think that the debate about universal health care is
over in the United States. We have universal health care; anyone who
gets sick enough can go to a public hospital and get treated. That??s
the law; hospitals can??t deny emergency-room treatment to anyone who
shows up. That is universal health care. What we lack is universal
preventative health care, which would be much cheaper and much more
effective.
But in any event, the citizenry pays, through public support of
hospitals and through insurance premiums, for health care for people
who show up in emergency rooms. And private habits that can be proven
to lead to big expenses for the public are no longer private habits ?±
if the private citizens who are affected expect for care at public
facilities.
Thus, there is an option if people want to ride motorcycles without
their helmets. They should register with some sort of national registry
that says they won??t wear their helmet while riding, and thus will not
accept care at a public hospital in the event of a crash. Either their
private insurance will bear the costs (and presumably, the private
insurance will bill them appropriately), or they will go without care.
The same logic could go for those who don??t wear seat belts, who smoke
cigarettes and so forth. The government will intrude into your private
life only inasmuch as you expect it to provide services. If you opt out
of the intrusion, you opt out of the services. But you can??t have one
without the other.
The old saw has it that there ain??t no such thing as a free lunch. I
think a corollary is that, if a free lunch is offered and the cook
starts saying a prayer, bow your head.
And, considering the heightened fatality rates for motorcyclists, maybe a prayer would be a good idea ?? as well as a helmet.
?ÿ
Mark West is a professor of mass communications at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. |
