The best safety argument I read was that every automobile ought to be fitted with a 6" surgical steel spike right in the middle of the steering wheel. It would be the only way to get most drivers to pay attention and not get into dumb crashes.
Yikes ... sorry to read that. It's amazing the freak accidents that do happen. One of others I saw was some guys knuckles which had been hit by a wheel nuts ... looked like a gunshot wound to the hand.
I'm with that argument for the most part ... *if* you're the one paying for the all damage.

Fine, yes, it's yours and my choice to die in style. I agree with that. Unfortunately though, some of that price falls upon society too. A lot of it on your family if you have one.

I don't know what the current price is, but I remember reading that the cost of a road accident fatality was over $500,000 by the time everyone involved got paid, police, coroners, inquests, hospitals, funeral parlors etc. And you put a value on your family's loss or time.

I always thought *that's* the missing part of the equation, i.e. ... "you can do what you want as long as you pay for it". "You want to kill yourself, fine, here's the bill."

Unfortunately, even in America, liberalism seems to have gotten the better of you, and no one will just let them wheelbarrow away the corpses of the poor who cannot afford insurance and compost them. Or it is wisdom, compassion and enlightenment? I can't say.


Life is a very weird place ...

I've fallen off at 80 mph, bounced over the tops of and sides of automobiles, come to a stop then picked myself and the bike up and gone to work the next day ... Yet some other guy sneezes whilst sitting on his bed, falls over, brakes his neck and spend the rest of his life paralyzed from the neck down (true story).

I have no idea what it is all about and how it works. It's enough to make you want to believe in Karma but I suspect it is all a lot more random than that.

Ha. Yah, a little bit of filler and it'll be like new. Made me sick to think what his head would have been like if he had not been wearing it. I guess he got it trapped under the bus and was dragged along too.

 

Entirely different in the South Bay, along with most riders I know.

 

Yep! Been there done that. But that was then and this is now.

 

Right on!!!

I like the new "dual purpose" helmets:

1. Visor for shade (I've had facial skin cancer) (visor tilts down so wind doesn't lift the helmet)
2. Chin protection (mouth and jaw surgeries are VERY expensive and complicated)
3. Visor that lifts completely up or down or in-between

 

All I am trying to get across is there is inherant risk with everything we do. If taking unnecessary risk isnt smart then why ride at all? Why not live in a bubble all our lives. We take those risks cause we like the way it makes us feel. I would Never knock or rag on a guy for being cautious or safety observant. It just isnt my particular style.

The cost of a vehicle accident is insurmountable especially to your family. But then why ride at all. There is no reason to ride a motorcycle, "all safed up" or not, other than enjoyment. Drive an SUV and be MORE protected...without firestone tires haha.
As for me. I'd rather be dead than living a parapalegic on machines cause my head was untouched but body crushed.

Why you wouldnt want a doctor operating on you who chooses not to wear a helmet is beyond me...That shows nothing of how he is on the job or with other's safety.

This is a completely case by case basis decision with no right or wrong. All this is just my 2 cents of course

 

If my son wasnt wearing his full face helmet When he had his crash Is lower jaw have been ripped off by a sign pole.
You wear what you want but I'm with the full face now.I like my jaw right where its at

 

I don't quite follow your logic. Actually I do, but you are so very wrong, and I will explain why. You believe a head injury, received while riding without a helmet, will mean instant death and prevent someone from "living a parapalegic on machines cause my head was untouched but body crushed".

Other people, in their desire to prove a helmet isn't needed claim their head "never hit the ground" during an accident. Apparently some people crash with, or without, a helmet and their "head was untouched". That means that if some people's heads pops like a grape under a boot and other people's heads never touch the ground, there are an immeasurable number of places on a rider's head that may hit something solid.

When some of these places make contact with the street, cage, curb, light pole, etc. the rider may die. But, when odds are taken into consideration, it is far more likely that a rider's head injury may result in damage to the brain that doesn't result in immediate death. Sometimes life goes on and on and on...

Not "living a parapalegic on machines" but as a less capable person then the rider was before the injury. Sometimes much less capable. No machines are required but the head injury prevents the ability to hold a job, write, walk, talk, or a whole host of other such indignities. It doesn't matter to me what you, or anyone, does with their lives. Just don't count on a head injury meaning instant death and freedom from machines, or from becoming a 'vegetable'.

That is not how it works.

 

I'm with you on that ... It's a crime that they've even taken the right to death, along with the right to live free, away from us too. All that's left in between, and where they're herding us, is a kind of bardo between banality and mediocrity.

You can have my eyes and kidneys and other other parts the medical industry can recycle, just give me the right to carry card which say, "If I my body is damaged worse than my bike (or worth more than my bike) ... pull the plug on me and let me go".

"I've had a great life, I am not complaining, just let me die".


However, brain damage is pretty disabling too. You can fit in your body and yet with the brains of a cabbage. Who knows what that's like.

One of the first adult books I read was "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun" by Dalton Trumbo. It could just as well be written about a biker.

I'd still recommend it as a read.

And don't think going to hospital is a great way to meet nurses ... unless you've met nurses these days. There's an old saying, "as soon as a patient starts to get interested in the nurses, it's a sign that it's time for him to go home". These days, it probably means something different.

 

I do actually agree with you on this. I said what I said more of a "whatever". yes a helmet might help me out a bit. but it also might do nothing. I might wind up a vegitable because of no helmet. At the same time I dont want my neck snapped and my head OK because the helmet saved me from being cheese graited while the rest of my body doesnt work. No one can predict what kind of accident they will be in.

 

And Lots of dead motorcyclists that wore full face masks would be alive if they didn't ride.