Helmet Laws, Part Two

Last week we asked you for your take on helmet laws, an issue that has been popping up in the news lately. Some lawmakers think we need them and others think that the media/right-wing/left-wing/chicken-wing are waging war (why is everything a “War on fill-in-the-blank” these days?) against motorcyclists. And while there was a clear winner, “None. Let Darwinism sort it out: if I go down and don’t have money/health insurance let me rot where I went down” it wasn’t the runaway victory that we had expected.

The Darwinism response garnered 38 percent of the vote, but in second with a still-substantial 28 percent was a universal helmet law response. Wait, what? That’s right, over a quarter of respondents were in favor of mandatory, nationwide helmet laws. Personally, I maintain that it’s your life to do with what you will. If you wreck and can’t pay for life-support or crutches, you shouldn’t receive either, but that’s just this guy’s opinion. Perhaps the real takeaway from this exercise is that we should all realize that it is a divisive issue and understand that this is the real problem with the argument, no matter what laws are or aren’t enacted, a significant portion of the population will be upset. More telling is that this informal poll was limited to HDForums, where some of the most hardcore riders can be found. How do you think the general, non-riding public would react?