Connecticut, like many other states, is running a sporadic "click it or ticket" campaign; the cops look for motorists who have not fastened their seatbelts and the cops give them tickets.
But clowns like these two just sail right by.
You can't see the rider too well. He is wearing jeans, work boots, a t-shirt and sunglasses. His passenger, as you can see, has on a short-sleeved top, shorts, no helmet and she is wearing flip-flops. In that get-up, she was riding on the back of a motorcycle that had been doing 70mph.
Picture what would happen if he were to dump the bike at any speed. She would easily lose several tens of square inches of skin to road rash. I've been told that the healing process for that much skin abraded away is both long and painful. Unless, of course, she were to crack her head against the pavement, in which case, her problems would be over forever.
On the other hand, don't wear your seatbelt and even though you are riding inside a vehicle with six different kinds of airbags, you'll get pulled over by the troopers, given a lecture and a ticket to boot.
Does this make any kind of rational sense to anyone?
"Organic crumple zones" are very Darwinian.
ReplyDeleteNo. All I can say is if you ever break a helmet while wearing it, you won't worry about the heat or your hairdo any more. Also all the arguments about limited hearing are mostly bullshit. How much you wanna bet me that they would be the ones in the ER screaming at the staff? I don't ride any more since I had a stroke, but when I did ride it always seemed to me that motorcyclists got a worse reputation from the idiots than from the outlaws. Although the outlaws didn't help either.
ReplyDelete-Doug in Oakland
I refuse to ride helmet free, although until recently, all helmets gave me screaming headaches. My mom and dad had a back tire blow as they came down off Pike's Peak in 1970; her helmet WAS shattered to bits, but it saved her life anyway.
ReplyDeleteSo, morons like that, oh, and those doing wheelies in mid-day traffic at 55 miles per hour, yeah, they bug the everloving crap out of me.
Neither seatbelt laws nor helmet laws make any sense to me. A human should have the right to risk right alongside all other human rights. The medical costs involved to treat any resulting, however, must also belong to that person. No free lunch at the county hospital.
ReplyDeleteCome to AZ (if you dare). You'll see worse than those two - try no shirt, (short) shorts, sandals, and no sunglasses -- Road Pizza anyone? I'm sure the local ER folks have stories for those who've been peeled off the roadway.
ReplyDeleteIt makes perfect sense if one assumes that the police and the lawmakers would rather see motorcyclists die as easily as possible.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, I've racked up a lot more mileage on bikes than in cars, so maybe I'm a little cynical in that regard. But law or no law, I wear a helmet, a jacket, and high boots. The bastards aren't getting rid of my that easily.
No. Lemme tell you, I once saw a label that said "helmet will not protect against all injuries. The helmet (and head that was in it) was fine. The neck that had hit the guy wire--not so much.
ReplyDeleteI cut up dead folks for a living. I won't go NEAR a motorcycle. There's a reason we call them donor-cycles.