I also like what biker joe said (and I say frequently myself) that a downside of helmet laws is that without the brain-bucket you're more likely to be a fatality and not have the taxpayers handling your health care.
I didn't know Texas had the thing of stickering your bike for helmetless riding if you got extra insurance. I like that idea. I've also long preached about the need for tiered licensing. Prove you can handle what that 600cc crotch rocket or 800 lb luxotourer can and wants to do before you're allowed to ride it. And though I have a CDL and know what I'm doing behind the wheel of a motorhome, it floors me that if you can pass a driving test in a Civic, you can drive a Subaru STi, a ZR1 Corvette, or a 40-foot motorhome. And I hate paying the consequences of that. If I'm driving my pickup hauling my 48-foot enclosed car hauler, truckers give me the courtesy of letting me know when I pull back in front of them after a pass. I RARELY get that courtesy in the motorhome because they're so used to motorhome drivers barely being qualified to drive the car they're pulling behind it. I believe mine weighs in at something like 36k lbs. 18 tons and you don't have to have any kind of training or special endorsement on your license to drive it, but I need it for my dump truck, which weighs about the same when full of rock and is much shorter.
I absolutely despise helmet laws. But I don't despise helmets. Even when I'm riding in Kansas, where they're not required, I usually wear one. I consider it as important as a seat belt in a car. But sometimes if I feel it's safe to do so, I'll ditch the helmet, which definitely does make the ride more enjoyable. Especially through a particular park I enjoy out there with its low speeds and winding roads.
It should be my choice, and that's the problem I have with helmet laws. That they're LAWS. Same problem I have with marijuana being illegal but alcohol is legal. I think they both should be legal, but also think a DUI should be treated more like attempted manslaughter. Well, DUI involving alcohol; not weed. You're just not as big a danger to fellow drivers when you're going 20 mph to not draw attention to yourself.
Too many laws that tell us what we must do to protect us from ourselves; making crimes out of actions that have no victims. Protect me from others; not myself.
I choose to wear a helmet most of the time, even when I don't have to. And it should be my choice, not mandated. The way I put it is "I hate helmet laws but I love helmets."
One guy commented about if a helmet impedes any of your senses or your ability to completely take in your surroundings (which is important for situational awareness), you need to get rid of the crap helmet and buy a good one. Ummm, beg pardon? I wear a very expensive Shoei and it impedes my vision, decreases my situational awareness, and definitely muffles my hearing. A minor downside of the last item there is that when I had the BMW K-bike, if I had the stereo turned up to where I could hear it through the helmet, I was shocked to find out how loud it was when I took off the helmet.
And I really hated the one guy's comment about if you don't know what a "head check" is. I've been riding 35 years and hadn't heard that phrase in the motorcycling context before and though it likely describes something I already do, I couldn't say with any level of confidence what the phrase means.
Does it mean to check to see where your own head is at before throwing a leg over the bike? Or looking not at the car but the driver's head to see if he likely sees you?
And let me rant a bit about statistics. I wonder what percentage of CAR fatalities involve no professional training? Wouldn't it be something very close to 100% in this country, since there isn't as much training available? At my school, you had to take Driver's Ed, but I didn't learn anything in it I hadn't already learned in trucks on farms, so I don't count it as training. And my daughter didn't have to take Driver's Ed at all. I don't think it's even offered out here. She just had to have a parent as a passenger for such and such length of time and so many miles. Fortunately for her, her old man's a performance driving instructor, so she didn't just have a passenger making sure she unwound the wheel after turns and stayed in her own lane. She learned threshhold braking, late apexes, and had a lot of focus on situational awareness. "What all possibilities do you currently see for someone to screw up and what would you do about each of them if they happened?", expecting an explanation while she's driving. That kind of thing.
Anyway, helmet laws suck. And legalize pot! Though I can't imagine myself (well, okay, maybe a little) smoking a blunt while cruising helmetless down the boulevard, I believe strongly that I have the right to do so, but not permission from my government because most of the time they're a bunch of nannies who pass off their own self-interest as mine.
