The True Cost of Motorcycle Accidents

I guess it was about a year ago that I started writing about motorcycle helmets. Because that’s when motorcycle riders started trying to get me fired.

In my innocence, I thought it might be a good idea for those who got on a motorcycle to wear a helmet in case they fell off.

I thought it might be a good idea if their brains did not splatter all over the pavement.

Boy, was I wrong.

A motorcycle magazine was infuriated by what I wrote and urged its readers to write to my publisher and tell him what a slime I was.

In that he already knew what a slime I was, he did not fire me. He just passed the letters along, either for my edification or as my punishment.

I read them all. And motorcyclist after motorcyclist told me he had a “right” to ride a motorcycle without a helmet. I checked the Constitution to see if I could find this right, but I failed.

So I concluded that the “right” motorcyclists keep talking about is the right that every American believes he is born with: the right to be stupid.

The right to be stupid is a God-given right. And many spend a lifetime perfecting it.

Drive with a seat belt? No way. If I want to be thrown through a windshield at high speeds, soar through the air and end up as a hood ornament on an oncoming bus, I have a right.

Wear a motorcycle helmet? No way. Next thing, they’ll be telling me what kind of shoes to wear. I have a right not to wear anything I don’t want to wear.

Gary Busey, the actor who did a fine job playing Buddy Holly 10 years ago, believed in the right to be stupid. He not only believed in it, he campaigned for it.

When California was debating whether to require all motorcyclists to wear helmets, Busey campaigned against it. Training is the answer, he said, not helmets.

Busey, himself, is a well-trained, experienced motorcycle driver. At age 44, he has been riding for years. And when he picked up his 1,300-cc, 600-pound, $16,000 Harley motorcycle for his regular Sunday ride last week, he knew just what he was doing.

Until seconds later, after traveling only 90 feet, he tried to take a right turn around a bus, lost control, was thrown from the cycle and struck the curb with his head.

He was not, of course, wearing a helmet. Instead, he was invoking his right to be stupid.

He underwent 90 minutes of neurosurgery to remove blood clots from his brain. As I write this, it looks as if he will be OK.

“It appears to be straight driver error,” Culver City Police Lt. Ellis Smith told reporters. “He went up against the curb with the back of the head. That is the primary problem. If he had been wearing a helmet, it would have probably contained it better. I don’t think even the helmet would have broken.”

Which is not the point. The point is that Gary Busey has a right to scramble his brains if he wants to.

Not a legal right. That is clear. States have the right to pass laws demanding citizens wear helmets on cycles or seat belts in cars.

But is there a higher right? The Stupidity Right?

Well, yes, I think so. But only as long as the stupidity is limited solely to the person being stupid.

If all motorcyclists fell off their cycles, did no harm to anyone else, and paid their own medical bills, I think you could make the argument that they were harming nobody but themselves.

Unfortunately, that’s not the way things work out.

If you saw ABC’s “Nightline” on the night following Busey’s accident, you saw another study quoted: An article in the July issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn. demonstrated that 65% of the costs of motorcycle accidents are borne by the public.

That’s because head injuries can be terrible injuries. “We’re talking about brains being injured,” said Dr. Abraham Bergman, one of the authors of the study and an expert on trauma. “Arms heal, legs heal, bones heal, but brains don’t. They scar.”

Some motorcycle riders are very macho types and imagine themselves going out in a blaze of glory. “Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse” is a motto that pretty much sums it up. And since we all gotta go, why not go while riding your cycle?

Well, because not everybody goes. Sometimes they just linger. “Sometimes death is the kindest thing that happens to them (motorcycle accident victims), because they can persist in a vegetative state for many, many, many years,” Bergman said.

And who pays for those many, many, many years? Who pays for it when there is no medical insurance or when the medical insurance runs out?

The taxpayer. You and me. Bergman estimates that the State of Washington, where he practices, would save $2 million-$4 million per year by passing a motorcycle helmet law.

And that is where I have trouble with the right of stupidity. Because why should the public have to pay millions because some motorcyclist refuses to wear a helmet, smashes his head and turns into a cauliflower?

And that is why we need helmet laws in every state. Because the victim is not just the guy on the cycle, it is all of us.

You want to be stupid? Fine.

Just don’t ask me to be stupid too. Don’t ask me to pay for it.