“A Few More Words on Motorcycle Helmets”
    by the Rev. Dennis McCarty
	I take for granted that if I speak my mind, I’m going to catch some grief for it now and then. Even so, the response to my recent column on motorcycle helmets was a personal high. Some folks hated it. 
	But recent newspaper headlines show how accurate that column was. We’ve had helmetless motorcycle riders killed locally. Pro football quarterback Ben Roethlisberger has changed his tune after (luckily) surviving his helmetless accident. And the Associated Press reports motorcycle fatalities have risen tenfold in Florida since they repealed their helmet law. 
	Indiana is making a huge mistake in not mandating motorcycle helmets. It’s not just about the cyclists, it’s about everyone who suffers when a helmetless rider goes down. 
	For my stand, I was accused of disliking all motorcycle riders. That was news to me. I don’t dislike my father, who wrode an Indian Scout “back in the day.” I don’t dislike my co-favorite cousin, who rides a Harley to this day. Nor do I dislike college professors, technicians, and administrators I’ve known over the years who ride. I do think they’re foolish when they don’t wear helmets.
	In my last column, I described being an Emergency Room chaplain the night paramedics brought in a biker.
He was riding without a helmet when an SUV turned in front of him. In short, the skull fractures from his un-helmeted head hitting the truck’s steel door, wound up taking his life. Not pleasant to witness.
	I mentioned the emergency room nurse who referred to motor-cycles as “donor-cycles.” (Not the first time I’d heard that term in the ER.) Letter-writers let me know they didn’t consider that kind of “gallows humor”
amusing.
	For the record, neither do I. Nor did the nurse. She wasn’t amused, she was disgusted. She told me she would rather have been working on the 10-year-old with the broken leg or the 70-year-old with chest pains, instead of racing to stabilize this biker who, she knew, had practically no chance of survival.
	But to refuse to treat the biker--to willfully reduce his chance of survival from one in a thousand, down to zero--would have left the hospital wide open to a major lawsuit. The ER staff had no legal choice but to treat him. If wearing a helmet is about freedom of choice--where was their freedom of choice?
	A helmet might have saved the biker’s life, or it might not. But he would at least have had a fighting chance. That sort of thing annoyed this nurse, and she didn’t mind saying it.
	Motorcycles are dangerous. They don’t give you the kind of protection that even a small car does. That’s not me being unfair, that’s just a fact of life (and
death.) It’s just dumb not to get the odds as much as possible in your favor.
	I’m not in a position to be judgmental about the thrill-seeking aspect of motorcycle riding. Years ago, I used to race stock cars, circle-burners in the super stock division. They’re dangerous, too.
	But you know what? I wore a helmet. And a fire suit.
And a safety harness. My car had a roll cage. And a fuel cell, to prevent gasoline fires. You know why?
Because I realize I’m not perfect. I wanted to be able to walk away from my mistakes. And I wanted to be able to walk away when others made mistakes, too.
	What’s more, my racing association would have thrown me off the track if I hadn’t used that safety equipment. And they’d have been right. They had insurance and legal liability to think about.
 	Helmet critics talk a lot about their “freedom of choice.” What about the Emergency Room nurse, who would rather have been treating someone she could save? Where was her freedom of choice? What about that biker’s nine-year-old daughter, who had begged him to wear a helmet? Where was her freedom of choice? What about his wife, a stay-at-home mom who got left with three kids and no way to support them? What about her freedom of choice?
	The thing that really strikes me about that column and the response it got, is that the only one to write one word of sympathy for the biker himself or for his family--was me. In all the letters I got complaining about how unfair my column was, not one writer breathed one word of sympathy for the dead biker, for his wife, or for his kids.
	There is such a thing as freedom of choice, and it’s important. There’s also such a thing as selfishness, and it’s--well, just selfish. Indiana needs a helmet law.

The Reverend Dennis McCarty is a Unitarian Universalist minister in Columbus. His opinions are his own, and not necessarily shared by members of his church. He can be reached by e-mail at columnists@therepublic.com