Motorcycle Helmets Make Baby Jesus Cry

I took a very informative advanced motorcycling skills class on Saturday. Good stuff. But during the introductory talk, the instructor told us about ABATE of Colorado, the group who put on the class. Most of it sounded good; protecting the rights of motorcycle riders to health insurance, things like that. Sounded like the kind of group I could contribute to. Then he mentioned that they managed to submarine a law in Colorado which was seeking to mandate that motorcycle riders under the age of 18 wear a helmet. If he had me at 'health insurance', he lost me at 'undermining helmet laws.'

At heart, I certainly have a bit of a libertarian streak, and I don't like governmental overregulation. But actively working to allow people to do stupid things which have bad consequences for the rest of the population, well, that's just bad policy.

The problem here is that, by not wearing your helmet or your seat belt, you are increasing your risk for injury. When you are injured, your health insurance, or your car insurance, pays for the hospital bills. That money doesn't magically appear; it is collected from you, and everyone else who carries insurance with this company, in the form of insurance premiums. So, when you collect massive medical bills as a result of not wearing a seat belt, everyone pays the costs for your poor decision-making.

My proposal is this: allow people to not wear helmets when they ride a motorcycle. Allow them not to wear a seat belt when they're driving a car. But if they are injured in a crash in any way which could have been prevented or ameliorated by the safety equipment they chose to forgo, then their health insurance is not required to pay for it. If you go entirely bankrupt paying for your medical bills, at that point the insurance company, maybe with some governmental assistance, will step in and foot the bill, but not until that point.

It's a solution conservatives should love; more freedom, more responsibility, less governmental oversight. And it's something liberals should love, since they don't own motorcycles, and always wear seat belts in their Priuses.