I don't need no stinking helmet!

[Patrick]

[quote="dr_bar"]I would have said, "Sure, go without a helmet. But in order to safegaurd our healthcare system, you forfit any government paid benefits for any injuries resulting from a M/C crash."

[quote]

I had one reply going but I decided to pause and look where your from and when I saw your from Canada I guess I might see your point but otherwise I would have given you a long disertation that basically said "bunk".

Pj

[dr_bar]

It's not a belief that is necessarilyrequired, but the fact that it would satisfy those that do believe in the extra burden...

It would be the appearance of making everybody happy...

[sv-wolf]

When the propaganda machine has got everyone demanding that the government should ban everybody else's freedoms because it individually costs them money (a debatable point), then the system has won, hands down, hasn't it?

An alternative might be to accept that most of us like to engage in risky activities of one sort or another at some point in our lives; either that or we enjoy watching others who do (Moto GP riders, snowboarders). Even choosing to ride a bicycle on British roads significantly increases risk to life and limb.

It often seems we'd rather try to box each other into perfectly safe, shut-down conformity rather than accept our collective freedom to take an individual risk. There's a cost to this but it's a cost that is best borne collectively (dirty word! ). Depends what you want out of life really. Depends on whether you are a yea sayer or a nay sayer.

Am I misreading this, but isn't it the case that those who congratulate themselves the loudest for being individualists, often seem to spend their time coming out with the most conformist and repressive pap! It's the opposite of rock bands. Those that live the most self-consciously wild celeb lives tend to write and perform the most anodyne or trashy music.

[flynrider]

I would have said, "Sure, go without a helmet. But in order to safegaurd our healthcare system, you forfit any government paid benefits for any injuries resulting from a M/C crash."

Do you really think you need to "safeguard" the healthcare system from such a tiny number of riders? Are you willing to apply that logic to people that are actually a burden on the healthcare system? Say, people who sit in front of the TV eating pork rinds? Those types of risky behavior are statistically significant to healthcare cost.

Your argument could be more easily be used to ban motorcycling altogether. It's more dangerous than driving a cage, and those injured have more of a total impact on the healthcare system than a few Sikhs.

As I said above, this issue is a red herring.

[dr_bar]

I would have said, "Sure, go without a helmet. But in order to safegaurd our healthcare system, you forfit any government paid benefits for any injuries resulting from a M/C crash."

Do you really think you need to "safeguard" the healthcare system from such a tiny number of riders? Are you willing to apply that logic to people that are actually a burden on the healthcare system? Say, people who sit in front of the TV eating pork rinds? Those types of risky behavior are statistically significant to healthcare cost.

Your argument could be more easily be used to ban motorcycling altogether. It's more dangerous than driving a cage, and those injured have more of a total impact on the healthcare system than a few Sikhs.

As I said above, this issue is a red herring.

Yes it's a red herring...


Read the following post...

[ceemes]

I would have said, "Sure, go without a helmet. But in order to safegaurd our healthcare system, you forfit any government paid benefits for any injuries resulting from a M/C crash."

Now the biker gets what he wants, and the public outcry about healthcare costs are all set to rest. A far as I'm concerned all bikers can take that risk, and see how their families feel when it's time to pony up the med bills because they didn't want to wear a helmet...

You should visit the GF Strong Centre, they have more then a few rehab cases there where riders wearing full helmets suffered sever brain injuries in crash. Hated going there when I was a courier, never failed to have some poor busted up bugger come rolling up in a wheel chair saying "Nice bike, I used to ride........." Thing is, if you ride, you are taking one hell of a risk even when you are fully geared up. How much do you figure I cost the health care system and ICBC in the four years it took me to heal up? Well over half a mill by my rough figures.

[shane-o]

When the propaganda machine has got everyone demanding that the government should ban everybody else's freedoms because it individually costs them money (a debatable point), then the system has won, hands down, hasn't it?

An alternative might be to accept that most of us like to engage in risky activities of one sort or another at some point in our lives; either that or we enjoy watching others who do (Moto GP riders, snowboarders). Even choosing to ride a bicycle on British roads significantly increases risk to life and limb.

It often seems we'd rather try to box each other into perfectly safe, shut-down conformity rather than accept our collective freedom to take an individual risk. There's a cost to this but it's a cost that is best borne collectively (dirty word! ). Depends what you want out of life really. Depends on whether you are a yea sayer or a nay sayer.

Am I misreading this, but isn't it the case that those who congratulate themselves the loudest for being individualists, often seem to spend their time coming out with the most conformist and repressive pap! It's the opposite of rock bands. Those that live the most self-consciously wild celeb lives tend to write and perform the most anodyne or trashy music.

Its easy, dont create a rule in the first place if your not prepared to apply it across the whole of your population or community.

No one here (AUS) goes on about not being able to ride without a helmet, and I can 100% promise you, absolutely no one would be granted special consideration to ride without one either.

Problem a lot of you seem to have is, as soon as a regulation or a legislation is implemented, no matter whether it has your best interests at heart or not, you want to buck against it cause it impinges on your delicate senses in regards to you being able to do what ever you want when you want (im using "you" as all of us). I have no doubt that most people here could be reasonable and conduct themselves socially acceptably with out regulation, but im afraid that cant be said for everyone.

Its a fanatsy world to think that everyone can pick and choose what laws apply to them, and that we dont need regulation to survive in a community or society, I can assure you, anarchy, in practice does not WORK as a whole !!!!!

Front number plates on a bike, now thats a diff' story

[sv-wolf]

[Serious political rant warning - again]

Hi shane-o

Its easy, dont create a rule in the first place if your not prepared to apply it across the whole of your population or community.

Simple question here. Why not?

as soon as a regulation or a legislation is implemented, no matter whether it has your best interests at heart or not...

The idea that governments 'implement' laws in the best interests of the population is absurd. Everything government does is directed to one and one only end: maintining healthy, i.e. profitable, capital enterprises in the interests of those who own them. And in pursuit of that, they subject everything to one and one only test: the cost-benefit analysis. That's as true of motorcycle helmet legislation as it is of setting interest rates.

It costs governments (and the firms/corporations that fund them through the tax system) a load of money to scoop biker's brains up off the highway, and if the biker is not dead, it costs them money to get him back to health - for the purpose of getting him back to work.

But more especially, (and this is rarely considered because people don't like to face up to the fact they are just 'resources' - i.e. so many cattle or 'productive units' - in the eyes of the state) letting people die before their working life is over represents a significant loss of an investment. that's because it costs governments money to educate people to a level where they can be usefully exploited. It costs them money to maintain their health and productive capacity throughout their working lives. Governments tend to favour helmet laws and other restrictive health and safety legislation in the interests of corporations, not of bikers or the working public in general.

Helmet laws are not introduced because governments have bleeding hearts.

Its a fanatsy world to think that everyone can pick and choose what laws apply to them, and that we dont need regulation to survive in a community or society, I can assure you, anarchy, in practice does not WORK as a whole !!!!!

LOL! I doubt if we mean the same thing by anarchy, but in the terms I understand I would tend to agree. Our own society is based on an anarchic economic system. Look around. Does it work? Regular recessions, waste on a collossal scale, vast economic wars, endless famines in the midst of plenty, people dying on the streets of New York or Cape Town in the midst of enormous wealth. I don't think so.

However, in the sense you mean it, how would we know? What's the evidence for that? That's a pretty uncertain thing to assert so confidently.

Front number plates on a bike, now thats a diff' story

I wouldn't dream of bleating on about reforming the helmet laws or any other laws come to that. I might get cynical perhaps. (I'm a government officer! I know how the system operates.) I'm all for wearing a lid, as I have said before. My rant is not about that. It's about the assumption the state has our best interests at heart. The language of rights and responsibilities is only meaningful when it is not dancing on the surface of a power structure that has its own remorseless and cynical agendas.

The world is full of people who tub-thump about their 'freedoms' and yet, given half a chance will yak on with a load of repressive claptrap. 'Individualism' is the ultimate bovine conformity. (Nothing personal there mate. Just a lonely voice baying at the moon!)



OK Rant over for the week!

[shane-o]

[Serious political rant warning - again]

Hi shane-o

Its easy, dont create a rule in the first place if your not prepared to apply it across the whole of your population or community.

Simple question here. Why not?

as soon as a regulation or a legislation is implemented, no matter whether it has your best interests at heart or not...

The idea that governments 'implement' laws in the best interests of the population is absurd. Everything government does is directed to one and one only end: maintining healthy, i.e. profitable, capital enterprises in the interests of those who own them. And in pursuit of that, they subject everything to one and one only test: the cost-benefit analysis. That's as true of motorcycle helmet legislation as it is of setting interest rates.

It costs governments (and the firms/corporations that fund them through the tax system) a load of money to scoop biker's brains up off the highway, and if the biker is not dead, it costs them money to get him back to health - for the purpose of getting him back to work.

But more especially, (and this is rarely considered because people don't like to face up to the fact they are just 'resources' - i.e. so many cattle or 'productive units' - in the eyes of the state) letting people die before their working life is over represents a significant loss of an investment. that's because it costs governments money to educate people to a level where they can be usefully exploited. It costs them money to maintain their health and productive capacity throughout their working lives. Governments tend to favour helmet laws and other restrictive health and safety legislation in the interests of corporations, not of bikers or the working public in general.

Helmet laws are not introduced because governments have bleeding hearts.

Its a fanatsy world to think that everyone can pick and choose what laws apply to them, and that we dont need regulation to survive in a community or society, I can assure you, anarchy, in practice does not WORK as a whole !!!!!

LOL! I doubt if we mean the same thing by anarchy, but in the terms I understand I would tend to agree. Our own society is based on an anarchic economic system. Look around. Does it work? Regular recessions, waste on a collossal scale, vast economic wars, endless famines in the midst of plenty, people dying on the streets of New York or Cape Town in the midst of enormous wealth. I don't think so.

However, in the sense you mean it, how would we know? What's the evidence for that? That's a pretty uncertain thing to assert so confidently.

Front number plates on a bike, now thats a diff' story

I wouldn't dream of bleating on about reforming the helmet laws or any other laws come to that. I might get cynical perhaps. (I'm a government officer! I know how the system operates.) I'm all for wearing a lid, as I have said before. My rant is not about that. It's about the assumption the state has our best interests at heart. The language of rights and responsibilities is only meaningful when it is not dancing on the surface of a power structure that has its own remorseless and cynical agendas.

The world is full of people who tub-thump about their 'freedoms' and yet, given half a chance will yak on with a load of repressive claptrap. 'Individualism' is the ultimate bovine conformity. (Nothing personal there mate. Just a lonely voice baying at the moon!)



OK Rant over for the week!

To be honest, I dont disagree with your perspective, and my 2 bobs worth wasnt a cheap shot.


I am a servant of the government as well, have been for many years, Im also a unionist both a OH&S rep and a union rep whilst a government employee (dont worry I have my fair share of power struggles going on at work), and dont think for one second that I believe that many of our legislations are for our (collective or individual) direct comfort or benefit. Nearly all control measures are finance based and if that happens to work in the benefit of the individual then this is just luck ( I see helmet laws in this category)!!!!

Being a part of an industrilaised society which most of us here are, means that yes, we are machines working within a greater machine, I mean look at the department name at your work that is responsible for employees "HUMAN RESOURCES" I mean the name its self, suggests what we are to the system. And yes, once we are old or banged up we are usless and become dependent on a system that only wants those who contribute not those who cause it to haemorrhage money.

I guess Im just looking at the helmet issue in this topic singularly and not the broader issues of how much control is to much.

From an individual point of view, the research suggests that helmets do protect us some what whilst we are engaged in a known risk taking activity. Through personal insurance costs, and the cost to reg a bike its quite expensive here and the reason is we are forced to pay ahead for our injuries, if helmet laws provide protection to my fellow riders keeping them alive with a better chance of reentering society whilst keeping my premiums lower and more affordable, then Im afraid on this issue i agree with the ruling in Canada that no one can legally ride with out a helmet.

[sv-wolf]

From an individual point of view, the research suggests that helmets do protect us some what whilst we are engaged in a known risk taking activity. Through personal insurance costs, and the cost to reg a bike its quite expensive here and the reason is we are forced to pay ahead for our injuries, if helmet laws provide protection to my fellow riders keeping them alive with a better chance of reentering society whilst keeping my premiums lower and more affordable, then Im afraid on this issue i agree with the ruling in Canada that no one can legally ride with out a helmet.

Didn't meant to imply there was anything cheap in your comment shane-o. Sorry, if you thought I did. Your comments seem perfectly reasonable to me, given your general perspective.

My quarrel is more with the premises on which arguments of this kind are based.

Although I'm also a unionist, I'm not a reformist. I think a much more radical approach to our problems is necessary. So, I have no interest in trying to influence governments, and I have no opinion on whether a piece of legislation is 'good' or 'bad'; as far as I'm concerned, it is simply part of the same ol' class agenda.

That means, I see no reason to complain about a minority group, like Sikhs, who can occasionally influence the law in small ways to get what they want. I'm certainly not going to call on the state to limit that gain on the grounds of 'uniformity' unless there is very good reason to suppose that working people as a whole are materially disadvantaged by it.

And as I believe that wage and price movements show pretty conclusively that the tax burden does not, in fact, fall upon working people but upon their employers, I am very dubious about those kinds of argument. (Many years ago the Australian government realised this. It drew a number of very shrewd conclusions and introduced some very successful and ground-breaking legislation to reduce the general level of wages. Similar measures have since been enacted by many governments around the world.)

I am equally unconvinced by arguments that helmet laws are a good thing because they protect motorcylists. This kind of reasoning assumes that government motivation is paternalistic, which (as you seem to agree) it isn't. More worringly it assumes that the power to make decisions of this kind should lie in the hands of governments who control the public power of coercion but whose larger interests are directly in conflict with the majority of the population. In other words, the democratic nature of government is an illusion. And that means there are no genuinely democratic methods left to us for agreeing on issues like. We can only express an individual view.

Whoops! I was trying not to go off down this track. Seems I got hooked in. I'll shut up now and get back to bikes.