Lives in the Balance (Sheet)

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
— Mark Twain (quoting Benjamin Disraeli)

CLEARLY, I PRESSED some buttons with my last essay, “The Brotherhood of Thunder.”

But as I said in that piece, the middle two-thirds of it was an homage I penned years ago in a fevered passion shortly after getting my Harley. I shared it with you not to start a turf war over whose bikes are the best or which riders are the friendliest — but as a song to the arrival of spring and to the glory of motorcycling the American way: on any mount you want and down any road you choose…

What I wanted you to take away from “The Brotherhood of Thunder” was the realization that Harley-Davidson is the last continuously manufactured domestic over-the-road consumer motor vehicle company that hasn’t merged or partnered with an overseas manufacturer. Yet it remains profitable, made in the USA, and, most importantly, iconic within its industry.

Harley-Davidson is a modern American hard-goods business success story — one of the precious few still out there. And Harleys and those who ride them (like the Winchester lever rifles and those who carried them I waxed rhapsodic about a few weeks ago) are among the last archetypal American brands, both in terms of a product and in terms of a brand of person…

Now that I’ve clarified, it’s time to move on to a larger point — one that affects all freedom-loving Americans, riders or not: the fact that your life and your rights aren’t as important to the government as a few extra dollars in precious highway money.

Brain-Damaged Analysis = Logic-Challenged Policy

“Helmets save lives and make riding safer,” do-gooders and politicians say. But do they?

Forget for a minute that motorcycle helmets can restrict peripheral vision and hearing (especially for riders using helmet radios or intercoms), decrease awareness and caution, and increase the “invincibility” factor among less experienced riders and let’s look at some numbers…

At first glance, most statistics used to support the argument that helmets save lives and/or reduce injuries — or rather, that helmet laws accomplish these things — are compelling. Most of them look like this oft-cited data from California, the state with the most road-registered motorcyclists by far in America:

Source: UC San Francisco School of Medicine

Impressive, huh? Looks like the helmet law reduced brain injuries by more than 53%.
Of course, looking at the data, one would logically presume that motorcycling fatalities would decrease by a similar ratio (that’s what the helmet weenies are counting on, but it’s not the case — more on this in a minute)…

However, these data are based on raw numbers and don’t control for the following crucial factors:

· Number of brain injuries per accident
· Number of brain injuries per hour of riding time
· Number of brain injuries per number of registered motorcycles.

Let’s put these numbers into perspective: First, a lot of motorcyclists ride far fewer miles when they are required to wear helmets. Second, the passage of helmet laws can result in drastically fewer motorcycle registrations. Both these factors translate into less likelihood of both accidents and brain injuries.

I’m not just arriving at these assertions from anecdotal evidence, but from the numbers released by pro-helmet sources. Consider:

· According to data from the National Association of State Motorcycle Safety Administrators (NASMSA), California motorcycle registrations plummeted in the four years following passage of the mandatory helmet law by approximately 20%. This fact alone should result in 20% fewer accidents and brain injuries, all other factors being equal…

· According to a 1994 UCLA study of the effects of the 1992 California helmet law mandate, in just the two years following the law’s passage, the total number of motorcycle accidents decreased by 34.98% (minus 25.46% in 1992 and minus 9.52% in 1993)! It stands to reason that brain injuries would also drop by at least this amount…

· According to a Florida study, the statistical adjustment attributed to declining registrations and mileage trends slashed the “raw numbers” fatality rate estimate associated with the effects of that state’s helmet law by more than 56%. Interestingly, this is nearly identical to the 53% reduction in brain injuries reported by the UCSF study the year following the California helmet mandate…

These data can point to only one conclusion: When helmets are mandated, bikers ride less, which equals fewer accidents. Any statistics that fail to adjust for this — like most of the raw numbers being trumpeted by the pro-helmet lobby — are bogus…

But back to the UC San Francisco School of Medicine chart for a moment: Isn’t it odd that the chart only catalogs brain injury hospitalizations, not fatalities? Could this be because the fatalities numbers paint a less-than-flattering picture of helmet usage?

Keep reading — and make sure you’ve got a helmet on, because you’re going to want to bang your head against the wall in just a second…

Helmet Laws: A Deadly Pain in the Neck?

You’ve already learned that in California, the total number of motorcycle accidents decreased by 35% in the two years (1992-1993) following the mandatory helmet law. So if helmets improved accident survivability, then the ratio of deaths to accidents should have fallen at a greater rate than this during those two years…

But it didn’t. Based on NASMSA’s records of fatalities per motorcycle registered in the Golden State, the fatality rate in the last year of voluntary helmet use (1991) was approximately 7.55 deaths per 10,000 motorcycle registrations. At the end of 1993, this ratio was approximately 5.30 per 10,000 bikes…

A difference of only 29.8%.

This means that the California mandatory helmet law made it MORE likely that a motorcycle crash would result in death to the rider — nearly 15% more likely, in fact.

California is not alone, either. In similar comparisons of public accident and fatality data across all 50 states in 1993 (the year in which mandatory helmet laws most recently peaked in the United States), the numbers look like this:

Source: Motorcycle Industry Council

As you can see, the rate of accidents per participant nationwide is 14.5% higher (222.21 vs. 194.02) in mandatory helmet states, and the rate of fatalities per accident is also higher, by nearly 3% (2.98 vs. 2.9). But wait, there’s more…

In 1997, both Texas and Arkansas repealed their universal helmet law for adult riders. Here’s what happened subsequently in those two states: In Texas, fatalities per 10,000 registrations dropped from 5.12 to 4.18, a reduction of 18.4%. In Arkansas, this rate dropped from 17.77 to 11.33 per 10,000 registered bikes — a whopping 36.2% decrease.

Why do helmets seem to cause more fatalities?

I’m not sure anyone could say for certain. Perhaps the helmet wearers aren’t as tuned in to impending accidents and have less time to attempt to evade or brace themselves for impact. Maybe the feeling of safety a helmet confers spurs recklessness among certain riders (what I call the “invincibility factor”).

More likely, in my opinion, is an increased mortality from neck trauma due to a helmet’s weight. At least one body of research (Goldstein, 1986) has shown that wearing a helmet contributes to more neck injuries in typical motorcycle crashes — likely by virtue of their inertia during an impact…

Bottom line: No matter how you frame the adjusted data on helmet laws, this much is glaringly obvious: The only way in which mandatory helmet usage reduces fatalities is by reducing rider participation. This depressive effect on ridership translates into fewer total deaths — but no reduction (and, in fact, an increase) in deaths per accident, per participant, and per hour of road time.

Saving Dimes, Wasting Dollars

A lot of helmet law advocates insist that helmet laws save tax dollars. Their angle is that because of the increase in head and brain injuries they believe the data show, uninsured (or underinsured) riders cost taxpayers more to hospitalize and treat in states that don’t mandate helmet usage than in states with “lid laws” in effect.

Let’s give that assertion its day in court.

I’ve already proven to you that in cycle-dense California, the bulk of the reduction in hospitalized brain injuries in the years following the 1992 helmet mandate can be attributed to a 35% or greater decline in ridership (and hence, the number of accidents), not fewer head traumas. Now, I’ll concede that this factor alone doesn’t explain ALL of the 53% reduction in hospitalized brain injuries post-mandate…

So how do we pin down — in dollars, not lives or injuries (you’ll see in a minute why this is all that matters to lawmakers) — how much helmet laws really save us, if anything?

Well, according to the pro-helmet National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s own numbers, the amount of money the California state medical insurance program shelled out for the treatment of underinsured motorcyclists’ head injuries was $40 million in 1991, the last year of voluntary helmet use. The year after the mandate, this number dropped to $24 million, for a “savings” of 40% ($16 million).

However, when you adjust for the 25.46% decrease in accidents in that same year, you’re left with only a 14.54% reduction in costs ($5.81 million). Still a decent savings, right?

Not so fast. This figure must be pared down yet again to reflect the near-15% increase in fatalities per motorcycle accident in California that same year. Remember, you can’t hospitalize a corpse and treat it for head and brain injuries. Being killed outright in a crash saves the state a lot of money in treatment costs…

Here’s my point in hashing all this out: By the time the difference in treatment dollars for head injuries pre- and post-mandate is adjusted per accident and controlled for increased fatalities (which save money, keep in mind), you’ve got a negligible sum, if anything.

Contrast this against the very real impact to taxpayers and the California economy that comes with the 35% reduction in motorcycling the registration figures and accident data point to in the years following the helmet mandate. That’s less fee money to the state; less profits to gas stations, motorcycle service centers, and bike dealers; fewer sales for tire, accessories, and apparel sellers — and a LOT less profit for roadside tavern and restaurant owners that cater to the cycling crowd…

Again, the bottom line: Even if it were true that voluntary-use states were spending extra tax dollars treating the head injuries of helmet-less riders, the overall impact of helmet laws on any given state’s economy and tax revenue outlook is almost certainly negative.

Now, here’s where we get to the really disturbing part of the helmet debate. It’s the part where you discover that in the eyes of your home state, you may be nothing more than a tool for milking the federal cash cow — freedom and safety be damned…

The Bribes’ Ebb and Flow

Before 40 years ago, few U.S. states had helmet laws of any type. But after the Highway Safety Act of 1966 took effect, they were almost universal. Virtually overnight, 22 states adopted them for 1967, and another 14 enacted them for 1968. By 1975, 47 of 50 states had mandatory helmet laws…

Why did this happen? Did motorcycle helmets become a hot-button political issue of the day, like women’s rights or the Vietnam conflict?

No. It happened as a result of coercion. A provision of that 1966 Highway Safety Act required states to adopt universal helmet laws or else lose a portion of their federal highway construction funds. Sure, states technically still had the right to keep these laws off the books, but what politician of either party would turn down millions of dollars worth of government pork that translates into more and smoother roads, a better climate for attracting business, and more construction jobs in his or her home district?

So all but a few of them cashed in (sold out) — and forced bikers to ride less free and, arguably, at more risk.

Enter 1975. Congress uncouples the helmet law requirement from highway funding, and in a miraculous mass reversal, a lot of states promptly became “freedom advocates” practically overnight — and began repealing their helmet laws. By 1980, just 20 states (including the District of Columbia) had universal helmet laws…

Which begs the question: If helmet laws are so noble and such a boon to states’ bottom lines, why wouldn’t they just leave these laws in effect — even without being bribed by the federal government?

Answer: Because legislation follows money, and the “dirty little secret” all state legislators know about motorcycle helmet laws is that on the balance, they have a negative economic impact.

What’s tragiccomic (but not surprising) about the ebb and flow of helmet legislation in the United States is that Congress didn’t learn its lesson the first time. With the passage of 1992’s Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), a helmet law provision was tied to highway money for a second time. This time, the penalty applied to states without BOTH helmet and seat belt laws…

Source: National Highway Transportation Safety Administration

As you can see, after ISTEA’s passage in 1992, only two additional states (California and Maryland) adopted mandatory helmet laws. One can only assume from this fact that a lot of other states had learned their lesson: that the most economic benefit lay with giving riders the freedom to choose whether to ride helmeted or not.

Predictably, Congress repealed the section of ISTEA that tied construction monies to helmet laws in 1995, effective beginning 1996. And look what happened afterward — the number of states (and the District of Columbia) with mandatory helmet laws shrank back to 20, the exact same number that had such laws after the mass repeal of the late 1970s…

Lucre Ahead of Lives — and Liberty

In a way, the history of the helmet law issue is a stark and fitting illustration of two pervasive aspects of our system of government, neither of them flattering or just.

First is the tendency of legislators to put dollars before all else, including safety and freedom. Second is the tendency of the federal government to bully or bribe states into adopting meaningless or downright harmful laws. This is how Congress gets to play “nanny” to us all without being accused of usurping states’ power…

Basically, the federal government makes it so difficult or fiscally punitive for states to maintain their own identities that they often become merely hired guns enforcing whatever misguided federal policies come down the pike.

Think this is what Jefferson and company had in mind? I don’t.

Beyond this, the helmet law issue in glaring relief shows how perilous it is to freedom when policy decisions are driven by statistics instead of principles — and when legislation is driven by the bottom line, instead of with an eye toward maintaining or increasing personal liberties…

Think about it: If the “balance sheet” mentality that has driven the changes in motorcycle helmet legislation over the last 40 years were to become the model for laws concerning all kinds of other freedoms, what would still be allowed at the end of the day?

If the data didn’t add up to a net gain to the economy, would motorcycles even be legal anymore? Would skiing? Would guns? Would drinking? Would pet ownership? It’s a very dangerous condition — from a liberty and “American way” standpoint — if a hobby, activity, pursuit, pastime, mode of transportation, or form of recreation has to pass the bean-counter test before it can continue to enjoy the blessings of the government or the courts…

And I, for one, would still be against laws that needlessly limit personal freedoms (like helmet and seat belt laws) even if it meant having to pay a little more in taxes.

Better that my tax money should go to the treatment of an American hurt doing something he loves rather than to the nitwits in Congress — who’ll only use it to foster disenfranchisement and dependency among the marginalized, the nonproductive, and the noncitizens, or to line the pockets of special interests…

Or to cook up one-sided statistics to justify taking away even more of our rights.

Always riding, never hiding (from the truth),

Jim Amrhein,
Contributing editor, Whiskey & Gunpowder
May 9, 2006