My father grew up working in the Wolf family meat market. That business is long gone, but some of the institutional knowledge was passed down through the generations, and I even spent time in the meatpacking industry myself. Sure, doctors know something about the fragility of the human body, but so do butchers: once you get the skin off, animals don’t look so different from you and me. It takes a lot less force than you might think to break down the basic biological materials all vertebrates are composed of. Which is why you need to protect the three-pound blob of fats and proteins inside your melon that contains everything that makes you you.
For the first time in a decade of riding motorcycles, I had a close call the other night. I was on my way to a children’s soccer match — one still set to commence at that point, which I imprudently took as a proxy for relatively calm weather — when I encountered an unexpected downpour. The road slipped out from under me on a soft left curve a few blocks from home. My bike gained traction again pretty quickly. Unfortunately, when it did, it was sideways and still moving forward. Six hundred pounds of Honda Shadow and another 180 pounds of lawyer smacked the pavement pretty hard.
Obviously, I am more or less OK. The doctor gave me a couple hydrocodone tablets to ease my recovery. But there is only one reason I’m not unconscious in a hospital bed somewhere (or dead), with my ATL editors wondering why my column was (even more) late: I was wearing a helmet.
My head actually BOUNCED off the pavement. It is weird to be conscious for that, because it didn’t even really hurt. The helmet did what it was supposed to do. It absorbed the shock. I saw the whole world from the level of the asphalt before my head was catapulted back up like it was spring-loaded. My bell felt a little rung afterward, but instead of lying there bleeding like I surely would have been had I been helmetless, I dusted myself off, picked up the bike, and pushed it over to the side of the road to collect my thoughts.
I live in a state that does not have a universal helmet law. In fact, only 18 states have universal helmet laws, and the trend, sadly, over the past 20 years is to repeal helmet laws rather than strengthen them. It is an inexcusably bad decision not to wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle, but it shouldn’t be a personal decision at all. Helmetless riders cost all the rest of us billions every year.
There are lots of statistics about the economic impacts of motorcycle safety. The U.S. department of transportation periodically reports on the economic costs saved each year by the use of motorcycle helmets — these costs are for things like medical expenses, lost productivity, legal and court costs, insurance administration costs, congestion costs, and property damage. For 2017, use of motorcycle helmets saved $3.7 billion in economic costs — and that’s exclusive of comprehensive costs, which assign an additional value for lost quality of life. One recent study found that national mandatory motorcycle helmet laws could save an additional $2.2 billion annually.
The argument from nonhelmeted riders goes something like, “My body, my choice, if I assume the risk, I will bear the cost.” Which is not true. All kinds of costs of a motorcycle crash are not borne by the rider. You sure don’t bear the costs of the traffic jam you caused while they hose your remains off the sidewalk. A meta-analysis of 12 scientific papers also found that nonhelmeted patients are more likely to use publicly funded medical insurance.
And then there’s the perennial pastime of motorcycle enthusiasts: pointing out mistakes made by other riders that they, of course, would never be foolish enough to make. You are human. Your decisions are made in a fragile three-pound blob of fat and protein. Do anything long enough, and you will make a mistake.
I’ve made many mistakes. But wearing a helmet the other night was certainly not one of them. Helmets are inexpensive. Helmets are effective. Protect your dome out there.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.