Motorcycle Safety

OFF THE WIRE
Thank you for your email regarding Administrator Strickland’s testimony on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) fiscal year 2011 budget, before the House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies. In your email you ask about his testimony concerning motorcycle safety and motorcycle helmet use.
The agency’s motorcycle safety program is a comprehensive effort that focuses on both crash and injury prevention, specifically increasing the use of DOT-compliant motorcycle helmets, reducing the incidence of impaired riding, increasing proper licensure of riders, increasing rider participation in motorcycle training courses and improving driver awareness of motorcyclists.
The core component of our program has not changed; it is to increase helmet use. This means that NHTSA recognizes that no other single countermeasure offers a comparable body of supporting scientific evidence confirming its potential for saving the lives of motorcyclists. With finite resources and the severity of the motorcycle fatality problem, we need to focus efforts on countermeasures that are known to be most effective. As Administrator Strickland stated at the House hearing, there is a direct correlation between helmet use and motorcycle fatalities. In response to a question asked by Congressman Olver, he stated “Anything that the Congress does that would support the movement of riders into helmets would be efficacious of safety.”
Under Administrator Strickland’s leadership, NHTSA will continue a comprehensive motorcycle safety program focusing on crash and injury prevention and the core of the program will be to increase helmet use. In addition, we will support and implement any program Congress determines necessary to reach our mutual goal of preventing motorcycle fatalities.Thank you for your letter and the opportunity to explain Administrator Strickland’s congressional testimony. I look forward to working with your organization and others on evidence-based strategies to reduce motorcycle fatalities
Diane E. Wigle
Chief, Safety Countermeasures Division
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

Dear Ms. Wigle:

As a motorcyclist for many years, it truly bothers me that NHTSA does not look at the "big" picture, and uses the band-aid approach to motorcycle safety.

Most helmets aren't even tested any longer, a lot have been recalled, and those that have been tested (less than 7%) have only been tested for one point of impact (the very top of the head), and only at speeds of 13.7 to 15 MPH maximum. A rider is only traveling at those speeds when accelerating or when slowing down.

Not to mention most helmet manufacturers have left the United States shores to avoid liability claims. Oh, and is there a list of approved helmets that NHTSA's going to put out?

How, pray tell, can you legislate this piece of so-called safety equipment that hasn't been proven to be safe be legislated as mandatory wear? And where else in society is this type of thinking practiced? No where that I'm aware of!

It's a proven fact that motorcycle safety, education and awareness not only to motorcyclists but to the general public will save more lives than any band-aid "wear a helmet" approach will.

For the past eleven years, each Monday through Friday I compile a newsletter that goes out to motorcyclists all over the country, and each day I read about a Right of Way (ROW) infraction that kills the motorcyclist, even though he was wearing a helmet.

Would you be so kind as to explain what exactly is the correlation of helmets to accidents; because I fail to see how, if drivers continue to remove a rider's ROW and maim, injure and kill motorcyclists, why riders should be held accountable for other's wrong actions! This type of thinking would be shot down anywhere else in society, but yet for motorcycling, it isn't.

I just don't understand how a piece of equipment that hasn't been proven safe must be mandated to wear by riders to save them from others' actions! Doesn't it make more sense to increase education to all, to avoid accidents all together? And how can you penalize riders for not wearing a piece of safety equipment that hasn't been proven safe?

Helmets do not always save lives, education does. Unless drivers are informed that a motorcycle is a motor vehicle and has the right to share the road, and are instructed as to how to "look" for motorcycles and interact with them on US roadways, then I'm afraid your band-aid approach will prove nothing; and more riders will die!

Sincerely,

Betsy