Continuance,THE BIKER LOBBY ROARS INTO ACTION

THE BIKER LOBBY ROARS INTO ACTION
Motorcyclists had long been organized—whether they belonged to informal clubs, racing associations under the aegis of the American Motorcycle Association, or "outlaw" biker gangs, such as the Hells Angels—and the passage of motorcycle helmet laws galvanized the groups to become political. During the 1970s, the American Motorcycle Association, which was founded in 1924 as a hobbyist group, organized a lobbying arm to " . . . coordinate national legal activity against unconstitutional and discriminatory laws against motorcyclists, to serve as a sentinel on federal and state legislation affecting motorcyclists, and to be instrumental as a lobbying force for motorcyclists and motorcycling interests."26 Additionally, those who identified with the biker culture, including members of outlaw motorcycle gangs and thousands of other men who rode choppers (modified motorcycles with high handlebars and custom detailing), became involved in state-level and national-level groups that advocated the repeal of helmet laws and other limitations to riding motorcycles.27 In its October 1971 issue, Easyriders, a glossy magazine for chopper riders, underscored the need for a national effort.
You, as an individual, can stand on your roof-top shouting to the world about how unjust, how stupid, and how unconstitutional some of the recently passed, or pending, bike laws are—but all you will accomplish is to get yourself arrested for disturbing the peace. Individual bike clubs can go before city councils, state legislatures, and congressional committees, but as single clubs, and unprofessional at the game of politics, their efforts are usually futile. . . We need a national organization of bikers. An organization united together in a common endeavor, and in sufficient numbers to be heard in Washington, DC, in the state legislatures, and even down to the city councils.28
The article went on to ask for $3 donations to the National Custom Cycle Association, a nonprofit organization established by the magazine. By the following February, the organization had members in 44 states and had changed its name to A Brotherhood Against Totalitarian Enactments (ABATE).29
Other state-level groups, which called themselves motorcyclists' rights organizations, also began to form around the country. The Modified Motorcycle Association, a group of chopper riders founded in 1973 that eschewed the outlaw behavior of Hells Angels, engaged in both antihelmet law political activity and local campaigns against police harassment of bikers.30
In 1975, these groups began to turn the tide against proponents of mandatory helmet laws. Motorcyclists, who had only thus far been successful in the appellate courts of 2 states and in stopping helmet bills in California, had evolved into an organized and powerful national lobby. In June and again in September 1975, hundreds of bikers descended on Washington, DC, where they rode their choppers around the US Capitol to protest mandatory helmet laws. In the post-Water-gate environment, motorcyclists found a newly receptive ear in Congress.31 Representatives of ABATE, the American Motorcycle Association, the Modified Motorcycle Association, and other motorcyclists' rights organizations were invited to hearings held in July 1975 by the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation to discuss revisions to the National Highway Safety Act.
Recognizing that proponents of motorcycle helmet laws, in the tradition of public health, had used statistical evidence of injury and death to make their case, the first motorcyclist to speak at these hearings, Bruce Davey of the Virginia chapter of ABATE, opened with a frontal attack on such data. He charged that NHTSA had manipulated evidence about the effectiveness of motorcycle helmets. Furthermore, he asserted that helmets actually increased the likelihood of neck injuries.32 Davey then advanced a series of constitutional claims that were rooted in an antipaternalistic ethic, which enshrined a concept of personal liberty, and that bore striking similarity to those that had failed in the judicial arena. In an argument more reflective of cultural attitudes than legal precision, he stated,
The Ninth Amendment [to the US Constitution] says no law shall be enacted that regulates the individual's freedom to choose his personal actions and mode of dress so long as it does not in any way affect the life, liberty, and happiness of others. We are being forced to wear a particular type of apparel because we choose to ride motorcycles.33
Not surprisingly, the issue of choice emerged as the central theme in the arguments of those opposed to helmet laws, similar to the arguments of women's reproductive rights advocates. Just as proponents of legalized abortion had argued that they were not pro-abortion but were in favor of a woman's right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy, ABATE chapter literature stated "ABATE does not advocate that you ride without a helmet when the law is repealed, only that you have the right to decide."34
At the end of the hearings, Representatives James Howard (D-NJ) and Bud Schuster (R- PA) said they would support revisions to the National Highway Safety Act that removed the tie between federal funding and state helmet laws. A bill that included these revisions had already been introduced in the House by Stewart McKinney (R-CT), an avid motorcyclist, who remarked,
My personal philosophy concerning helmets can be summed up in three words. It's my head. Personally, I would not get on a 55-mile-per-hour highway without my helmet. But the fact of the matter is that if I did, I wouldn't be jeopardizing anyone but myself, and I feel that being required to wear a helmet is an infringement on my personal liberties.35
The prospect of ending a threat to withdraw highway funds attracted the notice of liberal Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA), who signed on as a cosponsor of a Senate bill introduced by archconservative Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC) and James Abourezk (R-SD). On December 13, 1975, the Senate voted 52 to 37 to approve a bill that revised the National Highway Safety Act. The House passed a similar measure. The revisions were incorporated into a massive $17.5 billion bill for increasing highway funds to the states, and the bill was signed by President Gerald Ford on May 5, 1976.36

HELMETLESS RIDERS: AN UNPLANNED PUBLIC HEALTH EXPERIMENT
During the next 4 years, 28 states repealed their mandatory helmet laws. The consequences of these repeals were most succinctly expressed in the September 7, 1978, Chicago Tribune headline "Laws Eased, Cycle Deaths Soar."37 Overall, deaths from motorcycle accidents increased 20%, from 3312 in 1976 to 4062 in 1977.38 In 1978, NHTSA administrator Joan Claybrook wrote to the governors of states that had repealed their laws and urged them to reinstate the enactments. She cited studies that showed motorcycle fatalities were 3 to 9 times as high among helmetless riders compared with helmeted riders and that head injury rates had increased steeply in states where helmet laws had been repealed.39 "Now that some states have repealed such legislation we have control and experimental groups which when compared show that one of the rights enhanced by repeal is the right to die in motorcycle deaths," opined an editorialist in the June 1979 issue of the North Carolina Medical Journal.40
For those concerned about public health, the unfolding events were viewed with alarm. In the June 1980 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, Susan Baker, an epidemiologist and director of the Johns Hopkins Injury Prevention Center, compared the situation to one where "scientists, having found a successful treatment for a disease, were impelled to further prove its efficacy by stopping the treatment and allowing the disease to recur."40 Invoking the 1905 US Supreme Court decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that upheld compulsory immunization statutes, Baker asserted that the state had the authority to limit individual liberty to protect the public's health and the rights of others. In a reprise of arguments made a decade earlier when helmet laws were under constitutional attack, Baker emphasized the social burden created by motorcycle accidents and fatalities.41
In 1981, the American Journal of Public Health published a counterpoint to Baker's editorial, which was unusual in that it came from a public health official. Richard Perkins of New Mexico's Health and Environment Department attacked the argument that the motorcyclist was reducing the freedom of others by not wearing a helmet as "so ridiculous as to be ammunition for the anti-helmet law forces."42 Noting that there were no helmet laws for rodeo contestants and rock climbers, he argued that laws should consider not only safety but also "such intangible consequences as potential loss of opportunity for individual fulfillment and loss of social vitality."42
Baker and Stephen Teret offered a rebuttal to Perkins and stated that his argument "implies that if policy is not applied at the outer limits of a continuum of circumstances, it would be unreasonable to apply that policy at any point along the continuum."43 They defended their reliance on Jacobson v. Massachusetts by pointing out that the decision has been used as a precedent for decisions that cover "manifold" restraints on liberty for the common good beyond the scope of contagious disease.43
During the next decade, evidence of the human and social costs of repeal continued to mount. Medical costs among helmetless riders increased 200% compared with helmeted riders, and in some states, helmetless riders were more likely to be uninsured.44 The April 1987 issue of Texas Medicine published an editorial entitled "How many deaths will it take?"45 The editorial exemplified the growing frustration among physicians, epidemiologists, and public health officials with legislatures that failed to act on evidence that showed helmet law repeals increased fatalities and serious injuries. "I invite our legislators and those opposed to helmet laws to spend a few nights in our busy emergency rooms,"45 wrote the author, who was the chief of neurosurgery at Ben Taub General Hospital in Houston. "Let them talk to a few devastated mothers and fathers of sons with severe head injuries—many of whom will needlessly die or remain severely disabled."45 Posing a challenge to the antipaternalism that had inspired the repeal of laws, he contended, "[a] civilized society makes laws not only to protect a person from his fellowman, but also sometimes from himself as well."45
Other studies adopted a more narrowly economic perspective on the impact of helmet law repeals. In a 1983 article, researchers sponsored by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety used mathematical models to estimate the number of excess deaths—those that would not have occurred had the motorcyclist been wearing a helmet—in the 28 states that had repealed their helmet laws by 1980. They then conducted an economic analysis of the costs to society as a result of these deaths. This cost calculation incorporated direct costs (emergency services, hospital and medical expenses, legal and funeral expenses, and insurance and government administrative costs) and indirect costs (the value of the lost earnings and services due to the death of the person). The researchers found that the costs totaled at least $176.6 million.46
In Europe, meanwhile, where helmet laws were being enacted for the first time, studies were showing an opposite effect. In Italy, where a compulsory motorcycle helmet law went into effect in 1986, a group of researchers compared the accidents in 1 district (Cagliari) during the 5 months before and the 5 months after the law's enactment. They found a 30% reduction in motorcycle accidents and an overall reduction in head injuries and deaths.47