TENNESSEE - Citizen's Voice: Helmet law repeal will result in more injuries, deaths.......

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http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/feb/18/citizens-voice-helmet-law-repeal-will-result-in
Citizen's Voice: Helmet law repeal will result in more injuries, deaths
Dr. Blaine Enderson is medical advisor emergency and trauma services at the University of Tennessee Medical Center and professor of surgery at the UT Graduate School of Medicine. Knoxville News Sentinel Posted February 18, 2012 at 4 a.m. .DiscussPrintAAA.The Trauma Center at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville saves lives.
I have been a trauma surgeon at UT since the Trauma Center was started 25 ago. During that time, the Trauma Center has cared for over 80,000 East Tennesseans who were severely injured in car crashes, motorcycle crashes, falls, shootings and other sudden, unexpected events.
Over 95 percent of those injured survived because of the surgeons and physicians, nurses, techs, pharmacists, chaplains and other members of the trauma team who are available at UT 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We are proud of what we do to help injured patients.
Level One Trauma Centers have another job besides helping injured patients — providing education about trauma prevention.
We know that the best way to have a good outcome from trauma is to never have those injuries occur. We can fix many injuries and often can return the injured person to normal. With some injuries, however, we save the patient, but they are left with permanent disability. The most common injury that causes this is traumatic brain injury.
Once again this year, the Tennessee Legislature is considering a bill to repeal the requirement for motorcycle riders over the age of 21 to wear helmets. Once again, as trauma care professionals, we are opposed to this repeal.
The Trauma Centers in Tennessee have testified before the Legislature many times over the past several years, presenting scientific data collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that support motorcycle helmet use.
Studies in Arkansas and Texas demonstrated that when helmet laws were repealed, helmet use fell in half and motorcycle deaths rose by 20 to 30 percent. Conversely, when helmet laws were enacted in California, Maryland, Oregon and several other states, motorcycle deaths dropped by one-third and hospitalization for brain-injured motorcyclists dropped by 50 percent.
The proponents of this bill choose to ignore or discount the scientific data and talk about the proposed economic benefits of helmet repeal or personal freedom of choice.
The economic benefits cited include increases in motorcycle riders and registrations, motorcycle purchases and tourism because of the desire to ride without helmets. Economic data from Pennsylvania show that some of this is true.
The Pennsylvania data also show that the cost increases are greater than the economic benefit. This is partly due to changes in law enforcement demands, but more importantly is the increase in health care costs. New, inexperienced riders are more likely to have a crash. Without helmets, riders are more likely to have brain injuries which are expensive to treat, often require rehabilitation and long-term nursing home care, and eliminate the victim from being a tax-paying member of society.
Motorcycle riders often state that if they are killed in a crash because they are not wearing a helmet, that should be their choice. I support freedom from outside interference, as long as your personal freedom does not impact the freedom of others.
Your death impacts your family. The impact may be even worse when they learn that your brain injury was not fatal, but left you permanently disabled — unable to communicate, unable to care for or feed yourself, or unable to live at home. That impact is very hard on your family, but it is also hard on trauma care professionals like me, because we are the ones who have to tell your family that you lived — but you will never again be the person you once were.