agingrebel.com
The helmet culture war – the front in
the culture wars that requires motorcyclists to wear special plastic
hats – just entered its fiftieth year.
Forty-three years ago a Congressman
named Stewart McKinney successfully sponsored an amendment to the
National Highway Safety Act of 1966 that repealed the provision that
compelled states enact helmet laws. McKinney convinced his fellow
Congressmen by telling them, “My philosophy concerning helmets can be
summed up in three words. It’s my head.”
That was then. This is now. Now it takes a village to protect your head.
Earlier this year, an Arizona State
Representative named Randall Friese – he’s a Democrat from Tucson –
introduced HB 2052 which would amend Arizona’s current helmet law, which
requires persons “under eighteen years of age” to wear a helmet.
Friese’s revision would read: “An operator or passenger of a motorcycle,
all-terrain vehicle or motor driven cycle shall wear at all times a
protective helmet on the operator’s or passenger’s head in an
appropriate manner. The protective helmet shall be safely secured while
the operator or passenger is operating or riding on the motorcycle,
all-terrain vehicle or motor driven cycle.”
New Fee
Arizona motorcycle enthusiasts can avoid
wearing a helmet while they ride if they pay an as yet undetermined fee
when they register their bikes. If the law passes the amount of that
fee will be determined by the Director of the Arizona Department of
Transportation. Those fees will be deposited in the Arizona Highway User
Revenue Fund.
Under the proposed law, a policeman
can’t stop a motorcyclist simply because he is not wearing a helmet. He
has to find another reason to stop a motorcyclist. But if he does stop a
motorcyclist pursuant to, say a courtesy motorcycle safety inspection,
or for an unsafe lane change, or because he observes the biker’s front
tire touching a white stop line he can cite any motorcyclist who hasn’t
paid the proposed fee to ride helmet free down to the nearest
convenience store.
Privilege
Friese, a “trauma surgeon,” proposes “a
civil penalty of five hundred dollars” for not paying the requisite fee
before getting stopped by the police without a helmet. And, “two hundred
dollars of each civil penalty collected shall be deposited…in the
Arizona Highway User Revenue Fund and three hundred dollars of each
civil penalty collected shall be deposited” in a “spinal and head
injuries trust fund.”
The law hasn’t attracted much public scrutiny so far. Last month Friese told Cronkite News,
“I believe, and I listen to the motorcycle riders saying ‘we want to
choose,’ I don’t believe it is a right to not wear your helmet. I
believe it is a privilege, just as driving is a privilege.”
Since Arizona seems to be among the most
libertarian of all the states, Friese’s bill wouldn’t seem to have a
much of a chance. But it is probably less likely to pass if you know
about it in advance.
