Biker Rules

As we sometimes do when waiting in line among complete strangers, I complimented a T-shirt worn by someone queued ahead of me. Bright and well-designed, the shirt commemorated a bikers’ rally somewhere. The rather elderly woman wearing it asked me: “Do you ride?” I told her I did not – that I have trouble enough staying upright when I’m merely walking. (Well, when crossing a trout stream on slippery stones, for instance, but that’s not pertinent here.)

A rambling conversation about motorcycles followed, which quickly came around to helmets for bikers. I told this presumably-veteran biker about a woman I knew, passenger with her husband out for a casual ride, who was killed recently for lack of a helmet when their bike rear-ended a stopped car.

This biker lady told me that my dead friend was probably safer without the helmet, because what’s the first thing that happens at an accident? Good Samaritans try to pull the helmet off, and that will either kill you or paralyze you. “Let those who ride decide,” she said, in the manner of quoting a rule or proverb. Then she asked whether I knew the eleventh commandment, (I did not): “Thou shalt not stick thy nose in thy neighbor’s business.”

Hardly had she said this when the lady with the shirt was called to the front, ending her wait in line, and stealing my opportunity to respond effectively. So, for her, and for all the rest of you bikers out there, here’s my take on the bikers’ proverb and the 11th commandment.

If bikers were the only ones affected by their helmet decision, then I would have no interest in the subject. But those who ride without basic protection do affect me no matter how their medical care is covered. Those with commercial insurance are members of my medical insurance pool. Sure, they pay premiums (or an employer does), if they have a commercial insurance plan, but my premiums are affected by the insurer’s “experience rating.” The experience rating includes the costs of treating catastrophic trauma and of heroic interventions to save lives. An employer's cost of such benefits is passed on to me in the price of a product, so it affects me there as well.

Those without commercial insurance are dependent on my “voluntary” payment of income taxes for their government coverage such as Medicaid, or, if totally uninsured, they are dependent on charity care at the facilities that treat their medical issues, which then affects me because the cost of providing charity care is shifted to my commercial insurer and raises the premiums I must pay.

So if I am going to let those who ride decide, then let those who ride live with my rule which is “Let those who pay say ‘Nay.’” And my eleventh commandment is, “Thou shalt not stick thy hand into thy neighbor’s pocket.”

Of course, my rules have already been trampled by the audacious stampede of the acquisitive masses under the joke of "representative" government. The have-nots can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury, which is funded by those who pay the bulk of the taxes but who are overwhelmed at the voting booth. But if those of us who pay were to organize ourselves as well as a few (I stress: a few) bikers and others have done who have their hands in our pockets, perhaps those who pay could say “Nay” and make it stick. Then I’d be happy to let those who ride decide.