"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day." ~Thomas Jefferson
1) SC Motorcycle Safety Task Force to Debate Mandatory Helmet Law
2) Inexpensive Tactic to Raise Awareness: Who is behind political signs?
3) Without solid crash data, helmet dispute is worthless
4) Recent Biker Ezine Photos by FastFred
5) Utah Attorney General injured due to lack of skill touts helmets
6) Lawmakers: Helmet law doesn’t belong in N.H.
7) Open position on MRF Board of Directors
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1) SC Motorcycle Safety Task Force to Debate Mandatory Helmet Law
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FF Note: If you visit this article's URL you will see a photo of my good friend Dennis riding his bike. Nasty letters written to Ed Harmon by "bikers" are being used to further the mission of helmet law advocates. Concerned SC bikers are encouraged to write respectful letters to their individual legislators. Use this URL to locate and contact your elected officials:
http://www.scstatehouse.net/cgi-bin/zipcodesearch.exe
http://www.wspa.com/midatlantic/spa/news.apx.-content-articles-SPA-2007-09-26-0012.html
Motorcycle Safety Task Force to Debate Mandatory Helmet Law
Group makes first recommendations to reduce fatalities
By Robert Kittle
South Carolina's Motorcycle Safety Task Force agreed Wednesday in Columbia on its first recommendations aimed at reducing the state's rising motorcycle fatality rate. One is to create and put in place a public awareness campaign that encourages the use of all protective equipment by motorcyclists.
Another recommendation is that motorcycle advocacy groups that fight against mandatory helmet laws make it clearer that they're still in favor of protective gear; they're just against laws that require it.
Dennis Welborn is a member of the task force and a member of ABATE, A Brotherhood Against Totalitarian Enactments, which has fought against mandatory helmet laws. He says a lot of people do have the impression that his group and others like it are against the use of helmets, even though that's not the case.
"Many of our members wear helmets any time they ride and one of our former state coordinators never left home without his helmet on," he says. "So the issue is not the helmet; the issue is the helmet law."
Ed Harmon, who works for the state Office of Highway Safety and has been chairing the task force, says, "We would like to see the message about the use of protective equipment to be in the forefront from those advocacy groups. I think it would mean a lot in terms of motorcycle safety in general if they could present a clearer picture of that."
The task force did not decide at Wednesday's meeting whether it will recommend a mandatory helmet law. It will debate the issue and could make a recommendation at its next meeting November 14.
The task force is also recommending the creation of a statewide comprehensive motorcycle safety program that would be part of the state Department of Public Safety. It will now be up to the director of the agency whether to accept that recommendation. How that program would be funded would also have to be decided.
The task force also discussed how to get more riders to take training courses. While the number of motorcycle riders has been increasing in the state, the number of those riders who take a safety course has been falling. Harmon said the cost of those programs could be the reason, with the number of participants going down as the cost has gone up.
Pennsylvania is one example they talked about to change that. Its motorcycle training course is free, with the program funded by a $5 fee on motorcycle license renewals. While the number of participants has declined in South Carolina, it has increased in Pennsylvania.
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2) Inexpensive Tactic to Raise Awareness: Who is behind political signs?
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FF note: Bikers and other grassroots organizations could put this tactic to use for their goals too. See photo at article URL.
Who is behind political signs?
No one taking credit for rash of S.C. signs; latest cites 'amnesty' for illegal immigrants
By AARON GOULD SHEININ
asheinin@thestate.com
Do you support amnesty for illegal immigrants? If so, don’t call the S.C. Republican Party.
Unfortunately for party officials, the phone has been ringing since anonymous signs have popped up around Columbia and other metropolitan areas.
There are two versions of the signs, which measure about 2 feet by 2 feet. One says “Amnesty for illegal workers/vote Republican.” The other has the same message about workers but instead of saying “vote Republican,” it gives a phone number that turns out to be for the state GOP headquarters in Columbia.
But the Republican Party has nothing to do with the signs, said state party chairman Katon Dawson.
Dawson said about 100 of the signs have been picked up. Since many are planted in rights-of-way, he figures the state Highway Department will remove the others.
Whoever is responsible, Dawson said, knows that signs are a cheap way to gain attention. People talk about them and media, like The State newspaper, will report about them.
“Someone is just trying to throw the question mark up, and that’s a cheap way to get (the media’s) attention,” Dawson said. “It’s a $500 way to get themselves a $20,000 article.”
By comparison, a television advertisement that runs statewide can cost up to $500,000.
And just to be clear, Dawson said, the state party’s platform specifically opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants.
So who is responsible?
Dawson said he has no idea.
Joe Werner, executive director of the S.C. Democratic Party, said he’s seen the signs but the party had nothing to do with them.
Dawson figures a presidential campaign could have put the signs up as a way to reignite the controversy over illegal immigration, which has been a major issue in the Republican presidential primary.
Some candidates have criticized a proposal that recently died in the U.S. Senate that would have allowed immigrants who are in the country illegally to eventually gain citizenship. Critics call that amnesty. Supporters of the bill, including presidential contender U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., say it’s not amnesty.
As a guess, Dawson said he could imagine supporters of candidates such as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney or former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani — opponents of the Senate plan — planting the signs as digs against McCain.
Both campaigns said they had nothing to do with the signs.
“That is an outrageous statement,” said Terry Sullivan, state campaign director for Romney. “It would make no sense for us to do any such thing.”
Elliott Bundy, a spokesman for Giuliani’s campaign, also distanced his candidate from the signs.
“The only signs that our campaign is responsible for have Rudy’s name on them,” Bundy said.
It could violate federal campaign laws for a presidential campaign to post the signs anonymously.
The signs could have another possible target: U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Graham, a McCain supporter, was a major proponent of the failed Senate immigration bill. He has been criticized at home and in other states for that support and some groups in South Carolina have labeled him a “traitor.”
But Lee Canaday, who has passed out anti-Graham literature and stickers at Republican meetings, said he has no idea who put up the signs.
“Every U.S. citizen (save a few local Republican Party sycophants) I’ve talked to — no matter their color or ethnicity — is mad at the federal government and Lindsey Graham in particular,” Canaday said in an e-mail.
It’s not the first time anonymous signs slamming an issue or a candidate have appeared.
In April, similar signs with a similarly cryptic message about abortion showed up around the state, including Columbia. In May, similar signs about guns in schools showed up.
It was never clear who was responsible.
Reach Gould Sheinin at (803) 771-8658.
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3) Without solid crash data, helmet dispute is worthless
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http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/opnOPN38092207.htm
Without solid crash data, helmet dispute is worthless
By REINHOLD SCHLIEPER
COMMUNITY VOICES
News-Journal editorials are just as unlikely to tighten motorcycle safety as the state Legislature is unlikely to improve education: The intentions are admirable, but the decisional brushstrokes are too coarse to be truly helpful.
Helmets may indeed save some lives; however, the increased inertia of head turning, the impaired auditory sensations and the decreased peripheral vision may also increase the likelihood of accidents. I have great sympathy for the view that automobile drivers cause most accidents involving motorcycles, my one and only accident having been caused by a young student-driver who thought that the red light required speeding up instead of stopping, and whose guiding Mom was too busy chatting with others in the car to admonish the driver otherwise. But such a determination of guilt is of little help when I have to live with my own injuries afterward. The goal here is accident avoidance, not guilt diminishment by slapping some helmets on other people's heads or some guilt on other people's conscience.
So, the question is how best to avoid accidents. And that question is not answered by intermittent cries of "Helmet!" and "No helmet!" We must evolve some greater sophistication here.
I could simply assert that helmetless riding is a victimless crime just as seatbelt-less driving would be a victimless crime. In other words, if I decide to ride helmetless, I am the only person affected by that decision because I am the only likely victim if the decision were to have been the wrong one. Traditionally, our society has no right to limit by law what is in my private domain. Victimless crime is decidedly in the private domain. I make decisions about my life, not everyone else.
Hospital cost, however, victimizes all others also by my exercise of faulty judgment, my opponents will be quick to argue. And yet, this reflection does generally not enter into what we think about what we eat, obesity claiming many lives; what we drink, alcohol claiming as many lives; what we smoke, tobacco having been established solidly as taking lives; and what we believe, religions and ideologies having caused many wrong-minded deaths. Also, those sundry ways may be erroneous, yet we respect the privacy of decision-making here. Besides, the high cost of emergency rooms, as recently stated by another letter to the editor of the News-Journal, derives from our society's shirking its responsibility of providing affordable health care to all, not from an onslaught of helmetlessly injured motorcyclists.
Given all of the uncertainties about the benefit of helmets, I would conclude that only the individual rider may be able to decide what works best for him or her. What risks individuals take in their lives are obviously not the decision of the society they live in. Surely we do not want to forbid parachuting, hang-gliding, Bungee jumping, etc. merely because to some of us these activities look awfully dangerous? Risk-taking behavior for pleasure has a firmly established tradition in our culture, else roller coasters would have gone the way of the dodo long ago. Were I to indulge myself here with a slippery slope, I might argue that ultimately that kind of thinking is likely to lead to safe couches with virtual-reality hook-ups, the safest kind of environment one is likely to find anywhere.
What we can do, however, as a society is to make sure that risk-takers are fully informed. Motorcycle-safety experts Risto Kaivola of Finland and H. Ecker of Austria suggest a close analysis of each accident to determine cause and circumstances. And we have a pattern to follow here. With every plane crash, the folks from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) get busy analyzing each detail that may have led to the crash. I suspect that aviation has such an excellent safety record precisely because of such exhaustive analyses. I submit that what is right for the wealthy with planes is also right for the middle class with other vehicles.
In fact, if we were to go general with such an analysis for each crash on our roads, we might have found out much earlier about the BIC-lighter condition of the Pinto, about the Bridgestone-Firestone tire splitting, and about the rollovers of the SUV trucks. If such thorough analyses determine that careless driving of automobiles is at fault with motorcycle accidents, then we should probably tighten the standards of vehicle licenses and of the examinations that lead to them. If such analyses point to a weakness in the design of vehicles or safety equipment, then those standards must be tweaked. But these shouting matches about helmets are silly in the extreme without such thorough analyses.
Schlieper, Ph.D., a philosophy professor, lives in Palm Coast.
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4) Recent Biker Ezine Photos by FastFred
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http://www.fastfreds.com/trips/grcmmcc/index1.htm
GRCMMCC Propane Tank Upgrade
The old GROW Cafe was a stop along this trip and chore. Old timers know the GROM as a grass roots organization formed by hippies in the late 70's as well as a fun bar the hippies closed down after the violence offended their outlook on life. If you know about GROW or drank there in the past drop me a line ...
http://www.fastfreds.com/trips/jonesgap/index.htm
Jones' Gap Waterfall and hike
A side trip to Jones' Gap State Park in Greenville County gave me a chance to reflect and exercise. Based upon the name I wonder if any of my kin discovered this place back in the day. The drought has a big impact upon what you see in these photos. Once the weather gets normal again I'll return. I took some ventures off the beat trail as my pals know I often do. I walked up the side of a mountain about a half mile but found nothing but rats bane to see for the trouble ...
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5) Utah Attorney General injured due to lack of skill touts helmets
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FF Note: This incident appears to show how lack of train kills and maims. The incident also shows helmets can not overcome lack of skill nor will a helmet prevent or reduce most serious injuries.
http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695213459,00.html
Shurtleff prepares for second surgery
By Ben Winslow
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has screws and rods in his heel and his left leg, and he's in traction.
"It's messed up. I really destroyed this leg," he said in an interview Tuesday with the Deseret Morning News from his hospital bed.
Shurtleff will undergo another surgery Thursday to repair his shattered lower leg, which he injured in a motorcycle crash last week. The attorney general was practicing for a ride to raise money for a memorial for fallen police officers by riding a Harley-Davidson Roadmaster, a "big ol' heavy bike," as he described it.
"I knew that I was going to have to practice, so I was taking my time. I went on some side-streets, I was practicing in a parking lot. I was a little shaky on the turning, but I felt OK," he said. "I didn't feel comfortable enough to get on the freeway, thank God."
Instead, he took State Street from Lindon. At an intersection, he said he pulled out into the road and hit something like a patch of gravel. It laid the bike down on top of him.
"My foot went down and it was just enough that it tipped the bike and it caught my foot. It twisted it around backwards, basically, and shattered all the bones in the lower leg," Shurtleff said.
Describing the break, he said his lower leg bones are "shards." It will be at least six to eight weeks before he is able to walk.
"I also tore the rotator cuff in my left shoulder, so crutches won't work," Shurtleff said. "I can barely scoot along in a walker."
Shurtleff said a motorcycle helmet he was wearing may have saved his life.
"It cut my head open above my eyebrow, so I had to have stitches. But I fear it would have been substantially worse if I didn't have a helmet on," he said. "Every doctor says, 'You're a politician right? You were wearing a helmet, now help us pass a helmet law."'
E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com
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6) Lawmakers: Helmet law doesn’t belong in N.H.
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http://www.newburyportnews.com/punews/local_story_264214943.html
Lawmakers: Helmet law doesn’t belong in N.H.
Dan Atkinson
As the Live Free or Die state imposes bans on smoking in restaurants and slots at places like Seabrook Greyhound Park, those riding motorcycles likely won’t have helmets regulated anytime soon.
Despite a federal agency’s recommendation that all states make motorcycle helmets mandatory, New Hampshire lawmakers say they don’t see it happening in New Hampshire.
And that’s just fine by motorcyclists on both sides of the border.
“We’d probably go to Maine or Connecticut (if they changed),” said Amesbury resident Paul Cote, the legislative director for the Massachusetts Motorcycle Association.
Citing the rising number of motorcycle fatalities over the past decade, the National Transportation Safety Board last week urged New Hampshire and the 26 other states that have only partial helmet laws to require all motorcyclists to wear helmets. Currently, only motorcyclists under 18 are required to wear helmets in New Hampshire.
Mark Preston, a police officer for 17 years, a N.H. state legislator and a former motorcycle owner, thinks New Hampshire needs to live by its motto.
“It seems the way things are going, some of the mandates are telling people what’s good for them,” Preston said yesterday. “It’s enough of Big Brother looking over their shoulder.”
Preston admits when he rode a Honda 750 in his younger days, he never wore a helmet, “unless I went into (Massachusetts).” He’s also seen firsthand the results of a motorcycle crash involving someone not wearing a helmet, but he does not think the state should push safety on its residents.
“I would encourage people to wear helmets, but I couldn’t see voting for any law that mandates that,” Preston said yesterday.
Rep. Sherman Packard, R-Londonderry, a member of the Legislature’s Transportation Committee, said he would never support a helmet law.
“There’s no question it’s a piece of safety, but once you become an adult, you have to become responsible for your own decisions,” said Packard, who has ridden motorcycles for 39 years. The nine-term legislator said sometimes he wears a helmet, but other times he doesn’t.
The NTSB is full of “latecomers to the party,” Cote said. While he praised the board’s investigations of plane crashes and shipwrecks, Cote said the board does not have the experience to make meaningful recommendations about motorcycle safety.
“They should stay out of the motorcycle business,” Cote said. “I’m pretty upset they’re coming in here and blasting us.”
Cote said the best way to prevent accidents is to promote cyclist safety and education, not through helmet laws. Cote waxed philosophical, saying that motorcyclists — and people in general — spend their lives cheating death. Why not “Live Free”?
“Until Ted Williams or Walt Disney wakes up and tells us how they did it, there’s a number marked next to all of our lives,” Cote said.
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7) Open position on MRF Board of Directors
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FF Note: This is an excellent opportunity for the right motorcyclist rights activist. However the position will require a great deal of time and effort.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Miles France, Director of MRF State Representative Program miles@mrf.org (e-mail)
MRF Alert, Open position on MRF BOD
Candidacy papers for Sustaining State Motorcyclist Rights Organization Representative to the Motorcycle Riders Foundation Board of Directors due by November 15th, 2007. This is a two-year term.
Steve Zimmer, the incumbent, is not running for re-election due to accepting the position of MRF PAC Director.
The ideal candidate for this position should have experience and knowledge in the workings of their State Motorcyclist Rights Organization. The winning candidate must be willing and able to travel to 3 BOD meetings plus one regional conference each year and be able to communicate with other BOD and Committee members between meetings by email and telephone. Basic computer skills and strong communication skills are needed.
MRF E-MAIL NEWS Motorcycle Riders Foundation
236 Massachusetts Ave. NE
Suite 510
Washington, DC 20002-4980
202-546-0983 (voice)
202-546-0986 (fax)
http://www.mrf.org (website)
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