Freedom Riders

How motorcyclists won the right to feel the wind in their hair--and why drivers still have to buckle up.

Jacob Sullum from the November 2005 issue

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"We're Passionate About Our Motorcycles"

Which brings us back to the Quigley Factor. Why do motorcyclists seem to care so much more about helmet laws than drivers care about seat belt laws, when the underlying principle is the same?

Motorcyclists may have been quicker to recognize the importance of the principle because riding a motorcycle is much more dangerous than most other modes of transportation and forms of recreation. If the government can save lives and taxpayer money by requiring helmets, it could save even more by banning motorcycles altogether. The National Motorists Association's Baxter suggests that motorcyclists' consciousness of their minority status also fed their determination to resist helmet laws. "They knew that if they didn't directly get involved, nobody else was going to," he says.

The way helmet laws are enforced tends to confirm motorcyclists' sense of themselves as a picked-on minority. To begin with, police in states that require adults to use helmets have the authority to stop a motorcyclist simply for failing to wear one, while police in most states still need some other reason to stop a motorist before they can cite him for not buckling up. Even in states with primary seat belt enforcement, a helmetless motorcyclist is more conspicuous than an unbuckled motorist, making him more vulnerable to traffic stops. "The police really don't spot the guy not wearing a seat belt as much as a guy not wearing a helmet," says Texas ABATE's Fletcher. "You can see [the helmetless motorcyclist] three blocks away." Because he cannot credibly attribute his noncompliance to forgetfulness, says Baxter, "a motorcyclist who doesn't wear a helmet is a direct affront to the enforcement community," which makes a stop even likelier and raises the potential for a hostile encounter. And once he is stopped, a motorcyclist may be forced to park his vehicle and walk, unlike an unbelted driver, who can simply buckle up and continue on his way after getting a warning or a ticket.

Another reason helmet laws provoke more resistance than seat belt laws is the comfort factor: While buckling up is relatively painless for most people, wearing a motorcycle helmet that weighs a few pounds and covers most of your head can be tiring and sweaty. "If it's really hot, I absolutely don't wear one," says ABATE of Florida's Reichenbach. "You sit at a stoplight, especially in Florida, you're sitting there in 100 percent humidity, and the sun is beating down on you, and that heat's coming up off the road, which is like 140, 150 degrees....We've had people literally pass out at stoplights wearing helmets."

The view of helmets as confining and stifling meshes with the sentiment that forcing people to wear them ruins what is for many riders a visceral experience of freedom. "We're passionate about our motorcycles," says ABATE of California's Myke. "This is something that's more of a way of life than a hobby or a sport. It really goes to the core of our being....Riding a motorcycle is my celebration of freedom." Few motorists feel the same way about driving, which for most of us is a workaday means of getting around, not an important part of our identities.

Hennie, head of the Motorcycle Riders Foundation, says it's hard for the uninitiated to understand how a method of transportation could acquire so much meaning. "If you've never ridden a motorcycle," he says, "there's no way to describe the feeling of freedom. It's got to be the next best thing to being able to fly. When you start putting restrictions on that freedom, people take it personally."

In the final analysis, not enough people took seat belt laws personally. For the most part, whatever objections they harbored were overcome by force of law and force of habit. By contrast, substantial numbers of motorcyclists have complained loudly, conspicuously, and persistently about helmet laws for more than three decades. "Apparently," says the National Safety Council's Ulczycki, "legislators are easily convinced that the perceived rights of motorcyclists to injure themselves are more important than the public good." Aside from the tendentious definition of "the public good," this gloss is misleading on two counts: Resistance to helmet laws hasn't been easy, and it hasn't necessarily involved convincing legislators of anything but the motorcyclists' determination. Politicians didn't have to understand their passion to respect it. And therein lies a lesson for the world's busybodies and petty tyrants.�