Let Freedom Ring . . . (And Skulls Crack)

SACRAMENTO —  And so the winds of revolution finally have swept through the California Statehouse. Willie Brown is gone from power, along with his surrogates. Republicans at last have assumed control of the Assembly, blowing hard about “mandates” and “contracts.” This is a new day for democracy, these miniature Newts assure us, and it demands bold, prompt action. Thus, while Gingrich and Co. endeavor to bury the Great Society, balance the budget and so forth, the revolution’s West Coast branch has decided to go after bigger game.

Motorcycle helmets.

Last Monday, on its first full day in power, the newly arranged Assembly quickly passed out of the Transportation Committee a bill that would let motorcyclists once again ride without protective headgear. This first step toward eliminating the 4-year-old helmet requirement was hailed by its supporters as a great day for America.

“It’s all about freedom,” said a Rosemead motorcyclist who, like hundreds of his be-leathered biker brethren, had ridden to the Capitol on a Harley for the big moment.

Ah yes, freedom. . . .

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Freedom for motorcyclists to take a chance, to tweak the laws of gravity and dance on the edge of life’s game board. “A helmet,” said a bike-riding buddy, “sort of runs counter to the whole point.” Consider: In the first year helmets were required, motorcycle fatalities dropped from 523 to 327. Should that trend continue, it would take all the sport out of riding motorcycles.

Freedom for outlaw bikers to look like proper outlaws again. At present, they cut almost comic figures in their little black helmets. It’s not the headgear so much as the sour, humiliated expressions they wear beneath it. They seem to understand the basic paradox at play: If I’m such a big, bad outlaw, a rebel of society, how come these pencil-necked politicians can force me to wear this stupid hat?

Freedom for emergency room doctors to practice their craft. With head injuries way down, they are losing the valuable experience gained by reassembling broken skulls and faces on the fly. “Without a helmet,” one L.A. County-USC doctor explained, “the face gets all messed up. You have to work real hard, for example, to pry their eyes open, so that you can check their pupils. Sometimes you can’t even find the eyes at all. Pesky stuff like that.”

Freedom for hospitals to make an honest dollar. Annual hospital charges related to motorcycle injuries tumbled--from $145 million in 1991, to $93 million in 1993--once helmets were mandated. Apply the economists’ multiplier effect, and it becomes obvious that the decline in costly head injuries--beds in neurological intensive care run about $5,000 a day--played a role in the great California recession.

And freedom, finally, for members of the four-wheeled public to participate in the sport. Bikers speak of the wind blowing through their hair--and ears? For the rest of us, the excitement occurs somewhere lower, down in the wallet. Even the richest insurance policies typically cannot cover the cost of treating a critical head injury. Taxpayers eventually must pick up the tab. A helmet-less motorcyclist who crashed a decade ago and has been a quadriplegic ever since told the committee his health insurance was depleted after $2 million. Since then, Medi-Cal has paid nearly $4 million for his care. Thrilling.

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There have been other unexpected consequences. Emergency room doctors have noticed a drop in organ donations; helmet-less bikers provided a rich, steady supply of body parts. Also, bikers have begun to follow the lead of lobbyists for cigarettes, guns and alcohol. They have begun to employ that great euphemism of Sacramento politics, “to get involved in the process.” In other words, they are forking over cash--tens of thousands of dollars in contributions to grease the body politic.

“We’re playing the game,” the biker from Rosemead said last Monday, “to get done what we want done.”

This might explain in part why the Republican lawmakers, in their first muscle-flex, would choose to go after motorcycle helmets. Still, it’s puzzling. That the helmet law--like the seat belt law, like crackdowns on drunk driving, like so many other restrictions routinely placed on motorists--has been effective is, pardon the expression, a no-brainer. It has saved lives and loads of taxpayer dollars. Also, the desire of bikers to unfurl their fabulous tresses would not seem to be a prime concern of the voting mainstream.

So why are the revolutionaries doing it? Well, one theory is that the effort is a symptom of all their head-knocking with Willie Brown over the past year. On many occasions outfoxed Republicans were spotted literally pounding their noggins in frustration against chamber walls. The brain is a tricky, delicate instrument. Is it possible the time has come to consider mandatory helmets for lawmakers?