Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers is a national bikers rights and motorcyclist safety organization which has as its mission in every state to contribute to obtaining a riding environment on our roads and highways less characterized by the obscene risk that currently exists. We urge, for example, mandatory auto driver education on motorcycle safety issues, motorcycle specific ROW penalty legislation, and comprehensive cell phone bans. We also are pleased to present our motorcyclist safety perspective in opposition to proposed helmet legislation. We do this as a motorcycle safety organization first because we consider the myopic focus on helmet legislation which has dominated NHTSA policy and state and federal motorcycle safety debate for the past 25 years to constitute a failed policy. Motorcycle accidents result in an entire landscape of resulting injury, quadriplegia, paraplegia, other spinal cord injuries, debilitating internal injuries, catastrophic orthopedic injuries, limb amputations and others, none of which can be averted or reduced in severity by the use of a helmet. So rather clearly, even as we acknowledge that helmets may be useful to prevent some head injuries and biker deaths where the accidents involved application of impact energies to the head within the window of impact energies for which helmets have some utility, even then, we must recognize that such laws do nothing at all to reduce the incidence of every other of the panoply of injuries which motorcyclists sustain in accidents. Helmet laws are a BandAide on the broken body of the American motorcyclists. The common denominator responsible for the entire landscape of motorcyclist injuries is that they result from motorcycle accidents. It is our perspective that if we are to achieve our goal of reducing the overall risk of the full landscape of motorcyclist injury that the solution must be to reduce the incidence of motorcycle accidents. We intend to seize this motorcycle safety offensive every time our state or federal legislatures open debate on helmet laws, in part because our legislatures rarely discuss motorcyclist safety outside the context of a proposed mandatory helmet bill. It is our opportunity to redirect debate away from the unproductive to the productive. We seize the complaints of these legislators that motorcyclist injuries are a public health crisis or state fiscal crisis, and we join with them and thank them for acknowledging these facts, because indeed bikers confront obscene risks of injury from motorcycle accidents. But then we make very plain that their state public health and fiscal crises are not defined by some number of deaths or head injuries which might possibly have been averted or lessened by use of a helmet, the public health crisis extends to the full panoply of motorcyclist injury sustained in accidents, 95 percent of which cannot possibly be averted or reduced by the use of a helmet. And the same is true for the state fiscal crisis. The medical expenses which the state must pay for motorcyclist injuries, when the one who caused the accident is underinsured to pay for the medical expense, is medical expense incurred again for the entire landscape of motorcyclist injuries. The state therefore cannot put at dent in its accurately defined state fiscal crisis by enacting helmet legislation.
We are pleased to get involved in the motorcycle safety debate in any state, and would welcome the opportunity to contribute our motorcycle safety offensive to the helmet law debates as they arise in any state of the Union. We are pleased to get into the fights as they reach the legislative floor, or at any other stage of the process, as we did in our efforts with many others to attempt to attempt to persuade Michigan Governor Granholm to refrain from vetoing the Michigan repeal bill. And we welcome the opportunity to get involved even before the bills are introduced, as we see our best opportunity to redirect the debate as before legislators have taken a fixed position. Just in the past two weeks before this editing in January 2007, we participated at the request of the President of ABATE Utah, Bill Evans, and the Secretary of ABATE Montana, Linda Baldwin, in efforts to preemptively nip in the bud helmet legislation before its introduction. The Salt Lake City mayor, Rocky Anderson, had made it known that he would push for a universal helmet law for motorcyclists and bicyclists despite that the state of Utah is a 21 and older free state. ABATE Montana got wind that state legislator, Betsy Hands, had asked that a mandatory helmet bill be prepared for introduction to the state legislature. We presented our position papers to each, which you can review on other pages of this site, click here for Montana, and Utah. Other bikers rights organizations and individual bikers were also urged to participate in letter campaigns as we sent out a call for action from Bruce & Ray's Biker Forum, a Forum jointly moderated by Bruce Arnold of Ldr Long Distance Riders and Ray Henke of Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers. We were informed by Bill Evens that the Utah campaign was successful in persuading Mayor Anderson to discard his municipal helmet legislation, and we hope that the same result may be obtained in Montana. We will follow through with these politicians now to urge our alternative motorcycle safety strategies, in our effort to seize the opportunity presented by their expressed interest in the risks of injury we face as motorcyclists. We welcome any bikers rights organization in any state to advise us when they have a helmet law pending or when they are informed that a legislator, Governor or other elected politician is considering introducing helmet legislation.
When we say bikers rights to motorcyclist safety followed by our list of states Alaska Alabama Arkansas Arizona California, Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Massachusetts Maryland, Maine Michigan Minnesota Missouri Montana North Carolina North Dakota Nebraska New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico Nevada New York Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania, Rhode Island South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Virginia Vermont Washington Wisconsin West Virginia and Wyoming, what we are saying is that we welcome every opportunity to get involved in the helmet law debates whenever and wherever they arise and at any stage of legislative proceedings, before, and during all stages of consideration of helmet or repeal bills. We consider our motorcycle safety positions to be complimentary to those of the bikers rights organizations, and it is our hope that in the process not only will helmet bills be defeated or such laws repealed but that our legislatures will consider our motorcycle safety alternatives as superior means to reduce their state public health and fiscal crises associated with what I think we can all agree is an obscene incidence of motorcyclist carnage on our American streets and highways.
Thank You, Please "Ride Safely," And Watch Out for Dumb Auto Drivers. "Ride Safely" is not just our way of saying good-bye. We mean it. And what we mean specifically is ride SMART, because you can only expect the opposite from the "dumb," ignorant auto drivers who you are likely to encounter on the road at every turn. To be specific, when we say "ride safely" we mean use strategies to anticipate auto driver stupidity, actively look for potential hazards that might arise from auto driver stupidity, separate the hazards, and be prepared to act to defend yourself from the idiotic maneuvers of the ignorant auto driver. To this end Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers provides some SMART strategies for riding your bike on streets populated by auto drivers who, unfortunately, have not been educated about dangers they pose to us, or the simple and ordinary strategies which auto drivers should, but don't, employ to avoid causing our deaths and serious injuries. You can consider the "ride safely" strategies more extensively on the "Smart Safety Strategies For Dealing With Dumb Auto Drivers" page. But while we have your attention, permit us to mention just a few: (1) Use your eyes constantly. Actively scan for the potential hazards posed by dumb auto drivers when you ride. Actively look for hazards over the distance you will travel 14 seconds ahead of you, with the distance within 4 seconds being the immediate danger zone. This includes looking for cars approaching intersections from all directions, and do NOT expect that ignorant or "blind" auto drivers will respect your right of way. Stay aware of the cars in your adjoining lanes, moving quickly through their rear view mirror blind spots. Look out for cars parked on the side of the street, keeping alert for a turn indicator light or brake or reverse light, and for occupants in the driver's seat who might decide to pull out into your lane of traffic without turning their heads. (Also scan for road defects, pot holes, gravel, oil, and consider pedestrians and animals which might run out into your path.) (2) Separate your hazards. If you see more than one potential hazard, separate them so that you will only have to deal with one at a time. For example, on a freeway, if you are in the right-most lane and there is a car approaching from behind in the lane to your immediate left and another car entering by the freeway ramp to your right, slow down or speed up in anticipation that one or the other or both of these predictably "dumb" auto drivers may do something predictably stupid so that your accident avoidance options are maximized. (3) Provide ample space between you and other motorists by keeping up with traffic but remaining a safe distance behind the car in front of you. And that is not just the distance you would need to stop if the auto driver in front slammed on his brakes. You have to consider that there is another ignorant auto driver behind you who you can predict to have no clue how quickly you can stop you bike, and is probably following way too close to avoid hitting you if you stop as quickly as you can. So you must leave sufficient car lengths between your bike and the car in front of you to slow at the speed it will take the car behind you to brake if you don't want your bike and body pinned between the unforgiving metal of these two cars; (3) Choose your position in your lane of traffic to minimize risk, considering (a) providing the best and greatest number of escape routes; (b) increasing your visibility to other motorists, © avoiding auto driver blind spots, (d) communicating your driving intentions; (e) increasing your ability to observe potential hazards; (f) avoiding road defects/surface hazards; and (g) protecting your lane from other motorists. (4) Ride within your limits and the limits of your bike. A stretched and radically raked Harley chopper is going to have more limited ability than a sport bike for accident avoidance, such as swerving, our two quick counter-steers that will often get us out of predicaments caused by idiotic auto drivers. Each biker also has his own limits which are a function of his individual reaction time, and level of experience riding his bike, among dozens of other factors. All of us can ride with roughly equal "relative safety," recognizing that we all face the same hazards, including those posed by dumb drivers, if we ride within our limitations and the limitations of our bikes. That isn't to say that we can eliminate the dangers, particular the dangers associated with the stupid things that auto drivers do. But by riding within our limitations we can avoid the 20 percent of motorcycle accidents in which our own negligence is statistically a contributing factor. Motorcycle Insurance: Since You Cannot Rely On Auto Drivers to Carry Liability Insurance Adequate to Pay for the Serious or Catastrophic Injuries They Commonly Wreck Upon Motorcyclists, Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers Advises That You Obtain The Highest Policy Limit Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist Coverage That You Can Find to Assure that You and Your Family Will Not Face Financial Disaster In the Event You Encounter an Inattentive or Reckless Auto Driver.. There isn't an "old timer" who hasn't been in a serious motorcycle accident caused by the inattention or negligence of an ignorant auto driver. And it doesn't matter how experienced a rider you are. As noted above, fully two-thirds of motorcycle accidents are cause exclusively by the auto driver's negligence without any fault of the motorcyclist. Additionally, because we don't have thousands of pounds of metal surrounding us, protection designed interior padding, seat belts and air bags, very often motorcycle accidents will result in serious injuries. However, more commonly than not the ignorant auto driver who causes the accident will also be woefully underinsured and impecunious, unable to pay for our medical expenses and loss of earnings, let alone what might be the catastrophic impact upon our future lifestyle. The only way that a biker can be assured of compensation for accidents caused by the idiotic antics of auto drivers is to obtain uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage for himself. Generally speaking, uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage provides compensation above the policy limits of the at fault auto driver's liability policy, both for your economic damages and your general damages up to the limits of the UM coverage. To take an example, if the at-fault auto driver has $15,000 in liability coverage and you have $500,000 in uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage, the auto driver's insurance company would pay the first $15,000 and your insurance company would pay the next $485,000, up to the limits of your UM coverage. Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers considers that given the percentage of motorcycle accidents that are auto driver at-fault accidents, and the general failure of auto drivers to purchase liability policies adequate to cover the consequences of the serious injuries they will likely cause a motorcyclist, that it only makes sense to obtain the highest uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage that you can. (The above is not intended as legal advice, and may be subject to nuances of state law. The recommendation is based on general principles of law generally common in most states. You should inquire further with your local insurance agent. As a matter of policy, Motorcyclists Against Dumb Drivers takes no position with regard to the relative strengths of policies offered by particular insurance companies. Again, this is a matter for you to discuss with your agent.) |
