Posts
1877
Joined
1/19/2009
Location
Dallas, TX, USA
Edited Date/Time
1/27/2012 3:24pm
The right to not wear a helmet on motorcycles.
The right to have loud exhaust on streetbikes.
Seems to me, this is exactly in the line of what I've been talking about. We fight for stuff that just puts us in cross hairs of haters.
The right to have loud exhaust on streetbikes.
Seems to me, this is exactly in the line of what I've been talking about. We fight for stuff that just puts us in cross hairs of haters.
Do you wear a seat belt?
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It does take mandates for a greater good, to fix problems. Fighting to keep loud bikes only pisses off people. Fighting for no helmets only hurts our fight for equal insurance rates etc. Just the fact that people like you want us to fight for these dumb rules are the reason we are losing ground at every direction.
Do you really think people are that smart?
I wore a seat belt most of the time before it was law and now that it is law, I still only use it MOST of the time. When I was little, my parents didn't have the house on lockdown or cover any hard, pointy surface in rubber. Now days, you're a raving lunatic if you don't completely "childproof" your house.
We've turned into a bunch of worriers all on our own and don't need lawmakers to force all this "protection" on us.
I like to choose the level of risk I expose myself to and it should be my right.
It's not hard to imagine pretty much everything I do for fun could be made illegal if we let the gub'ment decide how safe we need to be.
If I had started arguing about Bush and you hopelessly trying to blame EVERYTHING on him...then you would have "caught me"...
When rules infringe on other peoples freedoms, that's where it affects your freedoms.
If everyone was so smart, like some say, and they fix their own faults. Then we would have very few loud motorcycles anywhere.
We swam at the swimming hole. Sometimes people drowned. Everyone understood. It was a risk of living you see. No one sued. We enjoyed freedom.
We rode our bikes, and sometimes we crashed. If we were injured it was understood. It was a risk of bike riding you see. No one sued. We enjoyed freedom.
We played on dirt mounds at construction sites. We enjoyed firecrackers and bottle rockets on the 4th of July.
At some point we forgot that a lot of the things in life that made you smile came with risks and that those risks were worth the reward.
Now we have allowed money hungry lawyers and power hungry politicians litigating and legislating our freedom out of existance at an ever increasing rate.
Our current "president" is both a lawyer and a politician.
I rode my Ninja for about 2 weeks with the stock muffler and It was scary. With a loud muffler, everyone knows im there and it is definetly safer.
Pit Row
in this day and age, due to trial lawyers going after the deepest pockets to get money (and dont think for 1 second they are doing it to help the injured, BULLSHIT, they are doing it to get a cut, and the more they get awarded the more their percentage cut is), you have companies trying to do everything possible to protect themselves from the criminally stupid that use their product in a criminally stupid way, get hurt doing it when any rational person would easily know you would get hurt, then sue.
imo, let them make stupid choices. You have to thin the herd of the morons someway and while loss of life is horrible, I have zero sympathy for those that make a stupid choice KNOWING the possible results if they took 1 second to even remotely think about it, and lose their lives over it. Thats harsh, but if they dont give a f*uck about their own life any more than that, why should I care?
now note, the above is talking about adults making a CHOICE that leads to bad consequences. Where I DO think the choice line should be though is when dealing with children. The arent given the choice, they rely on the choice of adults that are supposed to know better, they have to. Car seats, childproofing a house, yep, should be legislated because of the vast amounts of dumbass dont-care parents that dont care about their own lives obviously and unless someone hits them with a stick wouldnt take precautions. Its one thing to thrown your own life away by choice, its another to throw someone elses away by negligence.
I do think this though..... helmets worn while riding a street bike on the street. a 3000 pound car hits you at 50 mph, no helmet in the world is going to do dick-all to save you. The majority of street related motorcycle deaths comes from torso injuries and trama. Go look it up. MX, the spped are way lower, and you dont have 3000 pound projectiles constantly, a helmet OBVIOUSLY can save you from severe injury because everyone of us in here HAS went down, and no matter what ever injury we got, we ALL hit our heads doing it. Low speed impacts with no helmet equal brain damage at the least, death at the worst and you WILL go down riding mx and racing, period.
But more on topic of moto related, I DO think that anyone that races or rides MX and DOESNT have health insurance, and doesnt dress for the crash instead of the ride, they should not be allowed to set 1 foot on any track or riding area. To me, racing with no health insurance, that is DUMBER than taking a can of paint, huffing it, and wondering why you got brain damage, actually by the time you got brain damage you couldnt wonder, but your family them blames the pain manufacturer for your stupid as f*ck actions. Plus, by riding with no health insurance, you are jeopardizing not only you, you are hurting all of US because WHEN you go down, not if, WHEN, you then pull a chickenshit move, sue the track, it shuts down and dicks all of us in the ass. Those guys hurt our sport as a general riding public than any noise issue imo.
I'm so used to seeing helmets on riders now that it's jarring to go to Colorado, Florida, or Arizona, and see rider without them.
The last PSA that I got from the AMA was all about quiet pipes, not freedom to run loud ones...
Oh, and leave it to Butt R-apist to believe the "loud pipes save lives" fairy tale.
Loud P.O.S. Harleys...
No helmets...
Go figure.
But then how would that scenario have changed this situation?
(text blurbs copied from the Thumpertalk link posted in the current Vital "Watch Out for Shane Simon" thread)
"...(he) came down to ride my track and ended up getting hit by another rider and broke his femur...I received a summons, he is suing me...He did sign a waver and I do have insurance...Unfortunately because of this I am considering closing the track...he wasn't responsible enough to have any type of health insurance so I guess it's my job to take care of him..."
This isn't a Darwinism/"weed out the morons" type of issue, rather this is a real life, and unfortunately probably all too common situation faced by a motocross track owner in our own dirt bike community. -Neil
1. You have some minimum amount of insurance in the event you need medical attention (I believe $100K is the min.)
or
2. You have taken an MSF course and submitted $5 along with an application/ request for an exemption sticker along with proof that you took the class.
If you meet one or both of those criteria, you are not required by law to wear a helmet while riding on the street.
So there's your freedom of choice in that regard. It's not an absolute without exception law, at least not here. I suspect that the police do not regularly attempt to enforce this law unless they happen to stop someone for another normal offense and then start asking questions. Not unlike texting and driving... it needs to be illegal, but how do you enforce it?
I have a bigger issue with people that text and/or talk on their cell phones while driving than I do with someone that chooses to ride without a helmet or has loud pipes. The helmetless rider is putting himself at risk... the cell phone offender is putting me and everyone else on the road with them at risk.
Personally, I wear a helmet when riding dirt or street. I had a relatively low speed crash on the street several years ago... after seeing the gouges in my full face helmet, I decided that my skin would not have faired nearly as well, nor would I have enjoyed the pain very much... not worth the risk.
My street bike has relatively loud pipes, though they are not straight pipes with no baffle. I can personally attest that the noise from my bike has saved me on a number of occassions. People that don't ride generally don't see nor are they looking for motorcycles on the road. Often times they will hear me long before they see me... a quick blip of the throttle as I approach someone I'm not confident has actually seen me and could possibly pull in front of or change lanes on me works quite effectively. I'm not supporting those that choose to have loud bikes simply to impress the world or annoy the world, but I do beleive they do have their place within reason.
Along the same lines as the loud MC pipes... who here that is complaining about them has or has had dual exhaust on their vehicle? I had it on my previous truck and I know for a fact it annoyed the crap out of my neighbors... yet I don't hear anyone on here complaining or anyone lobbying to have them banned... what's the difference?
Our current "president" is both a lier and a politician.
Post a reply to: Can anyone explain why we fight for stupid rules like these??