This may look like a motorcycle helmet, but in the event of an accident, it's really not that much better than wearing a baseball cap.

The recent motorcycle crash of Ben Roethlisberger^[1] brings up an interesting question: if people like BenR are unwilling to make the right choice (the choice to wear a helmet), should he be allowed to make that choice at all?

Only twenty states have mandatory helment laws, where twenty-seven others have laws that target specific groups of riders. There are even people out on the Internet defending their non-helmet use on the grounds that helmets cause a higher incidence of broken necks and therefore are a bad bet^[2].

All this means that there are a lot of people out there riding without helmets^[3][4].

Roethlisberger has added another data point to my theory that because people oftentimes will not make the right decision w/r/t this subject, the decision should be made for them, in the form of a madatory helment law for all riders^[5]. Sound fascist? It could be, depending on your definition of the word oppressive, so I'd like to propose a set of requirements that riders need to meet to be able to ride without a helment^[6].

Please note that this list would be unecessary if three conditions were true:

1. You only hurt yourself when you got into an accident.
2. You didn't leave dependents behind in the event of your [premature] death
3. There was no possibility of ending up in long-term critical care (read: a persistent vegetative or quadriplegic/similar state), thereby shifting the [financial] responsbility for your [personal] irresponsibility onto both your fellow taxpayers and those who foot the healthcare bill.

Unfortunately, these conditions are not always true, thereby necessitating my proposal, so here it is:

Requirements for Riding a Motorcycle Without a Helment:

• If you build your own roads and don't allow anyone else to ride/drive on them.
• If you're a husband/father (or wife/mother), you need a minimum $500k life insurance policy.
• If you ride without a helmet, you must waive your right to long-term critical medical care.
• You must be a registered organ donor.
• If you do ride sans-helment, and you crash, you need to issue a pseudo-public declaration (assuming you can still (a) think and (b) write) stating:

What am I missing?

--tom

PS: I'm a [daily] motorcycle rider (of a 2005 Honda CBR 600RR) who both wears a full faced helmet and thinks that helmets should be mandatory in all states [in case it wasn't obvious already].