This entire discussion serves to illustrate a point I think is seldom made strongly enough...there are things worse than death. Mottos like "Live Free Or Die!" and "Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death!" serve to illustrate exactly that...Those who would accept any tyranny, no matter how slight it might seem, rather than risk the discomfort of resisting it, let alone risking death to fight it, deserve tyranny. So what if failing to wear a helemt increases your risk of death...It is not the government's place to tell me not to court death for myself. The frame of mind that suggests the government ought to have power to dictate our behavior because that behavior might represent a danger to ourselves acknowledges the position that we answer to and our subservient to our government. Our was not founded with that ideal in mind but rather with an opposite ideal...one that held our individual liberty and freedom to be worth fighting, even to the death, to protect.

BORN TO BE WILD!

Well you can't fight the Allmighty Dollar...

I agree with you in principle. The basic nature of the constitution is that no one should be able to tell you what to do unless it affects others. No one should be able to tell me tht I HAVE to do anything but die and pay taxes. Unfortunately in this case, if there was no helmet law in my state, it would be affecting me as in Higher Insurance Rates. Some times protecting people from there own stupidity saves others money.

One problem with your argument Lawmage lies in your signature. If our government is big enough to give us a system of roads it is also big enough to place restrictions on it's use. It is a trade-off we accept by making use of what only they are big enough to give us. It doesn't rise to the level of tyranny that is unacceptable to us.

To hit on what Bear mentions, it is the government that mandates the need for insurance to operate a vehicle on the roads they provide. If they then decide to force compliance through the pocketbook are the doing the bidding of the tyrannical government that built their empire? Even if it does, it doesn't rise to the level of tyranny that calls for bloodshed. There is always a trade-off as nothing is free.

Right on, Jo, except the arguement could be made that the government used our money to build those roads. It's what's happening here.

We must replace a major bridge that's over 20 yrs beyond its design life. The original bridge was tolled. Once the bonds were paid off through tolling, the tolls were dropped. This was followed by an unprecedented and unplanned for period of growth.

In order to replace the bridge, tolls (according to the DoT) will have to be re-instituted and a lot of the people are saying, 'No!--We paid for it once with tolls, let the Government pay for it's replacement.' No one seems to realize that when the government pays for something, it's using our money to pay for it. And, if the money isn't there (beyond a certain amount,) we have to provide it--if we want to get across a bridge.

We are the government! If we mandate helmet laws, if we mandate the need for insurance to operate a vehicle on the roads we have provided for everyone's use--are we the tyrannical government?

We're certainly the people/government faced with rising medical costs, rising medical insurance costs in order to keep stupid people alive who don't have enough sense to drive safely and defensively, who don't buckle-up, who drink and drive, and who don't wear helmets to protect us.

Let freedom ring--but think about everyone else affected by your moment of choice.

I pretty much agree with everyone. It's not the government's place to tell us we must drive cars and motorcycles safely, that is our own responsibility.

However, so many of us are irresponsible twits of the lowers order that the adrenalin rush of driving a bike into an oncoming truck exceeds common sense.

I still have no problem with that if it weren't for the fact that

1. innocent people can get hurt and
2. we pay for that stupidity

There's no answer that will be satisfactory to everyone.