"jim rozen" wrote in message
...
In article , Ed Huntress says...

The auto manufacturers could even out the score by disabling the
seatbelts and airbags when the cell phone is in use!

Or just disable the personal insurance, which is what I would do for
motorcycle riders who don't wear a helmet. Scatter your brains over the
highway if you must, but don't drive my insurance rates up in the
process, I
always say. g

You actually have this the wrong way round, Ed. Insurance
premiums are only paid out to live riders. Dead ones don't
collect.

Yeah, like the ones who have a neurosurgery and wind up in a coma for four
weeks, like Gary Busey. Or the hundreds or possibly thousands of other TBI
patients who got there because they weren't wearing a helmet.

Helmeted riders have a much larger chance of sticking
around and charging their insurance companies for long hospital
stays.

Nope.


The ones without helmets tend to have either very short hospital
stays, or are never admitted at the ER. They go right to the
morgue.

Nope. Check your statistics. This was examined thoroughly in the late '80s,
Jim. I'm sure the data is still around. Traumatic head injuries that did NOT
result in death were something like four times more likely for non-helmet
wearers.


There was an interesting study done by a dutch gent (name of
van der Sluice) which investigated trauma accident victims.
They ranked the degree of trauma from 1 to 4, based on a set
of criteria they applied.

Of the 4-rated trauma victims, the survival rate was five
or ten percent overall. *Except* for the subset of that
group which had been in motorcycle accidents. There the
survival rate was around FIFTY percent. The Netherlands
has a national helmet law for motorbike riders.

That same study noted that oddly, the length of hospital
stay did not vary directly as a function of the trauma rating.
The ones were of course the shortest, twos longer, threes longer
still. But the fours were shorter than the 1s.

Most of them died before they could spend the night in the
hospital.

So if you *really* want to cut down insurance costs, you
should absolutely _ban_ helmet use.

Nonsense. This study has been picked up by motorcyclists to defend the
indefensible. The TBI statistics are readily available, or were. Check
Google Scholar.

--
Ed Huntress