Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Motorcycle deaths rise with end of helmet law

A federal study finds an 81 percent increase in mortality in Florida. Deaths tripled among riders younger than 21.

By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN and SHANNON COLAVECCHIO-VAN SICKLER
Published August 9, 2005

	[Times photo: Cherie Diez]
	John "Johnny Widebars" Taylor of St. Petersburg said he was more comfortable riding his 1970 Harley-Davidson without a helmet Monday.

TAMPA - At a Brandon traffic light, Joe Dobrzanski's heart broke all over again.

A young man perched on a Ninja motorcycle, not wearing a helmet. It reminded Dobrzanski of his son, Scott, who recently died in an accident in Tampa after returning home from military service in Iraq.

"The light changed, and he tried to do a wheelie, but he flipped the bike," Dobrzanski said of the incident two weeks ago. It was another reminder of his loss and the family's wish that all motorcyclists wear helmets.

A new federal study reveals that Dobrzanski's sorrow is becoming more common in Florida.

In the three years after Florida repealed a law requiring riders to wear helmets, motorcycle deaths increased more than 81 percent statewide compared to the three years before. And the deaths of riders younger than 21 nearly tripled, the study found.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study also found that motorcycle injuries have become more expensive to treat. The average hospital cost to treat a head injury was $45,602, more than four times the $10,000 in insurance that nonhelmeted riders are required to carry.

The study noted that some of the increase in fatalities can be attributed to alcohol use, speed and increased ridership.

The report drew criticism from James Reichenbach, president of American Bikers Aimed Toward Education in Florida, who lobbied to repeal the state's helmet law in 2000. He argued that the statistics don't show the cause of death, which might often result from chest injuries or other body trauma, not head injuries.

The battle over the helmet laws pitted Reichenbach and his platform of "personal freedom" against the insurance industry, which worried that head injuries would increase without helmets, driving up health care costs.

The federal study found that head-injury hospital admissions rose 80 percent and the cost for hospitals to treat head, brain or skull injuries more than doubled, from $21-million to $50-million, in the 30 months after the law changed.

Sam Miller of the Florida Insurance Council says his agency's position remains the same - in favor of enforcing helmet laws, a stance he says is now reinforced by the federal study.

But Reichenbach said he believes other forces are at play. He says motorcycle ridership is taking off.

Numbers back him up.

New motorcycle registrations in Florida spiked from 219,000 in 2000 to 417,000 last year - a 91 percent jump, according to the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. Meanwhile, new car registrations in that period rose only 18 percent.

Some experts say baby boomers are driving the trend.

Young or old, though, the study suggests a greater share of those killed in motorcycle accidents are not wearing helmets. Even among riders younger than 21 who are still required by state law to wear helmets, use of helmets is declining.

Consider the study's results: In the three years before the helmet law was repealed on July 1, 2000, 9 percent of the 515 motorcyclists killed in crashes were not wearing a helmet.

In the three years after the repeal, 61 percent of the 933 fatally injured motorcyclists were not helmeted.

Of the 35 motorcyclists younger than 21 killed in crashes in the three years before the repeal, 26 percent were not wearing helmets.

Of the 101 riders younger than 21 who were killed in those three years after the repeal, 45 percent were not wearing a helmet.

"We have a public information crisis here, where people under 21 either don't know the law applies to them - or they don't care because they don't think it'll be enforced," said Rep. Irving Slosberg, D-Boca Raton.

He has made traffic safety a priority ever since his 14-year-old daughter died in a traffic accident in 1996 while riding unbuckled in a car with a teenage driver. He says the Legislature never should have repealed the helmet law, "and I think we have to revisit that, based on the statistical data coming in."

Twenty states and the District of Columbia require motorcycle riders to wear helmets, a decline from 47 states in 1975, according to a safety group funded by the insurance industry.

Last year in Hillsborough County, nine motorcyclists died in crashes, according to the Florida Highway Patrol. Between January and March of this year, the county already had eight motorcycle deaths. It's not clear how many weren't wearing helmets.

In Pinellas County last year, nine motorcycle drivers and one passenger died, according to the FHP. Another two died in the first three months of this year.

For Joe Dobrzanski, his wife and their remaining children, every time they see a motorcyclist without a helmet, it causes pain. His youngest daughter cries. His wife is moved to rage.

Scott Dobrzanski, 22, who had served as a soldier in Iraq, crashed his new Kawasaki ZX-636 Ninja into a guardrail on a downtown Tampa exit of Interstate 275 on April 24.

Joe Dobrzanski doesn't know if a helmet would have saved his son's life, though Scott suffered a severe head injury.

The elder Dobrzanski knows how hot and uncomfortable helmets can be. He wore one while riding a motorcycle from Colorado to Tampa before shipping off to serve in the Vietnam War.

He believes in helmet laws.

"You can't protect people from themselves," he said. "But I don't want any other parents to go through this."

--Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report, which used information from Times wires.

[Last modified August 9, 2005, 05:04:22]