It’s also hard to see why we single out motorcyclists for the sin of saddling everyone with higher health care costs. Plenty of patients suffer from self-inflicted ailments — lung cancer from smoking, liver damage from drinking, diabetes from eating unhealthy foods, AIDS from unprotected sex. Yet we don’t ban these activities.
Why not? Because we retain a respect for individual freedom and choice — even in matters of life and death, even when individual choices have collective costs. Motorcycle helmet laws are an unwarranted exception to our normal, sound approach, which can be summarized: It’s your life, and it’s your funeral.
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