In New Jersey they just passed a law requiring minors to wear helmets on the slopes. Why stop at snowboarding? Should kids have to wear helmets on their bikes? On sledding hills? If they’re snowboarding down a hill in their neighborhood? In their backyard? Skateboarding in their neighborhood?
Where do you draw the line?
Sure, we’re talking about kids here (won’t someone please think of the children!) but there’s not exactly an epidemic of 9-year olds with TBIs or kids getting broke off which might possibly warrant some political action. To put everything in perspective only about 40 people each year die while skiing or snowboarding; while 3 times as many people die from tornadoes and 25 times as many people died in bicycle accidents.
Proponents of helmet laws are quick to point out that “helmets save lives!” but the statistics don’t really back up that claim.
There has been no significant reduction in fatalities over the past nine seasons even as the use of helmets overall has increased to 57 percent overall [87 % for children under 10 and 75% for children 10 to 14 years old] usage among skiers and snowboarders…
Further, about 50% of those who die while skiing or snowboarding are wearing a helmet at the time of the accident, and helmet usage is lowest (43%) among the high-risk 18-24 year old male demographic which would not be affected by the law, and who are involved in the majority of ski/snowboard deaths.
Sure, wearing a helmet is the sensible thing to do. But there are a lot of sensible things, which impact more people to a greater degree, on which no tax money is ever spent. It’s not about the children and the people who told you that are full of crap. It’s grandstanding, trying to look like politicians are “doing something good” by solving a non-existent “problem”.
States are facing budget deficits and homeless people and foreclosure crises and people are out of work and can’t find jobs and the global warming — yet this is what the legislators spend their time & our money on? It’s not that I don’t “care about the children”. I just think that, among all the other problems facing society, “snowboard helmet laws” should fall pretty low on the list of priorities.
People need to start being and acting responsible for their own actions, and this means suffering the consequences of poor decision-making. It also means using common sense. If you’re an idiot or an excessive risk-taker sooner or later you’re going to find a way to off yourself and it shouldn’t be up to the rest of society to save you from yourself.
I’m not trying to pin all of society’s ills on helmet laws, but it certainly says something when this sort of nonsense law gets fast-tracked or prioritized over an innumerable list of real problems that need to be tackled. Start solving those problems, and then we can talk helmet laws.
