Posted on Tue, Mar. 14, 2006

IN MY OPINION

Biker death toll in Daytona goes hog wild againBY

FRED GRIMMfgrimm@MiamiHerald.com

This year's edition of that raucous good time called Bike Week racked up 18 deaths.

Eighteen deaths would represent a particularly gruesome week for the U.S. military. Last week, as the fun was unfolding in Daytona Beach, a total of seven soldiers were killed in Iraq.

In Iraq, of course, well-armed insurgents are bent on killing American soldiers. In Daytona, attendees at America's deadliest jamboree mostly do it to themselves.

Eighteen deaths in another sort of festival might raise serious questions about the wisdom of promoting an annual outbreak of utter mayhem. Imagine the pall that 18 corpses might cast over the Fort Myers Beach Shrimp Festival, the Bonita Spring Art Festival, the Arcadia Rodeo or Jacksonville's All-Florida Championship Cheerleading Challenge. All of these events managed to make it through this past weekend without a related death.

Thousands of revelers danced down Calle Ocho in Miami without inflicting fatal injuries on one another.

MEANINGLESS STATS

In Florida, however, biker deaths are recorded on a different ledger. Since the Florida law requiring motorcycle riders to wear crash helmets was repealed in 2000, the official position has been that the 81 percent increase in biker deaths has been a meaningless statistical aberration which should have no bearing on public policy.

Anti-helmet law activists maintain that the numbers have been skewed anyway by a conspiracy of trauma docs and insurance companies and medical examiners and highway safety busybodies and hospital bean counters and know-it-all editorial writers -- none of whom appreciate the joy of wind in the hair and asphalt in the frontal lobe. The initial reports out of Daytona Beach indicate that at least 12 of the 18 bikers killed during Bike Week were riding bareheaded when they crashed.

Yes, but weren't they exercising their God-given American right to crack unprotected skulls into any roadside attraction of their choosing? Which ought to be fine, as long as bikers then have the good manners to succumb. It's those who insist on lingering around hospital trauma centers whose personal freedoms intrude on the commonweal.

By last week, midway through Bike Week, 34 bikers had been admitted to Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach. Halifax spokeswoman Kate Holcomb said 15 of those were housed in the trauma wards with severe injuries, running up prodigious medical bills. She said the hospital would need another day to total up biker admissions from Wednesday to Sunday.

FEW ARE INSURED

Last year, 60 easy riders were admitted to Halifax with serious injuries during Bike Week. In 2004, the number was 78. The hospital has complained for years that few of the motorcyclists hauled into their trauma ward have bothered with a state requirement that anyone riding without a helmet purchase a $10,000 personal-injury policy. Although, as Holcomb noted Monday, ``That would barely pay for their helicopter ride to the hospital.''

The costs of treating uninsured and underinsured bikers has risen from $20 million a year in 2000 to $50 million last year -- a big chunk of that money going to treat head trauma victims.

But no one expects the Florida Legislature to resurrect the mandatory helmet law. Polls indicate that 80 percent of the general public would support a helmet law. No matter. Lawmakers don't dare stir up the biker lobby, which can summon 30,000 unmuffled hogs to come roaring into Tallahassee and stage a fearsome rolling demonstration of middle-aged pseudo outlaws on Harleys.

They disguise their paunches under black leather vests with bold inscriptions: LIVE FREE OR DIE (or maybe convalesce at the public expense).
Besides, so many bareheaded riders would likely rack up another big death toll.

Fred Grimm is The Miami Herald's Broward columnist.