another darwin candidate

[Shuffler]

Your insurance will go up if I trip and fall because I did not tie my shoes,  because I broke a leg climbing on my roof, because I grabbed a live wire thinking I was an electrician, because I hurt my back moving a couch, because I got drunk fall of my balcony, because I had a hard attack due to my diet, because I rear ended someone while I WAS wearing a seat belt, because I cut my finger cutting drywall, bla bla bla.  Non of this bothers anyone I guess since there are no laws against them and your insurance will go up if your company decides they are losing money because of all this.  But, riding with out a helmet  

Let me ask this.  If you think it is irresponsible to ride without a helmet and some how your insurance will go up if I have an accident, how responsible is it to get on that bike in the first place?  They offer no protection what so ever and any accident while riding one of them will result in injury.  It is a question of how bad.  So helmet or not, you can rack up a pretty good bill at the hospital, lose a limb, become paralyzed, or die.  Shouldn't then be also elegal to even ride a bike?  How is that different?

Your right.. it is absolutely impossible to protect yourself from stupid people. They are on the protected list and their numbers grow daily because of this. Back in the day they thinned theirselves out which also inhibited their numbers and they were unable to reproduce.

[Rob52240]

There is a way that not wearing a helmet can harm someone else.  Here is a perfect example.  You are driving down the road, happy as a clam.  You come to a four way intersection, and by your own negligence get into a crash with a motorcyclist.  The motorcyclist is catapaulted from his/her motorcycle, and hits his/her head on something (e.g., another car, the road itself) and is killed or horribly disfigured.  If they were wearing a helmet, this wouldn't have happened, and you would pay far less to cover their medical expenses.

As you can see, there is a significant advantage to mandating safety gear.  This advantage is a lack of vehicular manslaughter charges levied against you.

-Penguin

Circular logic

[dedalos]

A HA! Sarcasm, eh?!?! 

But here's the catch... if you are a participatory insurance (mutual) policyowner or happen to be stockholder as well as a policyowner in a "stock" insurance company, then you do lose when someone else does something stupid! 

Well, then, riding a bike should be made elegal to protect the stock holders.  Even better, selling insurance seems a bit of a risky behavior given the crazy things we do.  That should be elegal also 

BTW, I was asked by an insurance company 10 years ago to sign a paper that said that I would not ever sky dive again in order to keep the price of the life insurance down.  See?  It is doable without laws.  Put it in the contract.

[RTHolmes]

selling insurance seems a bit of a risky behavior given the crazy things we do.

when you aggregate the risks its actually quite lucrative 

[Reaper90]

That should be elegal also 

Are you just trying to cash in on the hip "internet e-age" by saying e-legal?

That should be illegal to speak that way!