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Comment by RhysU | Hacker News Reader

These same arguments apply to motorcycles. I find them ridiculous. But, it's your head man and as an adult you should be able to go helmetless if you so choose.

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In a world without health insurance, fine. Otherwise the system will try to minimize the costs - by forcing the people contribute at minimizing the risks. This is how it works now (in Germany, maybe also other places?) if you have a bike or ski accident without wearing a helmet, if it was self caused you'll probably get reduced payments.

Where does it end?

Do you get reduced payments for orthopedic rehab if you play sports and get injured?

Do you get reduced payments for diabetes treatments if you're overweight?

It doesn’t have to be a slippery slope. People who take on more risk or have higher protection pay higher premiums.

> But, it's your head man and as an adult you should be able to go helmetless if you so choose

The reasoning behind wearing an helmet on motorbikes is two fold:

- there are a lot more chances of being left disabled by the accident than dying, which is something you might not have thought about, but when you're disabled suddenly it's not your head anymore, you depend on other people to take care of your head and the rest of your body. There's a cost involved in severe head traumas and the monetary one is by far the less important.

- your head splattered on the asphalt is something other people might not want to watch. Some people might be even traumatized by that view. So please if you really want to risk it, do it when you're alone, in the middle of nowhere. Because you can still do it, you won't get arrested if you do it, simply fined.

but the real reason why I do not understand this "easy rider" alle cozze argument is: helmets are super cool! If professional bikers wear it, then why not?

Not in countries with socialized health care. I shouldn't have to pay for other people's recklessness.

As someone who lives in a country with socialised healthcare, who has occasionally done lightly reckless things in the past, I am happy to pay for other people's recklessness.

Or, rather, I am happy that if you end up in hospital for any reason at all, the only thing on everyone's mind is treating you as best they can, and helping you to get better. No matter how you ended up there, or whether it was your fault or not, or how much money you have - if you're hurt, people will take care of you.

It's what I'd want to happen to me, it's what I'd want to happen to my family, it's what I'd want to happen to some of my friends who have somewhat more reckless hobbies than I do. And so I'm happy to have my tax money do the same thing for complete strangers, because they're somebody else's family or good friends. (And even if they're not, being alone is not a reason to deny someone healthcare.)

I trust people not to "take advantage" of this and be stupidly reckless simply because the healthcare is there, because... even with great healthcare that's available for free at the point of use, serious injuries suck. Having great healthcare doesn't make pain less painful, or physiotherapy to come back from injury less time-consuming, or less of a crimp in your whole goddamn life.

While I totally agree with you on the payments side, I still like to see the message being sent out that reckless has consequences outside my own little head. Even those family members can suffer from my reckless behaviour. Right now, in case of a self caused accident without precaution measures (like, no helmet) the insurance will shorten the payments yes, but the system also won't let me default on the treatments - social support will kick in. So I have both the support and the threat and I think it works fine like that.

As long as you yourself pay for the potential "avoidable" damage: sure!

Except if they wreck and are on medicare you and I are footing that bill. Or if you bump them with a car and then they die because they're not wearing a helmet it's going to really fuck up your life too.

Or if they just don't have insurance, the hospital passes on the cost to recoup their care in the form of high rates for everyone.

You don't ride a bicycle in a vacuum.

Isn't that argument easily extendible to anything optional that is also dangerous..? Also this is an argument from a US perspective. As someone who lives in Canada, where healthcare is in large part paid by taxes, I have no interest in restricting what people do because "it'll cost me more". Leads down a road I don't like

You know that if something is paid by taxes, and you pay taxes, you are footing the bill for it? Yes you aren't going to get an itemized bill with a line item for Jim's cracked skull, but that's still money that could have gone to things like schools or infrastructure or cancer treatments or what have you.

Then why is anyone allowed to drink, smoke, or be fat? Why draw the line at helmets at not even more expensive choices?

This is basically what I mean. If we go down the road of preventing people from doing things based on medical expenses, where does it end

We do put restrictions on drinking and smoking, such as limiting consumption to certain times, places and age groups, and many places have things like taxes on soda and other such tactics to reduce obesity. We have even heavier restrictions on other activities that don't pose much threat to anyone but the person doing it, such as hard drugs. We don't want to stop people from having fun, we're all willing to bear some cost for our fellow man, but minor inconveniences which lead to big cost savings make sense. Helmets are incredibly beneficial and the burden is pretty light - even when not required by law most people voluntarily wear helmets. Mandatory helmet laws allow cyclists to keep doing what they love while dramatically reducing the number of severe injuries that society at large needs to deal with, it's a happy medium.

That is what I meant yes, I am okay with paying for stupid things that people do, else we end up with an insane system where are prevented from doing anything even mildly dangerous or disrupted, as it'll cost the taxpayers money.

I'm infinitely more concerned with the insane amount of government waste that happens where that money could go to schools or infrastructure or cancer treatments. I imagine that government waste is orders of magnitude more expensive than cyclists damaging themselves because they weren't wearing helmets, for example.

It's a very small step from there to saying that activities like above treeline winter hiking, ice climbing, motorcycle riding, playing football, etc. should be prohibited (or at least require expensive private insurance) because some number of people consider them unreasonably dangerous.

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