The Legendary: If you ride a hawg, get ready for this one...

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

If you ride a hawg, get ready for this one...

The CDC – yeah, the Center for Disease Control – in Atlanta – isn't satisfied playing dumb about HIV and Hep C, Ebola and weaponized bird flu.

No way.

Now, they've taken on the study of motorcycle crashes and made the case that there is an epidemic of crash-related deaths caused by – you guessed it – not wearing a helmet!

Yay-us!

According to the Motorcycle Riders Foundation, “The study is nothing new, in fact it is a collection of conclusions drawn from past studies and old statistics, some of the CDC's conclusions even seem to be drawn from thin air.”(click here for a report)

There's the Florida study that says fatalities increased 63.4% from 2000 to 2009.

It's true, but it's equally true that motorcycle registrations increased more than 100% during the same nine-year time frame, according to the foundation.

"More imaginary numbers hold that helmets save money." The claim: In 2008, the U.S. Saved $3 billion because of helmet use - and then the study claimed that the U.S. could have saved an additional $1.8 billion if mandatory helmet laws were on the books.

The evidence that all this is true? Got to be around here somewhere, but don't look in the Center for Disease Control's study, because it's not there, said Jeff Hennie, Vice President of Government Relations and Public Affairs for the Motorcycle Riders Foundation.

“They provide absolutely zero evidence of this supposed financial burden.”

On the other hand, the foundation has some positive figures of its own. Take rider education. In New Hampshire, said Robert Le Tourneau the state's motorcycle education specialist, there have been 15 fatal motorcyle accidents of rider who tookk the class since 1990 – out of 44,000 students trained during the same time period.

That adds up to 0.34% of fatal motorcycle accidents - with no mandatory helmet law.

CDC uses the highway traffic safety administration's base year for motorcycle fatalities – 1997.

With 2,116 deaths for 3,826,000 registered scooters, 0.055% were killed.

In 2010, there were 4,502 fatalities for 8,368,000 motorcycles registered. That factors out to 0.053%.

“So we have more than doubled the motorcycle population and we have actually reduced fatalities,” said Mr. Hennie.

Then there's the graphic novel about a pandemic of zombie virus that attacks an unsuspecting world – published by you know who.

The CDC in Atlanta has a website devoted to the subject. Just type in CDC - and zombies - and read all about it.(click here to see the CDC site)

The solution?

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that people distance themselves from anyone displaying these symptoms. They are also recommending that families gather emergency supplies and start making plans in case they are asked to evacuate...”

Evacuate? Asked to evacuate? Say what?

Yeah, you can get more information about that from www.emergency.cdc.gov – or you can talk to anyone who lived through Katrina...(el click-ola)

So, you can grab your flashlight and your crank radio, bottled water and get on the bus, Gus – or you can type in Motorcycle Riders Foundation and read up on the latest news on how to join ABATE and other organizations that are, like the Motorcycle Riders Foundation, “in the business of freedom.”