Motorcycling is "bad public policy"

“Any public policy that encourages anyone to get on a motorcycle is bad public policy. The problem is that the vehicle is inherently dangerous.”

So says Dr. Jay Falk with the Florida College of Emergency Physicians and academic chairman of emergency medicine for Orlando Regional Medical Center. The quote is from an article about Florida’s lack of a mandatory motorcycle insurance law. (Washington and Florida are the only two states that do not require motorcyclists to carry insurance.)

The thrust of the article is that by not requiring insurance, Florida makes motorcycle ownership more attractive to young riders, specifically teens, who then crash and die. To bolster the argument they offer the following examples:

Last weekend, three Palm Bay teens died when two uninsured motorcycles carrying them crashed into each other at high speed. And late Monday, a 23-year-old, uninsured Kissimmee man died when he crashed a Honda motorcycle while passing three cars in a no-passing zone.

Sorry, but a 23-year-old man is not a teen; nor I suspect would a law requiring him to carry insurance have necessarily kept him off a bike or kept him from violating traffic laws.

But wait, there’s more; referring to crash involving the three Palm Bay teens:

In last weekend’s triple fatality in Palm Bay, two 19-year-old men — one with a passenger celebrating her 17th birthday — were riding without insurance or motorcycle licenses. They crashed into each other going at least 80 mph on a residential street, police said.

So not only did they not have insurance, they did not have motorcycle LICENSES. The deaths are tragic, certainly. But please, someone explain to me how a law requiring these riders to have insurance would have prevented these deaths? The lack of a legally-required license did not stop them; why would lack of legally-required insurance?

Quoting from the same article:

Older riders tend to be more cautious and carry insurance, police say, but still crash and die routinely.

Huh, so the older riders that have insurance crash and die too? Interesting…