Huddled Masses

This is just a rant about crazy politicians and the over-legislation of protecting people against themselves.

http://www.motorcycle.com/news/passenger-age-cap-proposed-in-ontario-87568.html

This law would (if passed) prevent driving a motorcycle on a highway if another person under the age of 14 years is a passenger on the motorcycle. In support of the law, Helena Jaczek “cited statistics that show 199 motorcycle passengers under the age of 15 were injured from 1995-2005” ...

Seriously?

Let’s see, 200 injured people in 10 years? Wow, that does sound dangerous [rolleyes]. What other sorts of things are that dangerous? I mean, if we’re going to outlaw exhilarating fun just because you might get hurt doing it … clearly we want to start with the most dangerous stuff, right?

How about skateboarding? According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, skateboard-related injuries account for an estimated 50,000 emergency department visits and 1500 hospitalizations among children and adolescents in the United States each year.

How about roller coasters? The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions states that 1,713 ride related injuries occurred in 2005, and they average four fatalities a year going back to 1987! Oh my goodness! And of those injuries, over seven percent resulted in at least overnight stays in a hospital. (Of course, that’s not counting the 300 million other guests who safely enjoyed 1.8 billion rides).

Ms. Jaczek, maybe you’d like to start with actual statistics, like: what percentage of motorcycle rides ended up in an accident? A common one is injuries per “participant day” — that is, how many people participated in an activity each day. So, in order of priority, here’s a few things you should outlaw just to make your young people safer:

• Roller skating (912 emergency room treated injuries per million participant days)
• Basketball (799 per million)
• Football (704 per million)
• Soccer (405 per million)
• Fishing (85 injuries per million participant days)
• Golf (53 per million)
• Use of exercise equipment (nine injuries per million participant days)
• Billiards (eight per million)

• Camping (five per million)

Incidentally, according to the IAAP, the number for amusement parks is something like 0.00133 per million … and according to the Insurance Information Institute there were 6.2 million motorcycles on U.S. roads in 2005 … accounting for 0.4 percent of vehicle miles traveled in 2006 … with over 104,000 accidents and 4,810 deaths (the highest number up to that time since 1981). If we guess that those motorcycles get ridden for about half the year, maybe 5 times a week … that would be around 620 million “participant days” and would add up to about 0.00016 accidents per participant day.

As someone who neither motorcycles nor golfs, I think you should clearly outlaw Golf, since it not only has a higher rate of injury, but also restricts all that land from use by the rest of us who just want a place to throw a flying disc

PS: This politician was from Ontario, but the same idiots exist in New York: if you want to know what you should be spending your time on, I’ll give you one hint: stop spending money we don’t have.

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