Perfectly Legal

On July 8, the Portland Press Herald ran a story about a tragic 4th of July weekend motorcycle accident.  A group of six motorcycle riders swerved to avoid a turning car, which they came upon suddenly after rounding a curve. Forty-three-year old Rochelle Plummer was thrown from her bike and killed.  She was not wearing a helmet.  Nor were four of the other five riders.

As a doctor, you might expect that I would have something to say about the lack of helmet wearing.

I do: it is stupid.  People who ride motorcycles should wear helmets. I've seen too many people with head injuries not to believe this is important.

That being said, it legal in this state to ride a motorcycle without a helmet.  Which is also stupid.  But whether or not it should be a law, right now it simply isn't. So people can chose to wear helmets or not.  And many in Rochelle's group worked in public safety.  They knew the risks. 

So I was dismayed to read in the Press Herald sidebar:

INVOLVED IN ACCIDENT

ROCHELLE PLUMMER, 43, of Gray. Died in crash. No helmet.

Is it not enough that she died?  Do we have to publicly pour salt in her family's wound?

It seemed a classic case of blaming the victim.  Yet, when newspapers run stories about people who died for other reasons, they do not always feel the need to try and assign blame.  Maybe we should.  How about:

JOE SMITH, 56, of East Gish.  Died of heart attack.  Ate fatty foods. Never exercised.

Or perhaps we should start doing this for victims of crimes:

MELANIE PARKER, 23, of Way Up Yonder.  Raped.  Wore revealing clothing.

These could be taken to ridiculous extremes.

Obviously, there is a place for trying to understand why people die, or have their lives seriously impacted in some way.  When we do this, we can potentially prevent harm from coming to others in the future.  So the Press Herald is not remiss in commenting on a lack of helmet wearing. Perhaps their attention to the problem will someday lead to a change in Maine laws.

In the meantime, I wish they had not listed "No helmet" in their sidebar. We should let her family mourn her death without feeling the weight of public judgment.

She died doing something perfectly legal.