I was in Hawaii this past weekend for my friend Jay’s wedding. While there, I discovered that Hawaii is a helmet-not-required state. Yippee. It’s also a state in which you can ride in the back of a pickup truck with apparently no worries. Fantastic. Though they don’t have everything right – Hawaii is also a favorite place for homosexuals to congregate, and their gun laws are extremely restrictive, to name two – I do very much admire them for having the guts to allow people to be stupid if they want to.
Pushing the responsibility of wearing a helmet onto the operator and his/her insurance policy is a much better policy than requiring such safety measures by the state. It is refreshing to see that at least some of the states in America aren’t trying to make me safe – they’ll let me be as crazy/stupid/nutty as I want.