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Last week, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger crashes his motorcycle when a driver made an illegal turn in front of him. Today, they were both fined. It seems that Big Ben didn’t have a license to operate a motorcycle.
Also of note: “Only licensed motorcyclists can ride without a helmet in Pennsylvania.” Ponder that one for a minute.
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Every coin having two sides, it’s intersting that there’s not much talk about the driver that made the ILLEGAL left turn in front of him.
I almost lost my right foot to a such a maneuver. It is a fairly common, ticketable offense that ends very badly for the motorcycle coming the other way.
I always wear a helmet when I ride, but I dunno. You would think the focus might be on the one who actually CAUSED the accident.
Hat: Ordinarily, lacking a required endorsement is tantamount to lacking a license. I don’t have a CDL endorement on my DL. If I were tooling around behind the wheel of a semi and got into an accident, the cops would be similarly unamused.
Oddly, I recall Alabama allowing 15-year-olds to get motorcycle licenses whereas one had to wait to 16 to get a license to drive a car. That seems very odd in hindsight.
I just looked it up to see if things had changed since I was worried about since things (1982). They haven’t. Indeed, Alabama apparently will issue a motor driven cycle license to 14-year-olds [PDF].
How about the possibility that this oddly worded law is more directed towards passengers? In other words, anybody can ride a motorcycle (as opposed to driving one), but the law only allows those who are so licensed to not wear a helmet. If you’re an unlicensed passenger riding pillion (or maybe even in a sidecar), you have to wear a helmet.
I mean, really, there are many laws in this country which are much weirder than that interpretation.
