Well I have finally gone off the deepend with our bleed heart politicians etc. I was just reading about the guy who is fighting the motorcycle helmet law based on religious beliefs! I guess all common sense is finally gone. Imagine if this clown went to Mosport to drive on the track and didnt have to wear a helmet?! Am I the only one who this this is totally ridiculous and out of hand finally? If he doesnt have to wear one (even though it is totally dangerous and utterly STUPID!) does that mean none of us would? After all with equal rights etc.................

 

Just another idiot wanting attention I guess.

 

It's completely ridiculous, everyone in Canada has plenty of religious freedom and yet people just need to keep pushing it further and further. Next it will be "I had to shoot the guy, it's my religious belief" Are they ever going to just draw the line? You come to Canada you need to abide by our laws, plain and simple.

 

Meh, let him forego his helmet. He won't last long on the 400 series without it. Darwinism will take over then..........

 

Seems stupid at first, but if you consider that the guy is probably Sikh then it makes sense that he can't wear a helmet with his turban on. I don't know a whole lot about them, but I'm pretty sure they are very strict with the wearing of the turban, meaning they can't just remove it to wear a helmet. I'm sure this guy realizes the risks involved and is simply respecting the beliefs of his religion. I'm sure he'd rather wear a helmet then a turban.

If people want to start riding without helmets, that's their decision. Besides, the associated hospital costs resulting from an accident will probably be lower because the rider will more then likely die, rather then having to be kept in a hospital for treatment because they survived thanks to the helmet.

 

So I guess we should have different laws for different people. I couldnt care less about what he chooses for his religion. The law states that you must wear a helmet to operate a motorcycle. PERIOD. Btw, how did he get his license? Wouldnt they have made him wear a helmet when doing his motorcycle training and licensing

 

I agree. Sure, if your religion doesn't permit you to remove your head-dress then don't remove it.........................but don't expect a country to bend its Highway Traffic and Saftey laws because of it since it is that individual's beliefs that prevent him from sticking to the law.

 

Seems stupid at second thought, too. If he's a Sikh, and doesn't want to wear a helmet while motorcycling, he has a great option - TAKE THE BUS! (or a car). It's not like anyone is compelled to ride a motorcycle, so if doing so forces one to make a choice between religious practice and the law, a person has to choose which they will honour and accept the consequences - simple as that. It's not like riding or driving are a right.

As far as saving taxpayers money by Darwinian elimination - it's just as likely, if not more, that a person without a helmet will suffer a permanent brain injury, and become a lifelong care burden for the heathcare system and taxpayers.

 

It is no different than Jehovah's witnesses that refuse potentially life saving blood transfusions. Why would this particular person's belief offend you in anyway? S/he isn't asking you to follow their faith. But rather asking for tolerance for them to practice their own. I agree with you that it is a dangerous proposition but I don't feel the need to get upset about it. You probably missed the Supreme Court of Canada decision that allows students to now carry religious knives to school, which has far more potential to effect others. It got me a little upset but if that is the price we pay for having the Charter I am for it.

Not really just someone seeking religious freedom aided by the Charter, which I think that takes a little intelligence and courage to seek. S/he appears to not want to be hearded like sheep.

Exactly which law are they breaking? My understanding is that they are following the law and now asking for the law of the land to be applied to their request. The Law on any given issue is not always clear and often requires decision or elaboration. If the request is denied I am sure they will comply with the ruling. But I don't see an issue with making a request.

lol, true enough and if that is the person's informed decision more power to them. I see it as no different than a person that goes skydiving or bungee jumping. We all know that there is a potential to go SPLAT but people still choose to do it. If this person wants to have their brain spread on the 400 series highway in the name of religion more power to them.

Now this is the perfect assessment from my point of view. I don't know whether you are right about the actual associated costs but you have observed that it has little to no impact on your life or mine. Therefore WHO CARES.

 

Wearing a turban or a helment is his choice.

Amish choose to adhere to their religious beliefs so they don't drive cars.

If he wants to adhere to his religious beliefs then that means that he has chosen not to wear a helment and therefore not ride a motorcycle.

His choices lead to his consequences.

 

im with classic auto on this one. stop your bitchin an accept it for what it is.. .

DARWINS BACK!! and its about damn time.

in fact u wanna really improve the worlds population by leaps and bounds.. remove ALL legislation designed to force a person to protect themselves. Stupid people abound, and i agree the first 6 months will be pretty bloody as the very bottom of the breeding pool misfits drop like lemmings on parade. But look at the utopia at the end. As all the clowns an genetic "oopsies" drop, everyone wins. The religious no helmet clans can take the squishy head approach to reach thier god faster, the "U aint gunna tell me howter live" morons can prove us right as we tell eachother about how they died. The no blood transfusion people can also take that express checkout lane to god, pure as whatever disease kills em will allow.

And the rest of us?

We get shorter lines at the checkouts, less morning traffic, way more parking spaces, and cheaper insurance once its all said an done. There is great potential in this idea and i think canada should step to the forefront and show its people what true freedom is .

 

Talkslick, I totally agree.

I think this argument boils down to "who owns my body", clearly it's not ME, otherwise there wouldn't be an INSANE number of laws that protect my body, from essentially myself. Were my body truely my own, there would be no seatbelt laws, no helmet laws, no cigarette age restrictions, no trans-fat bans, I can't think of anymore off the top of my head, but these are laws that if i chose to "break them" cannot possibly harm anyone but myself. Essentially, if i hurt myself, my socialized health care has to fix me, so they OWN me and my body, and have to leglislate me into looking after it.

In no way am i advocating NOT wearing a seatbelt or a helmet, you'd be a ******* moron not to, but it should be your right to be that moron. Unfortunatley, it is not.

My point being, then -- that if you drop your bike going 150 without a ******* helmet, either because your a retarded douchebag as a result of a) inbred genetics or b) your religion, then that act should AUTOMATICALLY opt you the hell out of our healthcare system. I do not CARE if you wear your helmet or seatbelt, but i do not want to my tax dollars saving your life in the event that you MAY be able to procreate and pass those high quality genes on.

 

hey.. if they survive the splat sans helmet i am ALL for tryin to save thier lives.. med students need practice too if they peel whats left of your carcass out of a car or from around a tree an ur still breathing the i think ambulances an such should arrive as normal.. but when they get to emergency they got a tag sayin "this **** dint even try" and you get treated by med students

 

The last couple of posts seem to have missed the point of my rant. Im not talking about the helmet law per say, I'm upset that we will have to bend or change a law because of one persons beliefs. I totally agree that he has options, im my opinion they are: spend thousands on making a massive oversize helmet to fit his turban and have it DOT'd as per the regulation, put on a regular helmet and obey the provinces law or don't ride bike where there is a helmet law in place.

 

+1

Religion can be taught and practiced without government interference.

but while we're at it...remove public funding for catholic schools too. Either fund all the major religions or don't fund any religious schooling and just focus on teaching kids math, science, history and English (especially the latter so that we don't have more ub3r l33t haxx0rs y0).

 

Law is the law, its not about religion. But hey if he wants to ride with out a helmet let him.

 

Just think, if this were some other countries, we wouldnt even be discussing this, he would have been executed by now.

 

Can you define WE? If I am not mistaken the person asking for the accomodation is a Canadian just like you and I.

I think there is more than one person in his faith.

No-one is bending any law! He is asking for the law to be APPLIED.

We spend millions everyday based on people's beliefs. In this scenario it doesn't even cost us a dime.

 

So why don't you move there? You seem to be suggesting that they have a better judicial system.

 

I remember a couple months ago I was riding through the middle 48's, and I think somewhere around Utah, a couple bikers passed us without helmets. I later found out helmets were optional there.


IMO, how is this any different than Omish or Hudderite's asking not to have their photo's taken on thier drivers liscence? Or sihk children carrying their cerimonial knifes in school?

This guy/gal wants to ride his bike without a helmet, so he can enjoy a hobby or availiable form of transportation without taking his religious beliefs and throwing them out the door.

Point of Fact:

We have an inspector at our factory that DOES NOT wear a hard hat in mandatory hard hat areas as required by OH&S and the LAW. He wears the headgear of his religion.

 

According to Scientology, If you protest their religion or oppose it openly, and they recognize and know who you are - someone is appointed to seek out and shoot you with a colt .45. The only thing that stops this in some cases, is that you

A) Wear a Mask so they dont know who you are.

B) Its against the law. For now.

 

The part I'd be most worried about in this case is if all of a sudden not everyone has to wear a helmet, what will happen to our insurance costs. Sure they might be more likely to die, but then what's the cost of the settlement? Also, in a more minor accident, permanent, life altering brain injuries will be much more likely and the cost of a lifetime's worth of personal care is going to be insane. I don't want to have to pay for that.

I know that on the job site some people wrap their turbans specially so that they can easily take them off like a hat and then put on their hard hats or whatever other protective gear they need for their jobs.

The law protects religious freedoms, but it doesn't say that you can go around doing whatever the heck you want under the guise of that freedom. No one's forcing you to drive a motorcycle and it's not a right either, it's a privilege.

 

Agreed, but I find it hard to believe that a person would subject himself to racist views simply to ride a motorcycle. It is far tougher to wear a turban in our society than to conform to the majority and remove it.



But what annoys me is the racists that come out of the woodworks when we get a story like this one. Have the guts to say you don't like a person because of their faith, race etc. rather than trying to hide behind some notion that a person is bringing down the free world by exercising their constitutional right to practice their chosen religion.

Well if he is allowed an exemption based on faith I guess you could also put on a turban instead of a helmet. And of course follow the rest of the faith.

 

The reason there are laws that require one to protect themself, such as helmet and seatbelt and smoking laws, is because if one fails to do so, the rest of society gets to pay the considerable costs in terms of money and healthcare resources and lost productivity in tending to the aftermath. For every one person who might have otherwise survived had they worn a helmet, but is killed "cleanly", by which I mean they die immediately or at the scene, minimizing the efforts and money spent saving them, there will be several more who survive. These will require lengthy hospital stays in expensive critical care beds, rehabilitation, and possibly long term, even permanent care in an extended care facility, because of brain injuries that don't kill, but leave them limited or completely unable to care for themselves. The concept is not unlike combat injuries vs fatalities - for every soldier killed, typically three or four more are wounded - lost limbs, eyes, etc. It's the multiplication of non-fatal, or not immediately fatal injuries that provides the foundation in law for limiting individual freedom to make bad choices in favour of the greater good of society, not just protecting people from their own possibly poor choices.

It's because there's a very real cost to society when somebody goes from being a potential contributor to a long-term burden that we have "protect-from-self" laws. And that's why I think there's no reason to repeal or exempt motorcycle helmet laws to accommodate religious practice - as I said before, motorcycling is not a necessity, and not protected as a Charter right (eg, freedom of mobility, or some such - the Supreme Court has already ruled that no "right to drive" for example, exists), so if a person finds themselves in conflict between religious practice and the requirement to wear a helmet motorcycling (or at the track, for that matter), they have to choose which they will follow and live with that.

As far as the Darwinian argument - nothing assures that people who self-select premature death through their own stupidity will do so before reproducing - hence they may very well not have removed their genes from the gene pool. And besides which, it is a perilously similar argument to that of Twentieth century eugenicists - basically saying that we need to improve the human breed by eliminating the weak or undesirable - which reached it's consummation in the ****'s Final Solution, and in Rwanda, and the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, and the former Yugoslavia - and on and on, where one group decided they were the arbiters of what was desirable to eliminate from the gene pool. The tens of millions killed through genocides and progroms in the past century are the unfortunate extreme to which such Darwinian thinking tends to lead. Besides which, poor judgment, and even accidents, are at least at least as much a symptom of youth or inexperience as "bad genes". And I can think of a couple of very promising young people from personal acquaintance, without thinking very hard, who succumbed to that before they could go on to fulfill their promise.

 

I took it as suggesting we accommodate a great deal here - but even so, this legal challenge sounds spurious - and that there's lots of places where much less spurious issues wouldn't even be allowed to be expressed. So how it's meant may have to be clarified by the OP