UF football players can be allowed to ride motor scooters without a helmet, but when they step on the field to play... they have to put on a helmet?!

Motor scooters have become so prevalent on and around college campuses that they, along with backpacks, cell phones, and iPods, have nearly become a required item of purchase for higher education.  Their popularity, however, is not limited to a single demographic.

In 2007, scooter sales in the United States reached its highest level in 20 years(http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2008/05/post.html).  Annual scooter sales through September 2008 have increased a staggering 50.6% ... from 2007 sales for the same period (http://www.webbikeworld.com/Motorcycle-news/blog/).  That's a fifty percent increase from a record setting year.  Few other industries can claim ever having garnered such gaudy statistics, and most likely no other industry can even approach these numbers given the current national economic crisis.

Scooters are indeed popular for many reasons, including cost (both actual and subsequently-related costs, e.g. gas), convenience, and relative low maintenance.  Because insufficient parking is a constant and continuing issue on campuses across the country, as well as on the University of Florida campus, college students are particularly attracted to scooters.

The natural laws of cause-and-effect, however, dictate that this recent "scooter surge" would effect other aspects of our society as well.  Unfortunately, change is not positive in this circumstance, as the dramatic (and even unprecedented) increase in scooter sales has brought about a commensurate, if not greater, increase in scooter related accidents and injuries. In Gainesville alone there have been 2 fatal accidents involving University scooter riders due to traumatic brain injuries in 2008.  In both of these deaths the scooter riders were not wearing helmets.

According to the Gainesville Sun, 4,000 permits were issued for University of Florida students for motorcycles and scooters in the Fall of 2008 alone.

Gainesville Police Sgt. Joe Raulerson, who heads the agency's traffic safety team, said he doesn't know if a helmet would have prevented all the injuries the two students received in these scooter crashes. But, he said, wearing a helmet couldn't have hurt.

Raulerson was also quoted in the Sun, saying some of UF's football players ride scooters, and like many scooter riders on and near campus, don't wear helmets. "They're riding around campus without a helmet. Yet, when they step out onto the field, they put a helmet on," he said.  

The law states that scooter riders under 21 must wear helmets and carry $10,000 of medical payment coverage.  Is that enough? It is common place to see not only helmet-less scooter riders on the streets of Gainesville, but riders without other more less than subtle precautions like dress (wearing shorts, tank tops, flip flops, and a back pack, etc.).  Scooter riders sans helmet or shoes, riding double, wearing headphones, and so forth only increase the potential risk for accidents and injuries and fatalities. 

It is time for tougher Florida helmet laws as well as for them to be enforced to protect our Gainesville students and all scooter riders during this time of surge in scooter sales.  Do we have to wait for more students to be killed or injured before something meaningful is done?  We protect our football players with adequate protection, shouldn't we do the same for all UF students?  Football players of all ages are required to wear helmets before stepping onto the field, and they may not remove the helmet at any time until they leave the field.  Yet scooter riders, who travel on a much harder surface (grass vs. asphalt) and at a far greater speed than football players, are not held to these same requirements and regulations.  Plain common sense should tell us that something is wrong with this picture.

For more information and my views on this topic as a personal injury/accident lawyer/attorney serving Gainesville, Ocala, Inverness and Lake City and all over North Florida, see my previous blog, "It is time for our legistature to rethink the helmet law for Floirda!".