Riding Helmetless Only for Numbskulls

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State Rep. Dan Frankel remembers well the day his fellow House members voted to repeal the state's mandatory helmet law for bikers.

The Squirrel Hill Democrat had just supported paying for an exhaustive study by the legislative Budget and Finance Committee on the effects of helmet law repeal, the results of which would not be ready for nearly three years.

But with the governor beholden to anti-helmet lobbyists and groups such as ABATE -- or Alliance of Bikers Aimed Towards Education -- Pennsylvania's 35-year-old helmet law had about as much chance of surviving as a bareheaded biker in a 70 mph head-on crash.

That might be a poor choice of metaphor, but …