Unfortunately, the anti-helmet crowd has gained the ear of our top elected officials. The Legislature is considering a bill that would repeal Pennsylvania's 35-year-old mandatory helmet law. Gov. Ed Rendell has promised to sign a repeal if it crosses his desk.

Despite decades of scientific research and development, helmets are still derided as a fraud by thousands of motorcyclists. These are not particularly bright people, obviously. Anti-helmet lobby groups such as A.B.A.T.E. (A Brotherhood Aiming Towards Education), for example, deny the fact that a head wrapped in a protective shell stands a better chance than a bare one against the tarmac.

I crashed a motorcycle in 2001 at more than 100 mph, with the motorcycle and all 290 pounds of my personage landing on top of my helmet. Parts of the fiberglass outer shell were ground into splinters, and the emergency room doctors at Washington Hospital in Washington County spent hours explaining how closely my head would have resembled a punctured soccer ball had it not been for my helmet.

Their opinion is supported by the Pennsylvania chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians, which has renounced the possible helmet law repeal. So has the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, which has watched motorcycle fatalities drop by as much as 33 percent in states that have adopted helmet laws.

Saved lives aren't enough for the anti-helmet crowd. Charles Umbenhauer, a lobbyist for A.B.A.T.E., somehow remains blind to these and other facts about the effectiveness of helmets.

His group sponsors an annual anti-helmet law rally that roars along the Parkway West from Settler's Cabin Park in Robinson through Downtown. In protest, bikers defy the helmet law by riding bare-headed. When the ride is over, prominent accident attorneys speak to the assembled, reassuring them on their suicidal quest. They conveniently ignore the kegs of beer served at the event that also contribute to motorcycle deaths.

Umbenhauer recently suggested that helmets are useless at speeds above 65 mph. His argument fades easily in the light of my own accident and hundreds of weekly crashes by motorcycle racers and others traveling at high speeds.

The saddest thing about the anti-helmet lobby is that its members are little more than tragic fashion victims. Self-romanticizing and egotistical, these motorcyclists are caught up in dated Peter Fonda fantasies about freedom and wind blowing through their hair.

They have found a ready audience among opportunistic politicians willing to jeopardize the safety -- and the insurance rates -- of our state's two-wheeled commuters in exchange for a chance to appear opposed to big government.