In what could only be described as the ultimate irony, 55-year-old Philip Contos, a protester against the mandatory use of motorcycle helmets, died in upstate New York on July 3, 2011 when he flipped over the handlebars of his Harley-Davidson while on a protest ride and landed head-first on the pavement. Police said he would have survived the accident had he been wearing a helmet. While there is good reason to challenge paternalistic government intervention on certain issues, matters of preserving life is not one of them. Judaism insists on doing all that necessary to save lives, even though it might impinge on personal freedoms.
