Scott Pohl tried to reassure his parents he'd be safe riding his new motorcycle without a helmet. Not long afterward he died from head injuries when a driver who never saw him turned into his path. His helmet was in his satchel.

(Photo by Melanie Maxwell I AnnArbor.com)

Related: Search a database of motorcycle crash records.

The words are achingly sad, a glimpse into the past, from the perspective of the present.

A father is afraid. His son is not wearing his motorcycle helmet. And the son tries to reassure him - to a point.

“I'm always going to be more of a risk taker then you ever were,” Scott Pohl says in a message sent from his phone on May 23. “That's where I get a thrill out of life. You may call it stupid but I call it living. I hope you can understand that.”

Not long afterward, on the second day of summer, the 25-year-old went over his handlebars into a Ford Explorer whose driver never saw him coming. His helmet was in his motorcycle’s right satchel.

UNEASY RIDERS

An MLive special report on the aftermath of Michigan's new helmet-choice law.

• Story summaries to navigate series

• Full coverage: All stories in one place

Sunday: What records do, don't show

• Search for crashes where you live

• Daily debate: On death, injury rates

• No helmet, and a double tragedy

• Daily debate: On Michigan's records

Monday: No training, no license to ride

• Daily debate: On illegal cyclists

• The first helmetless death

Tuesday: Did predictions pan out?

• Daily debate: Conclusions drawn

• Death shows reports' shortcomings



Wednesday: Safety in a new world

• Daily debate: On new safety measures

• Looking for Ralph Nader

Thursday: One biker club's culture

• MLive poll shows strong opposition

• Live chat with 'daily debate' leaders



Local reports: Ann Arbor, Bay City, Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Jackson, Kalamazoo, Muskegon, Saginaw.



“When they changed that law, I thought it was stupid," says Scott's father, Karl. "I didn’t know it would affect me like it has. Scott lost his life and there’s going to be many, many more. He very well may have survived that crash.”

Scott Pohl became the 75th motorcyclist without a helmet killed or seriously injured in Michigan after the state lifted its helmet mandate to give riders choice, an MLive Media Group investigation found.

At least 700 other motorcyclists without helmets crashed six months after Gov. Rick Snyder and lawmakers changed the state’s 35-year-old law, records show.

And while the state is planning a study next year to weigh the fallout, police crash reports already paint a bleak picture.

Motorcyclists without helmets were much more likely to die or suffer serious injuries, MLive’s investigation found. They were more likely to be at fault. And many were not licensed to be on motorcycles in the first place – a problem that includes riders with helmets.

But the investigation also found Michigan crash records fall far short of providing specific details about injuries, which critics say skew statistics. A helmetless crash death could have been due to a chest injury – as reporters found in a Kalamazoo County case.

"It is frustrating," says Vince Consiglio, president of ABATE of Michigan, the most influential group in lifting the mandate. "Pennsylvania, Florida and others, all do a better job identifying whether we're dealing with severe head injuries or something else."







Still, opponents argue the higher injury and death rates are undeniable. And just last week, the investigative arm of Congress said direct costs related to motorcycle crashes totaled $16 billion in 2010.

Riders are 30 times more likely to die in crashes than car occupants, the General Accounting Office noted. It also said mandatory helmet laws are the "only strategy proven to be effective in reducing motorcyclist fatalities."

One police commander does not need studies to tell him that.

"If you were to run full force, as hard as you can, into a cement wall with a helmet on, and then run full force, as fast as you could, into a cement wall with no helmet on, what's going to hurt worse?" says Lt. Chris McIntire, head of the Michigan State Police post in northern Kent County.

How many did not have to die?

MLive reporters examined state police data for more than 3,000 motorcycle crashes – with and without helmets – in the six months after the repeal, April 13 to Oct. 13. They also analyzed information on nearly 16,000 crashes from 2008 until the new law.

In those six months, the bulk of this year’s riding season, crash records show:

• Cyclists without helmets were 43 percent more likely to suffer "incapacitating" injuries. Of more than 100 deaths - evenly split between those with and without helmets - they were three times more likely to be killed.

• Helmetless operators were at fault 51 percent of the time, compared to 42 percent for those with helmets. They also were more likely to have been drinking, one in seven compared to one in 17 with helmets.

• Some riders are ignoring requirements they be 21 to ride helmetless. The youngest in a crash was 14, in Muskegon Heights. Two females, ages 19 and 20 from Eaton and Bay counties, were killed. Almost all under-age riders without helmets were at fault in crashes.

• Most were not licensed to be on the road. Michigan has a loophole allowing riders to avoid safety classes or road tests required to be fully certified.

The new law allows choice for properly licensed motorcyclists 21 or older, provided they purchase the right insurance and pass a motorcycle safety course or have been endorsed to ride for two years.

Much of the legislation– such as the $20,000 insurance mandate – is unenforceable.

“Clearly they made the law such that it’s an honor system,” said Kalamazoo Township Police Chief Tim Bourgeois.

Perhaps surprisingly, most riders in crashes kept their helmets on. About three-fourths wore helmets, far short of the 50 percent detractors predicted overall.

But the higher death and injury rates have remained consistent since MLive began tracking crash reports a month after the law was lifted.

The Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning is planning its own analysis of 2012 crash data, likely in spring, said Shanon Banner, spokeswoman for the Michigan State Police. The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute will do the study.

The department’s highway safety office will also fund a field observation, which Banner said “will provide a more accurate analysis of actual helmet use” than only those in crashes. More than 550,000 riders are licensed in Michigan, up 11 percent since 2006.

Still, the biggest questions likely will go unanswered. How many suffered debilitating head injuries who might have been spared?

No one knows, and lawmakers chose not to find out.

'It's a waste of fricking money'

It didn’t take long for Michigan's first helmetless motorcyclist to be hospitalized. The same afternoon the mandate was lifted, a 25-year-old Montcalm County man enjoying newfound liberty was thrown face first into the car he rear-ended.

It took a bit longer for the first to be killed. Seventeen days later, a father of four died after crashing helmetless on I-69 in Flint.

And on it goes for helmetless crashes, records show:

• Michael Allen, a 27-year-old Afghanistan war veteran studying to be a kindergarten teacher, suffered traumatic brain injury when he crashed June 12 on a short trip to the store in Bay County. He was the 49th rider without a helmet to suffer serious injuries.

• Tabbitha Bartlett, 19, of Eaton Rapids, became the youngest fatality when the cycle on which she was a passenger hit a culvert on June 27. Her boyfriend also lost his father that day – he was the driver. Their deaths were number 18 and 19.

• Bryan Smith, 29, of Wyandotte, suffered brain damage when he and Mario Orsette crashed July 17 in Taylor. Smith, a passenger, was uninsured and needed 18 plates to rebuild his face. He was the 97th helmetless rider to suffer serious injuries. Orsette was the 25th death.

But was the law at fault? The Flint man had been drinking. And anyway, his injuries would not have survived a helmet, his family says.

An effort to answer such questions was nixed by lawmakers. An early version of the proposed law required a study within four years on helmetless head injuries and their cost to the state. The requirement was stripped in the House.

Some senators tried to restore and expand the effort, requiring the Secretary of State to document “the types and severities of injuries.” They also wanted data in alcohol involvement and how many operators had not passed a safety course.

The effort failed by three votes. Some worried about cost; some mistakenly thought state police already collected the data.

"That's the fault of our politics and our elected government. We could have had that information if we wanted that," said Dan Petterson, president of the pro-helmet motorcycle group SMARTER, for "Skilled Motorcyclist Association – Responsible, Trained and Educated Riders."

Petterson instead approached federal highway safety representatives to evaluate the impact in Michigan.

“They told me, ‘No, it’s a waste of fricking money. Why we would we do that? We have multiple studies that will tell us what happens,’” Petterson recalls.

One such study was done in 2009. Research in 18 states - including neighboring Indiana, Ohio and Minnesota – found unhelmeted motorcyclists treated at hospitals suffered nearly twice the percentage of head and face injuries, about one in five. The injuries were also more severe.

But legislating a similar study here might not have mattered.

Michigan does not have the technology to identify motorcyclists’ injuries, much less whether a rider was helmeted or not.

Injured brain or a broken leg?

The situation persists despite calls for reform. The governor's Traffic Safety Advisory Commission in 2009 called for enhancing police crash reports to more "accurately report bodily injury location and severity."

Currently, police reports only rank severity of injuries, the worst being fatal or “incapacitating,” the least being no injury. They do not record where an injury occurred.

“Police officers are not trained or equipped to determine type or extent of injuries at a crash,” said Banner, the state police spokeswoman. “Those determinations are better made by trained medical personnel in a hospital setting, or during a post-mortem exam of fatally injured riders."

But unlike some other states, Michigan does not have a system that merges hospital, ambulance and police information to show whether a crash resulted in traumatic brain damage - one of the most severe and costly injuries - or a painful case of “road rash.”

That system, financed largely through federal grants, is called CODES, for Crash Outcome Data Evaluation System. It was in place in the 18 states studied by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2009.

Michigan applied for funding, but did not qualify because it does not have a statewide emergency medical database. Emergency rooms and hospitals also do not uniformly file an “external cause code,” which show if the cause was a motorcycle crash.

“Some keep them and some don’t,” said Linda Scarpetta, manager of the Injury and Violence Prevention Section at the state Department of Community Health. Even then, they may not report whether a head injury involved a helmet, she added.

Anne Readett, communications chief for the Office of Highway Safety Planning, said the agency is working on a plan to link crash data with emergency or other health-care information. The effort is some years from implementation, she said, but Michigan will lack at least one element that helped elsewhere.

“Federal funding for CODES projects is no longer available,” Readett said.

'My goal is 100% not to get hurt'

On May 23, Karl Pohl saw his son riding helmetless from their rural home southwest of Howell. He left a voice mail, then sent a worried text message.



The son's reply is eloquent, for the medium.

Scott: “I made it to work safe and sound with my helmet on. I didn't appreciate the attitude you gave me. .... however I understand where your coming from.”

Replies his dad: "I just wish you were of the same mind set you were when you first got your cycle......talking about head injuries etc."



Scott: "I sure as hell don't want a head injury. Priority #1 is not to go down to begin with. ... I say a prayer every time I get on my bike too. I ask to be protected. It makes me feel safer so I hope you can relax a little more."

Scott Pohl died exactly one month later, when the driver who never saw him turned left. The cause of death was traumatic head injury.

And this is what Scott's father sees when he rereads the last line of his son's message.

"My goal is 100% not to get hurt.” And then he closes, "...... Love you Dad!"

-- Contributing to this report were: John Counts of AnnArbor.com; Jonathan Oosting of MLive's statewide team; Dominic Adams of The Flint Journal; Gus Burns of MLive's Detroit hub; Zane McMillin of The Grand Rapids Press; and Aaron Mueller of The Kalamazoo Gazette.

-- Email statewide projects coordinator John Barnes at jbarnes1@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter.