#2704: Vince Consiglio

It’s been a while since he’s been in the news, but it’s worth reminding you. Context: motorcycle riders who are 21 or older have been allowed to ride without a helmet under certain conditions in Michigan since 2012. Still, Michigan saw a drop in motorcycle-related fatalities over the next few years – despite “the doom and gloom that was predicted when the helmet law was modified in 2012,” according to the group American Bikers Aiming Toward Education (ABATE) of Michigan. And ABATE’s president, Vince Consiglio, concluded that “helmets don’t prevent accidents ... in Michigan, there's more people killed wearing helmets than without.” That’s technically likely to be correct: In 2014, 50 motorcyclists died while wearing helmets in Michigan, 48 died without helmets, whereas nine were unclear. If you don’t get why Consiglio’s reasoning merits him an entry in our Encyclopedia, you may state your name in the comment section and perhaps get an entry yourself.

In fact, there were also more injuries reported in 2014 for those wearing helmets (1,559) compared to those not wearing helmets (633) (with 99 of unknown helmet-wearing status). We are excused for suspecting that Consiglio would reason his way to thinking that those numbers supported his conclusion rather than completely undermining it. Consiglio isn’t anti-helmets, though; rather, he said that helmets might be appropriate in some circumstances but not in others. He also asserted that “helmet laws have done nothing to improve safety or reduce fatalities or the cost of insurance”, which is astoundingly false. Subsequent years unfortunately saw a lot of doom and gloom.

It is worth noting that Consiglio, by 2023, was still making the same argument, blaming increases in motorcycle fatalities over the last years on COVID restrictions (which apparently limited access to training and certification). He also argued for increasing speed limits to 80 mph, because “it’s actually safer if you can go 80 and get ahead of the traffic.” You get no points for poking holes in that thought process either.

Diagnosis: The most interesting thing about Consiglio’s anti-helmet reasoning is how much it resembles anti-vaccine reasoning about, say, measles or COVID and vaccines. You could even be excused for thinking that he’s just parodying the antivaccine movement. He is probably just exceptionally dense, however.