New data shows a marked increase in Missouri motorcycle fatalities since the state lifted its helmet requirement last year. These were predictable, avoidable tragedies that the state Legislature and Gov. Mike Parson were warned about by safety experts and others. As politically unlikely a suggestion as this may be, they should heed the data and reinstate the helmet requirement.

And all those Missourians out there today who reject coronavirus vaccination and masks on the shaky premise that government mandates are always wrong should also pay attention. This is yet another instance in which some pesky mandate can save lives.

Missouri in August 2020 lifted the state's motorcycle helmet requirement for riders 26 years of age and older with proof of medical insurance. That requirement alone speaks volumes: It was a recognition by even the anti-helmet law's promoters that they were enabling dangerous behavior.

And indeed they were. As the Post-Dispatch's Kim Bell and Josh Renaud reported this week, the percentage of motorcycle-involved crashes that resulted in fatalities so far in 2021 is the highest since 2001. In the 12 months before the helmet requirement was lifted, just six people died while riding without helmets. Since that risk became legal, 54 helmetless riders have died. Mercy Hospital St. Louis reports treating five times as many helmetless motorcyclists since the law passed.

In short, even after just a year of data collection, it's undebatable that the move to lift the helmet requirement has factored directly in deaths and injuries that didn't have to happen.

The helmet issue may seem entirely separate from the debates raging around the pandemic, but there is a common link that speaks to a wider issue: Those who believe government-backed safety measures like helmets, coronavirus vaccines and mask mandates somehow impede their freedom have a strange definition of that word.

Government has long enforced all kinds of laws designed to protect people from unnecessary risk, including speed limits, drunk-driving laws, food inspection laws and more. Is a requirement that travelers take off their shoes in the airport security line a violation of their freedom? At some level, sure. But society has agreed that keeping everyone safe is, in certain circumstances, worth what amounts to minor inconveniences.

Often lost in the pandemic debate is the fact that those who reject masks and vaccines endanger not just themselves, but those around them. The lifted helmet law also impacts others, via use of medical resources at a time when (thanks to anti-vaccination/anti-mask petulance) hospital beds are in high demand.

No one is an island. Living among other human beings requires a balance between personal choice and the greater good. Chanting "freedom" as a retort to any little request for societal cooperation may feel as liberating as wind through a rider's hair — but as some motorcyclists have learned the hard way, that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best response.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

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