Deadliest party in 2021 racks up more fatalities

The giant party ended with eight celebrants killed, another 91 hospitalized, nine of whom were kept alive by ventilators. Try to imagine the civic reaction if such mayhem was associated with one of South Florida’s officially sanctioned events; if body counts and serious injuries were considered an acceptable inconvenience at this weekend’s International Orchid & Bromeliad Show in Davie. Or the Las Olas Art Fair. Or West Palm’s SunFest.

Somehow Miami stages the annual Calle Ocho festival — the nation’s biggest street party (in a non-COVID year) — with a million wild-and-crazies (including the world-record

119,986-dancer conga line in 1988) without much more trauma than heat exhaustion and sore feet.

Meanwhile, the 2021 Bike Week in Daytona Beach racked up more deaths than the spate of tornados that ripped through Georgia and Alabama last week. The tornado disaster was declared an emergency. Bike Week? Just one hell of a party.

Eight killed, 91 hospitalized was hardly a shocker in Daytona Beach. Six bikers were killed and another 58 hospitalized during the

2020 rally. The infamous — at least, it ought to be — Bike Week of 2006 racked up 18 deaths. That same week, seven American soldiers were killed in Iraq. Of course, in Iraq that year, well-armed insurgents were bent on killing American soldiers. In Daytona, attendees at America’s deadliest jamboree mostly did it to themselves.

Somehow, I doubt elected officials would accept such fatalities at Florida’s other annual events. If the cost of Tampa’s Gasparilla Pirate Fest, the Fellsmere Frog Leg Festival, Art Basel, La Belle’s Swamp Cabbage Festival, the Miami Book Fair, Key West’s Fantasy Fest or even the Battle of Olustee Civil War Reenactment included eight battered corpses, there’d be a statewide grand jury, maybe a congressional investigation. Sure, Marco Rubio would utter something non-committal, but he’d say it with passion.

Last month, with less provocation, Miami Beach closed the barrier island causeways to outsiders and shut down spring break. Ultra Music Festival was evicted from Miami’s Bayfront Park for exceeding the decibel limit. Apparently, decibels in Miami create more outrage than deaths in Daytona. Because politicians don’t dare mess with Bike Week.

Their deference derives from the demographics. No one would confuse the kids at Ultra with the 300,000 or so grizzled bikers — most of them white guys (including more than a few actual outlaw bikers ) — who descended on Daytona Beach. Right-wing politicians, especially, love to be photographed among them, decked out in their leathers, straddling

$30,000 Harleys, offering their best approximation of Marlon Brando in “The Wild One.”

Judging by the median age among the biker hospital admissions, 48 this year and

55 in 2020, Bike Week attendees suffer from a collective middle-age crisis. (The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that motorcycle fatalities are the only category in which the 50-and-older mortality rate exceeds 30-and-under deaths.)

This pandemic year brought another kind of risk. A New York Post reporter described the superspreader scene nicely: “Hordes of maskless bikers descended onto Dayton Beach this week to party, hangout with scantily clad women and defy COVID health restrictions they believe infringes on their freedoms.”

Not to invoke a stereotype, but a considerable percentage of these guys seem to be of a certain ilk, whom politicians are reluctant to cross. That was clear back in 2000, when the Florida Legislature revoked Florida’s motorcycle helmet requirement, despite overwhelming evidence that the law saved lives. A month later, Bike Week rung up 14 deaths. Of course, the wind-in-my-hair set could point out, proudly, that two of those deaths were not actual motorcyclists but hapless pedestrians run down by rogue bikes. Which suggests that helmet requirements ought to be apply to both riders and anyone else venturing outdoors during Bike Week.

Reinstating the helmet law in Florida, which leads the nation in motorcycle deaths

(547 in 2018, according to the most recent count available on the NHTSA website), would reduce fatalities. The feds reported that in states without helmet requirements,

57% of motorcyclists killed in 2018 were not wearing helmets, compared to 9% in states with helmet laws. Lawmakers in Tallahassee won’t care, but NHTSA estimated that helmets saved the lives of 1,872 riders in 2017 and might have saved another 749 if they had been wearing proper headgear.

But talk of helmet laws or COVID masks or tougher traffic enforcement or other measures that might reduce the funereal statistics associated with Florida’s deadliest annual get-together offend motorcyclists’ ride-free-or-die ethos. During Bike Week, that’s no empty motto.