For almost a decade, Ron Smith, an attorney and avid motorcycle rider from Pinellas county, Florida, advocated against laws which said motorcyclists had to wear helmets to ride. Eventually, the state law changed.
This August, Smith, 66, and his girlfriend, Brenda Jeanan Volpe, 62, died in a fatal motorcycle crash. Neither was wearing a helmet, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Smith and Volpe were on their way to a funeral when Smith reportedly lost control of their bike while slowing down for traffic. The motorcycle crashed into a trailer attached to a truck.
A Florida highway patrol spokesperson, Steve Gaskins, told the Times no one was charged in the accident.
Both Smith and Volpe died of blunt trauma to the head, according to an autopsy for Smith and an initial report for Volpe from the Hillsborough medical examiner.
“It’s entirely possible that if they were wearing a helmet they might have survived but … we can’t say for sure,” Eric Teoh, a motorcycle safety researcher at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, told the Times.
Helmets “certainly would have improved their odds”, Teoh added.
Smith was a member of American Bikers Aimed Toward Education (Abate), an advocacy group that has lobbied against helmet laws.
As an attorney, he represented clients caught violating Florida’s motorcycle safety laws in cases experts say may have helped overturn the state’s mandatory helmet law.
In one case, Smith represented a rider who received a citation for riding without a helmet. A judge threw out the ticket, causing the local sheriff’s office to temporarily stop enforcing the state helmet law.
A separate case was sent to Florida’s second district court of appeal, which found the state helmet law to be constitutional but said the Florida department of highway safety and motor vehicles violated the law by not publishing a list of protective equipment.
In 2000, Florida changed its laws to state that anyone over 21 was no longer required to wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle, if they had more than $10,000 of insurance to cover accidents.
Smith was remembered by friends and associates as someone who valued his independence and that of others.
“He thought everybody should have their own choice,” said Dave Newman, who with Smith was a member of the American Legion Riders.
On one online tribute page, Volpe was described as a “devoted loving mom, grandma, daughter, sister, aunt, niece, and friend, a truly beautiful person”.
