A Phillips motorcyclist died Tuesday night after failing to negotiate a curve on Route 4, the second local motorcycle death of the season. He was not wearing a helmet.

The death will be duly noted by the media, as will the 20 to 30 other deaths which are nearly certain to occur in Maine over the next few months.

It continues to boggle the mind that motorcyclists continue to ride without helmets.

Ponder, if you will, the airline industry.

The federal government last month shut down several major airlines for safety violations. The problem: Bundles of wires in wheel wells were not tied at correct intervals.

There is a longstanding safety culture in civil aviation. Accidents are studied exhaustively and then corrective action is taken to prevent problems.

And the result is impressive: despite hundreds of thousands of take-offs and landings, despite millions of passenger miles traveled, there was not a single commercial aviation death in the U.S. in 2007.

In fact, there have been impressive safety gains in most methods of land transport. Cars and trucks are now built for safety, highways are better designed and the result is clear: Most forms of motor vehicle travel are safer than they have ever been before.

Save one: motorcycle ridership.

The number of motorcycle deaths has more than doubled over the past 10 years. While riding a motorcycle, you are now 37 times more likely to die in a crash than someone in a passenger car.

According to a recent U.S.A Today research project, motorcycles result in more deaths than plane crashes, boating mishaps, industrial accidents and railway crashes combined.

It hasn’t always been so.

Motorcycle deaths declined in the early 1990s, a trend which was reversed by a single governmental action in 1995. Congress once required states to have helmet laws to receive certain forms of highway funding. Under pressure from motorcycle groups, that changed in 1995.

Since then, a steady stream of states, including Maine, have repealed their helmet laws. The predictable result – a steady increase in motorcycle deaths.

The statistics are plain. Bikers without helmets were involved in 36 percent of accidents, but they resulted in 70 percent of $12.2 billion spent on motorcycle crash medical care.

Two decades ago, slightly more than 2,000 people died each year in motorcycle crashes. Today, nearly 5,000 die each year, more than the total number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq in five years of war.

Yet we have little faith that Congress will act rationally and reinstate the helmet law.

That said, parents and safety conscious motorcycle riders and passengers need to be aware of the facts, which are plain: motorcycle riding is dangerous. Riding without a helmet may be fun and look cool, but it makes an already risky pastime far more lethal.