Rising NFL star and future organ-donor Ben Roethlisberger rode his motorcycle helmetless through my neighborhood this week, stopped for dinner, signed a few autographs and departed with a 30 percent greater probability he will end his days with a layer of moss on his north side.

Here is a man with a stunning future who opts to rocket across Pittsburgh's cratered roads on two wheels tied to an engine, his million-dollar noggin covered only by a red baseball cap turned backward.

Who advises this guy? Tommy Maddox?

Steelers coach Bill Cowher said yesterday he had a talk with Roethlisberger about the motorcycle but seemed unaware his quarterback doesn't wear a helmet.

Cowher told Roethlisberger to "make good choices."

Each man's conception of good choice seems markedly different. Roethlisberger, explaining himself to reporters yesterday, moved that difference of viewpoint a few notches into the neighborhood of surreal.

"I'm not really a risk-taker," he said.

Why, then, was he cycling without a helmet?

"I think that's on discretion," he replied.

It is, indeed. Pennsylvania's lobby of unreason recently won its long-standing fight to repeal helmet laws. Roethlisberger now has discretion. He uses it selectively. I counted three helmets in his locker at the South Side training facility yesterday. He wore one while on the field.

Ben Roethlisberger apparently has less confidence in the Steelers offensive line than he does in the condition of Pennsylvania's roads.

"There's a law," he said. "You've got to wear it in football."

Correct. People collide on football fields at speeds upward of 20 mph, or roughly one-half the average speed on Banksville Road.

The National Football League has set a number of guidelines for off-field risk-taking, most of them to prevent six- and seven-figure athletes from disabling themselves for nonpaying audiences. Driving is, of course, permitted. Jousting on horseback is probably out of the question. Riding a motorcycle, given that it is a form of transportation, is one of those iffy propositions. Riding one without a helmet is, in Pennsylvania, entirely legal. So is sticking needles into your tongue. Each seems equally ill-considered.

As reporters waited for Roethlisberger to leave the practice field yesterday, I talked by phone with Dr. Hank Weiss, director of the Center for Injury Research and Control at the University of Pittsburgh. I put it to him directly: Does smacking one's head on a hard surface at great velocity go better with a protective helmet?

"I don't think quarterbacks are any different. Their heads are the same as everybody else's," Weiss said. "There's about a 30 percent increase in mortality and serious head injuries whenever motorcycle helmet laws are repealed."

The libertarian in me says let Roethlisberger live his life as he sees fit. The Democrat in me says he has an obligation to his community to remain healthy. The Republican in me wants to know who's going to pay for the cleanup if he deposits his brain on Route 19.

"It's a choice," he told me, after the press gaggle broke up. I suggested that an entire region has invested emotionally in him, and wondered if he might not have a social obligation here to protect himself from harm.

"So does that mean you shouldn't ride a motorcycle? I mean, there are people invested in you," he said.

I did not have time to explain to Roethlisberger that in my case, there appears to be a constituency advocating head injury. In his case, a town that built a stadium for his team, and a team that asks this community to emotionally meld with it, have good reason to ask Roethlisberger to guard himself from harm.

This is not about setting an example. This is about staying alive. It is galling to think that the thing standing between the Steelers and the playoffs could be some drunk making a left turn straight into a quarterback who has yet to learn that concrete is harder than turf.