A Site for Shore Eyes

In just the past two weeks, three people on bicycles were hit by automobiles, and two of them were taken to the hospital in critical condition.

I ride my bike pretty much every day, dodging both cars and pedestrians, and I see many others on bikes. Only a small percentage, including bicycle police officers, bothers wearing helmets. I consider my helmet one of those things I just won’t leave home without.

I wasn’t always this way. Until I first gave up riding bikes at 17, I never wore a helmet, and I’m not sure they even made them. My first wheels were a scooter, a Vespa 125, which I rode for a few years, but never while wearing a helmet. Of course, I was both fearless and invincible, which explains taking two of my friends out around the bell buoy in an 8-foot pram with a 3-horse motor on it. Yes, it also explains many other stupid things I did which didn’t seem all that stupid until I guess, the age of reason set in and I started raising a family.

Let’s get back to the original subject matter. I don’t know the details of either recent accident, one involving a boy who was hit by a car and the other involving two teenagers hit by a car driven by a 77-year-old woman, not that there’s anything wrong with that. I do know that the boy who was critically injured had a head injury, and I’d almost bet that the teen also landed in the hospital because of an injury to his head.

I understand the need for young people to look “cool” by not wearing a geeky helmet, which isn’t required while riding on the boardwalk but is in all other places for those 16 and under. That’s a stupid law, because a person’s head doesn’t automatically get harder at the age of 17. Most kids (and I) don’t expect to fall off a bicycle; like how spastic can one get? Unforeseen problems sometimes arise, however, and wearing a helmet can make you look smart, even if you think it makes you look stupid.

Mechanical problems can occur anytime. Once, while riding a trail, I had almost completely stopped when I applied my front brake. It locked and slammed me instantly to the ground! Fortunately I only experienced a bit of pain, but my head never hit the ground. If it had, only my face was unprotected, because I was wearing a helmet.

If a cyclist gets hit by a vehicle, even at a slow speed, the impact can send the bike and the rider out of control. If wearing a helmet, the rider’s head usually survives intact. If not, it’s often the difference between getting scuffed up and being put on life support in the hospital. Road burn and even broken bones are not usually life threatening, but many head injuries are. The professional riders in Le Tour de France and other races wear helmets and survive some pretty impressive crashes.

Many states passed helmet laws for motorcycles, and many repealed them. Bikers (the other type) didn’t want the government telling them what to do, so many of them now ride without helmets. This is even stupider than not wearing one when riding a bicycle, because the impact is usually much greater. Even Evel Knievel was smart enough to wear a helmet, and he survived many crashes that probably would have killed him had he not been wearing one.

I suspect that one reason for so many bare-headed riders here is the large number of bicycles rented every day. A helmet requirement would require a few changes in the rental business, but safety should always trump profits.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 5th, 2010 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.