Brain buckets save lives.
As I sit in my chair a gurney is wheeled into the room and parked behind me. I turn and observe a young guy lying on his back, bare-chested and wearing a “halo.” Halo is the name given to a full neck brace that locks to the head with metal screws through the skin to the skull and secures to the shoulders. It is definitely a serious gizmo and makes me queasy when I see one since about the only thing not broken in my accident was my spine. The guy wearing it lies motionless and because I can’t see his face don’t know if he is awake.
When my therapist arrives to accompany me to the Crip Board, I ask about the young guy lying silently on the gurney. I learn that one night a week or so ago he drank a six pack and then thought it would be great fun to take his motorcycle out and see how fast he could go through the city streets. He ended his ride with some superficial cuts and bruises plus a fractured C2 vertebra the same injury actor Christopher Reeve suffered in his horse-riding accident. The guy with the halo is 20 years old and can now look forward to being paralyzed for life, baring any unforeseen medical breakthroughs. I suddenly feel not so bad..."
From: "What I Saw After the Crash"
I can think of a plausible reason that non-wearers of helmets might have fewer accidents: They can see and hear.
What, then, can we infer from the statistics? For one, less people have been injured each year from 2012 to 2014, but the death rate has stayed around 4% of total incidents.
Are less people getting into motorcycle accidents because they have better visibility, can more easily hear traffic around them, etc? Or are there less motorcycles on the road?
See, this is what I love about these reports - they don’t say anything, they don’t mean anything, they don’t do anything - but nevertheless, they get big play in the press.
I always use a helmet when I ride. Know several people who won’t for various reasons. I think they’re insane. Even good riders fall occasionally; when you do, the helmet will save your life.
Nothing about the aggregate here. Has the total number of registered motorcycles increased or decreased, what is the rates per a constant, say per 10,000 riders. What is the demographic, has the population gentrified and are they taking less risk and or giving the sport up. Is the price of the more high tech bikes driving riders out of the sport. With all those questions, I am not sure they can say this with certainty and my guess is others have questions I haven’t thought of as well....
Automobile traffic accident deaths would go down if airbags in steering wheels were replaced with a sharpened spike.
(Apologies to whichever comedian I ripped that off of.)
If I rode I’d wear a helmet, but it’s not the government’s place to protect me from myself. I want the liberty to decide for myself.
Here in WTX, I ride “naked” on commutes and secondary streets. Helmet on every time I hit the “open” road due to the large insects and “stoopid” drivers.
A WTX grasshopper at 70MPH can really be a distraction. Oh, and we will soon have tarantulas that are quite greasy on the road when you squish them.
I had a motorcycle accident when I was in the Army. After looking at the beating the helmet took, I shutter to think what my head and face would have looked like...........
I noticed that people wearing helmets were more likely to take chances