Posted on 09/11/2008 9:19:43 PM PDT by DakotaRed
That's true. Bikes don't bring squat at the auctions. They'd rather seize late model cars from people they catch with a roach in the ashtray. There's much more money to be made there.
Then I guess there's about one hundred million idiots walking around. I never saw one kid wear a helmet while riding a bike when I was growing up forty, fifty years ago.
Gee. Lighten up. I was just kidding. That’s what the “smile” means.
I just meant that I didn’t understand your car lingo.
I and my family always, and I mean always ride with helmets. I make the law. However, the state should not make that law nor should they seize private property.
I have a friend who had the same rules in his family. His brother died many years ago in a cycling accident so he has more reason. One day he saw his 15 year old daughter riding a few miles from home with some friends. Stopped, put her bike in the trunk and said “see you at home.” Then he drove away.
We had a kid in our neighborhood like that. The poor sucker’s mother made him wear a motorcycle helmet to ride his bike. A green one. A BIG green one.
The other kids called him “Kazoo” after that alien guy from The Flintstones — the one voiced by Harvey Korman (I didn’t tease him; I felt bad for him and I was a good girl).
Regards,
PS: I rode my bike EVERYWHERE. In NYC, you couldn’t get a license till you were 18, so I rode it a LONG time, too. Had a couple of spills and got one good injury — a full body scrape. A helmet would have done nothing to protect me from that. BTW, that spill was entirely my own fault. I was riding with a backpack slung over only one shoulder and it swung forward into my front tire. AIRBORNE!
Hey you aren’t the Dale Reed that converts Wedges to Hemis are yah?
I speak Georgian with an accent!
:)
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience" -- C.S. Lewis
There are worse people in the world than idiots.
After reading some of the comments here, I wonder how I even attained adulthood and not living out the rest of my life incompassatated by a head injury since I didn’t wear a helmet when I was young. My injuries on a bike were normally on my knees or the palms of my hand or my elbows (or combinations thereof). We can’t wrap everyone up in bubble wrap at the dictate of the state.
Nope, my expertice was in small blocks.
I had to promise to quit racing when I got married in 58 and the only car I built after that was the Cobra for Dennis Wilson and spend my Saturdays over the years maintaining the corp. vehicles and equipment.
Utter nonsense. My heaviest bike helmet weighs in under 300 grams. If you think it makes me any less nimble you're invited to follow me down Barr Trail next time I'm in Colorado.
I like your friend already. I’ve caught my children helmetless a couple of times, and each time I’ve taken their bicycles away for two weeks. It seems to have done the trick.
I was recently asked to do a talk on car/bicycle interaction safety by my daughters drive ed instructor. At the end, I brought out a friends helmet after his crash. It was totally shredded from the impact. While he was seriously and non-permanently injured, his is alive only because of the helmet.
I save my fractured and broken helmets as souvenirs. They’d make a great slide show for bicycle safety. They call me the helmet nazi. I’ve been known to berate trail riders who ride without helmets, especially those gems of parents who take their kids out helmetless.
Here's hoping that you don't see me out riding.
In your effort to argue your nanny state point, you failed miserably to respond to Paleo. He said nothing about laws. He declared a non helmet wearer to be an idiot. A person who fails to wear a helmet on Hollister is both a law breaker and an idiot.
As a youngster I had two bike accidents that resulted in concussion and one unconsciousness. As an older and wiser curmudgeon, I wear the helmet and set a good example for all the true boys in the neighborhood. Mom can look out the window and say...”see, you must wear your helmet like Mr Bert”
> In your effort to argue your nanny state point, you failed miserably to respond to Paleo.
I disagree: it was dispatched in full. But for the avoidance of doubt, Paleo’s assertion is “everyone is an idiot who doesn’t wear a helmet.” I do not wear a helmet. I am not an idiot. Therefore, Paleo’s point is false.
> A person who fails to wear a helmet on Hollister is both a law breaker and an idiot.
I can dispatch your assertion with equal ease. Your assertion is that anyone riding a Hollister is a law breaker and an idiot. As a matter of Principle, I would not wear a helmet while riding a Hollister even if I knew what a Hollister was. I am not an idiot. And there are no laws requiring me to wear a helmet whilst riding a Hollister (I checked). Therefore your assertion is false, too.
> As a youngster I had two bike accidents that resulted in concussion and one unconsciousness
The occasional concussion is educational for boys. That is how we learn not to get hit in the head. Pity the poor coddled lad that has no experiential learning in that department! He will grow up genteel and sissified.
> As an older and wiser curmudgeon, I wear the helmet and set a good example for all the true boys in the neighborhood.
That should be your prerogative, not your duty as a law-abiding Citizen.
Meanies at work.
This reminds me of a time nearly two years ago. Our Guardian Angels team patrolled a music festival over a November weekend. Toward the end of the festival, there was a shrieking of a little kid, just behind the festival tents. BatBob and I went to check it out.
An officious Maori Warden had grabbed this kid’s bike and was trying to confiscate it, saying it didn’t belong to the kid, that he’d stolen it. The kid was nearly beside himself: he was only nine or ten, and he was crying, and trying to explain that the bike was his. It was obvious to everyone that the kid was telling the truth, and a huge crowd began to form.
It was about as close to a lynching as I’d ever seen. So BatBob and I started to do crowd control. I can’t quite remember how it resolved — I think the kid’s mum somehow got involved. Anyrate the kid ended up riding away, terrified.
The crowd disbursed, and the meanie Warden — rather than being grateful for not getting lynched — stalked around haughtily as if he had been perfectly right to try to seize the kid’s bike.
I felt like throwing him bodily off the festival grounds, but kept my counsel. What a creep!
Once you give these petty tyrants a little bit of authority they just can’t wait to exercise it. Even on innocent little kids.
That is what is happening in this article.
What evidence do you bring forward that you are not and idiot ?
Admitting to not wearing a helmet is prima fascia evidence that you are
> What evidence do you bring forward that you are not and idiot ?
Luckily, I don’t need to. To whit:
“Negative proof, the fallacy of appealing to lack of proof of the negative, is a logical fallacy of the following form:
‘X is true because there is no proof that X is false.’”
You would have learned that in Debating 101, as I did.
> Admitting to not wearing a helmet is prima fascia evidence that you are
As you would know, it certainly isn’t prima facie “evidence” of any such thing. It is merely an emotive assertion of yours that I am an idiot — which is unsupported by facts.
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