Several years ago I wrote an essay entitled: “On Helmets”, it was an exploration of why some professional cyclists still hung on to the practice of going helmet-less. That was a long time ago and I’m not in a category of cyclist to be around those people anymore. My sense of when and where to choose a helmet has been refined over the years. My recent post was not about helmets, it was about urban exploration and the wonders therein, but it sparked a controversy about helmet use, the mandating of helmet use, and helmets for children.
I don’t go to city council meetings as a habit, but when I briefly lived in Vancouver, WA, in the winter, I went to one, to vehemently disagree with the in-place helmet law for adult cyclists.
Because I rode to college at 8:00AM and it was still butt-cold most mornings, I wore a WOOL HAT. Therefore, no helmet. I asks the council members: “Why is it you mandate the use of a helmet that is ventilated and designed for warm weather only?” The answer is simple, though I did not hear this. In Washington, it doesn’t dawn on local government officials that anyone but desperate bums and kids use the bicycle to transport oneself around the city. To them, it’s recreation.
There’s yet another reason to not wear a helmet. Ever ridden all day long? I have – and the risk of skin cancer is higher and worse than cranial injury by riding the long white line. This is why, upon meeting people during my touring adventures, I explained to those that vocally challenged my helmetlessness and asked: “Why haven’t they invented a SUN helmet?” The little visor does NOT cut it, as you need 360 degrees of sun protection. Nope, I don’t do chemicals on my skin – sunblock is not the way for me, after the research I’ve seen. I have a bald spot. I use a legionnaires hat when I’m out running errands. So, the question is – when does Senna wear a helmet, and when does he choose not to? (Because it is a conscious choice based upon sound risk management and circumstantial functionality)
HELMET ON:
Group rides, pacelines, mountain biking, road racing, big city traffic, Boston especially, or anywhere that feels more like combat than a bike ride, and… to set an example for children.
HELMET NOT ON:
Riding to the cafe, or on quiet neighborhood streets. Towing a trailer slow, or riding ALL DAY or for many hours.
Basically, when you reach a certain skill level, which kids don’t have – no matter how much they think they do, you simply do not fall down by yourself at higher speeds. You might fall, as I still do, at zero knots or just faster, but once I’m a moving, there’s no falling. I focus on NOT falling as I go along, especially on long highway rides, where if I did fall, it would be into a ditch or some brush, and if I were hit by a car at 55 mph – what would a helmet do? Granted – I give credit to people who wear helmets all the time. This is not a bad or wrong choice. Conversely, I equate people who lecture and tell others to wear a helmet with anti-tobacco people. I’m someone who can’t stand the smell of cigarettes for two seconds, but I won’t ever tell people they shouldn’t smoke unless they’re my family. It’s a personal choice to hurt oneself or risk oneself – we have that right to decide.
Yes, I’ve heard the reasoning behind the law, and it’s the same over-controlling reasoning they won’t let us reach into dumpsters to get perfectly good organic fruit. That legal term: LIABILITY. There’s way too much emphasis on indemnifying everything these days. Same reason I’m REQUIRED to insure my pickup even if I only drive it once a month. I could drive it every day, so I’m charged insurance that is based on a ‘would-be’… just as if I COULD hit my head and incur a public debt because I can’t afford health care. But mandating everyone to wear a helmet is WRONG, I fight it, I will always fight it… first and foremost because available helmets are for ‘summer recreation’ and aren’t adaptable to all weather, and secondly because it infringes on my personal liberty as an adult in a way that doesn’t set well with me at all.
I agree with an under 16 or under 18 helmet law. These people haven’t been riding a bike for 25 years. The risk management part of their brains is barely developing. But for the law to tell me that at 35 years old I need to wear a helmet when its 42 degrees out and raining? Turning my bike ride into a paranoia every time I see a police car? This is why I spoke out at that Vancouver city council meeting, and why I disobey that law. It’s right across the mighty Columbia from Portland, and there’s no sign to greet you as you cross the bridge:
Helmets are mandatory in Van-shit-hole.
Portland’s traffic is far more fast and furious than Vancouver’s ever will be, so why the law?
Because this is WASHINGTON – and if you don’t want someone telling you you need a license to wipe your ass, don’t live here. It’s the most ridiculous bureaucratic fuck-stick place, but I love riding all year and I love GREEN. Conclusion: Wear a helmet if you want, and don’t if you want. Don’t judge others for making their own choices that have little or no effect on YOU.
Kids don’t ride bikes to school because they don’t have to anymore. Parents see a pedophile on every corner or something, because the numbers of them driving their kids to school is ridiculous in the areas I have lived. Personally, I think kids are lazier too. Why ride to school if you can be taken by mom or dad? More time to stay inside and play video games.
And if emergency rooms stats actually scared people away from dangerous activities then there would be a lot less fast food restaurants and the obesity rate would be lower.
and fuck me too.
Damn. Shit gettin’ nasty in here like back before election time when there was two sommerfliesbys. Big ups to el jefe for vouching for the real me back then…I appreciate it still.
fuck me as well.
Jar …last breaths: Cant screw my lid shut
Dr: Sorry contributory negligence, you die
Dr: Oh wait this is US your neighbors have to unwillingly cover your stupidity
Make a law against driving with flip flops and I’ll accept a law that says I have to wear a helmet. I know when to wear a helmet. I might become an old cyclist, you’ll see. Maybe I’m old already… sure feels like it when I’ve got carpal tunnel and arthritis bad.
Myth #1: Technology improves lives. It only complicates them.
Myth #2: Medicine is about saving lives and preventing disease. This is secondary to the money thing. You who are in the medical industry are doing your job, and it is about money. If the money wasn’t moving in certain ways, you’d not be doing it!
Myth #3: We all deserve to live long lives. This is the crux; Mother Earth did not design it this way, and she has her way no matter how much we try to control things. This age of human supremacy is ephemeral, though unprecedented on Earth. We’re made out of the same stuff that every other animal is made out of, but we are so ridiculously manipulative at life and detached from the Mother as to make it a sick joke… to the point where we pay money to experience primal and basic things at some camp or ‘retreat’ with some guide.
Let’s recognize how sick this sick society is and make it something different. Fake compassion is just as bad if not worse than aggression.
If I could put it into writing, and have it stick, I would say: Let me die. But, SmartJar – do you realize that the system gives us one and only one option in the scheme… let the money move, and let the debt grow. Someone or some few are making good money on this big debt, and taking away the debt is a bad thing to them. There are a lot of things we take for granted that are just absolute lies, and only through hearing a lot of points of views, analyzing them with a good processor (your smart brain) and finding what is REALLY going on do we see how fucked it really is.
We are an enslaved nation in a world of slaves with a few powerful string pullers and the free men among us are rare rare rare. Like Roman times.
LJ,
go have a browse at:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_lif_exp_at_bir_tot_pop-life-expectancy-birth-total-population
click on the country links at the bottom, Swaziland, Zambia etc & look at the statistics.
I know a lot of theose countries personaly & technology, medicine & money would make a huge fucking difference to those stats.
Average life expectancy of 31.99 years ? in this day & age it’s a fucking crime against humanity.
Oops forgot, they neither have WMD or oil so there’s no reason for us to take an interest is there ?
uh, helloooo, snake!
can a brotha get a table dance? see post below…..
by the way, you’re really fucking nice. way to crack the mold. i crack helmets, snake cracks molds.
Dude, I’m so late to this party that I already missed it. Fuck it.
I’ll chime in (as I’m often prone to).
I’ve ridden many, many times without a helmet. I can’t even begin to count the times.
Then, one day, I woke up in the hospital. I was wearing a helmet that day, on a road ride.
I never even saw the car coming.
So, for me, now, after that, I put on a helmet. Seeing my wife’s crying eyes look down on my as I was taped to a back board waiting for the MRI scan is not something I care to repeat. Would the helmet have prevented my back injury? No. But, I really don’t like to think about what my head would have looked like without it. I believe I am here today because I was wearing a helmet.
Others may choose not to. And, frankly, I’m not what I feel about it – the long string of points and counter points presented thus far; it’s my choice, it’s society’s burden, it should be law, the state should stay out of it, etc.
But, I will say this, I never saw that car. And it knocked the living shit outta me.
Just remember that you only have one shot at this. And it’d be a god damn shame to let some drunk idiot take it away from you because of pride, hubris, or just proving some fucking point about “choice”.
That plastic lid can save your life. Don’t overlook that simple point.
The short life expectancy of people in Africa IS a crime against humanity. Sure as shit. Sure thing – but look at what CAUSED it, not to technology for a fix. Those people were colonized under the Maxim gun and the strap of white rule. They forgot how to exist in their own element. They were taught an un-natural way of existence: Private property and money economics. yes, this shit existed in Africa before whites but it was not the same dynamic. There’s a natural cycle to things, and a natural existence to every species and sub-species, including the different groups of people. There’s lizards that exist in places I’ll probably never go that would bite me and I would die. But a native of that area would live.
Snake is a nice person. Snake-yoga!
Did someone say table dance?
LJ – Horseshit !!
Yes, colonisation did bad shit but a lot of these people still live like their forefathers did, small rural villages, subsistance farming, (shit it’s drought, bad crop, no food, fuck it’s a flood, no crop, no food, let’s hope that our leaders haven’t sold all the foreign aid supplies to buy more weapons or build bigger palaces).
Rural villages, bad roads, little to no infrastructre, minimal medical aid, no sanitation, (yep, lets just go crap behind the hut) I could go on & on but technicaly they are living your ‘ideal’ low tech mother nature loving lifestyle.
My point, it’s a fuck side different to actual live in one of these place than to ‘choose’ to live in a clean, green environmentaly friendly way in the USA or NZ where is things go to crap theres a safety net, in Africa there’s no safety net.
“Otherwise, their stupid law can fuck off.”
“Today, I got fillet brazed Reynolds 853, forged 7000 series aluminum, and titanium composing my front end.”
LJ— well I guess that sums it up. BTW, the frame that failed was hand-made in Italy. Metal fatigues with age, it is a fact. So I guess you throw away your bikes after ten years? How old is that land shark? When was the last time you x-rayed or eddy-currented the welds? Ride safe, man.
Danimal #08 wins. Right on, brother. See you out there.
“The typical bike crash involves a drop to the pavement.”
Kaszi— or a three-ton “luxury sport utility vehicle” piloted by an angry, distracted driver. Ride safe, man.
Yep, I must need an NDI inspection on my bike frame. Or, I should just wear a helmet. The US Is #47 for life expectancy. Surely all of the energy we are consuming and the high tech medical equipment available to us isn’t doing it. We’re #47! That is sick and sad.
Thanks, Big Jonny for interjecting some humor into this serious conversation. To the rescue, again.
In ma nature there is no safety net. Little birdies get eaten while the mom is away to find food. What makes HUMANS so fucking important?
“So doctor, why is it that I can live my life without all that technology?”
LJ— who was it that used the phrase, “young and dumb?”
Danimal wins. Keep the rubber side down.
And we’re #17 , (hyah, nyah) plus as Kiwis we’re allowed to go live & work in Australia #7 , (so when I’m hitting the limit, I’m on the plane, instant extension)
Okay, Snake in a tie with Danimal. Can I fill your water bottles, gentlemen?
Fill them with what? And are they steel, glass, or LDPE bottles?
why is that every damn post LJ is involved with is like that accidental peek up fat chicks skirt….
you see it, wished you hadn’t, but can’t help looking again just to confirm what you saw, and could it really be like that….
Like Moby says in one of his songs: “The truth is not that comfortable.”
Your stance is composed of your tangent on the world. It is only your version of truth designed to fulfill its makers desire to be right. There is no one truth. And Moby pretty much blows.
Still, glad you’re getting over the stingy part, LJ.
I need to go get my tin foil hat re-sized
I agree with you, Gnome, to a point… my truth and your truth isn’t THE truth, as how connected to the real truth we are is inversely proportional to how much we attach ‘want’ or ‘faith’ to what we believe, and directly proportional to how observant and objective we are. Another quote, and from a guy whom I don’t believe everything he says, but this one is golden:
“We dance around a ring and suppose, whilst the truth sits in the middle and knows.” – S. Hawking. There’s a photo somewhere of him as a kid, long before his crippled drooling self, about 9 years old, leaning against a bicycle, looking BADASS. I want a poster of that photo.
Damn dude, just man up and acknowledge that going without a helmet is not the brightest thing to be doing. Regardless, stop blaming it on stupid shit. (Like the fact that you can’t wear it over your hat! That would be funny if it wasn’t so dumb.) Stop saying you don’t need one because you are a good rider. And stop getting drawn into debates you can’t win.
That plastic lid can save your life. Don’t overlook that simple point.
Word.
In BC we have had a bicycle helmet law for many years now I don’t think it helps. I’ll give an example. I used to do bike maintenance and safety clinics for kids. We would look over their bikes for safety issues, ie. loose grips, frayed brake cables, brake pads cutting into tires sidewalls, worn and bent rims…etc. Pretty much every kids bike we checked had safety issues. We would also check helmet fit. In one particular case we had 15 of 16 kids whose helmets didn’t fit. Loose chin straps that allowed the helmet to fall off, helmets way too big…etc. As well we had two bicycle police officers, neither had a proper fitting helmet. Many of the parents also had ill fitting helmets. So we have a law that requires helmets enforced by people who don’t know how to properly fit one. Point of story if you’re going to wear one or make your kid wear one make sure the f*cking thing fits and is properly adjusted, it’s jewelry otherwise as pretty much all of us know. Don’t know how? Go see your friendly neighborhood bike mechanic and get set up.
Bought my first helmet almost 30 years ago. Any of you old enough to remember the Bell V1 pro? Probably not.
From the perspective of those without all the drawbacks of our evil technology, littlejar, I know a few Dominicans, Haitians, and people from the great continent of Africa who would gladly trade places. The luxury you forget is the CHOICE that you have. I tend to agree with you that it is, at the very least, ironic that we pay for our adrenaline rush, for shock, for fear, for excitement in these good ol’ united states. But we can say who, when, and where. When a neighboring clan, or a mamba, or malaria comes through your door, and you get to experience that terror for real, for 24 hrs a day, and when the pain that goes along with it is real…
As an example of how I agree with you, but the impossible decisions…I went to inland southern Belize to work for 6 weeks in a clinic that tries to provide basic care, year-round, to the Maya descendents. Now these villages: primeval. Accessible by walking paths through native rainforest. Thatch huts. Language both Spanish and Native, mixed. They slept in hammocks. One room, fire ring in the middle, they breathed the smoldering ember-smoke all night. Corn tortillas the dietary mainstay. And they cut the forest. All day, they cut it down. And burned it, sold what they could, turned the rest into farmland for their crops.
I saw a baby one day with guillan-barre. Look it up. Suffice it to say an inciting viral illness, like a cold, can make a baby paralyzed. In the early stages, you don’t know how bad it’s going to get…so we asked the family if they would accompany us to a hospital in Belize city. They wouldn’t. They refused. Despite our good rapport with them, they accepted infant illness, and mortality. And they wanted to have roads to their town, to cut and burn the forest, and they wanted to drink coca-cola.
I realized, then, that I didn’t know fuckshit about anything, because it takes a bigger man than me to tell people who have nothing that they can’t slash and burn their forest. That they need to use “alternative techniques” -techniques that could leave them without food for all they know- and that infant mortality from treatable illnesses was unacceptable. Now, yes, the broad swath of human progress may be toward those things, just as it may be toward more bikeable cities and less dependence on fossil fuels. But to that one family, and in that one little town, who of us can tell them “how to live?” They know more about life than any of us- probably more than most of us want to know.
It’s not camp. This whole “getting back to nature” bullshit fails to recognize that. Pain is pain, real, and it doesn’t end when the roller coaster stops. And sometimes a child dies.
In the country of the free and the brave, it is funny to see how many people think that biking is soooo dangerous that helmet wear should be mandated and the personal liberty of choosing to wear or not to wear be overridden.
At the same time possession of firearms seems as an unalienable right even though there are 100000 blessed/killed by firearms in the US annually. I wonder how is this less expensive for the society than few cyclists not wearing helmets that do not really protect in case of collision with a motor vehicle?
Go on and live your little paranoid lives guys, heads up littlejar!
i am expediting my tinfoil hat refit.
I’m pretty sure somewhere in the constitution there is a helmet clause, along with assault rifles, low yield thermo-nucular devices and thongs.
Stand on your false pulpit of liberty while people die and have catastrophic injuries, all in the name of liberty.. Seriously, that is such a damned lame argument. You have to be joking..
Ooh, my tinfoil hat is ready…..
What is the tin foil hat for? Does it block microwaves from entering your skull? Would they let you on the plane wearing tin foil hat? Or are you just vogue-ing in a Devo sort of way?
I’m in the field for a couple of days and this shit blows up?! This is uglier than politics… sfb, thanks for the props. Joe, if we ever cross paths, I’ll buy a round as well. That goes for anyone here.
We’ve had a bunch of heated arguments here, but when it gets to this point we might as well be arguing about whether letters are better than numbers. Step back and breathe people. I’ll check on y’all tomorrow…
el jefe, beer good. Me like.
to quote FLC:
“I never take myself too seriously
‘Cause everybody knows fat birds don’t fly”
and why not throw in a little:
“I am always optimistic about human relations
I got more friends than my man Peter Gatien
We’re always fun loving, so don’t start bugging
If your girlie comes up and starts kiss-kiss-kissing and hugging”
LITTLEJAR (francis) – why would you establish and contribute to the perpetuation of such a mindless posting? you suck and should be denied from ever posting at dcdotcom ever again.
http://www.mikeaitken.com/index.html
Now if anyone here is a better rider than Mike Aitken please speak up. But when one of the most talented riders on the planet goes down on something he’s done countless times and nearly loses his life that should be a wake up call for the rest of us. And please think before anyone makes an ill informed statement regarding bmx, its not punk kids riding little bikes. The skills gained from bmx easily crossover and have allowed many former/current bmx riders to excel at mtb’ing.
Dr. Doom – Evil medical school, I hear it’s a bitch. Kinda like Johnson and Wales? Glad I’m on the side of good. I don’t give a flying fuck what you think. No one else does, either.
LJ,
Keep it up, you’re doing good.
Fuck them.
But please keep it in perspective…
Danimal,
I bow to you.
Seriously, you’d know all about the Swedish Truck Paradox in Africa.
I’m just grateful that there are people like you around.
oh you care little francis. it’s impossible for you not to. how about i extendthe electrician’s offer but instead i’ll come to you for some serious face pounding… i bet i can make you cry…
Well, a threat for a threat – are you done yet? (as in, quit pretending you’re a couple of people. Lame.) I’m done caring. Just give it up. You’ve said some gross, ugly things (Mr. D, Dr. Doom, whoever else the fuck you are) but you aren’t a threat to me, and I’m not a threat to you. And I’m not, never was, never will be a marine. (that was a joke, a parody) I was just ripped off by two ex-marines in a row, so I’m through doing business with them too. God bless the Corps and all that, I’ll just give up the tasteless military parables. So what other assumptions do you have today?
“And I’m not, never was, never will be a marine.”
Huh ??
What ??
OK. LJ. I admit to being a general over all dick towards the World.
But…..I make you look like a bucket of amoeba shit.
Things change tho.
I’m still working on that change.
You ?
come on LJ francis, ugly things have been said… are your feelings hurt? where the fuck have you come from? seriously, i’ve been following this blog since the summer of 2003 (i think, maybe it was 2002). who the fuck are you and what qualifies you to post your useless tripe here? dude, you’re bringing down the DC ship. littlejar = devolution. please, cease and desist…
Would you guys seriously knock off the fist fight crapola already? You’re not going to drive across the god damn country to get in a punch up. It just isn’t going to happen. Disagree, tell each other you suck it, and move on to the next argument.
your choice to wear a helmet or not is a reflection of your own self worth. it by no means makes you a pussy to wear one (or your child). if you love life and enjoy your days on this ride then you should wear a helmet. that is the most basic and underlying argument on the subject. so do what you want. your actions, if well thought out will speak of how you view yourself. what do ya think, ya got something to live for? then it sure doesn’t hurt to wear your skid lid.
“A man who hasn’t found something he is willing to die for is not fit to live.”
Dr.MLK
What do you live for LJ? i just hope it isn’t to piss into the wind on a helmet law.
LJ just lives for piss, period end. Nothing else, well besides felching another brothers’ milkshake. How are ya, francis?
Ain’t what you said about me, creep-o. Hey, where did fun old Electric Joe go? He turned into Mr. D? Still the only one calling me francis, and you’re still the only one making yourself into a real winner. This isn’t a fist fight, this is cowardly bullshit. Both ways. I admit to getting sucked into something stupid and pointless. You taunted me, I wasn’t long enough on patience. At what point do YOU win? OK – let’s just say, at comment #100, YOU win. I don’t feel one bit bad about it. Go home with your victory. You’ll get yours someday, if you ever have the nerve to harass people in person as you do so cowardly online… hiding behind multiple personalities. Sick-o.