We humans are a strange lot. We see what we want to see, we hear what we want to hear, and we believe quite a bit without questioning. We’re creatures of perceptive reality, of habit and repetition. If someone or something challenges our long held belief in something, whether it’s right, wrong, or misguided; we’ll defend it to the hilt regardless of anything.
The recent tragedy of Anita Zaffke comes to mind. Anita was on her motorcycle in early May, and doing everything she was taught was right about being safe on a motorcycle. She was wearing her helmet, and had bright reflective clothing on. While Anita was stopped at a red light, she was tragically killed. Anita’s body and motorcycle we’re thrown 150 feet away at the rate of 50mph. Several bones in Anita’s body were broken along with several severe internal organ injuries. She did not survive.
Laura Hunt was the driver of the car that slammed into Anita and killer her. Laura, a registered nurse I might add, was driving her car and doing her nails at the same time! She looked up while driving at 50mph to see the red light and to send Anita to her death. Recently, Laura was indicted on 6 counts of reckless homicide and faces 5 years in prison.
Anita was wearing all the right and proper motorcycle safety gear that various authority figures, teachers, parents, family members, the mainstream media and others have told us was and is safe and is required and requisite to avoid disaster. But how did the helmet and reflective clothing keep Anita safe from the stupidity and recklessness of Laura? The simple answer is that they didn’t.
I recently attempted to have a discussion with my aunt about motorcycle helmets. She looked upon me with horror when I told her I did not wear a helmet. She told me that is not safe at all. When I attempted to counter-point her or get more of a response than ‘that’s not safe’, she would have none of it. She just regarded that not wearing a helmet was not safe.
There are three issues here; what we’re taught as safe, what we perceive as safe, and what is actually experienced as safe.
I have quite a few friends who are nurses, police officers, paramedics, and firefighters. I myself did a stint in the ER and in an ambulance. About 70% of my nurse friends will tell me that I am an idiot for not wearing a helmet because a helmet always equals safe. They will tell me about all the horrific injuries they see from motorcycle crashes from riders without helmets in their hospitals. I asked if they ever see any riders with helmets on? They say no because they’re always safe.
But the other 30% offer quite a different picture. The reason they don’t see any riders with helmets on the hospital? It’s because they’re already dead. The paramedics, firefighters, and policemen that I have spoken to have all told me very similar stories. Helmets have rather nasty habits of breaking necks. The helmet adds an extra amount of weight to the human head that the neck just cannot handle properly. Go ahead and put a helmet on (any kind) and shake your head back and forth and even up and down. Even with a snugly fit helmet, you can feel the extra pulling sensation at the base of the skull and on the neck. Now multiply that pulling sensation by 20x and imagine the snapping of the neck. Helmets also have a bounce back effect from striking a surface. That bounce back can also snap necks (like snapping a rubber band too fast). Helmets effectively make the biker's "head" much larger, so with a bigger head a falling biker is much more likely to slam it against the road or a car (causing traumatic brain injury because the brain is still slammed against the skull). Helmets can also cut off, severely damage, and obstruct the airway. They can also hide, mask, and obscure critical head injuries and impair treatment that can readily be treated on the scene.
Helmets also have side effects when worn. They muffle one’s hearing and impair peripheral vision (almost like horse blinders). And as mentioned above, they add extra weight to the head and the neck that the neck cannot properly support (especially when moving your head to check on traffic left and right and on your six). Yet many helmet safety diehards I have told this to scoff at these points, and yet they’ve never even worn a helmet. Go ahead and put a helmet on; any kind really (full face, half face, top helmet). Go ahead and walk around with the helmet on your head. You’ve lost quite a sense of your environment with full face and half face because of the loss and/or impairment of peripheral vision and hearing. Now imagine having that on your head at 50mph with those losses. That’s pretty safe, right?
The Chicago Sun-Times recently had a small article about a Chicago area reporter, Tom Negovan, who returned from being attached to a combat unit in Afghanistan for 2 years. The first week back in Chicago, Tom decided to take his motorcycle out for a quick ride and got into a bad accident when a driver turned left directly in front of him. The bike was totaled and he suffered a few broken vertebrae which required spinal surgery, and the article made mention a few times about how Tom almost always wore his helmet; and the time he doesn’t wear his helmet is when he gets into an accident. Yet no other mention was made about the driver who was not paying attention to the road and their surroundings, and pulled left in front of an oncoming motorcycle.
The article had carried a tone of and made the assumptive comparison that if you do not wear your helmet, you’ll get into a wreck on a motorcycle; and if you’re wearing your helmet this type of injury and surgery could have been avoided. The article failed to mention that it’s also possible the added weight or even the pinch point the helmet creates at the back of the neck could have caused even more injury to the spine. And the article further failed to make issue that drivers need to pay attention to the road and traffic. Essentially the article shifted the blame onto Tom instead of the driver of the car. The idea is that if a rider gets hit by an at-fault driver, it was the stupid rider's fault for not wearing a helmet. This is no exaggeration; this exact opinion has been promulgated by the defense in countless court cases, effectively denying riders and their families’ justice against at-fault drivers.
I refuse to wear a helmet when I ride. I like to move my head around and check my six. I like having my peripheral vision detect the motion of a car on either side. I like hearing and sensing my environment for dangers, sirens, even someone telling me something from a car, or effectively hearing sounds from my bike (in case something is wrong). Want to smell gas, oil, and your exhaust in case something is wrong also? None of these can effectively be done while wearing a helmet.
The illusion of helmet safety is rooted in the false perceptions of what we’re taught and what we experience. Just as many nurses claim that helmets equal safe because of the lack of injurious patients brought in wearing helmets (because many or most of them are dead at the scene); many riders themselves who are taught that helmets and reflective clothing equals safe ride ignorant of what’s really going on around them. They believe that riding with reflective and colorful clothing means that drivers in cars notice them and that if anything happens to them, the helmet will keep them safe. Many drivers also misconstrue the helmet/safety link. Drivers who see a rider with a helmet on automatically think that if something happens to the motorcyclist they’ll be fine because they’re wearing a helmet.
There is a complete disconnect on what safe really is, what the assumptions are, what the perception is, and what the reality really is.
Illinois recently passed a law making text messaging illegal while driving. That’s just great, and I’ve heard cheers from people who claim that this is what needs to be done to make out roads safer and more accident free. What about touch screen dash mounted GPS units? What about playing with the various radios and MP3 players? What about reading the newspaper and books? What about the three yelling and obnoxious kids in back? What about doing makeup and feeding your child a bottle or sippy cup? What about staring off into space while in hermetically and environmentally sealed soundproof vehicles with an air conditioner at full blast with all the comforts as our living rooms during primetime realty TV watching time? Except these motorized living rooms on wheels impede us from properly hearing, seeing, and even feeling the outside environment that we’re driving in and supposed to be paying attention to so that dangerous accidents do not happen to us or anyone else. But we’re going be safe come January 1st 2010 when text messaging becomes illegal in the state of Illinois.
What’s interesting is that helmet laws may ironically make riding more dangerous, because fewer riders on the road means that drivers are less likely used to seeing riders. I’m not the only one who refuses to ride through a state that requires a helmet, and I know that there are people in helmet-required states that won’t ride or buy a bike because of a helmet law. Helmet laws make driving, riding, and even walking more dangerous, because when people stop riding, they start driving, and it's cars and SUV's that kill other drivers and pedestrians, not riders.
When I ride, I have no choice to pay attention to what I am doing, to my motorcycle, and my surroundings. My feet have to remain on the foot pegs, my thighs hugging the gas tank. My left hand covering the clutch, and my right hand on the throttle and near the front break lever. My eyes are scanning the road for holes and bumps, dips and dangers, cars, other riders, and any other type of movement on the road. Paying attention to all those variables is what is going to keep me as safe as possible. I have no choice but to pay attention to what I am doing and to my surroundings. And that choice of control and vigilance is impeded by a helmet.
Drivers in any type of four-wheeled vehicle on the road have lots of choices to either pay attention to the road, pay partial attention, or none at all. They can eat, drink, smoke, text message, read books, read newspapers, do makeup, do their hair, shave, paint their nails, email, discipline unruly children, feed children (and YES, I have seen somebody breast feeding a baby behind the wheel), input directions onto a GPS, play with the radio, talk on the cell phone, dial the cell phone, turn the air conditioner on full blast, turn the radio up in volume, close the windows and seal themselves from the outside environment, and daydream. And they have the choice to do all of this, some of this, or even none of this at 30, 40, 50mph or faster because the vehicles they drive afford them the opportunity and ability to do so.
Unfortunately, helmets have become a panacea and already so much a part of the society’s collective safety consciousness; many people and city and state governments think they can require a person to slap a helmet on their head and they've done their part to make sure that motorcyclists are safe. But it's actually the opposite. This approach is akin to outfitting somebody with a flak jacket and then having them run through a firing range. If you had to choose between giving a person a helmet or the education about how to ride and drive safely, you should choose the education and ditch the helmet every time.
The drivers who are so insistent that bikers wear helmets aren't wearing helmets themselves. This isn't silly: crash helmets could potentially save more lives for motorists than bikers. About 58,000 drivers and passengers die on U.S. roads every year compared to 2,500 bikers. If helmets are good for bikers, they ought to be great for drivers and passengers. Why is nobody banging the drum about this? After all, helmets save lives and are always safe, right? Or is it that a crash helmet would impede a driver’s ability to read and pay attention to the TV and properly use the touchscreen GPS in the SUV?
If you feel that you can properly ride your motorcycle, pay attention to the road and environment, and properly see and keep an eye on cars and other vehicles on the road; and act accordingly in those situations while wearing a helmet. Then by all means do so. That is your choice, and always should be. You should have the right and choice to always do what you feel is safe and right for you. Since drivers of all kinds seem to have a plethora of choices afforded to them while driving, motorcyclists should have a choice afforded to them also. Let those who ride, decide.
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