TCI Friday – Splattered Brains
The first organized ride I covered as a writer ventured through the rolling hills in the back country of Orange County.
I had a map of the course, and after watching the group roll out, I drove a reverse course route to find an interesting spot to view.
As I came up to the base of a serious descent, I saw a lone rider sprawled out in the ditch with a couple of others standing over him.
He cradled his right arm and shoulder looking more than a bit dazed.
The EMTs arrived shortly after I did. They put him on a stretcher and loaded him in the ambulance.
Then one EMT came back for his stuff. He picked up his helmet and held it before me — its inside cracked in half.
“That,” the EMT said to me, “Would have been his skull if he didn’t have his helmet on.”
I had been riding regularly for a few years by then, and I always wore a helmet. Still do.
On the rare occasion that I forget to don my noggin protector, I’ll feel the breeze in my hair and think, that’s odd, then OH SHIT! … I turnaround and cautiously head home.
My reputation preceded me on a few occasions where I was invited to ride with a small group. I could never keep my opinions to myself, so I devised my mini-poking-fun-rant to get my point across.
I would say, “You know that’s kind of rude to not wear a helmet. If you crash I’ll never be able to get the image of your brains smeared across the road out of my head, and we’ll all have nightmares.”
Sometimes they would engage me, arguing that it’s a short fall from a bike seat.
To that I’d say, “Take a watermelon or coconut and hold it head-high then drop it. That would be your skull.”
It worked a few times to get someone to put on a helmet. Other times they laughed it off. Luckily no nightmares for me. Yet.
This week’s question: Do you dare ride anywhere without a helmet, and do you ever speak up to advocate wearing helmets in a ride?
I’m the counter example. If I’m riding on our local bike path, or sometimes even commuting when it’s hot out, I skip the helmet. I love the wind in my hair and think the risk is acceptably low.
Once in the last 10 years I forgot my helmet at home and another time I forgot to bring my wife helmet. Since we drove to the start I couldn’t just turn around to get my helmet. Both rides were MTB on dirt roads so helmetless did not feel like a big risk
I learned to ride a bike in 1966 or 1967 and to date I’ve only broken one helmet due to a fall. I was going slow so it was the vertical fall Taft broke the helmet.
Do I ride with a helmet? Yes. Would I ride without? Yes, but probably not a road ride unless it was a slow cruise on residential streets or protected bike path. I would nit do a group ride without a helmet.
I do not appreciate strangers who think they’re the helmet police.
In general I have always been a wearer of the helmet, especially when I would do group road rides or ride to the bar. Eventually I began not wearing a helmet on short rides around the neighborhood. I actually began to enjoy the free feeling of not wearing one. I also began to notice that cars would give me more space when I wasn’t wearing a helmet. My life, my decision, my risk.
When I was a kid, we didn’t have helmets. When I started riding in the late eighties/early nineties many still did not wear helmets. I think some people give too much credit to a small piece of a beer cooler that they strap on their heads. You can still get hurt riding bikes with a helmet on. Getting pasted at full speed by a car could still kill you. Maybe not wearing the helmet will ensure that my time comes and I won’t spend the rest of my life in the hospital or a rehab facility not knowing my own name.
I, like Syborg, do not like the helmet police. But I try to be understanding. Maybe they suck at riding bikes and are always scared.
I wear a helmet nearly all the time. Mostly because if I get maimed or killed I don’t want some POS insurance company insisting I’d have been fine, despite logical evidence to the contrary, if only I’d worn a helmet.