Up Front

UP FRONT

Allan Girdler

THINKING ON A HEAD

Because I am a normal father, I’ve always set the kids a normal bunch of rules, things like clean up your room, help your mother with the dishes, homework before play, be home by 11 p.m. and don’t ride without a helmet.

The other day I was riding near home. Half a mile in front I saw my middle son. I knew it was him because it was a red bike, blue jersey and yellow helmet. He didn’t know I was back there so I rode along keeping an eye on how he behaved—quite well—and suddenly I realized an odd frhing:

I’ve never caught any of the kids riding without a helmet.

Sure, it’s a rule. So are the other rules hsted above and it won’t be news to any parent to hear that all the others have been broken at least once. These are norrnal kids. They dodge helping mom, their rooms would shame Gypsies, etc. Obviously they wear helmets, not because they obey rules or are afraid of the old man.

Further, my kids’ friends wear helmets, most of them most of the time, anyway. These are normal middle teen-agers, say 16 to 19 and they mostly ride rat bikes. They ride too fast, neglect their machines, make noise and constantly engage in a futile struggle to fool the police into not noticing the lack of turn signals and such. Normal kids, in short, but they wear their helmets.

Next exhibit. We live near a military base and every day I see servicemen riding big bikes. I know they’re in the service because they are in great physical shape, have short hair and always ride with their helmets locked under the seat or strapped to the sissy bar.

Worse yet. There are in this country states where the law requires helmets for younger riders, 16 to 18, but doesn’t require helmets on adults, 18 and older.

Well. Here we are again with the helmet issue. How long this has been going on, I can’t recall. But the activist bikers have struck successful blows for freedom, state laws requiring helmets have been repealed or rescinded and now I see the feds are beginning again with the planted news stories about how fatalities have increased as helmet laws have decreased. Along with that come plans for a campaign to persuade riders to use helmets.

Catching the kid wearing his helmet when he didn’t know I was looking set me thinking about this.

Example one. We live in a free state. The young riders wear helmets, at least the ones I know. We can give credit for common sense. They know helmets work. But beyond that, because they don’t have to do it, wearing helmets is one way for the bikers to tell the difference between them and the wimps who may ride two-wheeled motor vehicles of some sort, but who aren’t really into motorcycles. These kids ride bikes, they like bikes and they wear helmets not for protection but as a matter of pride.

The servicemen are subject to other rules. They’re going to and from the base. The base has a helmet law. So they must own helmets and they must wear them. Past the gate, and it’s so long, Sarge! They are Off Duty. Colonel Bogey can’t touch them for 24 hours and the way they celebrate this is, I think, to not wear the helmet instantly they don’t have to.

Case three. Whoever wrote the minorsonly law must have been born 48 years old. Remember what it was like, working your way to adulthood, month by crawling month? Remember how great it was, being able to prove you were all grown up? Okay, I concede the good reason for protecting minors from themselves. But when you engrave in stone the rule that kids must wear helmets, you make helmets . . . kid stuff. Wanna prove you’re a grown-up? Pitch your helmet on your 18th birthday.

My examples are chosen to show how we can work with human nature or against it. If I was base commander, although the rules wouldn’t allow it, I’d forbid helmets on base. The speed limit there is only 15 mph, after all. I’d feel better knowing the guys were stopping just outside the gate, defiantly putting on their helmets and soaring off down the road.

I have seen some alleged research into why some riders don’t wear helmets. The scientists discovered we are “counter-dependent.” This means that while some people do what mommy tells them, others do whatever mommy tells them not to do. There’s a sliver of truth here. I’d rephrase it some and say that motorcycle people are more likely than average to do what they want. And we don’t take kindly to being told what to do.

What we’ve forgotten, thanks to the foolishness of mandatory helmet laws, is that we bikers darned near invented the helmet. Yes. Riders and race drivers and pilots began using the cloth and leather jobs, actually more caps than crash hats. Then Dr. George Snively and friends worked out that those cork-and-canvas rigs didn’t protect. The Snell Foundation worked out what a helmet could do.

The market? Motorcycles. Thanks to the Brits the sports bike was here and th>l guys who rode hard and well wore held mets. They were out there in the wind anc the rain and the rocks and they knew. Anv rider whose head was worth protecting wore a helmet. And those of us, okay, me. who didn’t have a Big Twin, took our cut; from them. I didn't have a Triumph, butj bought my first helmet at the Triumph store. I was no Smokin' Joe Leonard but I had a helmet like his.

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We were smarter than average. Here’s^ tip for the next time a non-rider asks why we don’t all wear helmets: Ask if he wea?s one driving his car. Most car-connected deaths are due to head injuries. Most heaci injuries could be prevented by helmets. Yet there's no law's even for seatbelts, never mind helmets. No campaign, jjo' adds, no fines or questions of Constitutional law and we’re talking perhaps 20,000 fewer deaths per year. Racing drivers took to helmets (their rules said they had to) but the real market, the reason better helmets have come on the market, is us, the bikers.

Every year more and more riders used them. Then we got the law and we lost sight of the issue. We got so busy fighting those who’d save us against our will, fn violation of our rights, that we forgot. Until we were told we had to like helmets, we liked them.

I still do. No nobility here. I’m subject to emotional force. I can argue the merits, describe hownice it is not to have the wind bring tears from my eyes and flail the ciwl from my hair. I actually have gone over the bars and been glad, on the way dow*i, that I was wearing a helmet. All true.

But underlying that, 1 decided years ago that really being a motorcycle nut, a good rider, a biker, meant wearing^a helmet. And I’ve worn them ever since.H

Back to the proposed campaign. Let’s skip the lectures, to begin with. We don’t need people telling us we need their advice. Nor have I faith in the pow'er of celebrities. What campaigns are really good at is giving people good reasons to do w litit they want to do anyway. Their peers and the wish to be seen as good riders have done more for my kids than my threats could hope to do.

As a cheerful closure, a tidbit from the Wall Street Journal. That excellent newspaper ran a story on the laws vs fatalitks pitch the feds are making. But this story quoted the AMA at the same time, citirlg other factors ignored by the safety lobby, and the newspaper itself wondered, if people need compulsion, why are helmets sales on the increase when the law isn’t there to compel? t

Because when those who ride are free to decide, they’ll make the right choice.