Thursday, September 24, 2009

Only stupid people don't wear helmets.

Hubby got hit by a car last month. Idiot. He was riding his bicycle when some lady pulled out of Tim Hortons and smoked him. The bike went under the car, and hubby went over. Thankfully the only casualty was the bicycle. Hubby ended up with a separated shoulder, but was ok. Needless to say, this incident freaked me out, and has made me more than a little paranoid since. Enter the evil helmet discussion.

In Ontario, it is law for anyone under 18 to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle. However, if you are an adult, you may use your own judgement, (or lack there of). After hubbys recent ambulance ride, I asked him to wear one. He refused. He is afraid of looking stupid... as if walking around with a smashed-in skull would make him look cool. "Chick's dig scars", he said. I pleaded, begged and cried. Nothing worked. He flat out refuses to be safe. Now I get this sick feeling every time he goes out. If he's late, I have visions of fantastic smash-ups involving various degrees of destruction to both hubby and vehicle. He could alleviate all of this craziness by just putting the damn thing on his head. Why are men so dumb? Stupid Question.

What do you think? Helmet, or no helmet?

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chicks also dig slightly tossled hair from someone being all environmentally friendly and good to their body...

Helmet...definitely helmet..

Anonymous said...

p.s. my dad won't wear one either because 'it is only a short journey' and 'too much hassle to look after'

grr...

Jinksy said...

HELMET! No question - absolutely no excuse for letting pride in your appearance get in the way of safety. You tell 'im, gal!

tamara said...

I always wear a helmet, but my husband refuses to! Even though a friend of ours had a bike accident and would have been severely injured if he hadn't been wearing one. It's an ongoing battle...

Anonymous said...

I am sure you did not marry a stupid man. Stubborn, macho, determined...Okay.

I think a hlemet is a must, but even the law allows him to determine his own future.

Please don't be offeded, but calling my husband names never wins him to what I want. I say this with the kindest of intentions to you! Pleae don't hate me!

agrantham81 said...

The law here is that you must wear a helmet.

But even without that I vote Helmet.

My little brother refused when he lived with us to wear one as well. But what do you do??

Poopsie aka Blue said...

Now I will say up front I can't ride a bike NO sense of balance, none @ all.
So I watch with frequent fear as Oxford many many cyclists weave between the cities busy traffic.
It's a 50/50 split between helmits worn or not.
I go with the idea, you must be mad to cycle in a city without protection but men are just BB stuborn about their macho image.

Blue
x

Richard Keatinge said...

It appears that helmets break easily, but don't absorb the impact, see the engineers quoted at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet#Criticism_of_current_standards.3B_new_designs. A broken helmet has simply failed, and the widespread anecdotes on the theme of "a helmet saved my life" seem to owe more to wishful thinking than to science. As for the occasional anecdotes about "a car ran over my head", see the pro-helmet site http://www.helmets.org/smush.htm; if a car goes over your head, I'm sorry to say you won't be sitting up and praising your helmet. The only known connection between helmets and death is that helmets have strangled a few young children who were wearing helmets while playing off their bicycles.

Helmet laws have stopped a lot of people cycling and have done nothing for head injury rates, see http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=16565131 (Robinson's work uses the best scientific methods, all available control groups and so on.)

Helmet propaganda relies on overemphasizing the very small dangers of cycling and seldom seems to emphasize its large benefits. At my moderately advanced age it's far too dangerous not to cycle - regular cycling, Danish style, not too far, not too fast, nearly halves the death rate, see http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/160/11/1621. Taking up moderate exercise is about as beneficial as giving up smoking. Bicycling is good for health, but bike helmets don't seem to be.

Hilary said...

We have a lot of biking paths (very few roads must be crossed) and when I bike I don't wear a helmet any more. That having been said, when my children were young, I did wear one because they needed to do as I did and not just as I said. If I was riding in traffic now, I'd be helmeted.

Your husband knows all the reasons why he should wear one but has decided not to. You can't control that (as much as I'm with you on wanting to) so your best bet is to accept it and try your best not to stress out over it. Things can and do happen, but the chances are still small that something serious will happen (again). But yeah.. I feel for you.

Carolina said...

We are a bicycle loving crowd here in the Netherlands, but almost no one wears a helmet. It isn't even a point of discussion. Sometimes I see little children wearing one and very sporadically a grown up. I think we feel that if we have to start wearing helmets on a bicycle, we are one step away from having to wear helmets when we go walking ;-) Or maybe that is just how I feel.

Be careful is all I can say. Try not to fall on your head!

Smacktapolis said...

Helmets look stupid. And they ARE stupid as the far majority of bicycle injuries are to parts of the body OTHER than the head.

Most of us didn't wear helmets when kids and we all turned out fine, yet nowadays kids wear helmets, sit in car seats, wear protective clothing just to take a leak, yet all these kids are doing stupid things.... Hmmm... Maybe people could learn a little respect for their bodies and NOT wear all this safety crap.

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