[email hidden said:"]... I'll write once again about an incident I witnessed.
My family and some friends had just left a restaurant in a large city,
and were walking toward the car. Up ahead a tour bus was parked by the
side of the narrow street, facing away from us. A woman driving the
same direction was passing the bus.
At the instant she passed the front of the bus, a college-age kid came
zooming across the front of the bus into her path. She hit the kid,
HARD. We were something less than half a block behind. I heard the
sickening crash. I saw the kid's body tossed in the air higher than
the car's roof, upside down. The car screetched to a halt and the kid
came down in front of it. I later heard he landed on his head on the
road.
I knew I'd just seen a traffic fatality. I sprinted back to the
restaurant and had them call 911, then I reluctantly jogged back to the
scene to see the carnage.
The car's windshield and grille were destroyed, the hood was badly
dented, the windshield wiper badly bent - but there was no carnage. As
I had run back to the restaurant, the kid had picked himself up off the
road and walked to the sidewalk. An off-duty EMT had also witnessed
the crash, and was having him sit motionless on a low brick wall as he
held his neck immobile, but the kid was calm and conscious. (The
motorist was much more upset.) Cops came and took statements, the
ambulance came, they strapped him on a backboard and took him to the
ER. But he was fine, and back in classes the next day. We know because
we called to check.
His head had smashed the car's windshield and wiper. And he landed on
his head in the street. But except for a 1" scratch above the right
ear (Head injury!!!!!) he was fine.
Did his helmet save his life? Absolutely not. He wore no helmet.
But if he _had_ worn a helmet, there's no doubt that everyone -
off-duty EMT, policeman, ambulance driver, ER personell - would have
said it had. There's no doubt the helmet would have been badly
smashed, if not in pieces. But again, he had no head injury but a tiny
scratch.
What's even more odd is that nobody - no witnesses, no EMT, no cop, no
ambulance driver, no ER doctor (AFAIK) said he _should_ have been
wearing a helmet. Because he wasn't riding a bike. He had jogged
across that street in front of that bus. He was a pedestrian.
It's odd, because the numbers of fatalities and head injuries of
pedestrians in the US each year absolutely dwarf the numbers for
cyclists. And, BTW, the per-hour figures for peds are a bit worse than
the per-hour figures for cylcists, according to the only source I've
been able to find. But no busybodies go around telling peds to wear
helmets.
Anyway: Every time I hear a "My helmet saved my life" story I think
about that incident. If that ped had been wearing a helmet, everyone
would have been positive it saved his life. And everyone would have
been wrong.
Quoted message said:
I've now made it my mission to get non-helmet wearers to - even tough
they're dorky and made for chldren - wear helmets.
How do you feel about people accosting you, trying to change your
religion to save your soul? Surely you understand that your eternal
soul is much more valuable than your mortal head; so surely they are
much more justified in what they do, than you are in your obnoxious
campaign.
Yet most people feel there is nothing is so obnoxious as a true
believer trying to convert others.
- Frank Krygowski
Brilliant, Frank. That's the sort of post that makes "Helmet Wars" threads worth reading.
