Bicycle Helmets: Why Adults Should Wear Them Too
BOSTON (WBZ) ―For Lisa Hoffman, strapping on a bike helmet has always been automatic.Well, then you're an idiot. Don't pass laws affecting me because you don't know how to properly stop a bicycle. The story here doesn't get into laws for adults, but still mentions that no states require adults to wear helmets (22 states mandate helmets for minors). This video here has the call for MA to mandate helmets.
It's a habit that saved her life.
"A rollerblader cut me off while biking. I braked really quick," Hoffman says "I flipped over my bike."
Why stop there?
Why not full bubble wrap from birth to death? Maybe a protective cocoon we can all walk around wearing so that nothing bad ever happens, and if something does happen it's not our fault? At some point, the overbearing, overreaching government intrusion is going to mandate this sort of Nerf™ World; why not get in on the ground floor? Let's get a Nerf™ Suit into production, get a bunch of idiots to make teary testimonials about how the Nerf™ Suit ZOMG TOTALLY SAVED MAH LIFE, and agitate to have them made mandatory?
Gah. I probably just gave some Beacon Hill politician a boner just thinking about this...
That is all.
13 comments:
The thing I'll never understand is why people think that you have to be 'safe' all the time. If you're unlikely to be hurt by something, you stop respecting it. Take away people's natural caution and they lose the ability to discern threats.
Not to mention that the most alive I've ever felt was when doing something that could've ended with me as a statistic. If you're always safe, you're not really living, are you? I know people who think that Scuba Diving is sooooo dangerous and they'd never do it, yet to me it's the most peaceful I can get.
Makes you wonder if the human race is doomed, doesn't it? If you spend all your time being 'safe', you have no passion for doing something new and different.
"Welcome to Nerfachusetts, here's your state-mandated nanny"
What happened to the "If you're injured and you're not wearing full protective gear, you're a dumbass" crowd?
Doesn't apply to bicycles? I wonder why?
My daughter hit a pothole in the road when riding once when she was about 13 or 14. it was a deep one and stopped the bike cold so that she went over the handlebars.
She was wearing a helmet, but that doesn't do you a whole lot of good when you land on the point of your chin.
Broke her jaw in three places and would have lost most of her teeth had she not had braces at the time to hold them in place until the docs could get in there and put everything back where it belonged.
Is life...is not safe.
I always wore a bike helmet (once I had kids) because I wanted to set an example for them. Nothing wrong with a little added protection for the cranium. When I worked in the hospital on the vent unit, we had a patient who hit her head on the curb after hitting some kind of obstruction while riding her bike. She ended up a vegetable. Also, and I found this out years later, my daughter drove headfirst into a tree one time. Luckily she was wearing her helmet. You can't keep everyone safe all the time, obviously. But wearing a helmet is just as much common sense to me as fastening my seatbelt while driving.
But wearing a helmet is just as much common sense to me as fastening my seatbelt while driving.
No argument here, but "common sense" or not, for adults, it's a personal choice.
Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane for no other reason than recreation doesn't seem much like "common sense" to me, but I'd never characterize someone as a "dumbass" for choosing to do so.
The point is that, as adults, it is up to us to assess the risks we are willing to take and make our own decisions.
Freedom includes the liberty to do things that others might conclude were dumb.
Of course, it also entails the responsibility to accept the consequences of those decisions.
Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane for no other reason than recreation doesn't seem much like "common sense" to me, but I'd never characterize someone as a "dumbass" for choosing to do so.
Well, if they weren't wearing a parachute, I'd call them a dumbass.
In the meantime, I think I will invest in NERF. Seems their products are going to get pretty popular in Massachusetts.
Remember when they wrapped London lamposts in styrofoam padding 'cause too many people walked into them while texting? Mike and I have always felt that barbed wire and metal spikes would have effected a more desirable outcome.
Note to self, "Self: don't EVER piss off Lissa."
Dude, cocoons aren't safe. People get trapped in them all the time! Haven't you ever watched "This is Spinal Tap"?? :-)
If life was easy and safe, they'd get someone else to do it.
Lissa said...
Remember when they wrapped London lamposts in styrofoam padding 'cause too many people walked into them while texting? Mike and I have always felt that barbed wire and metal spikes would have effected a more desirable outcome.
I've often said that people would drive much more carefully if we replaced air bags with spikes that shot out from the steering wheel.
As to the topic at hand, I always wear a helmet when biking. That's because I sort of have some valuable stuff inside my head.
If others choose not to do so, that's their business, not that of the government.
I just think of the result of not wearing a helmet as Natural Selection at work.
My Much Better Half has long maintained we've made life to safe for the weak and stupid and they are breeding a higher class of idiot.
I used to ride a bike when I was a kid, but as an Adult, I refuse to use ANY 2 wheel form of transportation. Nothing against you who ride, but I have enough trouble getting around without getting smashed by some iPODDING, TEXTING, CELL-PHONING, STARBUCKS DRINKING IDIOT IN A SUV WHO DOES 50 THROUGH SCHOOL ZONES AND WON'T USE THEIR TURN SIGNALS AS THEY DIVE IN FRONT OF MY CAR ON THE F$^^KING INTERSTATE!
That feels better.
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