in a horrible accident two years ago. He was riding on the freeway to a rally event with some friends.
I know this fellow, Dan, who was involved in a horrible accident two years ago. He was riding on the freeway to a rally event with some friends. His wife was on the back. No one was doing anything wrong, they were just riding on a three-lane interstate highway through the north end of the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles on a perfectly fine morning with good visibility. Unknown to them a young woman was falling asleep at the wheel of her car a short distance ahead. She had been partying all night up in the Bay Area, had stolen the car, and was now about to doze off and crash into the center divider. Her car spun onto the middle of the freeway. Dan hit it square, but to this day he does not remember those moments. Maybe that's good. Dan's wife, wearing a full-coverage helmet, died on the scene of blunt trauma to her torso. Dan was wearing a non-DOT "beanie" and survived. He almost lost his leg, he is still in rehab recovering from other massive injuries, and still can't work, but he survived. You might be wondering, what was the sense of his wife wearing a full-head helmet if she died anyway? Or perhaps, what good would a full-head helmet do Dan, since he survived without one? I think those are the wrong questions. The real question does not concern itself with whether someone else died or might have died depending on whether someone else was or was not wearing a helmet. The real question is simply: What if a helmet can save your life in the accident that you happen to have? Dan's story is likely to be the kind of incident that anti-helmet people will use to argue that we do not need to wear helmets. In reality, if it is an example of anything, it's a classic case of how random an accident can be, how helmets sometimes make little or no difference in certain types of accidents. But Dan's is not the only story. For example, there's the story of a helmetless fellow who returned home and stopped in his driveway, lost his balance, tipped over, hit his head on the concrete driveway, and died of head injuries. Or the guy wearing a non-DOT helmet who was leaving a stoplight at only five or 10 mph when the truck next to him suddenly turned and nudged his front wheel. He lost his balance and his helmet hit the pavement and... he died on the way to the hospital. Both are true stories. Both of these fellows could very possibly be alive today if they were only wearing a DOT helmet. Which accident will you have? Again, perhaps this is the wrong question because accidents are random-we can't pick the accident we will have. Maybe the right question is: When I do have an accident, will my chances of survival be increased if I happen to be wearing a helmet? In our next issue we will report on our visit to Dr. Harry Hurt's Helmet Protection Research Laboratory. Maybe we'll learn enough to ask the right questions.
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