“If you’ve got a $10 head, wear a $10 helmet” was a very famous advertising catch phrase put forward by Bell Helmets in the 1960’s. It really did get the message through, but it did not get through to SE Asia, unfortunately.
Over the years, I have had a series of helmets. One was actually kept by the Confederation of Australian Motor Sports, the straps cut to ensure nobody tried to use it, and it was stored without any cleaning of the external surface. Why? Because this was the helmet I was wearing when I was caught in a fire. The back of the helmet was melted and the rest of the helmet was blackened from the smoke. I was quite happy to see that particular helmet being used to drive a point home to novice drivers.
However, it is interesting to look at the history surrounding the use of helmets, starting with motorcycle helmets. The Motorcycle Rider’s Association of Western Australia (MRAWA) researched this topic and went back as far as T.E. Lawrence, otherwise known as Lawrence of Arabia, who died from brain injuries in 1935 following a motorcycle accident.
One of the neurosurgeons who attended Lawrence was Australian Dr. Hugh Cairns. He was profoundly moved by the tragedy of this famous First World War hero dying at such a young age from severe head trauma. Having been powerless to save Lawrence, Cairns set about identifying, studying, and solving the problem of head trauma prevention in motorcyclists.
In 1941, his first and most important article on the subject was published in the British Medical Journal. He observed that 2279 motorcyclists and pillion passengers had been killed in road accidents during the first 21 months of the war, and head injuries were by far the most common cause of death. Most significantly, however, Cairns had only observed seven cases of motorcyclists injured while wearing a crash helmet, all of which were nonfatal injuries. His 1946 article on crash helmets charted the monthly totals of motorcyclist fatalities in the United Kingdom from 1939 to 1945. The obvious decline in the number of fatalities took place after November 1941, when crash helmets became compulsory for all army motorcyclists on duty. His article concluded: “From these experiences there can be little doubt that adoption of a crash helmet as standard wear by all civilian motorcyclists would result in considerable saving of life, working time, and the time of hospitals.”
It was not until 1973, 32 years after his first scientific article on the subject, were crash helmets made compulsory for all motorcycle riders and pillion passengers in the United Kingdom. And many years after that for the use of crash helmets to be legislated in Thailand, and some SE Asian nations are yet to follow.
However, legislation alone is not enough. Helmets have to be of a sufficient standard to give the protection needed. The plastic bucket favored by some motorcycle taxi passengers is worth very little as far as saving lives is concerned. There needs to be a standard, and the US Snell Foundation is one such organization.
For us ordinary mortals, selection of a good helmet is a matter of first checking to see if it is certified by Snell, or British Standard, or DOT. After that, select the one that fits your head, we are not all of the same size! The helmet should be a bit snug when brand new, as it will pack down a little bit to fit your head.
And by the way, be careful if you are going to have your helmet painted, some external shells do not like the thinners in some paints. For this reason, I use stickers on my helmets, rather than paint.
We have come a long way since the leather helmets worn by drivers such as Prince Bira and Juan Manuel Fangio in their heyday, and it has been the advances in technology that have made today’s helmets as good as they are.
