Antique & Classic Cars Blog

“Wise guys” usually means mafia members, at least in popular culture, but there’s another group this term applies to. It’s male motorcycle riders wearing baseball caps or with bear heads. “Wise guys” is a half-joking term–the outlaws branded this way in movies and court documents aren’t so wise. Neither is this group of male riders who feel their faces or hair are so cool or alluring to women that they don’t want them covered up by a simple protective device that could save their lives or their families by keeping their brains intact.

Sunday I was bicycling by the river and two wise guys passed on their quiet, windscreen-equipped cruisers. The second guy had a young girl, under ten, on the back–with no helmet. That’s not cool.

It doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been motorcycling or how careful you are. There are circumstances beyond a rider’s control that pose unavoidable dangers. If that rider and his daughter stop at an intersection and the driver of a big sedan behind them is stone drunk, or has a seizure, or a stroke or catastrophic mechanical failure and can’t apply the brakes, they’re getting hit. And it doesn’t matter if he’s Gary Nixon or Valentino Rossi or Travis Pastrana, there is nothing he can do about it. That little girl is going off the back of that bike and the odds of her head hitting metal or pavement or glass are high.

The responsible parent in this situation already acted by fitting her helmet properly and then his own. The wise guy, if he lives, gets to look at his injured daughter or her picture and fight his conscience for the rest of his life.

Yes, there are people in the world who rail against helmets, including those who say the forces a helmet imposes on a child’s neck can do as much harm as an impact. But forces that great only arise in a collision, at which point everyone on the bike is airborne. Hitting the pavement with a helmet on your head is better than slamming it with your skull directly. Plus, helmets have gotten much lighter since parents who crashed with unhelmeted kids that were lucky enough not to be injured started making that argument.

Pro football players are tougher than the rest of us. They get knocked out wearing helmets. The road is harder than a defensive tackle. Don’t be a wise guy. Protect your head and protect your child’s. And spouses–if you can’t convince your biker husband to wear a helmet, make sure your family’s life, auto, and health insurance policies have you and the children protected in case Harvey Wallbanger or Mac Adam comes calling.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 11:19 am and is filed under Motorcycle tales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.