10:10am Monday 5th January 2009
By Doug Akroyd
A quick salutary tale for all those cyclists you see now and again pootling along without a helmet.
Quite often, it’s the parents in a family group who are bare-headed while their children are fully helmeted up - a case of do as I say, I reckon, not as I do.
How insane is that?
It doesn’t take a moment to tumble off your bike, and if your head crashes into the ground with any kind of force, then you could be in big trouble.
Not so long ago I did that very thing, when my wheels were whipped away from under by a patch of ice, and I smacked my head with some force onto the hard-packed ground.
The damage to the helmet was evidence enough of what could have happened to my skull.
The side where my head impacted with the Tarmac was not just cracked, but split asunder.
Broken beyond further use, it had done its job and I was more than grateful that the only pain I suffered was having to shell out for a new one in the January sales.
So quite why people think they don’t need to wear a helmet is beyond me, I’m afraid. Without mine, I would have probably cracked my skull and maybe done even worse damage.
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