Not to stir the pot but I agree with Argon all the talk about gear versus no gear when driving in a cage has no validity in this thread and takes away from the gist which is the helmet saved his life end of story.
He is to be thanked for sharing his "findings" with us. Nothing better than real world experience as a learning tool.
While I won't get into the freedom of choice debate either, I would like to hear someone standup and talk about their experience in a crash while not wearing a helmet. I really can't see how not wearing one would save you in similar circumstances but I'd be interested in knowing.
Whatever your feelings, always ride to arrive alive.
Cheers,
spyug.
OK. I can do that. I have a scar on my forehead from an initial impact, and a second on the back, which curiously enough, came from a second impact.
The first was where the car hit me and the second happened when I hit the concrete. My skull was split at the back.
The police arrived and found me with no life signs.
An hour later the wreckage was cleared up. I was checked again and still had no life signs, but the law demanded that a doctor officially declare me to be dead, so I was sent to a hospital. (This is the actual police report.)
I returned to life lying on a gurney, with lights shining in my face. Two doctors were standing by my feet, ready to turn and walk away when I sat up and asked for a telephone. Their mouths dropped wide open in shock.
Exit hospital.....
Just pour me into a cab and send it on its way. I had no idea which way was up, so I fell on the floor and stayed there.
I always had a near-photographic memory. Not anymore.
I did not have amnesia, just a malfunctioning brain. Memory came and went. Long-term memory seemed OK, but short-term was just that: often minutes, sometimes days, occasionally weeks, would pass, and then most or all of it vanished.
There was nothing but loneliness every day, because I had no idea where anyone was, including me, even hours before.
Perhaps the loneliness was what got me to marry a woman I had met only weeks before the crash, a woman I did not know. Not to worry, even today I have no trace of memory of the marriage ceremony or anything else concerned with it, including where it took place. All of it is blank.
I do recall falling over.....frequently.... and that lasted for many months. This was because, being a typical male, I often lost track of direction, but in my case it meant an inability to tell which direction was up and which was down. I usually found which way was down.
A daughter was conceived and born before my memory returned to normal and a son was on his way. Later, the marriage that should never have occurred, and which proved highly distasteful to both of us, was dissolved.
My life was literally taken and gone, and then it was restored, but it was totally and irreversibly changed.
I was not wearing a helmet at the time because I was changing a tire on my car when someone drove into the car, and that drove the car into me, and me into the concrete abutment that was behind me.
Is there any valid reason to say there is a difference between this and a motorcycle crash?
NO.
Absolutely not.
Impact and head injury is exactly that.
On the other side:
While in the right lane on a 3-lane highway a car from the far left chose to make a sudden exit and as it crossed the lanes its rear bumper intersected with my front tire. I had no chance of advance reaction as the car began its move across the lanes from behind me, out of my range of vision, and it was travelling faster than me. I did not see it until a split second before it hit me.
The bike almost instantly went over on its side, almost down, but after a bit of fighting with it, I got it back up, still at about 60MPH, and just in time to meet a bumper on the back of another car that was stopping on the side of the road.
I went over the car and landed on my head and shoulder. As I slid across the pavement face-down, with the open-face helmet and one shoulder taking the rest of my weight, I clearly recall thinking to myself " Am I ever going to stop sliding?"
I think it was the sissybar that hit me just as I left the bike and broke my back. My wrist was also broken. One leg was lacerated more than the other, and more than a bit. The right side of my face had to be rebuilt as the sunglasses had bent down and in upon impact, shredding the skin and leaving my face full of broken glass and road dirt.
The helmet took the 60 MPH impact without splitting. My ex-wife (the second one) still has the helmet sitting in what is now her garage. I kept the leather jacket, and wore it for another 15 years, before finally using it to bury my cat, who always thought my shoulder was her favourite place in the world, and who had always found comfort being in and on that jacket (while I was wearing it) from the time she was 8 weeks old.
Since I both landed on it and then skidded for at least fifty feet on my head, there is zero question that the helmet saved my life and it allowed me to get the delightful experience of having surgeons spend a few hours cleaning me up and then cutting my remaining flesh into ribbons so they could stretch it, stitch it, and rebuild my face, all of this while I was fully awake.
Since then I choose to wear a full-face helmet and I choose to believe that people who choose to not wear helmets while riding motorcycles are fools.
Does that cover it?
/
