Occasionally an article or editorial catches my eye, and often for all the wrong reasons. This is another of those occasions.


I know critical thinking is in the curriculum of most colleges, and virtually all journalism courses. Taking a giant leap of faith and assuming you did take said class, or that it was part of a class you took, perhaps I can convince you to take down your critical thinking cap, blow off the dust, and don it for a while.

The wearing of a seat belt in an automobile does not, in any manner, equate to the wearing of a helmet on the head of a motorcyclist. Not even a little. The ONLY relationship between the two is that they’re both termed “safety equipment” by their pundits and manufacturers.

In an automobile, you are surrounded by thousands of pounds of metal, plastic, glass and sundry other materials, surrounded by dozens of blunt or sharp/pointy objects and hard protrusions, all of which your body tends to bang against when the forces applied to it during deflection and deceleration that occur in an accident come into play. The main purpose of the seat belt is to limit this interaction between the body and all those protrusions and objects. Its secondary purpose is to assist in keeping your body from interacting with the objects outside the cocoon of your vehicle by ejection, thus preventing your body from being subjected to the further indignity of being compressed or ground/abraded by the vehicle it formerly piloted.

And, in certain circumstances, they will be responsible for the death of the occupant they were designed to protect.

None of the above transfers to the use of a helmet by a motorcyclist, except that they too will sometimes be responsible for the death of the rider they were designed to protect.

Keeping our critical thinking caps on, let’s press on.

Fact - A motorcycle helmet, in order to comply with DOT standards, must be able to absorb an impact equivalent to a six foot man falling down. That is the entire design specification.

Fact - A motorcycle helmet adds as much as seven pounds to the standard load carried by the cervical vertebra, all of it above the fulcrum point of the basal skull interconnect.

Fact - The incidence of accidents are directly proportional to the fatigue of the persons involved. Studies have concluded that a fatigued driver is actually worse than a drunk driver.

Fact - Additional pounds equals fatigue.

Fact - Although the Delta-V of the forces involved vary considerably, depending on speeds of the individual objects involved, weights of the objects, and several other data bits, the G forces involved in an automobile/motorcycle collision can routinely be as high as 200. Meaning that three pound helmet is now exerting 600 pounds of force through the basal skull interconnect. The human body is simply not designed to absorb these types of forces without considerable damage.

Now, without getting into the dozens of other facts I could pass along to you, based on in depth research, what do the facts above tell you about your pet theory?

I implore you, as I have with many of your fellow editors and journalists, do the research. Wear your critical thinking cap while doing the research. Then, form your opinion.

As for me, after much research and careful consideration, I’ve reached the following conclusions:

Wearing helmets saves lives.

Not wearing helmets saves lives.

Wearing other protective clothing/gear saves lives.

Not wearing other protective clothing/gear saves lives.

Motorcyclists learning how to ride alert and safely saves more lives.

Automobile drivers learning how to share the road and be cognitive of motorcycles saves the most lives.

And, before I let you off the hook, your entire editorial was, for all intents and purposes, nothing more than rhetoric. It pushes all the right buttons, but anyone giving any real thought to it is sure to see it as rhetoric. You offered no evidence that a helmet would have altered the outcome of the reported collision. You didn’t say what the coroner ruled as cause of death. In fact, the manslaughter victim in your article is there as nothing more than a red herring.

Dr. John Myers

Clinton, Tenn.