Helmet Safety - wear one, always while on your bike!

**Helmet Safety

Hi everyone,

Good morning!

Recently I observed that one of our security personnel was having a swollen and bruised face, and I enquired as to what happened. He said that he met with an accident in his bike and when I asked if he was wearing a helmet, he replied, "When I reached within the last 10 kms of my house, I took the helmet away, thinking I don't need it any longer".

Just a year ago, my father-in-law met with an accident in his scooter, injured his head, was kept in ICU for weeks together, made the whole family go down with untold sorrow and anxiety, but by God's grace, he got better, healthy and fit in half a year! His only explanation as to why he did not wear the helmet was, "My office is only 2 kms from the house? Why carry the helmet around?".

Is there a time in this fast paced world when we "cannot need it any longer or can consider protection as a burden"?

With the context set, I would like to share the information below:

Motor cyclists are more likely to be injured in serious or fatal crashes than car drivers. Sounds like common sense, but read on to know exactly how:

When a motor cycle is involved in a collision; the rider is often thrown from the cycle. If the riders head hits an object such as the ground, the heads forward motion stops, but the brain having its own mass, continues to move forward until it strikes the inside of the skull. It then rebounds, striking the opposite side of the skull. This type of injury can result in anything from a minor head injury, such as concussion to a fatal head injury. Hence, motor cycle riders who do not wear a helmet run a much higher risk of sustaining head and traumatic brain injuries and of dying from these injuries.

Research published by the WHO says that wearing a helmet decreases the risk and severity of injuries by about 72% and decreases likelihood of death by  almost 40% depending on the speed of the vehicle involved.
 
Wear a standard helmet well strapped at all times when riding for your own safety.

~A Software employee's experience

Another experience by a different employee:

A worst day my gang (friends) had:

That was Friendship day (Aug 2005); my friend called me from Yashoda Hospital Sec-bad saying our friend "Vijay" met with an accident on Warangal Highway that night.

They were on the way home in the night on a bike without HELMET. They hit a lorry parked at road side, Vijay's head hit lorry's back frame.

He is still in COMA and his parents and brothers are still taking care of him even though doctors said that there are no hopes. We saw him last year again and he is really not Vijay, his entire face got changed and we could hardly see flesh on his bones. He opens his eyes few times a day and recognizes no one and takes only liquids.

A good lesion I learned:

I know the importance of wearing helmet (to say, I purchased a helmet 2 days before I bought my bike) and I am a strong supporter of it. Recently I met with a small accident. As I wore helmet, it ended up as a small accident other wise it would have been a bad day for my parents.

My bike's brakes were not good then and I hit a car with just 30-40 kmph speed which was controllable, but within a second I fell down and the first part of my body that hit road was my head. Thanks for my Helmet which took the shock and saved my head.

I learned physics with that incident:

In most accidents, the first part to hit the road from our body is our HEAD as it possesses some mass/weight and our brain may not react in that fraction of second to order your HANDS to act immediately to protect your head or to try balancing.