Dawn of a new era........

From 1^st June 2007, Tamil Nadu roads shall see the dawn of a new era, called the 'plastic head' generation. Gone is the craze for customized iPods. the Indian crowd(Aged 5 & up) is busy customising their headgear now with the helmet being made compulsory for all 2 wheeler riders in six districts in Tamil Nadu. You do tend to wonder why it took them so long to come up with such a simple common sense rule. Anyways, now that the rule is there, we have lots of people cribbing over what they deem as an unnecessary act by the government. So here is a brief collection of facts which I have gathered from the net, newspapers etc about why it would be better if one wore a helmet.

When you are traveling at 50kmph, you are doing approx 45 feet/sec, which is the same speed which you attain when you jump from the 4^th floor of a building. That’s suicide!!! Hmm I wonder, who would jump from a building everyday…..

Have you ever thrown a watermelon onto the floor from say a height of 5 metres. It obviously cracks. Try making your watermelon wear a helmet, and now throw it down. Nothing happens. That shows that helmets absorb the impact thus minimizing any damage to whatever’s inside it…..

Per vehicle miles traveled, motorcyclists are about 14 times as likely as passenger car occupants to die in a traffic crash and three times as likely to be injured(of course this somehow varies a little bit in India. I guess you are more likely to die if you were in a intercity bus rather than a motor cycle…).

The average hospital charge for seriously head-injured motorcyclists was found to be almost three times that of motorcyclists without head injuries, so incase you do have an accident while riding with a helmet, you know it’ll be lighter on your purse..

Hmm I think the above few points are reason enough… An aerial view of the roads, will no longer show black heads, but you are more likely to see a multitude of colours, flames and the occasional Schumacher or Iceman and Alonso too riding their Hero Honda Ferrari or Bajaj Mclaren….