“the Helmet Man” (part Ii)

“THE HELMET MAN” (PART II)

CONCLUSION OF AN ANALYTICAL INTERVIEW

J. G. KROL

Now that you know how the Snell Foundation works, we can discuss its role in relation to government, and touch upon the government’s responsibilities in creating standards. How much is enough? How much is too much?

THE SNELL HELMET certification program provides invaluable information to the helmet buyer and most objections raised against it seem to fail on two grounds.

First, the program is advisory, not coercive, and is thereby relieved of many serious burdens that a certification program backed by force of law cannot responsibly ignore. The Snell Foundation does not owe a duty to all elements of the industry and can back consumers even when their interests clash with those of manufacturers. A coercive program, if it is to be just, must consider all viewpoints.

Second, the job of identifying the better helmets is fundamentally easier than the task of identifying an optimum one; the former involves only relative performance, the latter presupposes knowledge of absolute requirements. To criticize an advisory, relative certification program in terms of criteria properly applying only to a coercive, absolute program is like objecting to the SST because it doesn’t have feathers.

LEGISLATION ACTIVITY

The basically educational helmet approval program is not the Snell Foundation’s only activity. For three years running Dr. Snively testified in favor of the Foran bills that would have required all California motorcyclists to wear helmets. This, notice, is an entirely different ball game from helmet certification, and we get a glimpse of the iron fist inside the catcher’s mitt.

California remains, more-or-less by political accident, one of the few states not forcing cyclists to wear crash helmets for their own (or is it society’s?) good. Accepting the present political infeasibility of mandatory-wearing laws, Snively recently backed a bill prohibiting sales of “sub-standard" helmets in the state, and this bill is now law.

When universal coercion comes on stage, it occurs to me that the responsibilities of those holding the reins of power escalate to a new. higher level. The standards for helmet approval must not be judged against criteria appropriate to coercive, absolute requirements. Technical questions, political questions, moral questions, sociological and economic q uest ions—all these become proper matters for public discussion.

“At heart,” says Dr. Snively, “Em an anarchist,” a statement sure to capture the hearts and minds of motorcyclists who, perhaps by the very nature of their sport, seem to prefer voluntary cooperation over coerced interaction.

But as is so common, hidden just below the libertarian palm fronds are the guns and turrets of authoritarianism. Dr. Snively is so convinced of the importance, value and wisdom of head protection that he has little patience for what he considers the ignorance, shortsightedness, stupidity, recklessness or suicidal impulses of motorcyclists who choose not to use the best available head protection. This theme is hardly Snively’s original composition, for its melody can be heard in every legal mandate and prohibition regarding helmet construction or use.

THE SAME OLD QUESTION

I listened intently to George Snively’s arguments for compelling people to protect their own heads, wondering if I’d hear something new. Briefly, I didn’t. As usual, and as philosophers have debated for a hundred generations, the whole thing comes down to this: does an individual human being have the right to choose between his own life and death, or doesn’t he?

If you say he does, you’d better be prepared to exercise heroic self-control in keeping your hands off his affairs even though he seems to be acting with absolutely incredible ignorance, shortsightedness, stupidity, etc. If you’re at all honest, you’ll admit that that’s not easy to do.

And if you say he doesn’t, you’d better prepare yourself for the inevitaole day when others try to force you to behave the way they think is informed, wise, intelligent, etc. That’s not easy to accept either. To test where you stand on this issue, consider this thought-provoking incident.

THE ULTIMATE TEST

The day before Christmas, several years ago, the postman delivered my sparkling new Bell 500 helmet, at the time one of the best hats available. Naturally, I had to try it out immediately.

On the way to the Ortega Highway, which climbs from Lake Elsinore to the crest of the coastal mountains, then tumbles down to San Juan Capistrano by the sea, the rear tire blew out and I, experiencing this for the first time, rapidly diverged toward a concrete-lined irrigation channel at the edge of the road. Bike and I dropped into the shoulder-deep barranca at about 50 mph and my head ricocheted off a utility pole, then back into the concrete.

This was more of a test than I’d had in mind, but the helmet passed it with flying colors, for my head was uninjured. My bod, however, was a trifle bent, so I spent the night in a nearby hospital for “observation,” a medical term meaning they look in every hour or so to see if you’re still alive. As I lay in bed I ruminated on the fact that without the helmet I’d surely be dead.

As I mentally congratulated myself on my wisdom, prudence, intelligence, etc., in wearing a good helmet, I noticed that the bed next to me was occupied by a genuine, old-fashioned, outlawtype motorcyclist who, it turned out, had raucously interrupted the tranquil TV viewing of a suburban family by motoring his hog clean through the wall of their house.

His head was a clump of bandages like I hadn’t seen since watching The Invisible Man on the late show. Cheerfully he informed me that the doctors predicted his paralysis (!) would begin to go away in, oh, a couple of weeks. Had he been wearing a helmet at the time? Of course not. Had his misadventure convinced him that he ought to wear a helmet? Why, no, not at all. If he ever recovered to ride again, he’d do it with his head as naked as a bald eagle’s.

So there we were, lying side-by-side in the hospital. Protected by a thenSnell-approved helmet, heavy leather coat, gloves and boots, my only injury was a splintered bone where a wrist had peeked out between glove and sleeve. And with never a thought to protective clothing, my roommate was in far worse shape-yet he was the one who scorned the future use of a helmet, not I.

OPPOSITES AND OPPOSITES

Now the opposite of a mandatory helmet law is not no law at all, though proponents of helmet legislation would like to get you to accept that false alternative. The opposite of a law mandating helmet-wearing is-as a moment’s thought will reveal-a law prohibiting helmet-wearing. Lying there I had plenty of time to think, and it slowly came to me that if I claimed the right to try to force the wounded outlaw, by law, to accept my personal views on wearing a helmet, then by elementary justice I had to concede him an equal right to try to force me, by law, to accept his personal views on wearing...or not wearing...a helmet.

But had I been riding bareheaded those wood splinters, creosote smears and concrete chips which had merely marred my new helmet would now be embedded in my skull. If I’d been within a few steps of the Big Door, he’d been within a few millimeters, and his mind was still unchanged. What would he do if he had a chance to make law?

If the state is conceded the power to require helmets, it surely acquires the power to prohibit them. A few energumens poised near the fulcrum of power and unburdened by decisive technical data (recall the British doctors and total-coverage helmets) could infect a legislature with the notion that, e g., a helmet’s mass adds to the danger of whiplasha demogorgon no legislator would dare io lavor and in ’wo click' and a whistle helmets coulu be prohibe ted under the rubric of protecting the public health and welfare.

CHANGING TIMES, CHANGING LAWS

Once it is granted that legislators courts and administrators have the power to control your head, they can hardly be abused for exercising that power in whatever way they think best, whether you agree or not. It’s their power.

To avoid ¡.he unthinkable but perfectly logical possibility ot having helmets outlawed, the only way out seems to be to deny that the state has powei to act in this area, one way or the other, a notion that Hamilton. Jay Madison, or surely John Locke would not find terribly surprising or original True, the current momentum of government activity is away from, not toward, prohibiting the use of crash helmets, but that predicts little about the future.

After years of restricting auto headlights to four in number and 75,000 aggregate candlepower-for reasons of safety-the government has recently decided cars need six headlights and 150,000 candlepower-again, for reasons of safety. Yesterday you could go to jail for mounting quartz-halogen driving lamps on your car; tomorrow you could go to jail for taking them off.

Consider also the saga of automobile air bags. First proposals were to mandate them, but if recently developed crash restraint systems involving shockabsorbing belts with ignition interlocks are made mandatory instead, then the air bags will have been effectively prohibited. Who can say now which legal requirement will prevail? Mandate or prohibition?

One indication air bags may be on the way out for cars is that Washington has recently rumbled regarding “air vests” for motorcyclists and air bags fitted inside crash helmets. Since there is not a scintilla of compelling evidence favoring a “gas hat” over conventional designs these proposals may be plausibly interpreted as a trial balloon lofted by some bureaucratic barony to survey the possibilities of defending its own organizational (hot? air?) bag.

KEEPING THE SCHEDULE

These examples show that the arbitrar) redefinitions of right and wrong Orwell predicted for I ^84 are upon us already some !2 years early, which is an encouraging sign that government programs need rol always run behind schedule It is also encouraging rhal a few of the people able to influence government, like George Sniveiy. have an empirical, non-hysterical approach to questions of crash protection. But law is a two-edged sword in the hands of our governors and they, sensitive beyond human ken to the gentlest of political breezes, can swing it either way with equal vigor. Since positive law is already on the march, all we can do is to hope it will be drawn in some tolerable image of wisdom. Snively’s own guidelines seem sensible in this regard, and we can hope legislators will be guided by them:

(1) Set performance requirements, not design specifications.

(2) Insist that requirements are based on sound and complete evidence and theory.

(3) Where facts are lacking, do the research to get them.

(4) Meanwhile, set plausible tentative requirements with all due caution and provision for speedy review.

(5) Concentrate on relative levels of performance.

This last, of course, suggests a somewhat different approach to legal standards than the present baseline concept, and suggests to Sniveiy that legal standards and Snell standards can play complementary roles. While Snell would periodically adjust its requirements to identify the top 10 percent, say, of all helmets for the benefit of users seeking maximum protection, the government, perhaps less frequently, would adjust its requirements to drive the worst 10 percent off the market.

This gradual, relativistic approach will not enthuse the agitated advocates of quick, simple, ultimate solutions to whatever “problem" the daily headlines deign to inform them of. but it is the one rational approach consistent with our limited and gradually evolving theoretical and empirical understanding of crash inputs, head mechanics, and brain tolerances.

Will things work out as Snively suggests? Or will we continue to enjoy instant solutions based on speculation, wishful thinking and scare-mongering? Politicians pursuing publicity do not hesitate to rush in where sober researchers fear to tread. For decades all progress in automotive lighting was stifled by law...in the name of safety. How unfortunate if the same thing were to happen to crash helmets.

POSSIBLE LITIGATION

According to Dr. Snively, there are three basic ways the general level of head protection can be enhanced: education, legislation and litigation. The Snell Foundation is active in the first two, as we’ve seen, but it is not itself deeply involved in litigation. However, Snively points out some of the possibilities.

Every helmet manufacturer who expects to stay in business carries product liability insurance. Curiously, he probably has less need for it than the maker of household appliances. The law feels that a housewife using an electric toaster is entitled to protection against nearly any malfunction which injures hereven if she goes out of her way to misuse the device in a way its designers (or any reasonable person) would never contemplate.

Current trends in consumerism hold the manufacturer liable for almost any injury arising in connection with his product, even when it is used ignorantly or carelessly or both. That’s the situation for most consumer products.

ASSUMED RISK

But the manufacturers and vendors of crash helmets are protected by the doctrine of “assumed risk,” for the dangerous conditions in which a helmet is used, viz. a crash, exist quite independently of the product itself.

When a rider sustains head injuries the courts are loath to decide whether he received them because the helmet failed to provide adequate protection, or because the impact loads were so great they could not possibly have been mitigated enough to save him. Having assumed, or taken on, the risks inherent in motorcycling (skiing, water skiing, skydiving, etc.) and having precipitated the crash himself, or at least put himself in its way, the rider has little recourse against the helmet supplier. The same reasoning, by the way, applies to goggles, gloves, faceguards, boots and other protective gear.

To the layman this may seem yet another example of juridical doublethink. If, gird,ed with stupidity, you manage to discover a way to electrocute yourself by poking around inside your TV with a butterknife, your widow has a good claim. On the other hand, if you carefully examine a variety of crash helmets, buy the one that seems to provide the most protection so far as you can possibly tell, voluntarily wear it, and still get your head flattened... your widow has little or no claim against the manufacturer.

Yet it would seem that a protective device, like an insurance policy, is called upon to function only in dire crises, hence should be especially burdened to work right. Intuitively, a defective fire extinguisher seems a much more serious problem than a defective cigarette lighter. A broken fire alarm seems worse than a broken parking meter. Defective martini glasses do not arouse the same intense concern as defective safety glasses. One would expect the courts to take a dimmer view of defects in safety or protective products than in any other kind.

DIFFICULTY OF VERFICATION

No doubt, they do. The difficulty is to establish, after the accident, just how well the crash helmet did work, and just how well it could have been expected to work. If the trigger breaks off a fire extinguisher when you try to use it, and nothing comes out at all, you might have the beginnings of a case.

But suppose the extinguisher squirts out all its goodness and your house still burns down. How could anyone, afterward, possibly prove whether the extinguisher was defective or not? This is the situation with crash helmets. Proving anything, one way or the other, is nearly impossible.

Recognizing this difficulty, the courts hastily steer away from such cases. What else can they do? Once again, what seems highly meritorious from one point of view-the user’s desire to see all bad helmets driven off the market-seems totally impossible from another point of view—the court’s adherence to their institutionalized procedures of evidence and proof.

Checking with a helmet manufacturer, with the SHCA and with a broker who’d placed helmet manufacturer’s liability insurance corroborated Snively’s glum description of the limitations of such tort litigation. There have been only a few suits along these lines and nobody anticipates any significant number of them.

Snively thus proposes that the courts adopt the doctrine that a helmet is deemed defective if its design is markedly inferior to the existing state of the art. This would be amenable to proof in court, even after an accident. With no-fault automobile insurance on its way, many tort lawyers are snuffling around for work. Combine this with the courts’ growing receptiveness to big money class actions, and it seems inevitable the argument of markedly inferior design will be tested in future litigation.

While the chances are low for a major consumer victory, no manufacturer can afford to ignore them, for a single class action judgment could bankrupt him. Unfortunately this works rather backward to what is really needed.

The responsible helmet maker who’s already building a decent product is the one who will worry about a lawsuit. His ongoing and prosperous firm will take it in the financial jugular. There’s no point in aiming class actions at a dishonorable and marginal firm. The schlock operator will fold his corporate tents, which were very probably designed from the outset to collapse under such pressure, and fade away into the night, leaving a multi-million dollar judgment floating as ineffectually on the air as the smoke from his dying campfires.

Class actions could have the unfortunate effect of penalizing the responsible manufacturer and advantaging the irresponsible one. Furthermore, the doctrine of markedly inferior design could degenerate into “anything the slightest out of the ordinary,” and this could have the effect of strangling technical progress rather than advancing it.

“DECEPTIVE NON-DISCLOSURE”

Another rather exotic area of litigation derives from Snively’s observation that it is uniquely difficult for the buyer to evaluate a crash helmet’s quality or performance at the point of sale. This approach is based on federal, and derivative state, laws regulating the content of product advertising, labeling and description.

The Federal Trade Commission could hold, on suit brought by a consumers’ group, that due to the nature of the crash helmet and to the conditions of its use, stringent and meaningful disclosures must be made of a helmet’s performance capability. The FTC could apply the principle of “deceptive nondisclosure” to crash hats.

This is exemplified by the landmark decision in which Geritol ads were forced to point out that, whatever the tonic’s benefits for people suffering iron deficiency anemia, the simple fact is that the vast majority of tired and run-down people are not that way because of a lack of iron. To fail to disclose this fact was held to be deceptive.

If you look closely at ads today, you’ll notice several in which it is claimed the product will help you if (small print) you happen to suffer from Garnishfagel’s Snydrome...of which three cases have been recorded in all of medical history. Similarly, it could be held that the primary factor in selecting a crash helmet is the degree of protection it provides in a crash—that appearance, workmanship, price, style and everything else are only secondary considerations.

Then it would be deceptive to fail to state on the helmet what its protective capability might be. Wouldn’t it be fascinating to see helmets bearings the label. “This product fails to meet Z90.1, Snell 1970, and every other independent standard ever established?” The FTC could even decide to outlaw the practice of a few manufacturers who state their helmets meet or exceed a standard...which they themselves have set up. This would follow from the Crest, Crown, and other FTC decisions.

FTC: AGENCY OF CONVENIENCE

While the theoretical possibilities of litigation before the FTC seem charming, a little browsing through the FTC’s intricate, bewildering, inconsistent, irrelevant and often contradictory rulings convinces me that the Commission can do anything, literally anything, provided only that the action is convenient for the parties with the most political and financial clout.

The FTC seems able to ignore a clear, definite law on the books or, if it chooses, to stretch a law light-years beyond its original wording. For instance, you’ve probably used a chamois many times while washing your car. Do you know what a chamois is? Legally? Barring people connected with the industry, I’ll bet you’re wrong.

If the dominant manufacturers in an industry band together to squeeze out low quality merchandise, they can usually get their way before the FTC by appealing to the public good. They can also get their way, again with pious appeals to the public good, to destroy competitors who are too tough or resourceful to deal with in fair competition on the open market.

So the potential good which the FTC could do to force accurate and meaningful disclosure of helmet performance is not likely to come out of the powerbloc wonderland in which it operates. Meaningful performance disclosure is not likely to come about by direct litigation.

“GRADING” ALREADY EXISTS

On the whole, litigation seems to be a bust, but this last aspect of it does raise the interesting subject of helmet grading about which Dr. Snively is unexpectedly unenthusiastic. He fears that a mandatory grading and labeling approach would degenerate into incomprehensible complexity, and would wind up doing the consumer little or no good.

At the present time there are four quite distinct grades of crash helmets available:

(1) Helmets not meeting Z90.

(2) Helmets meeting Z90/SHCA/ MSATA/AAMVA/AMA.

(3) Helmets meeting Snell 1970.

(4) Certain custom-made, cost-is-noobject helmets not available on the mass market.

In an abstract, theoretical sort of way it is possible that a helmet could pass Snell 1970 and fail Z90, or that a ten dollar unlabeled swapmeet special could be better than a $300 custom hat from Protection, Inc., but for all practical purposes these grades are in ascending order. Unless ill-considered laws force all helmets to become substantially the same (remember the sealed beam) there will continue to be different effective grades of helmets...even though the grades be not entirely consistent and comprehensive...so you will continue to have a certain amount of information to guide your choice of headgear.

Presumably, the more useful product information you can get, the better choice you can make, so it is paradoxical that George Snively, who is personally responsible for the extent of helmet grading now existing-being the father of Z90 and Snell 1970—should doubt the value of beefing up this approach.

Perhaps, amidst all his other concerns, he has not really thought through the theory of mandatory grading or examined its many rather successful applications, as in agricultural products. If one values the buyer’s freedom of choice, grading will be seen to possess many unique advantages, while wholly to reject product grading is to suggest that one is less interested in serving the helmet user than in controlling him.

PROGNOSTICATION

Education, legislation and litigation can usefully progress no further than permitted by fundamental technical knowledge about head protection. Tomany burning controversies of the J§; have been definitely resolved, e is general agreement that “suspenon harness” helmets, once the standard design, just don’t do the job, and that soft foam rubber liners once thought desirable are virtually worthless in a serious impact. Snively can be credited with these two important discoveries.

But the state-of-the-art of head protection is by no means fully developed, as is illustrated by the many unanswered questions about crash inputs, head mechanics, brain tolerances, etc. Current limitations on the SOA are most clearly revealed by Dr. Snively’s assessment of two standard measures for gauging the level of development in any technological field.

PRACTICE VS. MAXIMUM

One method is to compare current practice to a theoretical maximum. Example: a perfect gearbox puts out exactly one horsepower for each horsepower input. If current gearboxes are measured to attain 90 percent power transmission efficiency, then we are absolutely certain that no change in design, no amount of hand-fitting, no miracle lubricant or additive, no surface treatment for the gears, no amount of careful break-in can possibly increase the output by more than one-ninth (100 percent divided by 90 percent = 1 and 1/9). Comparisons like this are valuable because they tell us where there is room for substantial improvement and, perhaps even more importantly, where there is not. (You can forget the legendary 100 mpg carburetor.) Of course, application of this method presumes that you know the theoretical upper limit.

GAUGING “STATE OF ART”

It is clear in principle that some such upper limit must exist for head protection. When a supersonic jet flies into the side of a mountain at Mach 3 there is no way a better crash helmet can help the pilot survive. Yet Dr. Snively could not tell me precisely what the upper limit of head protection might be, or exactly what factors would determine it.

This condition may be compared to the state of art of engine design in the early 1800s: steam engines existed and some were in use, but Sadi Carnot had not yet devised the crucially important Carnot Cycle that set absolute upper limits on the efficiency of all heat engines and, for the first time, told designers where they should and should not look for further gains in performance. So if history is to repeat itself, you’ll be pleased to know that crash helmets will be developed pretty much to their ultimate limit by, roughly, a century and a half from next Tuesday.

Another method for gauging the state of art is to estimate the degree of improvement in performance that can be contemplated using present methods (facts, materials, theories, etc.). This is usually done by extrapolating along a “growth curve.” In other words, does it appear that we’ve just broken ground with a new technology, and a lot of building can take place with what we have? Or will an unpredictable technological breakthrough be required to move beyond the present plateau?

Experts now predict, for example, that digital computers will not run faster than they do already by more than a factor of ten, or order of magnitude, anytime in the foreseeable future; but the data storage capacity of high-speed computer memory is projected to increase by several orders of magnitude during the next few years as concepts and approaches now in early development are perfected and put on the market.

Such projections, even when quite crude, can provide invaluable perspectives...which are often contrary to the impression one would get from the breathless rhetoric of this week’s advertisements or press releases. For example, over the first half of this century the growth curve for the top speed of production motorcycles shows speed increasing by about 4.5 percent per year, or about 2 mph per year, from 12 to 120 mph.

Neatly deflating the super-excitement about current “superbikes,” these growth curves tell us that speeds cannot even maintain their historical rate of growth, for if they did, production bikes a generation from now would have top speeds somewhere from 220 to 1200 mph. Because the method of estimating how far we have to go along a growth curve is so effective in cutting through superficial, trivial and misleading details, it is much favored and widely used by planners, scientists, investors, marketing strategists, economists and futurologists.

LOST ON THE GROWTH CURVE

Dr. Snively, however, is hard pressed to locate us on a growth curve in head protection technology. He is certain that present helmets have not attained the 90 percent level of foreseeable potential (like production motorcycle top speeds). He is also certain that existing helmets are not operating well below the 1 percent level of potential, permitting order of magnitude-type growth (like computer memories). Probably, Snively estimates, we can expect improvements in helmet performance somewhere in the range between 50 percent and 500 percent. Much of the difficulty, of course, is that head protection involves concepts that are poorly and vaguely defined. We have clear ideas of what we mean by the speed of a motorcycle or the size of a computer memory, and we can visualize ways to measure these quantities, but we are nowhere as clear on the meaning or measurement of head protection.

Skip van Leeuwen of Buco points out that their total-coverage hat is unique in being cut high at the back to reduce chances of neck injury, and he adduces the neck injuries of Wayne Hosaka, Matt McKee, Loyal Penn, and Gold Cup boat racer Tommy Fults. Dr. F. Sinclair Finch, chief medical officer of the American Power Boat Association, opposes total-coverage hats in boat racing. He also opposes, it should be noted, rollbars, seat belts, and shoulder harnesses for boat racing, due to its rather special characteristics. Yet many top competitors in auto and cycle racing, fully aware of the advantages and disadvantages, definitely prefer total-coverage helmets. Somebody...the individual choosing for himself or an external agency choosing for him...has to assess the costs and benefits of alternatives, and this must be done in an ambience of risk and uncertainty.

ROAD RIDING FACTORS

Uncertainty about the meaning and measurement of road user head protection is the most notable, and one of the most important, factors in the state of the art. Disagreements about materials, performance requirements, laws, regulations, manufacturing processes, quality control, helmet configurations, testing methods and all the rest are stimulated, it is true, by differing economic interests, conflicting institutional objectives, and incompatible attitudes toward freedom and coercion. But the origins of these disagreements are found in our ignorance.

This pattern will continue throughout the 1970s. Researchers will painstakingly accumulate facts and will slowly develop and refine their theories. Manufacturers will devise faster, cheaper, more consistent processes (e.g., the persistent rumors that a method has been found to make F/G shells as cheaply as P/C). Old materials will be improved and new materials will be tried...not always with success. Government agencies will thrash about in their usual predicament of having to take action—to “do something”—even when the alternatives are not fully understood. And the helmet buyer, the helmet user...what can we expect is going to happen to him?

GETTING THE PERSPECTIVE

It would be easy to paint an alarmist picture of the poor consumer, buffeted and abused by greedy manufacturers, quarrelsome scientists, and bureaucratic panjandrums. But that’s just not true.

It would be easy to paint a panglossian portrait of the consumer who never had it so good: better crash hats than were ever before available are now his for the picking, and ingenious manufacturers, brilliant scientists, and public servants deeply concerned with his welfare vie with one another to attend to his every whim. Makes you kind of nauseous, doesn’t it?

No, things aren’t likely to change very much for the consumer. When you walk into a store to buy a crash helmet you will have-as you always did-a certain amount of information to guide your choice, and you will lack-as you always did-complete and perfect information.

You will be fairly sure that no helmet on the shelf is too good, in the sense that it provides more impact attenuation than you can possibly use. You will be fairly sure that a Z90 helmet provides more protection than an unlabeled one, and a Snell approved hat yet more. You will be fairly sure that extra double cheap bargains are poor investments.

You will be fairly sure that any helmet which can pass Z9U or Snell is so labeled, and the salesman is pulling your leg if he tells you that a helmet does meet these standards but the manufacturer declines to say so because he wants to save the cost of the certification program or because he believes his brand-name is so prestigeous it doesn’t need independent approval.

You will be fairly sure that partial-, full-, and total-coverage configurations provide increasing margins of protection. You will be fairly sure that a F/G shell is less likely than a P/C shell to be damaged by chemicals or to contain invisible stress residuals. You will be fairly sure that any helmet will protect better if it fits snugly, rather than loosely. You will be fairly sure any helmet should be repaired or replaced after it has sustained visible damage to its shell or liner. You will be fairly sure that helmets will improve, on the average, as time goes by. In short, there will be several rather important things you will know about choosing a crash helmet. and Dr. Snively hopes you will consider them in making your choice.

THE UNESCAPABLE RISK

But you cannot escape, you will not escape, the risks and uncertainties that are now. and will continue to be, inherent in the situation. If you're that afraid of falling, don’t climb mountains. If you do climb, control as best you can the risks you can control, and bear stoically those you can’t.

Manufacturers can devise, the Snell Foundation can advise, the government can proscribe, researchers can describe, but the final burden of risk lies on your own head, both literally and figuratively. Dr. Snively cautiously predicts a general improvement in helmets, but the day will not soon come when you can be absolutely certain that any brand, any model, any particular sample of helmet will absolutely and completely protect your head against any crash.

That time is as distant as the day you can be absolutely certain no boulder will leap from behind a bush to bite you in the collarbone, or the day you can be absolutely certain you will not be run off the road by a smiling little old lady in a maroon Buick sedan. Choice and risk are the onus of life, and there’s no way you can avoid them. All you can do is to use the information you have as best you can-though it be frustratingly fragmentary and seemingly inconsistent-and to trust the odds for the rest.

That, perhaps, constitutes a philosophy of life, a point on the line from fatalism to hypochondria, a life style of risks correctly evaluated, narrowly circumscribed, boldly undertaken, and gloriously vanquished, the only real alternative to schizophrenic catatonia. The empirical unknowns, theoretical lacunae and normative imponderables make choosing your head protection a dramatic miniature of the whole sport of motorcycling and, in a way, of life itself.

How awkward, then, is Snively’s ambivalence between education and legislation, between entrusting the welfare of motorcyclists to their own wit and wisdom and coercing them into caring for their heads, even by means not provably optimum.

Education, information, constructive advice would surely be preferred by de Tocqueville, that incisive student of the American spirit who said, “Each individual possesses the degree of intelligence necessary to manage those affairs which concern him exclusively-that is the great principle on which civil and political society rests.”

But nobody can choose to exercise your intelligence effectively, except yourself. That’s always your choice.

And I’m left wondering what ever became of that fellow who put his bare head through the wall of a house? (Ö)