Get a Lid - Counter Point

I received this lucid comment on the helmet issue from Darren Young from Nevada and felt it warranted its own article posting here.

Greetings Tim!

I'll bite on this topic. I starting racing road bikes about the same time you did (late '85, early '86) when helmet use was in it's infancy. First helmet I owned was a Bell V-1 Pro and, while it served as great protection, it was damed uncomfortable! It came out of the closet for races (required) and when my parents caught me leaving the house without it! Once I was 'on my own' helmet use was very sporadic, pretty much racing only. Stupid if I really think about it, safety aside; like training in racing flats and then toeing the line for a race in training shoes...I should have been trying to duplicate race conditions in training!

Sorry, I moved off topic a little, the issue you brought up wasn't safety or best practices but one of personal choice. I was often annoyed, like yourself and the cyclist in your post, when some 'fred' (a term I no longer like but would have used in the past) would 'tell' me MY business. It was a choice that affected ME and not them. While I agree with the previous statement in it's purist sense I've come to the personal conclusion that the 'ME' in that statement was exceedingly hard to define as just the singularity it so desperatly tried to be. Basically, most of the decisions I make have (or could have) effects on more than just me. My cranium gets hurt to the degree I'm a vegetable, someone has to take care of me. I pay the ultimate bill, death, and my daughter doesn't get to really know me and my wife would miss me (at least some of the time ;-). My choice, their consequence.

I'll take a shot at some of the other examples you gave on personal choice: Smoking, weight problems, chronic poor diet. These can have effects on the rest of us, at least the way our current health/insurance system operates, we all share the costs regardless if we've made the 'personal' choice.

This whole thing is hard for me to write because I still feel personal choice is sacred and seldom, if ever, tell someone else how to live their life. But, you asked so there you have it: MY OPINION.