Trooth

Some laws are just there to protect dim people from themselves though. You could argue "Why?" and of course there is no response other than because just sometimes learning by your own experience is not possible. You only get one chance.

It's like the helmet laws on motorbikes. They aren't going to save your life if you come off your bike at 100mph on the M1, they are there for when you come off at 15mph on black ice in nose-to-tail traffic.

Once whilst sitting outside a pleasant bar in a port in Greece during a thunderstorm i saw a rather lovely young lady come a cropper. She was an English tourist on her moped. She came off in the rain right at the lights at an embarrassingly slow speed, but was thankful for her helmet given the blow it took on the roadside kerb. She had hired the helmet too as a matter of course (being illegal not to ride without one in the UK) some of her friends had not (being on holiday and wanting to get away from the man, man).

As far as i am aware cycling helmets are still optional - which is a bit daft as they only have low speed accidents. Again having had a friend come off the loser with roadworks on a bridge, the helmet is the right thing to wear.

The other thing is that we don't actually seem to grow up as people. Yes we should be adult enough to make the right decisions, but we as a species (especially the males in our species) don't seem to be able to actually become mature until we hit our 30s. So the bravado aspect of seat-belts, helmets and so on has to be catered for.

There are loads of things wrong with the nanny state. However seeing as most of us don't have the time nor inclination to actually learn about the subject matters before we jump in our cars, switch on our power tools, plug in our electrical equipment etc it is down to our level of civilisation that we implicitly look after each other. Yes this means i can't feel the wind in my hair as a ride my chopper down a country lane. But as i get older i find the only way to really feel the wind in my hair anyway would be to ride with my arms outstretched above my head ......

I still think that road safety would be improved if car manufacturers were compelled to remove all seatbelts and airbags from cars, all padding on dashboards and instead, fixed firmly on the steering wheel, passenger glove compartment and the rears of the front seats were a large metal spikes mandated to go rusty after 3 days. That would enforce better road safety - but for some reason my MP refuses to return my correspondence.

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The world as it should be at surrealscoop.blogspot.com

dalem

If your point is that you want to save me from myself then I see your point, even though it is hateful to me.

-dale