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Syed
Mansoor Hussain, who wrote the following opinion piece, "has
practised and taught medicine in the U.S."
Sections
in bold text have been so marked by Drive and Stay Alive.
Recently
the government mandated protective helmets for motorcyclists. Whatever
else, this was the first time in quite a while that I saw the police in
Lahore enforcing any law. The only time I have ever seen them this
efficient is when they have to block local traffic to allow a VVVIP to
pass. Perhaps this is a sign of good things to come, but then may be not
and as a cynical friend suggested to me recently, the police are in with
the helmet sellers. I, being an optimist, believe that the police are
doing this because they actually want to save lives and enforce the law.
The more interesting thing about all this was the opinion given to us by
a leading politician that turbans were as good as helmets. As I started
to think about this, I realised that this may indeed be true, and if so,
how could we prove it. If we could only devise a method of proving
this we could for a change teach the cocky westerners something
that they not only never knew, but being the non-turban wearing sorts,
never could know. For things like this, they use dummies with sensors
and then simulate crashes and see how much damage would have occurred in
different types of accidents to different parts of the body.
It would seem to be a straightforward test to see how dummies wearing
turbans and helmets fare in a collision. But, there are two essentially
insoluble problems. First, dummies cannot ride motorcycles.
And more importantly, even though Pakistan has many dummies, it does not
have the sophisticated, electronically wired dummies needed for such a
test. Another problem, of course, is that for any such test to be
relevant it must mimic real life as closely as possible. A motorcycle on
Pakistani roads has on the average two and a half riders. This usually
includes the male driver, his wife and the half being a child. So, any
testing must also examine the effect on the un-helmeted, un-turbaned
wife and child.
The more I thought about such a test, the more gruesome and macabre the
parameters became. Therefore it is probably best to abandon the entire
concept and accept the possibility that turbans might actually be as
effective as helmets in preventing serious brain injuries to
motorcyclists involved in accidents. But, the problem of children
being carried on motorcycles remains a matter of some concern.
In the US, a motorist driving around a child without carefully tucking
it away in a back seat safety harness can be arrested not only for
unsafe driving but also for child endangerment. A motorcyclist doing
something which is considered the norm in Pakistan would probably end up
in jail in the US and have his children removed from his custody for
good measure.
This brings us to an interesting series of questions. Is
travelling with two or three children on a motorcycle child abuse or
just child endangerment? And, if it is either of these two, then why is
it not a crime? And, if it is a crime then why are those doing
this not being stopped and fined? We can go through the usual litany of
reasons why this is acceptable since there is no other means of
transportation available to the majority of middle and lower middle
class working people. Nevertheless, by any standards of road safety,
carrying a number of children on a motorcycle is dangerous.
Unfortunately this just meshes into the general disregard for child
safety that is prevalent in this society.
What adults do is their business as long as they do not put others at
risk. If a motorcyclist wishes to put his (I have yet to see a her
driving a motorcycle) life in danger, that is his business but when he
endangers the lives of others, especially children, then that is the
business of society. We are all full of platitudes about how
children are the future of any society, yet the scant attention we pay
to their safety exposes the hollowness of such rhetoric. A child
that grows up in an environment where the safety of children is of
little concern will have little concern for the safety of children as an
adult. So, I would rather see our “finest” stopping motorcyclists
for driving around with children rather than for not wearing helmets.
Having vented my spleen about unprotected children on motorcycles, I can
now return to the helmet versus the turban question. The traffic in a
city like Lahore is worse than bad. The only saving grace is that
because of its chaotic nature, the speed of the average vehicle is not
very fast. Therefore, if and when an accident does occur, it is usually
a low speed contact producing relatively minor damage. In such an
environment, a turban might indeed be as effective as a helmet. So, I
suppose, what we need is a law that forces motorcyclists to wear either
helmets or turbans. Here, of course it might become necessary to
legislate the bulk and heft of turbans that than can be used instead of
helmets.
Intuitively it would seem that the sort of turbans the Sikhs wear would
be most effective. This is so for two reasons. First, they have a lot of
tightly wound hair underneath and second, their turbans are made up of
quite a few layers of cloth that are remarkably well fixed on their
heads and won’t fall off after an accident. This is in stark contrast
to the turbans worn by many of our motorcyclists that are nothing more
than a desultory twist or two of cloth around their heads. Perhaps in
these days of cross-border friendship, it might be worthwhile for those
in our Punjab to emulate those in the Indian Punjab, entirely for the
purposes of driver safety. Or perhaps that was the idea all along.
Finally, what exactly is “pillion riding” and why does it get banned
every so often? If it is indeed what I think it is then why don’t the
traffic police stop people indulging in this proto-terrorist activity
during times of national emergencies and VVVIP visits? This brings us
back to the peculiarly vigorous policing of the helmet law. It was
alleged by many distraught helmet buyers that many of those selling
helmets made a fast buck by increasing the prices manifold. As we well
know, to make a buck especially a fast one; in Pakistan like many other
places you do need to have the law fully behind you or at least on your
side. Perhaps my cynical friend was right after all.
Source:
The Daily Times, Pakistan
DSA
Comments: Firstly, we must make it clear
that we agree entirely with Syed
Mansoor Hussain's comments about specific dangers to children being
carried on motorcycles.
Secondly, however, we find it alarming that someone with a medical
background should imply -- as is certainly the case here -- that a
tightly wound turban will always be as capable of protecting the
wearer's head as would a crash helmet. Even crash helmets vary quite
widely in protective standards and any rider in the western world who
had any sense whatsoever would always buy a full racing standard helmet
rather than a cheap one, even if just for use among relatively slow
traffic in a city, as mentioned in the above article.
Despite his medical background, Syed
Mansoor Hussain completely fails to address the rather obvious fact that
certain types of trauma to the head would undoubtedly require both the
hard shell and the internal padding of a good helmet to save the rider
from brain damage or death, rather than just the padding of a tightly
wound turban.
At Drive and Stay Alive, we would not presume for one moment to pass
opinion on whether religious groups who wear turbans should ever be
forced to remove such in order to wear a crash helmet -- that is an
entirely different issue altogether -- but we do believe it is wrong and
potentially dangerous to over-emphasize the skull-protecting
capabilities of turbans in this context. Even the focus on city traffic
does not allow for the possibility that this new helmet law may in due
course be applied in rural areas, where the argument about slow moving
traffic would become entirely irrelevant.
If he knows his stuff about crash testing and accident research, Syed
Mansoor Hussain should also be aware that just because "dummies
cannot ride motorcycles"
it does not mean that effective tests have not been established by which
all aspects of helmet safety may accurately be tested. Those same tests
could undoubtedly be used to examine the efficacy of turbans as head
protectors.
And finally, given that a great many people and several organizations in
the western world commit a great deal of effort and money to helping
other countries save lives by means of enhancing road safety, it is
saddening to see such people referred to as "cocky
westerners,"
especially by someone who "has practised and taught medicine
in the U.S."
Eddie
Wren, Executive Director, Drive and Stay Alive, Inc.
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