Wear a helmet. It's better than the alternative...

[Jim Lane]

107. I'm not anonymous, and here's my story.

I post on DU under my real name. (OK, the birth certificate says "James" not "Jim" but close enough.)

I was wearing a helmet when I had my bicycle accident. My head hit the pavement hard enough that, even with the helmet, I was knocked unconscious. I can't tell you for sure what would have happened without the helmet but my lay opinion is that serious head injury would have been highly probable, with death a distinct possibility.

If you really think I'm lying, there's even a court record about it. I went down because the town's contractor had been in the midst of doing road work and knocked off work on Friday without putting up any barrels or cones or signs or anything. I encountered the site on Sunday and hit a gouge they'd left in the road. I think the town was the first-named defendant in the lawsuit, so you can go to the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack, New Jersey and find the record for Lane v. Borough of Hillsdale (begun in 1996 or 1997). (The suit was about the injuries I suffered below the neck, where the helmet of course didn't help me.)

As for your repeated statement that all those kids decades ago somehow survived: The vast majority of children in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s did not get lead poisoning. Does that establish that the concern about childhood lead poisoning, with the consequent banning of lead-based paint in 1978, was a mistake? It's just silly to argue against an improvement in public health on the basis that there are some people who don't benefit from it.