Use your noggin...
or pay the price.
I
by Roger Moroney
n 1971 I took my motorcycle licence test...
and I think I was helmetless. Because I
was certainly helmetless when I bought
the CB100 that year to get me to work
and back, although to their credit the
lads at the shop pretty well insisted I get
one, which dad was happy to pay for as
I’d exhausted my savings on the deposit.
But I didn’t have to wear it because
it was not a legal requirement to do so.
It wasn’t until 1973 that it became
compulsory for riders and passengers
to wear a safety helmet.
I can remember seeing pictures of early traffic
department motorcycle-borne officers riding in
their finest uniforms, with boots and gloves of
course, and their very flash peak hats with the
traffic department emblem stitched to the front.
One of the guys where I worked had a Kawasaki
350... the twin version which came under the
branding of A7 Avenger. It could move...really
move. And he’d scream off on the thing after
work, helmetless, while I effectively putt-putted
away in my direction home, helmetless. He let me
take it for a bit of a squirt one ‘smoko’ time and
I was hooked on the horsepower of the thing.
And yep, I did the squirt helmetless.
That taste of extra tow led me to replace
the 100 with a 350 about a year later,
although I went down the CB350 path as I’d
developed an equal liking for four-strokes.
I changed jobs for one in town closer to
home and occasionally wore the helmet, but
on warm and bright days often just left it
sitting on the shelf by my bedroom door.
Crazy, but hey, that’s the way it was,
although I can only sit here now and
ponder that had the introduction of the
helmet legislation been staged in 1968 one
of the kids in the six form of the school I
attended and who had a motorcycle would
72 KIWI RIDER
probably have lived to see his 18th birthday.
He crashed on the way to school one
morning and we all heard the news at
assembly the next day that he had died.
We would never see him again.
Yet the other three or four kids who had
motorcycles then continued to ride to school and
home again at the end of the day... helmetless.
Crazy, unfathomable times.
When the law was changed to make them
compulsory the helmet industry stepped up a notch,
and one of my first “glamour” lids was basically an
open-face helmet which had attachment studs set
into the front where a clip-on full-face panel could
be attached. I painted around the edges of the
helmet and clip-on so as to make it harder to spot.
It served me well until I bought my first real
full-face helmet, which was pretty much a
bottom line job but, hey, after the addition of
some taped pin-striping and a Castrol sticker
it looked just swell. Through my years of riding,
which now number 47 years, helmets have saved
me serious injury four times. And had I been
helmetless whilst involved in my most serious
It’s all fun, freedom and
wind in your hair until it’s
not. This happened to the
editor’s mate ‘just’ riding
his bike 100m back to his
van at a bike show.
The two photos show
post-accident damage and
post-titanium plate inser-
tion. Wear your helmet.
unplanned dismounting I would have been killed.
Simple as that.
The impact damaged the front and left of the
thing and rendered it no longer usable... and I had
concussion for about four days. And while I may
have had concussion I had no doubts at all about
what had assisted me in staying aboard planet
earth, and today I just can’t get my head around
the times I used to ride without one. Mind you, I
heard the other day about a couple of lads who
had gone online somewhere to complain about the
fact they were legally compulsory. One bemoaned
that it should be the rider’s choice, no one else’s. If
he did not wish to wear a helmet then so be it. And
about a week ago a couple of young guys went
tearing up a nearby street shirtless and helmetless
in the searing heat aboard a crazy little scooter.
Probably figured a short burst around the block
“no cops around” wouldn’t hurt.
Oh yes, it could.
I have this terrible vision of a helmetless rider
being unloaded by a sudden impact and issuing
his final words “uh oh”.
Short ride, on or off the tarseal... put it on.
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