Lew, the implicit self-importance of helmet-wearing was pointed out to me the week I started wearing a bicycle helmet by my helmet-less classmates at Berkeley. “Kathryn thinks her brains are more important than ours,” they teased. Of course, by the time we graduated, we were all convinced that we had important brains to protect!
At least helmets were not required by law for adults, so we could decide on the importance of our own brains without interference from the state. Not so with other regulations: a friend of mine got a ticket for going through a red-light on his bike (the fine was the same as that given for cars caught for the same infraction – upwards of $100).
1:42 pm on June 17, 2008
