Thanks to the Daily for its difficult editorial regarding Tim Widmer’s tragic death which appeared Monday, April 27.

Your story is made even more tragic by the fact that the State of Iowa evidently had a motorcycle helmet law from September 1975 to July 1976, according to an article in The Des Moines Register of March 6, 1992. During the period the law was enforced, death rates were 40 percent lower than the year before and 30 percent lower than the year after the law. Evidently, lobbying groups were able to influence legislatures to actually repeal the law. The result is, as you said, that we, along with Illinois and Colorado, are one of three states in the land with no helmet protection laws. I think there are times to take a stand, but I don’t feel that lack of helmet protection laws is an issue on which Iowa should lead the way.

In the same vein, let me plead for the use of bicycle helmets. Helmets are absolutely known to decrease injury to the head, face, and neck by 85 percent. Yet, in the three campus-wide helmet campaigns over the last three years, our Health Education unit has sold only 63 helmets on a campus of 25,000 students and 4,000 faculty and staff. Even if more helmets had been sold, they likely wouldn’t have been used. In a student questionnaire, we found that while 17 percent of students owned helmets, only 6 percent of those wore them. Helmets appear not a high priority item to the bike riding community. It seems what many folks who wear no helmets say is, “I don’t need it; I’m only going to campus.” They don’t realize that it often isn’t how fast or how far one is going that determines brain injury, but the vertical distance from head to pavement, and that becomes a factor the minute one climbs on a bike.

And one last thing. While we’re talking about fatal bike accidents, remember that in about a third of those accidents, the rider had been drinking. So please don’t drink when you drive — or ride.

Mark Blaedel

Interim director

Student Health Center