A Survivor's Story 

        I owned a helmet, and a lot of the time I wore it.  But a lot of the time I didn’t. Most of the time I would just ride around with my helmet strapped to the sissy bar on the back of my bike. It was cool to feel the breeze blowing through my hair and besides, “It wasn’t cool to wear a helmet”.  One night last June changed my whole outlook on helmets. 

        It was a beautiful summer day, the perfect day to spend all day cruising on my 1994 Honda Magna.  Once again, I had my helmet strapped to my sissy bar so I could get that feeling of freedom.  Anyway, soon nightfall came. It was still nice and warm out and I was contemplating whether or not I should put my helmet on or just keep it off.  I was in a town that was 12 miles away from home and I decided to put the helmet on because I could slide the face shield down to keep the bugs out of my face. There is nothing worse than a june bug smacking you in the eye at about 60 mph right? So I’m on my way home all relaxed, got my feet up on the highway pegs just cruising somewhere between 55-60 mph. I begin to see headlights from the right hand side of me. It was a car traveling down a gravel rode. I am always really cautious at nighttime because I know that it is harder to see motorcycles when the sun goes down. So I start to slow down as I approach the intersection. I’m watching this car as it puts its break lights on to slow down for the stop sign. Assuming everything is fine I accelerate back up to 55 the next thing I know, I am about 15 feet from the intersection and the taillights on the car go off.  All I remember is lifting my feet off of the highway pegs to hit the brakes.  I never even touched the brakes. The car ran the stop sign and I T-boned the front fender.  I was thrown off of the bike, over the car in a somersault and landed directly on my helmet. I slid across the highway and into the ditch. The helmet only had what I consider mild damage considering the rate of speed I was traveling at. But I don’t even want to imagine what my head or what would be left of it would look like. 

        When the paramedics arrived to the scene they were asking the police where the victim was? The police pointed over the man standing next to the car. No one could believe that not only did I survive the car (driven by the drunk drivers) impact but I was up walking around. Now I honestly believe that there was a greater power looking over me that night or else I feel I would have had some time of broken bones. But as far as my head goes…I owe it all to my helmet. 

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