people in Vietnam started wearing helmets on motorbikes. As of September 15th, 2007, every person riding a motorbike on a national road anywhere must be wearing a helmet or risk severe punishment by the traffic police. I had forgotten about the new law when I took my bike out to the market and the library on Saturday morning and felt like there was something…different. Everyone was wearing helmets! I mean EVERYONE! Even children on motorbikes were wearing helmets. It’s amazing how much a little fear of the police can go such a long way. It might also have to do with the amazing propaganda campaign displayed in the central city roundabout. We’re talking pictures of disgustingly mutilated limbs and mangled faces underneath the motorbikes which led the people to their early deaths. Talk about fear tactics, this is absolutely stunning. I’ll try to get a picture or two. It reminds me a bit of those pre-prom SADD anti-drunk-driving videos that made me afraid to ever get in a car again, with anyone, period.
Perhaps people in Vietnam really wanted to be wearing helmets all along, but that mob mentality of “well, no one else is, so I don’t want to” just took over. Now everyone else is wearing helmets, so maybe people figure, “why not, might as well protect my brain.” I even saw a man riding a bicycle today who was wearing a helmet! There are of course, still issues with the motorbikes. Helmets are expensive, and the solution to this problem has been to import cheap Chinese helmets that may or may not save people’s brains from separating from their skulls in the case of a high-speed accident. People are potentially driving more recklessly than before; I’ve heard that in the US motorists drive closer and more recklessly around bicyclists who are wearing helmets. The rationale here, I guess, is that if they hit the cyclists, they probably won’t kill them. But in any case it’s an amazing step that I seriously never thought I’d see.
There, I edited the post due to comments of my former colleagues at AGU. OK?
