Warning. This post gets heavy and kind of gross. If you have a weak stomach, you might want to stop reading now.
One of the great things about traveling is seeing what other people’s day to day life is like. China is not the first country I’ve been to where I’ve seen entire families riding on a single motorcycle and not one of them in a helmet. Doug and I, multiple times have seen a family of 5 on one motor scooter. Dad is driving, one kid is standing on the little floor board and holding onto the 2 rear/side view mirror bars, another kid is sitting on the seat in between dad’s legs and mom is sitting behind dad while a third child sits behind mom.
A few weeks ago I saw two scooters nearly collide. The driver of one scooter flew over the handlebars, his arms out in front of him like Superman and i watched him skid belly down into the dirt and gravel. He had some bad road rash but he was ok.
About four days ago I saw an elderly man crash his scooter into a deep rut in the road. I ran across the road to help him. He was bleeding from his knee and ankle but the way he was clutching his chest scared me. I couldn’t tell if he was having a heart attack and crashed his bike or vice versa or if he had just hit himself in the chest with the side view mirror. He eventually got up, picked his scooter up, turned the key and drove off.
Early this morning, right after Doug and I had taken a water break we saw a man by the side of the road. He was scraped up and bleeding, his shorts were shredded, he was talking to someone on the phone and looking off the side of the road that was fairly dense with vegetation and sloped downhill.
I talked to Doug about helping him. I think this whole trip has been about “helping”. We have received a lot of it and we felt it was time to give back. We decided to go across the road and help this guy pull his motor scooter out of the ditch.
We had actually walked past him a little ways and when we crossed the road, we saw that his scooter was off the road and a good 20 yards ahead of where he was standing and looking.
We walked back to where he was and looked down and there was lying, a man of about 50 who was so tiny that he couldn’t have weighed more than 80 lbs. He was not conscious, he was bleeding from his head and I could clearly see that his lower leg was broken badly. The bone was sticking out several inches and the rest of his leg was hanging at an awkward angle. The man with the phone went down into that shallow ravine and picked up the injured man and carried him like a child, cradled in his arms and lay him on the side of the road. He was alive, he was breathing at a consistent rate but it looked labored. He eventually started opening his eyes and trying to move but we did our best to calm him and to keep him from moving. He actually moved his broken leg which was a relief to me because I’m assuming this means that he doesn’t have a spinal cord injury.
It’s very likely that this man could completely recover from his broken leg. But what about his head injury? A helmet could have really mitigated the severity of his injuries. We honestly don’t know if he will live or not.
Eventually an “ambulance” with some “paramedics” showed up. I put both of those words in quotes for a reason. The paramedics didn’t look like they knew what they were doing and the ambulance was little more than a white van. Inside there was no gurney, just this plastic sled thing they loaded the injured man onto and slid into the back of the van. The paramedics were more occupied with his broken leg than his head injury. He wasn’t bleeding from it but it still occupied their attention. There was not one piece of equipment inside the ambulance.
So, perhaps you are asking yourself what exactly is the point of this whole grim story. It is simply this. Wear a fucking helmet people. Lately on Facebook I’ve seen people ranting about helmet laws going into effect in different states and how our government shouldn’t be telling people what to do. Fine, don’t wear a helmet because your government forces you to wear one. Wear a helmet because I am ASKING you to wear one. OK? Can you do this for me?
There apparently is no helmet law in Minnesota and it just amazes me why people persist in not wearing this very important piece of safety equipment! Here in the US we have the equipment readily & cheaply available and still they refuse to use it. Freedom is wonderful, even for the hard headed! Now this is a perfect example of where your “charity” would have been very useful…If you had “trip money” that had been given to you by others, this would have been a perfect time to use it! Karma is important and it is kind of like entropy, it is just everywhere. World pain and suffering is often difficult to comprehend or be empathetic to unless you are immersed in it. Then it becomes all too real!
When I was in Laos, I saw a man who had been hit by a mini van. He shattered the entire windshield. He was unconscious by the side of the road and bleeding badly. I had a driver for the day and we were in a minivan too. I begged the driver to take this guy to the hospital. My driver refused on the grounds that if the injured man died in his car, his car might become cursed or haunted. Finally a pickup truck came by and some people loaded his crumpled body into the back.
The next day I asked the driver to take me to the hospital where the man had been taken. It was the most shocking thing I had ever seen. Nothing about it was sterile. Not the bugs flying in and out of it. Not the filthy cot that he was lying on, the dingy sheets, the army blanket that covered him even though it was 85 degrees out, not the screened but glassless windows. His wife and mother and sister-in-law and other family were all in the room sitting on the floor. Someone there spoke very good English and I learned that the man was going to be ok. I slipped $50 US to his mother. Depending on what he did for a living, that might have been 1/4 year wages for him. I figured he’d be out of work for a while and would need cash. I hope it made a difference in his life.
Now is not the time to argue the toss. It is you that witnessed a gruesome road traffic incident and naturally you are perturbed by it.
I can say that the 3 days I spent riding around Hawaii without a helmet were some of the most glorious days of “perceived freedom” I have ever experienced.
It’s a tough call. You were on holiday. It’s easier to throw caution to the wind when you are somewhere exotic. I’m curious which island you were on. Doug and I plan to move to Kauai in a few years. Come visit. Bring the family.