Passes & Canyons Blog

There’s no good reason not to wear eye protection.

Old pictures of motorcyclists from, say, 50 years ago can be pretty amazing if you pay attention to the details. It’s not that most of the riders are not wearing helmets, though they’re not. It’s that in most cases they’re also not wearing eye protection. Of course, laws back then didn’t require either.

Here’s an example. Some time ago I got a copy of McQueen’s Machines: The Cars and Bikes of a Hollywood Icon. Flipping through it there are a variety of pictures of Steve McQueen on motorcycles and, in several of them he’s blasting along with no helmet or glasses. It is interesting to note, however, that in shots where he is racing he always wears goggles and a helmet. So it’s not like people back then didn’t understand the protection these things offered.

Nearly every state now has a motorcycle helmet law in one form or another, some requiring all riders to wear them, many only having restrictions on those under 18. These laws are a volatile topic year after year and are likely to remain so for a long time to come. At one extreme are non-riders who want to force all riders to wear helmets, and at the other end are riders who consider it insane to ride without a helmet but who adamantly oppose government mandates on the issue. And there’s a wide spectrum of positions in between the two.

What goes undebated, however, is the fact that requirements for riders and passengers on motorcycles to have some sort of eye protection are widely mandated now as well. Glasses or goggles, per se, are not specifically required; a number of states demand eye protection on your face only if you do not have a windshield. Alaska is more specific: your windshield must reach at least 15 inches above your handlebars. Alabama, California, and others don’t require anything. Indiana only requires eye protection for riders under 18.

It’s a non-issue. Why? Because people by and large are not stupid. I’ve been riding for more than 30 years and I’ve gone down on my bike once. I didn’t always wear a helmet, although now I always do. I was that day but it didn’t matter, my head never touched the ground or anything else.

On the other hand, I cannot count the number of bugs that have died on my visor or on the lenses of my glasses. And then there are the bits of grit and sand and tiny pebbles that my eye protection has deflected. I know that many years ago, just like Steve McQueen, I used to ride without glasses or any kind of eye protection. I find it hard to believe now.

What I also find kind of hard to believe is the number of states that have no requirements or only require a windshield. Both my bikes have windshields and trust me, they don’t block all the airborne debris. I don’t care what the law is, or what state I’m in, I’m not going riding without eye protection.

And I think that’s why it’s a non-issue. I know that in my experience, and I suspect in yours, too, if you go to a state that has no requirements for eye protection, you’ll nevertheless be hard put to spot anyone who doesn’t have it. It would just be stupid not to.

Wow, what a concept: People are not stupid.

Biker Quote for Today

You know you’re a biker if you have ever had to borrow a helmet for your date.

I eagerly opened the latest issue of AAA Colorado’s EnCompass magazine when it arrived the other day. In the previous, September-October, issue they had printed an outrageous letter from a member who obviously doesn’t engage her brain before opening her mouth. I had written in rebuttal, and while I wanted to make sure they had printed my letter, I wanted even more to see if the editor had added an editor’s note in regard to the two letters. Bingo! They printed it and there was an editor’s note!

Let me back up and fill you in on all this.

Two issues ago, EnCompass had a couple good articles about how drivers need to share the road with motorcyclists and informing drivers of things they might not know about motorcyclists, such as issues with oily pavement and that sort of thing. They also spoke about the legal mandate to wear eye protection.

We all wear eye protection

In the subsequent issue, someone wrote in making the bald statement that “less than 50% of motorcyclists conform” to the eye protection mandate. I was blown away, both by the idiocy of the statement and also by the fact that the magazine had printed the letter with no note or anything about the glaring inaccuracy of that statement.

So I wrote a letter in reply. I said that I’ve been riding for more than 20 years and I always look at bikes on the road and have almost never seen a rider without eye protection. I said that with bugs and grit and everything else, it”s not a question of whether you’ll get hit with the stuff, it’s a question of how frequently, and that for that reason we would wear eye protection even if it wasn’t the law.

Then I proposed that the editor or staff take a simple test: Notice for one week all bikes you see and look to see if the rider has eye protection. I said the number without protection would probably be zero.

Finally, I told them I thought they were a bit irresponsible for printing that letter without any verification or asking the writer to provide verification of their statement.

So they printed my letter, but the editor”s note didn’t say anything like “You’re right, we did your test and didn’t see a single rider without eye protection” or anything like that. What they did say was “As in other publications, letters to the editor are not intended to be read as anything other than the writer’s opinion; AAA does not fact-check them or judge the validity of those opinions.”

Oh really. I happen to be a former newspaper editor and I guarantee that that was not the way we operated. We believed we had an obligation to present accurate information to our readers, and if someone wrote a letter making absurd claims there was no way we would print that verbatim without either an editor”s note correcting the inaccuracy or contacting the writer for them to correct it first. Plus, this was not a statement of opinion, the writer put this out there as a fact! We were always happy to let people state their opinions, no problem there. It was the facts we cared about.

So let me make one point that shows how absurd this response from EnCompass is. Does anyone really believe they would have printed the letter without any editing or checking if the writer had said “more than 50% of motorcyclists deliberately run over small children every day”? Or how about “more than 50% of motorcyclists are pedophiles”? Are they really not going “judge the validity” of those statements? Hogwash!

Oh well, at least they printed my letter and I set the record straight.

Biker Quote for Today

The superior rider uses superior knowledge to avoid situations that require superior skill.