Sixteen years ago, I was still learning to ride a bicycle. I wasn’t that good at it. Dad had been holding the back of the seat as I pedaled the old BMX down our gravel driveway and he had always told me when he was going to let go. Other times, I’d command him to let go, because I got tired of looking like a sissy who needed his father to push him around. So one summer day I said, “Let go, Dad!” He did. And I went over the side of the bridge over the brook, crashing into the rocks below onto my head. I’m alive because I wore a $10 helmet.

Ten years later, I was a rather advanced cyclist. I used a Ross Professional road racer, a Raleigh Record road racer, and a Gary Fisher mountain bike, the latter of which I still ride. When it came to bikes, bike-riding technique and bike safety, I knew my stuff. I was flying over large terracettes in our field, flying sometimes as much as eight feet in the air, standing on the cross bar, bunny-hopping, and doing all kinds of things I probably shouldn’t have done with a 26-inch mountain bike frame. One day I was out riding and I was on a blind curve, as far in as I could get without going into the ditch. Some guy in an SUV comes roaring around the curve at about 50 miles an hour, way too close to the edge. I was forced to ride into the ditch. I hit a rock, flew over the handlebars and-you guessed it-landed on my head. A much more expensive helmet this time, but almost identical to the one I wore ten years prior.

Needless to say, I don’t pull as many of the antics as I used to. I don’t have as much time to ride as I used to. But when I do ride, I find the same helmet that saved my butt (and head) five years ago and strap it on. I know I’m no expert, but I also know that I’ve no control of outside forces.

The closest locality that has a helmet law is Salem, in neighboring Roanoke County, enacted in 2000, where all riders under the age of 15 must wear a helmet. The same laws have been enacted over the past nine years in Virginia Beach, Prince William County, Alexandria, Arlington County, Newport News and Manassas, to name a few other areas in the state. Plenty of other states have helmet laws, some mandating that riders of all ages use a helmet.

Clearly, there’s no one out there who’s invincible. Plenty of people my age think they are. I once thought the same thing, even after my spill that summer in 1986. Of course, being five years old, things don’t hit you as quickly as they do when you’re 15 or 21.

It is from the simple fact of humanity’s vulnerability that helmet laws everywhere have been enacted. And if there’s a community without a helmet law, there’s likely a large pool of parents who’d like to see one. Not because they want to subdue their children’s freedom, make them look dorky or whatever reason helmet law opponents come up with, but because they don’t want to see what happened to cyclists like myself happen to someone who wasn’t wearing a helmet. For more information on why some people are opposed to helmet laws, click here.

Contrary to a rather dominant belief, helmets are not heavy. My helmet barely weighs seven ounces. Slightly heavier helmets can be purchased for about $20 and you still can’t feel them on your head anymore than a ball cap, save for the neck strap. Helmets used to cause a lot of perspiration around the scalp which could in turn disrupt a cyclist’s vision, but helmets available today have multiple air vents. Because of their light weight, one might think that a helmet would shatter on impact, but modern helmets are engineered with some of the same concepts used to construct bicycles. Giro and Bell are both manufacturers of such helmets. Less expensive but equally safe alternatives can be had at Wal-Mart and similar stores.

Are they unattractive? You bet they are. My helmet is probably the ugliest thing I own and looks even worse on my head. But after those two accidents, I really don’t care.