I usually wear a helmet while driving a bike, no matter whether I go for a short ride or a long drive. Main reason was, in Cochin I was terrified of the local red town buses which never care on whose going on the road, even though the helmet would be of a little help when hit by them, it acted as a good sound proof material against their blatant horns.
On a fine day during early 2008 I was on the way to office driving around 40km/hr, a tempo was travelling at the same speed at some 10 feet distance in front of me. Sudddenly down in a slope ,out of the blue that tempo driver applied brakes and turned 180 degrees at a place where there is no turning which completely caught me by surprise. Even though I tried applying brakes it was too late my bike jammed directly on to the tempo's left side door and my head protected by the helmet was the first to get hit the tempo with the maximum impact.Front wheel of the bike got bent,the doom and the headlights were crashed into pieces.
In the mean time a small crowd gathered. I took out the helmet and saw the visor got cracked right in the middle,I was searching whether something happened to my body and found as usual I escaped scratch free. One nice man got me a bottle of soda which I managed to gulp down.I saw the bike in pretty bad condition to my surprise the tempo driver accepted his mistake and volunatarily agreed to pay for the damages which I politely refused but he insisted on sharing it 50-50,it took more than 1k to get the bike back to normal.
So if there wasn't a helmet worn on that day it wouldn't have been the visor which would have got cracked!
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