Tough Turban: an open-source design for turban-wearing motorcyclists
toughturban.com
toughturban.com
As a safety conscious rider, it's hard to see this one way.
On one hand, the Sikh riders seem to really enjoy riding, and riding together. Nothing quite says "bad ass immigrant" like a flock of brown brothers on Harleys in matching turbans, rolling in a holiday parade. Turban and beard are very integral to their religious identity, no doubt about that.
On the other hand, riding without a helmet is a terrible idea, for both the rider and the community, which inevitably bears part of the consequences. Even purpose-built helmets without chin bars and face shields do little to change outcomes in the majority of crashes. Even at sub-freeway speeds. There are good reasons modern ECE and Snell ratings really require full-face helmets for street motorcycling applications.
I really, really hope this isn't a Sikh-specific rehash of the "party hat" phenomenon in the USA. Down here, some riders, and especially "scene" Harley-Davidson riders, reacted to helmet laws by selling cheap, minimal "helmets" that either claim to pass or just pass our laughably outdated DOT safety standards. These are little better than paper party hats, ticking a box to avoid obvious problems with police.
I'm not familiar with the full context in Canada. But law aside, anybody riding a motorcycle on public roads in a turban needs extra helpings of initial and refresher training, more insurance, and proactive estate planning.
Why is there a need for a law? Someone should be free to ride without a helmet, whatever his religion, as long as he can find an insurer willing to provide adequate coverage (or be able to self-insure) for his medical bills.
I'm not fined for being fat, or even given the bill for my own (hypothetical) coronary, despite the enormous liability that gives the state. As long as that's true, I'd say motorcyclists can reasonably doubt that protecting the state is the real purpose.
Because we live in a society? Because suiciding yourself on public roads should be illegal?
In Canada, for example, healthcare is a shared burden across all people. Which alone is a strong argument in favour of safety enhancing policies.
There is also good argument for the role of government to help take care of its citizens. The danger of not wearing a helmet is so great that the government steps in to enforce people to do it. It doesn't matter how well the person says they are prepared for the risks or has "done research", the data are clear that they are objectively wrong to not wear one. Sure, people can say they are smart and ready, but time and time again we see that people make choices against their best interests. So, the government steps in.
On the other hand, if we believe that people should be allowed to hurt themselves if they can find someone to cover their medical bills, then the question becomes where do we draw the line? Riding a motorcycle without a helmet seems like a reasonable one. What about with a helmet? Motorcycles are inherently dangerous. But all road traffic is more dangerous than trains. Should people need a personal health insurance add-on to drive a car? What about eating unhealthy food?
Even if the line is drawn clearly, now only the rich can afford to do certain dangerous things and everyone else can't. Due to money shifting into the private sector, less and less will be covered by state insurance, making things that are allowed even today (like many sports) to be off-limits to anyone middle-class and lower. Now we've turned a situation where everyone has reasonable but equal limits to one where the rich have no limits and everyone else has unreasonably strict limits.
See for example (6D helmet manufacturer): https://youtu.be/B6jI0w5UFLs
Having said all that a helmet without a chinstrap, such as this one, is basically like not wearing a helmet at all. In a crash, the helmet isn’t going to stay on. If the helmet doesn’t stay on, it’s not going to do anything.
Guessing not. At least in Alberta, Sikhs have explicit exemptions from requiring helmets while operating a motorcycle[1]. I think BC and Manitoba do as well but I haven't checked their specific regulations.
It took less than 3 years for an exemption to be put in place, and it came during a period of history that wasn't exactly friendly to immigrants and their descendants.
Probably better than no helmet, though my concern would be that this provides no real protection from abrasion for the face.
Motorcycle protective gear needs to protect from impacts yes, but abrasion is also a significant risk - slides from speeds over 100kph can be quite substantial in both time and distance - upwards of 5 seconds, and dozens of metres, pushing higher in different conditions.
This video of a slide in the wet made the rounds a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoYLKSYnrN0
That extends to the rest of your body. Protective gear is the difference between a bruise and a scar.
Remember falling off your bike as a kid? At over 50 km/h with a 200 kg bike, you'll turn into a meat crayon.
As they say, dress for the slide, not the ride. Mine saved my life, and prevented a few scars.
So I guess it's trying to be better than nothing rather than a full solution to head protection. Unless you want a chinstrap on a turban. Bit like stronger thongs/flipflops maybe.
I've been riding motorcycles for a decade. My father was a motorcycle defensive driving instructor and somebody ran a red light and nailed him. My oldest brother was a semi-pro motorcycle racer and still died in a crash.
The only sane option when riding a motorcycle is a full face helmet and proper protective gear. Insisting on wearing religious garb while riding means you should not be riding.
This idea we get to be judgy and have anxieties about others taking risks, as though we have some responsibility for them is just wishful thinking. It makes the critic feel they are retaining some power in the face of a risk taker's badassery. Every time I read resentment of someone else taking risks, it's by someone who aspires to do the same thing and doesn't because their risk appetite isn't the same.
Risk takers often seem powerful and sexy, and this offends those invested in compliance. The reason people hate on Harley riders is because they feel ashamed. We all die, but please, try to lay off those of us who choose to live a little before we do.
Riding a purposefully noisy vehicle is not what risk taking looks like, it's more like a "Look at me! I exist!" cry for validation, and that's not powerful or sexy.
The question is thus what's the balance between cost to society from the accidents (of which the biker takes most of the risk), the beneficial externality, and the restriction of the biker's ability to select his/her own risk tolerance? How does this compare to other such restrictions (seat belts, airbags).
How much money even gets spent on medical bills for bikers who choose not to wear helmets? If everyones personal lifestyle choices now have a monetary impact on each other, then how much intervention does this justify? Should people be forced to eat healthy and exercise? Obesity cost the healthcare system significantly more than motorcycle injuries. Alcohol, candy, cigarettes, even OTC drugs have a huge cost on the healthcare system, should those be illegal? What about mental health? Should people be prevented from doing anything considered "health threatening" out of the fear they may cost tax payers money?
Also should people be allowed to opt-out of a universal healthcare system and be exempt from lifestyle regulations?
From my european pov I've always felt universal healthcare would never work in the US due to this focus on individual freedom over almost anything else.
This shows what can be done when you really do think outside the box and stop letting convention dictate what can be accomplished. This concept makes my heart swell at how awesome inclusion can be.
This isn't about Snell, this isn't about being AS GOOD AS a full-face helmet. It's about being better then a cotton(?) fabric turban. It's about respecting a persons choice of religion.
I ride. I curse at the organ donors who wear skull-caps, or the teens wearing shorts & t-shirts; and hope I am wrong and they stay lucky. But I support this.
Things can only get better from here. This is an improvement. This is embracing what's different and trying to make a difference.
Exactly. This is no different to kevlar jeans - they're nowhere near as good as racing leathers, but they're a damn sight better than regular pants while still being something you can wear all day.
My understanding was that the religious obligation for Sikhs was to keep their hair covered. Does this necessarily require a cloth turban? This seems like a case where Sikhs could take a page out of Orthodox Jews' book and do some creative interpretation of what defines a turban, rather than try to turn a turban into an inferior helmet.
Why couldn't a turban have a chin strap?
And we're obviously not talking about the forces that would remove a properly fitted helmet (and perhaps head) as well.
Sikh turbans aren't "a simple hat".
Asking for data for something so well supported is simply lazy. Go google "Snell tests" to get an idea of what properly designed helmets should protect against.
And the Snell Tests don't say anything about if Sikh turbans will come off at what speeds. Asking for data is a way to counteract "everyone knows this, it's just common sense" drivel that isn't actually true.
"Well how do you know that I'll die if I jump off the Empire State Building?! You've never seen ME jump off the Empire State building!"
I'd say that seeing how much of a beating full-face helmets take when they hit the ground hard, it's a pretty logical leap to assume that anything less than that is going to suffer a worse fate.
Unless wrapping it in 10 feet of hair confers some magic physics defying powers.
Asking for data when there obviously is none, and then ignoring logical inference is poor form.
Yes, they do: If they tear a person's head clean off with their helmet, they'll also tear a scalp and hair out.
Sanctity for religion is cool, until you start doing mental gymnastics away from the proof in the pudding.
Also there are non-Kesdhari Sikhs (those who've never kept long hair) and those who've had their hair cut (called Patit ("fallen") by hardliners) but still wear a turban to signal religious and communal affiliation. You might be surprised at how many Sikhs have had their hair cut but go back to wearing turbans again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md3hNJYtDHg
I count at least one turban-ectomy, with nowhere near the forces of a motorcycle crash. I think we can call that myth "busted".
However, it isn't much worse than the brain buckets Harley riders wear. Ironically, the loudest of the "loud pipes save lives" crowd tends to love riding without any protective equipment.
That being said, it's their problem. I wear full gear, they don't. They choose the risk they are willing to accept. Sure, tax dollars pay for their accidents, but in a world of smokers, heavy drinkers, cyclists running red lights and programmers never exercising, what's another person living dangerously?
It is not open source.
No, because of the "for personal use" restriction. Whether it is on Github has nothing to do with it.
And calling the subject «open source» is similar blasphemy as publishing project without source to sourceforge.
They make exemptions to their religion when it benefits society, like not wearing kirpans on airplanes. As much as I would hate to see a Sikh (or anyone for that matter) badly injured in a motorcycle crash, not wearing an approved helmet has no external victims - so I respect this as a good compromise. Please supplement this with a good backboard and an airbag vest that provides neck support.
I'm not saying that that fact has clear behavioral implications -- a world where nobody wad allowed to risk their health in any way would be both unjust and impossible -- but it's true.
Sounds like they are taking additional risks for no good reasons, why not let the market price the insurance premium?
I am happy to pay through taxes for things like rescue services or medical bills for people who do things like rock climb or attempt ocean crossings in a solo kayak. Or even just ride a motorcycle without a helmet and look awesome.
The world is better and more interesting with these people in it.
Plus, more organs for everyone else.
Ideally people could self-select into places with different rules: some with higher taxes and more interesting people, some with the reverse.
Unfortunately this is true only on paper. I grew up in (Indian) Punjab, the heartland of Sikhism and a Sikh-majority region. In practice Sikhs participate as fully in the caste system as Hindus.
Matrimonial advertisements for arranged marriages in newspapers are segregated by religion and caste, and that's true in Sikhism as well. See https://www.tribuneindia.com/classified/grommswanted . Notice almost all the Sikh listings include caste names as well (Jat Sikh, Gursikh, Khatri, Ramdasia, etc).
Mazhabi Sikhs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazhabi_Sikh) who are from 'untouchable' Hindu backgrounds are still discriminated against. They marry within their own communities. I've known 'high caste' Sikh parents to reject a groom from a Mazhabi background even when the groom was a high-ranking government officer with a prestigious job (as in the kind where he always has a police cordon around him).
Punjabi comedy openly includes casteist slurs against mercantile Sikh castes. I could cite some but they are in Punjabi.
There's just so much against evidence against Sikhs not embracing equality in real life that I don't know where to start talking about it. They are simply no better and no worse than other Indians in this regard.
They should just wear a helmet.
I like the work that Sikh community does. I've come across many good Sikh people. But their beliefs regarding hair is harmful in this case.
From my perspective (US), this is a much needed belief today since it was born out of the similar circumstances in 1699.
Thing cannot be aerodynamic with all that ribbing, can it? It'd surely start rocking your head or something, right?