Crash helmets might save lives but getting people to wear them was an uphill task.

By Sharad PandianThese days, everyone on a motorcycle or scooter wears a crash helmet so we don’t give it a second thought. It might come as a surprise then to learn that until about 50 years ago, wearing a helmet while riding in Singapore was complet...

Crash Helmet Woes

However, as in the case of Britain, not everyone here was in favour of the idea. The Vespa Scooter Club in Kuala Lumpur, for example, opposed wearing helmets in town and wanted to confine helmets to the highways where people tended to speed. Club president Ji...

Making Crash Helmets Mandatory

Given the extent of the opposition to making helmets mandatory in Singapore, credit must be given to the man who ceaselessly campaigned for it - Milton Tan, the president of the Automobile Association of Singapore. For Tan, wearing a helmet “was not a ...

Circumventing the New Law

Of course, the passage of the law did not immediately settle the problem. In the first month of the law taking effect, 220 people were booked by the police for riding without a helmet - and this figure only included those who were caught. What was al...

The Use and Misuse of Crash Helmets

Very quickly, helmets went from saving lives to also threatening them. In December 1979, a man died from a fractured skull and bleeding in the brain after being beaten by a gang using crash helmets.35 A spate of robberies committed by people wearing vi...

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