Indonesia’s leading clerics are considering a religious edict against riding a motorbike without a crash helmet to promote safety on the chaotic and deadly roads of the world’s most populous Muslim country.
Such a fatwa would not carry a penalty for those who ignore it, but advocates said Sunday making road safety a moral issue could be more effective than the law.
Helmets have been compulsory in Indonesia since 1988, but a 2005 government study found that up to 30 percent of riders in cities still did not wear one. Even fewer riders wear them in rural areas.
In my travels, I rarely see helmeted motorcyclists. In China, the only ones are American ex-pats.
In my own state, we don’t have a helmet law either. A couple of years ago, the neurosurgeon called me because he wasn’t going to address the intracranial bleeding until I controlled the “extra-cranial” bleeding from every orifice of the head. I was not successful, and the patient expired on the table.
We all pay for this foolishness. A lot of motorcyclists don’t survive, but a lot of them do only to become CHI patients (closed head injury). It can take months to get them out of the hospital, and it is my experience that most are not insured. Many become wards of the state on permanent disability.