Vietnam: Dying for helmets?

[mscuddy]

Motorcycle riders are being killed at the rate of 8000 per year in Vietnam, that has an estimated 6.5 million motorcycles and scooters on Vietnam's congested roads and highways.

Most Vietnamese seem to think helmets are "for nerds" as one rider puts it, and as a result the trauma wards are seeing a steady increase in brain injuries, and deaths from motorcycle accidents. This trend is expected to worsen, as 2 million more motorcycles per year "hit the streets" in Vietnam, no pun intended.

One American businessman is trying to change all this, with inexpensive helmets made available to the bloodied masses.

Read about the carnage here:

Armoring Vietnam's Road Warriors - New York Times

[Kenneth_Moore]

Hilarious - the Vietnamese create the equivalent of our DOT, which proceeded to mandate helments that nobody wants to wear (or can afford). Which then proceeds to block the use of a $10 helmet that people would wear, saving countless lives and injuries. Damn...sounds familiar.

[sarnali2]

Maybe they can make reinforced coolie hats and use them?

[mscuddy]

..or maybe they can start riding stuff like this, and scare the bejeezus out of each other...in a good way.

[Kenneth_Moore]

Originally Posted by sarnali2

Maybe they can make reinforced coolie hats and use them?

One of the more amusing things I experienced was at Kennedy Space Center, working in Launch Control on the Space Shuttle. There is a large, cone shaped device that sits on top of the External Tank when the Shuttle is at the pad. It supplies the liquid oxegen and hydrogen, and has some intrumentation feeds. Since the start of the project, it was known as the "Coolie Cap," and referenced with that name in thousands of OMIs, procedures, schedules, tech docs, computer programs, etc. One day, the government decided that "Coolie Cap" was an ethnic slur, and for about six months dozens of NASA weenies spent thousands of hours rooting out ever instance of the phrase and changing it to the PC "Tank Interface Unit."

[seruzawa]

Originally Posted by Kenneth_Moore

One of the more amusing things I experienced was at Kennedy Space Center, working in Launch Control on the Space Shuttle. There is a large, cone shaped device that sits on top of the External Tank when the Shuttle is at the pad. It supplies the liquid oxegen and hydrogen, and has some intrumentation feeds. Since the start of the project, it was known as the "Coolie Cap," and referenced with that name in thousands of OMIs, procedures, schedules, tech docs, computer programs, etc. One day, the government decided that "Coolie Cap" was an ethnic slur, and for about six months dozens of NASA weenies spent thousands of hours rooting out ever instance of the phrase and changing it to the PC "Tank Interface Unit."

We had some excellent training films but since some of the lecturers on the films were smoking all those films were destroyed. New films that are inferior were produced. Heaven knows how much $ was wasted because of the smoking nazis.

[Kenneth_Moore]

Originally Posted by mscuddy

..or maybe they can start riding stuff like this, and scare the bejeezus out of each other...in a good way.

A Chinese copy of a Russian copy of a pre WWII BMW engine? That's some serious she-it!

[BrowningBAR]

What motor is in that thing? Is that an old Beemer in it?

[mscuddy]

THAT'S A DAG GUM CHANG JIANG, THAT WILL SOON HAVE A FULL TEST AND RIDING IMPRESSION OF THE MARQUE, EMBLAZONED ACROSS THE ELECTRONIC PAGES OF MOTORCYCLE.COM. And yes, it's a Chinese copy of a Russian copy of a 1938 R75 Beemer...

[BrowningBAR]

Didn't BMW copy it from the French?