I know that in the UK we laugh sometimes at the folks who get on Vespas in high heels, etc, but what I’m seeing here in Athens beggars belief. Riding past our cafe this morning - a CBR1000RR, heavily modified and beautiful (stopped at the lights so I had a good look). But the guy on it… was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals - and no Lid. And us wasn’t taking it easy either - he was really gunning it like the cops were after him. Absolutely insane - and not uncommon for here.
Overall probably less than half of the folks on bikes I’ve seen here wear helmets. Proper biking gear I have yet to see…
It’s the same thing in SE Asia. Unless it’s the law to wear helmets, people don’t. Tshirts, shorts and sandals are the norm. IMO it’s way too hot to wear anything else.
I’ve always been on the fence with this stuff, for instance if the traffic is mental (hong kong, Philippines etc) you’re not going to be going more than maybe 20mph anyway, most of these guys are on 125s or less and they’re not going out for ‘rideouts’ and trying to go fast. The argument could be made that having no helmet allows better peripheral vision and hearing stuff coming.
I know for a fact that I regularly hit over 20 mph on london roads on a pushbike in shorts, t-shirt and no helmet and I’m perfectly comfortable with that, if there wasn’t a helmet law for motorbikes I might not stick one on on a hot day when popping to tesco express down the road (as I currently don’t when I go on the push bike)
Hahaha. Personally I think when it gets too hot, it’d affect concentration, just like the highway code states about ‘too cold’.
And true, my average speed in SE asia was 15-20 MPH. Seeing some people going 70 on a ‘motorway’ though, frickin scary.
