Ever wonder about the origins of the motorcycle helmet?
According to this excellent BBC article, it can be traced back to a rainy Sunday 19 May, 1935, the day TE Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia – an iconic figure in post WW1 Britain) died as a result of severe head injuries. He had crashed his Brough Superior S100 motorcycle six days earlier (eighty years ago to the day) avoiding two boys on bicycles, near his home in Dorset in England.
Neurosurgeon Hugh Cairns was one of the medics that had attended to Lawrence after his accident and had concluded that his death could have been preventable and took it upon himself to research motorcycle helmet safety.
He began to gather data on motorcycle fatalities, publishing his findings in the British medical journal in 1941 which spurred the British Army to make them mandatory for all dispatch riders. Cairns died in 1952 from cancer, and did not live to see the UK government introduce mandatory helmets for all motorcyclists in 1973.
Read more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32622465
