Old Bike Mart Magazine June 2013 Back Issue

The world changed on June 1, 1973. On May 31 the world was traditional, then as the final strokes of midnight died away and June began the world was a different place for us motorcyclists.
How or why? Well it was the introduction of the compulsory helmet law for those of us who were to ride a powered two wheeler on Her Majesty’s public highway.
There had been mutterings about the subject since motorcycles were invented, but for some reason the attempts to introduce such a law to ‘protect’ us from ourselves kept being defeated. Wearing a crash helmet is a sensible thing to do as even pitching off a bike at low speed can result in a serious head injury. Such compulsion had already been in force for military motorcyclists – introduced by a cash strapped army being unwilling to see the costs of training riders only to have them rendered unable to perform their duties.
But for us in civvie street – not actually me of course as in the 1973 I was but 13 and had only just taken my first tentative steps into trials riding and it would be another four years before the ‘L’ plates went on my Ossa – there were howls of outrage at the invasion of personal freedom.
The law was backed up by a media campaign showing a couple of rockery/greasery types on high performance bikes alongside a chap in suede shoes, sheepskin jacket on a 125 of some description and a lady in ordinary clothes on a moped. The two outlaw types had safety helmets on while Mr and Mrs Commuter were bare headed and the headline was ‘from June 1 the two on the right will be breaking the law’. All heady stuff…
Tim.