EDITORIAL - Wear that helmet!

There is a certain “heartlessness” in the media business. With so many human tragedies happening everyday, and so little space or time to report all of them, media practitioners, and most especially editors, tend to get picky on which tragedy to report.

It must be conceded that every human tragedy is worth telling. But owing to limitations as mentioned above, only those involving particularly interesting circumstances, and those from which some redeeming qualities can be derived, get to be chosen for publication or airing.

In case our readers haven’t noticed, this paper has recently been giving what otherwise would be considered inordinate attention to some rather less extraordinary and common enough tragedies such as road accidents involving motorcycles.

Motorcycle accidents happen everyday. Such accidents are so common that oftentimes there is little compulsion to publish any of them. But The Freeman has recently been giving prominence to motorcycle accidents based on one criteria: Helmetless drivers and passengers.

Of late, whenever a motorcycle accident happens and it involves a driver or passenger who was not wearing a helmet, we not only would publish the story, we give it prominence, as part of our advocacy for road safety.

Recently, there has been some controversy over a new regulation requiring motorcycle riders to wear prescribed safety helmets. Sadly, however, much of the controversy dwelt not on the safety aspect of the issue but on some darn sticker that the helmets must have.

To us here, the real issue had been sidetracked. The real issue is safety and we feel this has not been given the attention it deserves. That is the reason why we have been pushing motorcycle accidents involving helmetless drivers and passengers in your face.

And we will keep on doing so until all people, not just our readers, realize that the difference between life and death can be a simple matter of having the right helmet. So, forget the sticker. It has no life to lose. But you have. Wear that helmet.