Bitten by the Bike Bug
I am sure this e-mail finds the testers of the kickstarter industry in excellent health. I am writing on behalf of my cute 13-year-old nephew, Pranav, who follows your magazine on an annual basis, since he does not get regular access to the magazine.
I get my monthly copy from the news stand regularly. Once I finish reading it, I keep it safely for my nephew for the time when he visits me during his summer holidays. Once here, he demands all the 12 issues from the year gone by.
He reads the magazine so carefully and enthusiastically that I have even seen him look up the dictionary for words that he does not understand. I and his father are both motorcycle enthusiasts and I suppose he has inherited that enthusiasm in right earnest. As somebody rightly said, ‘Introduce your children to motorcycles and they will never have money for drugs.’
BI has made Pranav’s mind so sharp that now he has started asking me questions I am hard put to answering on my own (maybe, the BI team can help me in this regard). His latest question is as follows.
During impact, motorcyclists are thrown off the bike, which leads to fatalities in many cases. Why not experiment on seat-belts and built-in side airbags to see if these can avoid injury and death? I tried to explain to him the cost involved which he somehow was not able to digest. To escape such questions, I have referred him to BI. Since he is only 13, he is not allowed by his parents to have a personal e-mail address (for obvious reasons). However, I am sure the day he gets his own e-mail account, your inbox will get flooded with his queries!
When his dad is away at work, Pranav flicks his Royal Enfield Thunderbird for a short spin with his mother (with the helmet on, of course) and under her supervision. He recently sent me a photograph showing him astride the bike.
Since 22 April is his birthday, seeing his photo published in Bike India will be the greatest gift he can ever get. Gaurav Awasthi, by e-mail Dear Gaurav,
It is fantastic that Pranav has taken to biking at such a young age. Of course, he has two petrolhead role models in his father and yourself. If he does ride his father’s bike, we would strongly recommend that he do so in an enclosed environment and not on public roads, for this would be illegal and would pose danger to himself and others on the road.
As for Pranav’s question, some bikes do come with airbags, the Honda Gold Wing being a shining example of this. However, a seatbelt would be very impractical because you are less likely to get severely injured if you are thrown off the bike rather than when you are strapped to it: in case of an accident, you don’t want hundreds of kilograms of metal to crush any part or the whole of your body. This is also why, moving forward, airbag technology in the two-wheeler world is being incorporated into the riding gear rather than the bike itself. Safety gear manufacturers are constantly pushing the envelope for protective riding gear, which includes this technology.
We hope this answers Pranav’s query and here’s wishing a very happy birthday to him from the entire Bike India team.