I started wearing one of the early Bell helmets in the late '70s, the kind with a cloth cover over a foam shell as I recall. I'd' gotten a bad head injury as a kid when I went over the handlebars of my Western Flyer. When I got into college and bought a fast French bike I was doing a lot of riding over rural roads in Tennessee, where people then and now drove like mad dogs. I didn't want to take any more chances than I had to.