Lawrence and the crash helmet· built byUuser-e8a0f3

Lawrence and the crash helmet 7

• 1888 – 1935 T. E. Lawrence Lawrence of Arabia, 1888–1935 Archaeologist, intelligence officer, guerrilla leader and, for the last thirteen years of his life, a serving airman under assumed names. Lawrence helped lead the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans, wrote one of the strangest books in English, spent the rest of his life trying to escape his own fame, and died in a motorcycle crash whose consequences outlived him.
• 1896 – 1952 Hugh Cairns Port Pirie, Australia The Australian neurosurgeon who attended Lawrence after the crash. He went on to organise mobile neurosurgical units in the Second World War and to run the trial that proved penicillin worked on head wounds.
• 1935 The crash Dorset, United Kingdom Riding his Brough Superior back from the post office, Lawrence crested a dip in the road, met two boys on bicycles, swerved to avoid them and was thrown over the handlebars. He was not wearing a helmet, and almost nobody did.
• 1935 Lawrence dies Bovington, United Kingdom He never regained consciousness and died six days after the crash, aged 46. Churchill wept at the funeral; the neurosurgeon who had attended him spent the next six years thinking about why he died.
• 1941 Head Injuries in Motor-cyclists Oxford, United Kingdom Cairns published in the British Medical Journal on the deaths of despatch riders, showing that most had died of head injuries that a hard helmet would have prevented. He had been collecting the cases since 1935, when Lawrence died under his care.
• 1941 The army orders helmets United Kingdom Within weeks of the paper, crash helmets became compulsory for all British Army motorcyclists. Cairns later showed that despatch rider deaths fell sharply once they were worn.
• 1973 Helmets become compulsory in Britain United Kingdom Thirty-eight years after the crash, wearing a helmet became a legal requirement for every motorcyclist in the country. Most of the world followed.