It’s Father’s Day in the United States today, meaning there’s no better time to tip our hats in respect to the most timeless pieces of fatherly advice out there; advice like “here’s how to grill a mean hamburger,” or “here’s how you can predict what song I’m going to sing for the sake of embarrassing you at the bus stop,” or “here’s why someone needs to punch this football player in the face.”
But the advice of wearing a helmet while biking is perhaps the greatest of all, and dishing it out today was none other than professional chef and father Gordon Ramsay, who forgot to take this advice so that the rest of us don’t have to.
The celebrity restauranteur, in a quick TikTok video, wished all of us the happiest of Father’s Days; an occasion he says he’s lucky to celebrate after a biking accident left him visibly traumatized and even more visibly bruised. As a result, he compounded his Father’s Day message with a plea for all of us bikers out there—fathers or not—to strap a helmet on if we decide to pound the pavement in such a manner.
With that out of the way, we need to take a moment to talk about this bruise, because I’m frankly concerned that it might attack me if I don’t acknowledge it as an individual in its own right. In fact, I don’t think it would be satisfied with being acknowledged as a peer, either; I get the distinct impression that this bruise wouldn’t rest until each and every one us was made painfully aware that it is bigger than all of our futures combined, and then some. I fail to believe that anything will gain my fearful respect as resolutely as this bruise.
Now that I’ve thrown the bruise off my scent, we’re all beyond thankful that Ramsay survived the ordeal, and his request that we all wear helmets when biking isn’t coming from nowhere; according to Hackensack Meridian Health, a 2018 study found that bike helmets reduced the number of seriously injured or killed cyclists by 34 percent, and significantly reduces the severity of any head injuries sustained in the event of a biking accident.
Should more action be taken to make urban areas safer for cycling? Yes, absolutely, but you can never go wrong with safety, especially if everything else goes wrong in your next biking endeavor.