tim's experiment

It is a sad story when someone who is cycling along without a care in the world is struck by a falling tree, and suffers fatal injuries. One sympathises with the relatives and friends of Choi Kit-keung, who suffered this misfortune in Shatin last week. Having said which some of the resulting complaints have many of us barking, if you’ll excuse the phrase in this context, up the wrong tree.

Trees are a part of nature and like other parts, including us, they eventually grow old and die. When this happens unexpectedly, or is hastened by rough weather, they may, also like us, fall over. This is part of nature’s rich pageant and to expect our government to change it in the name of “tree safety” is fruitless and wasteful. Actually accidents involving falling trees are extremely rare. The last one before this was two years ago. Before that I don’t remember any. If you are hit by a falling tree you may rightly rail against the harshness of fate in your case. But from an overall point of view this is not a common hazard. The likelyhood of being knocked off your twig by a falling tree is extremely low: somewhere between being struck by lightning and being kidnapped by the North Korean Secret Service. You are far more likely to win the Mark Six.

So it is a spectacular waste of money to have teams of civil servants roaming the territory taking the pulse of sickly trees. And now, according to this morning’s papers, the district crime squad is looking into the matter. What on Earth could it have to do with them? Murder by Death Watch Beetle? Where are you, Agatha Christie, when we need you?

The serious side of all this is that in the brouhaha over trees an important point has been overlooked. Mr Choi was not beaten to death by the tree. When he fell off his bike he struck his head on  the pavement, causing the injury which killed him. So the moral of the story is not that the government should be taking more care of trees. It is that cyclists should wear crash helmets. I readily admit that when I was a kid we all rode bare-headed. But in many countries now the wearing of some sort of protective headgear is virtually universal, if not compulsory. In Hong Kong it is almost unheard of except among the serious racing fraternity. This should be changed. This would be a more constructive reaction to Mr Choi’s death than griping about government tree inspectors. It is of course perfectly legal to ride a push bike without a helmet. But if someone chooses to play roulette with his life it is too late to complain when the ball drops into the zero hole.