“The good old days weren’t always good,” Billy Joel opined in his 1983 single “Keepin’ the Faith.” Whether the good old days actually were better is up for debate. But you could make a strong case that the good old days were much more dangerous than present times.
In his keynote address at the 2014 National Safety Congress and Expo in San Diego, motivational speaker Dale Lesinski put it this way: Safety is “evolving in our personal lives.”
Case in point: bike helmets.
“Did we have helmets when we were kids? No,” Lesinski said. “In fact, in my neighborhood, if you wore a helmet when you rode a bike, you didn’t have to worry about falling off your bike – you were getting pulled off your bike or beat up.
“But with our kids, it’s totally cool. It’s standard PPE for them. If they’re on their bikes, their rollerblades, their skateboards – it’s totally accepted.”
The social stigma once associated with bike helmets is just one example of how the good old days “weren’t always safe.”