If you haven’t already joined the Facebook page, Fans of Motorcyclist Magazine’s Washed Up Writers, I encourage you to do so. FOMMWUW is a place for former Motorcyclist mag writers to post their new stuff and for fans to see that their old favorites did not die just because Bonnier killed the motorcycle magazine business in America. One of the washed up writers posted a helmet review from his site. The review was ok. It covered fit and finish, noise and weight. Conclusions were drawn but that’s not what I took away from the review: It was the inspiration for this blog.
Way back when moto-magazines still held thrall over the motorcycle advertising landscape writers were professional and paid fairly well. One of those writers, Dexter Ford, wrote the most important motorcycle magazine article since…since I don’t know when. The story was called Blowing The Lid Off and the amount of time and money spent researching this one story dwarfs what we Internet bloggers can devote to a hundred topics.
Blowing The Lid Off combined applied scientific research, traffic accident studies and logical thinking to destroy the long held belief among motorcycle riders that a more expensive helmet was a better helmet. Ford didn’t mince around with fit and finish. He cut right to the chase: How well does the helmet protect your head in a motorcycle crash. New ways of testing helmets were devised. Whole new parameters were used instead of the old metrics. Ford’s story changed the way helmets were rated by proving that stronger helmets weren’t always better in a motorcycle accident. One of the cheapest helmets tested (Shark brand, if I remember correctly) protected a simulated human brain better than the most expensive brands available.
Rotational forces, multiple impacts, using statistical areas of contact instead of a fixed point on top, the story was complete and completely unheard of: A masterwork. Ford had so perfectly executed his Mona Lisa that Motorcyclist Magazine lost a huge amount of advertising money from (expensive) helmet manufacturers. The toxic corporate fallout from Blowing The Lid Off contaminated friendships, leaked emails and ultimately cost Ford his job at Motorcyclist. It was a real mess but that story is best told by those who were actually involved.
I met Dexter Ford on the Best Western Motel-Arkansas-Harley Ride boondoggle. (Even though I wrote about wheel spokes coming loose, that was not the story that soured The Motor Company on my writing). We had drinks and dinner at the schmoozefest portions of the ride. Shooting the breeze with Ford was so damn funny I actually had to beg him to stop as my uncontrollable laughing was making me look like a drunken idiot. The other moto-journos at the table must have thought I’d lost my mind.
Ford and I got along famously on that ride but we had a little falling out towards the end of the Best Western tour. He was a proponent of the sanctity of the writer’s craft. He believed it was a calling and the worthiest of all pursuits. I’ve always approached writing from the rear entrance and with not much respect for the act-of so I told him that digging a perfect ditch was just as valuable as anything I could ever type. I can be a jerk when I want to be.
After that, Ford was not exactly dead to me but the fun times and hilarious asides dried up. I probably should not have said the thing about the ditch but I’m a laborer at heart and will always take the side of the man in the hole.
I tried to find Blowing The Lid Off online but after 10 minutes of searching I could not find a link that worked. Maybe one of you guys can post up a link or it’s saved in an archive somewhere. Failing that, screen shots of the story could be uploaded somewhere safe. It would be a shame if the greatest investigative motorcycle writing ever disappeared from the moto-world.