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To Encourage Biking, Lose the Helmets
Hugh Pickens writes in about the detrimental effects of mandatory helmet laws (at least as applied to adults): "Elisabeth Rosenthal writes that in the United States the notion that bike helmets promote health and safety by preventing head injuries is taken as pretty near God's truth but many European health experts have taken a very different view. 'Yes, there are studies that show that if you fall off a bicycle at a certain speed and hit your head, a helmet can reduce your risk of serious head injury,' writes Rosenthal. 'But such falls off bikes are rare — exceedingly so in mature urban cycling systems.' On the other hand, many researchers say, if you force people to wear helmets, you discourage them from riding bicycles causing more health problems like obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Bicycling advocates say that the problem with pushing helmets isn't practicality but that helmets make a basically safe activity seem really dangerous, which makes it harder to develop a safe bicycling network like the one in New York City, where a bike-sharing program is to open next year. The safest biking cities are places like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, where middle-aged commuters are mainstay riders and the fraction of adults in helmets is minuscule. 'Pushing helmets really kills cycling and bike-sharing in particular because it promotes a sense of danger that just isn't justified — in fact, cycling has many health benefits,' says Piet de Jong. 'Statistically, if we wear helmets for cycling, maybe we should wear helmets when we climb ladders or get into a bath, because there are lots more injuries during those activities.'"
The real problem is that I'm an adult and I can decide for myself whether or not I will wear a helmet. The government doesn't need to make this decision for me.
The US is absurd: you don't have to wear a helmet on a motorbike, but you need one on a pedal bike ?!?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Yes, there are studies that show that if you fall off a bicycle at a certain speed and hit your head, a helmet can reduce your risk of serious head injury
People don't wear helmets because they are worried they are going to fall of their bike. They wear them because they are worried they are going to get hit by a car and then have their heads hit the pavement with much greater force.
I knew a kid who rode a bike and then got hit by a car without wearing a helmet. After about 6 months of care in the ICU he was released. He was never able to get a driver's license due to his brain damage. About 2 years after his initial accident he was killed on a bike while he again did not wear a helmet.
This is why so many "common people" look down on academia. The blind grabbing of statistics by people who've never lived in anything other than a wonderland of privilege in their major cities. You know why people feel it's unsafe to bike? It's because it's fucking unsafe to bike in areas without bike lanes. Which is pretty much most of the US except for major urban areas or the occasional statistical fluke. Rich people in the suburbs who are terrified of their own shadow are the exception. The norm are people who actually are at high risk of being run off the road if they tried to bike to work at 7am.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Australia is an oft-cited example. Many Australian territories passed mandatory helmet laws for cycling. Off the top of my head, cycling fell by about 40% in the aftermath, and the injury rate went *up*. (Of course the injury rate may have gone up because the people who were helmet wearers in the first place, and didn't stop cycling, were higher risk takers - and removing the other 40% who were not risk takers from the cycling pool made the accident rate go up - note rate, not absolute value).
Another experiment someone did in Britain was to fit an ultrasonic measuring system to a bicycle to measure how close cars were passing. They tried riding in various different manners, for example further from the kerb (tr.US: curb), with helmet, without helmet, dressed as a woman etc. He found that as a hemetless woman, cars gave him the greatest amount of room, and as a helmeted man, the least amount of room. http://www.drianwalker.com/overtaking/overtakingprobrief.pdf
There's also the theory that the more cyclists on the road, the lower the accident *rate* (absolute numbers may go up) because car drivers are just more used to seeing them. Holland has probably the highest rate of regular cycling, probably the lowest rate of helmet wearing, and probably the lowest cycle accident rate.
In summary, I don't think helmets ever should be made mandatory, and may actually have the unintended consequence of making the remaining cyclists less safe.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I ride my bike to work every day, in the Netherlands. For the most part I ride on specific bike paths. If I had to wear a helmet, I would probably use a different form of transport in the future. The attitude of the car drivers is different here because people expect people on a bike, which makes it safer.
You know, there is a middle way between them being on the pavement and being on the car's part of the road.
This encourages bike use by tourists, and probably others who are out and about and just decide to ride somewhere rather than catching a cab, on impulse.
You're not likely to go for an inpulse ride (like we did, plenty of times, including around Vienna at midnight), if you need to be carrying a helmet around with you.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
It's called EVOLUTION.
It's called NATURAL SELECTION, not EVOLUTION.
I am sitting right now in the Surgical ICU of a level 1 trauma center. 3 of our 34 patients have serious intracranial hemorrhages from bicycle crashes.
> "maybe we should wear helmets when we climb ladders or get into a bath"
Of course we should wear a helmet (or better a harness and a safety rope) when climbing ladders. It is know to be one of the most dangerous activities in a normal household.
But you also have to look at the context. Free-climbing for example is technically much more dangerous than climbing a ladder, but people are typically skilled and very concentrated when they do it. Average folk climbing a ladder are inexperienced and often distracted. This combination can make any activity dangerous.
In The Netherlands, part of the success is in the fact that sharing the road with bicycles is considered an important part of driver education (and has been for a long time). In cities with (almost) all bicycle lanes separate from the main road, no driving exams are done (example: Almere, the 6th city of the Netherlands has no possibility to do driving exams). Any mistake where a bicyclist is not given the space and care (s)he deserves results in failing the exam, so this part is taken very seriously. In additions, drivers are always held responsible in accidents invoolving bicycles.
As a result, car drivers are very careful around bicyclists and they need not wear helmets. Cycling is considered safe. These factors make more people want to use the bicycle.
If you really want to risk a lifetime of memory loss, lost speech, confinement to a wheelchair, 24 hour care, a feeding tube and the loss of any "normal" future life, go ahead and ride without a helmet.
Traumatic Brain Injury is a wide awake nightmare both for the patient and those close to them.
Why increase your risk by going without a helmet? Just so your hair looks good?! Death would be merciful for some of the patients I've seen.
...most of us only wear helmets when skating - not during ice-skating though. If you loose balance when skating, you can fall on the back of your head and that gives a messy picture. And after you fell other skaters could slip in your blood, so they should wear helmets too. But when you bike, the chances you fall on your head are much, much lower.
Laws should be about self-responsibility and not being allowed to bother others. For instance it is not allowed to have "aggressive defence-tools" (guns, knifes) on you here for *obvious* reasons, and you are allowed to eat French cheese. What most tourists don't understand is that this "non-bothering self-responsibility" is very deep in our culture - you are allowed to smoke marijuana as you like, but you should not bother others with your smell - that is rude and is at the wrong side of the grey area. Want to suicide yourself? Your call, but it is not a quick road though. Jumping in front of train or taking a whole school with you? Bothers, so rude and therefore not tolerated by society.
Yeah, in hilly northern San Diego, it's really *only* the helmet laws that are preventing 40% more people from riding bicycles. Also it has nothing to do with the way that main roads have 50mph speed limits with a "white line" separating the cars from the bicycle lane. Also not due to the fact that one of the official "bike routes" has an uphill section that is actually on Interstate 5 between two exits where the bicyclists have to ride on the paved shoulder with, you guessed it, a magical white line keeping bicyclists separated from cars on the freeway.
Honestly, anybody stupid enough to believe that eliminating helmet laws will reduce obesity is living in a dream world.
I don't ride much anymore because I'm lazy, not because of helmet laws.
I cycle at least 60 miles per week from and to my children's schools (I drive them to school in the morning, but cycle home). I always wear a helmet, and when my children cycle with me, I require that they wear helmets too.
I have been cycling for 22 years. In that time, I have only had one serious fall from my bike, about 14 years ago. I wasn't wearing a helmet that day, and I landed on the back of my head, ended up in hospital and was concussed for days. I would not like to go through that again!
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
Here's two reasons:
1. Helmets give the cyclist a false sense of security.
2. Helmets give drivers a false sense of security.
You may think [1] does not apply to you, and possibly it doesn't but people are incredibly bad at judging that kind of thing. It's very likely that you take more risks when wearing a helment.
The second point is far more important and it's not something you as a cyclist can do anything about. Studies have shown that cars pass closer and faster to bikes when the cyclist is wearing a helmet. On some subconscious level they see the cyclist as being less vulnerable and hence they drive more dangerously around them.
For these reasons I discourage my three daughters from riding helmets when they cycle and I don't wear them myself.
However, even if one discounted both these reasons, mandatory helmets are horrible on principle. Its my own life I may be putting in danger, so if you want to wear a helmet, go ahead, if you want to tell other people to wear a helmet, go fuck yourself.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
If I can reduce the chance of damage to literally the most valuable thing in my life by wearing a $25 helmet OF COURSE I'M GOING TO WEAR A HELMET
It's all about the "If" at the start of your sentence, though. The question is, "does wearing a helmet increase or decrease the chance of you having a serious head injury?" Of course the intuitive answer is "decrease" but science-aware folks on Slashdot are comfortable with the idea that we don't just accept intuition, we test and find out.
So I'd settle yourself down a bit, instead of calling people names.
I ride a bike in London, don't own a car and am in my 60s, to declare interest. I don't wear a helmet and am unwilling to do so.
The arguments that I citing in the heading are summarised here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Social_Cost that is, neither car nor bike is particularly 'wrong' about any of this. The best thing [that we don't really have in London] is safe bike lanes.
However there's also more economics that probably shows that safety features make activities more unsafe by making the operators more reckless: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Peltzman the younger bikers who run lights seem to prove this.
Finally I like to appear as a soft, helmetless pink squishy thing with white hair, I suspect these signals make motorists more careful around me. But, for certain, the debate tends to be emotion rather than reason and statistics.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
What causes obesity? Eating wrong. Nothing else.
The majority of calories burned each day whether you are an exercise nut or a couch potato is spent while sleeping and otherwise just living. Adding exercise to the mix has other benefits, but not fighting obesity.
People: Need to change WHAT they eat
Government: Needs to change what is available to eat
As a cyclist and well trained driver (more licenses and drivers training/saftey courses then average, in the USA at least) I don't think helmets will help/hurt much.
I don't wear a helmet except for events/races(lots of close cyclist make me nervous, and odds of an accident likely go up) and while I'm sure a helmet would help if a car hit a cyclist, I'm betting it'll cause lots of damage, helmet or no. No, the problem in my town is it seems cars *try* to cause bike wrecks. Shouting, tossing things at me and my two wheels, or just not watching for cars, never mind less visible bicycles come to mind for reasons why. It doesn't matter that I try to avoid cars, do everything to stay out of busy traffic, drivers still do those very annoying, dangerous things.
That's not to say I haven't done stupid things with cars and bikes, I make mistakes like everyone. But if drivers and cyclists try for safety and to share the roads, it'll help alot more then helmets ever could.
(*I'm sure there's speeds/circumstances/accidents where helmets make all the difference, but it's likely a very tiny percent.)
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I am a 64 year old dutchman and lived for 20 of those in Amsterdam. We do not wear bicycle helmets and we do not wear stepladder helmets or soccer helmets or tennis helmets. Having said that, the dutch infrastructure is very bicycle friendly up to the point that according to our traffic lawas, when a cyclist (or pedestrian) collides with a car, the driver of the car ALWAYS carries the responsibility.
What I am much more concerned about is people on bicycles that carry a cellphone in their hands. Only yesterday I saw a kid of about 14 driving with one hand glued to his ear, falling from his bycicle without any apparent reason, continuing the conversation while falling, hitting the ground, getting up again and driving on.
I do not know how the authorities can stop this, but that is what I worry about.
Paai
I find the dents and gouges in my helmet to be pretty compelling evidence of injuries and pain that didn't occur.
YMMV, Science Guy.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
To encourage car use, lose the safety belt, air bags and bumpers.
I live in the Netherlands, where helmets for cyclists aren't mandatory and we have a lot of cyclists. Yes, compared to the number of cyclists we have we do not have a significantly higher injury/death rate than in the USA, but we do have a lot of injuries and deaths non the less. Drivers are more aware of cyclists here, but the ones that do get hit, often have head injuries. Helmets save lives, just like car driver awareness does. Don't think you can substitute one for the other and make the world a better place. As long as drivers will hit cyclists, the cyclists that get hit have a better survival/injury rate if they wear a helmet, period.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I can't respond to number one quantitatively because I've literally never cycled without a helmet on, ever. All I know is that American drivers scare the bejesus out of me. I trust them enough to not clip me when they pass me in the bicycle lane when I stay in it and that's about it.
As for point number two I'll take your word on the studies (I can't be assed to dig anything up). I will still wear a helmet because I feel the additional protection is absolutely worthwhile.
By the by, I never suggested anywhere that I thought mandatory helmet laws for all was a good idea. I live in California where the helmet is legally required until age eighteen, and I can literally count the number of children on bicycles with helmets I've seen on two hands. I personally think you should wear one or not as it suits you. I was just explaining why I didn't understand why people would want to not protect their brains, their selves, their perception of who they are, and all the money ever spent by or for them.
You should turn signatures off.
If I can reduce the chance of damage to literally the most valuable thing in my life by wearing a $25 helmet OF COURSE I'M GOING TO WEAR A HELMET DO YOU THINK I'M STUPID?
Are you wearing helmet all the time then? Or just while biking? Why not while walking? Or while entering bath tub?
The satanic idea behind promotion of helmet-less biking is to extend the pool of organ donors, because most heads hitting streetlight poles head-on are ending up brain-dead and can be legally slaughtered for meat-processing.
There is a lot of demand for organ transplants among the rich and mighty. If you are the actor for Jockey Ewing from the Dallas TV show, you can get a replacement liver, even though severe alcohol abuse is a legal transplant-blocking condition. If you are Dick Cheney, you can get a new heart, even if you are decades beyond the allowed age, while youngsters, as well as family people of 3 kids are dying on the waiting list. If you are Steve Jobs, you can get a liver transplant, even though HIV infection is an exclusion condition.
Please bike without a helmet, because the reptilians need your body, your organs for tranplant!
No, my question is actually "Is spending $25-$50 for a marginal or even theoretical reduction in the chance of serious brain injury worthwhile considering the immense value I place on the spongy tissue behind my eyes?". It is rhetorical, because for me the answer is "yes".
Please, I love science! Show me more science!
You should turn signatures off.
That way wearing a helmet while biking is nothing special. Want to get somewhere without a helmet? Take a walk!
Most of what we know about the brain coincidentally comes from studies of head trama from
bicycle accidents. Apparently slamming skulls into concrete and trees at bicycle speeds is the perfect combination of brain injury and loss of physical/mental capacities. This, along with increased organ donation from the severe accidents are two overlooked benefits of helmetless bicycling.
Your point is incisive and thoroughly annoying to me and my worldview.
To answer as completely as I can:
I do not wear a helmet all the time (for example, when walking or entering the bathtub) because I am not placing my safety in the hands of my fellow Americans when doing so. When the margin of safety is a foot and a half at best and there's nothing between me and the car passing me (like a curb would be were I pedestrian, or a grab bar in a tub) at speed differences of twenty or more miles per hour I would like to improve my chances of surviving being knocked off my bicycle cheaply and effectively.
You should turn signatures off.
I used to wear a padded leather "skid-lid" in the 70s. I so envy the youngsters that can all have helmets now, its surprising how many of us survived the Evel Knievel era. BTW I usually spend $60-$80 on a helmet, cheap at any price.
in Denmark and I am sure that will put an end to the popularity in Copenhagen or we will have a lot of criminals.
I can see it now, the cheap law/cop shows on TV now on the hunt for these CRAZY criminals not wearing a helmet. Should be a nice change from those "high speed"(lol) car chases where people drive 10km/h about the speed limits.
There is no way in hell I am going to wear a helmet every Sunday morning when riding all the 500m from my house to the bakery for bread.
just look at Me, i allwaze rode My bike when i waz yunger an got in lotsa accdents and dint hert my Head er suffer no drain bamage.
Seriously though, I did ride a bike all the time when I was younger. I also *never* wore a helmet and don't recall one single time that I actually hurt my head while riding a bike. And I've done some pretty dumb things too that led into some pretty spectacular crashes. As animals, we have natural instincts that allows us to "see" what danger may be happening on-the-fly in case of accidents, and this allows to adjust our bodies, without any real effort, for such situations. It's hardwired into our brains for survival, and if you don't have that and die in such an accident on a bike... then well, your genes probably don't have much to add to the gene pool when it comes to survival. Instinct says, if your body is heading down to the right and cannot be stopped until it hits the ground, tilt your head the other way and put your arm, elbow, hand, whatever down to take the blow instead. It'll hurt like a bitch and probably burn for a while, but it'll heal. I've had some serious scrapes on my arms and legs and even got blisters, but *never* any kind of head injury.
Also, bicycle accidents never catch me off-guard; I was always quick to notice them and easily adjusted for them before the bike went down, with no need to go to the hospital after. On the other hand, it's easy as hell to slip and fall while in or near in a pool or tub or something. Wet porcelain is wicked slick, and given you've pretty much always got walls and other objects around you (including the side of the tub to stub your toes onto on your way to the floor), there's never a lack of things to make a simple slip really bad in such settings. Even then, I tend to bang an elbow into the wall or catch the toilet before my head strikes anything. The article has a point on the helmet-in-bathtub comparison.
Than there are pedestrians killed by cyclists anywhere.
This "pedestrian walkway" thing doesn't seem to be sinecure against cars hitting them.
Yes, Amsterdam has lots of bikes, but it also has many dedicated cycle paths and car drivers who are conditioned to expect cyclists everywhere. I doubt that the relatively low number of cyclists with head injuries is due to them not wearing helmets.
(BTW: protip, dear tourist: if you are in the Netherlands and the pavement under your feet has a reddish-brown color, you are probably standing on a cycle path. Get off unless you enjoy non-helmet wearing cyclists swearing at you).
I never understood people who don't wear helmets when cycling.
Because, with literally thousand of hours biking as a (helmetless) kid growing up in the pre-nanny era, even riding about two miles to and from school every day (no, not an exaggerated memory, thanks to the magic of Google maps I can actually trace the route) - I took plenty of falls off my bike.
And a helmet wouldn't have done a hell of a lot to protect the one part of me that got injured over and over in those falls, my knees.
If I can reduce the chance of damage to literally the most valuable thing in my life by wearing a $25 helmet OF COURSE I'M GOING TO WEAR A HELMET DO YOU THINK I'M STUPID?
Yep, I kinda do - Because falls not related to a car hitting you won't affect your head, and if you do get hit by a car on a bike, that little eggshell won't do much to help you when the rest of your body gets smeared across the pavement like so much squirrel.
Free tip for all the Lance-wannabes out there - Quit "clipping in". When you can actually move your limbs to catch yourself falling, nothing short of getting run over should give you much worse than a bit of road-rash. Maybe a broken wrist if you go down hard.
I'm not sure how I feel about this argument that helmets give everyone a 'false sense of security'.
reduction ad absurdum - the best thing is to make the whole enterprise of bicycle use simply as dangerous as possible?
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
Parents who tell their kids to wear helmets, but then either don't know or don't care how to wear it properly.
I've lost count of the number of times I've seen kids wear helmetsm where the strap either isn't fastened or isn't tightened, to the extent that the helmet will either fall off the kid's head or becomes a SERIOUS strangulation risk in case of an accident.
And then there are the kids riding around with helmets that have obviously already been in at least one crash, meaning that their value even in case of proper fastening and tightening AND the right kind of accident, is essentially zero, if it doesn't become a strangulation risk due to the previous damage.
Frankly I'd rather see kids without helmets that with that kind of helmet culture.
As a cyclist I've seen a fair few arguments and studies like this one against wearing a helmet, but most people just use the 'common sense' argument for wearing one.
I don't wear a helmet, and in general I'd rather learn the arguments for changing my behaviour. Does anyone have a good link to well conceived arguments or studies that say you should wear one?
This is not the greatest sig in the world. This is just a tribute.
Where I live you never see a racing or a mountain biker without a helmet. At speed they make absolute sense. When speeding I wear them but for short urban trips I don't.
The thing is that once your condition -and hence also the speed- augments you almost automatically get more interested and you will eventually start wearing one. So no, I don't think we should assess this issue in society as it is a self regulating one.
I also see a parallel with cyclist roads. Either have proper good cyclist roads where you can get up to and maintain speed or get away with them altogether. These rods lull you in a false sense of security an comfort. The consequence of cyclist roads is that motorists loose attention for bikes. Also, switching from one cyclist road to another is awkward and will cause accidents at speed.
In short, only regulate things that cause unacceptable risk to society. (E.g. a car insurance obligation protects society against people that would never be able to cover damages caused.)
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
If he died because he got run over and his chest collapsed, a helmet would not have helped one iota.
Since bike helmets are sorted to protect against 12mph collisions and the energy released goes up as the square of the speed, if a car going slowly at 24mph goes past, the helmet would absorb and dissipate only 25% of that energy before failure. If the collision at 12mph were enough to warrant protecting the head then this is obviously not enough.
Bike helmets are designed to disintegrate to dissipate energy. They aren't crumple zones and aren't rubber compression zones. This is why you have to get a completely new one as soon as you get a dent (never mind a disintegration) in your helmet since it has now powdered in that area.
If we get rid of seat belt laws and reckless driving laws and we will get a lot more car and truck sales!
Show me one person that has said, "I would love to start bicycling, but I refuse to because of the damn helmets."
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Helmets are reflective which help motorist see bicyclists. Wearing bright clothing also helps you see bicyclists. Dutch people riding bikes in dark clothing at night while it is raining and bopping off that helmets are not needed are... asking for it.
Bicycle helmets are not useless. When I was 10 or about that age, I was out bicycling with my dad on a long, straight path. It was a cool summer, there was no rain, no other bicyclists, no obstacles. Basically, the conditions were not dangerous at all. My bicycle was (supposedly) in fine condition, and it was in the same shape as it was bought. I decided to go really fast on the bike, at least fast for a 10 year old. At some point, the fender on the front wheel ends up going down into the wheel; the result is that the front wheel comes to a sudden and complete stop, and I - with my HEAD first - rotates along with the bike and come crashing down into the pavement. Despite wearing a bicycle helmet, and wearing it correctly, I was still knocked out for maybe 2 minutes. My dad was the one responsible for the bicycle, and he had 20+ years of experience buying and maintaining bicycles, and he would not have let me ride my bicycle if he thought it was unsafe. Having a fender come down into the wheel and causing a total stop is much more obvious in hindsight than later. My dad was much more careful about verifying that the fender was fastened correctly after that. I don't remember if he contacted the shop where the shop was bought.
I have no idea what the consequences would have been if I had not been wearing a helmet, but I believe I might have cracked my skull if it hadn't been for the helmet. I don't know whether bicycle helmets should be optional or mandatory, where I live they are optional, but some of the commenters here claim that bicycle helmets are useless, and that is simply not true.
In regards to getting people bicycling, I think it is more about support, culture, distances, hills and infrastructure than any safety laws. In regards to helmets, having helmets that fit peoples style help a lot in regards to adoption among adults. If you are afraid of adoption because of bicycle helmets, consider making them mandatory for children and optional for adults. Adults that choose to forego them are responsible for their own health anyways.
My best friend in the first grade died because she wasn't wearing a helmet and was hit by a small truck in her neighborhood. It wasn't the drivers fault of course since she just went right out in front of them without looking. Helmets are good common sense... just wear it.
I don't cycle because I'm lazy, not because of the freaking helmet. If I was going to start cycling I wouldn't even think twice about a helmet, it is just common sense.
I agree however it shouldn't be mandatory, this will help take some idiots out of the gene pool, these sorts of people will end up blaming someone else anyway when something happens whether they wear a helmet or not so what difference does it really make.
People in a car accident are more likely to have head injuries than cyclists in accidents. Therefore car drivers and passengers should be wearing helmets whilst in the car.
So, when you get hit by one of the drivers who thinks that any cyclist wearing a helmet is a psychopath who ignores traffic laws, are you still going to think it was worth it?
I'm living in a country with lots of bicyclists, and around here, that's the opinion among lots of drivers. They give space to regular cyclists, but none to the psychos with helmets.
I moved from the US to The Netherlands four years ago and traded in my 30 minute commute on the highway for a 7 seven minute commute on a bike and it has proven to be the best part about the move. It took some time to adjust to not wearing a helmet (you do tend to stick out if you ride around with one on.) The biggest issue in terms of safety is not the helmet but having dedicated, physically separate bicycle lanes. I mean *real* bicycle lanes, not just lines painted on the road. It feels like here that they plan the bicycle lanes first and then try to fit in the car lane in what is left over. It the US it always seemed that there was never enough room to add a proper bicycle lane because no one was thinking about that when the road was planned.
The key is the word "false".
Helmets give you a sense of security. It might be false.
Having a proper bike seat instead of a rusty spike gives you a sense of security. It's almost certainly not false.
I doubt you're located in Copenhagen or Amsterdam...
'Pushing helmets really kills cycling and bike-sharing in particular because it promotes a sense of danger that just isn't justified — in fact, cycling has many health benefits,' says Piet de Jong.
Sadly, right after saying this, Piet de Jong got on his bicycle without a helmet and crashed. After hitting his head on the curb, he was rushed by ambulance to the hospital for emergency brain surgery.
"Contrarily the lookaside buffer might not be the panacea... "
parent was referring to Europe but my wife was in Boulder CO several years ago for work & fell victim to this. she was making a right turn & got T-bonned by a bike messenger illegally riding on sidewalk & through crosswalk at high speed (not visible to her). as luck would have it there was a cop two cars behind her who witnessed it, stopped & issued the cyclist two citations (for above reasons - none to her) but wife's company still got stuck w/kid's hospital bill which luckily was pretty minor (ER visit, xray, abrasions, sling).
I cycle (in Atlanta) & am well aware that motorists are both ignorant of cyclists rights and/or willfully ignore them. my philosophy is: "the laws of the state of Georgia may be on my side but the laws of Isaac Newton are on the cars!" cyclists have a responsibility to obey traffic laws too if nothing else out of enlightened self-interest...
that said, these are bad/stupid laws...
I will continue to wear a helmet while cycling whether it is mandatory or not.
WHY?
because I require my children to wear helmets while riding, so how can I require them to, while not myself?!
They are both aware enough such that if I tried any such stunt they would laugh at me.
Do condoms give a false sense of security, too?
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
So, because you strapped something soft and fragile to your head, and because you saw it got damaged when you fell, you reason the soft/fragile thing must have protected you from injury? It may have, or it may not have, however you can't tell from the extent of the damage. E.g., had you strapped an egg to your head, and it had cracked and broke after a bump, would you then use that as evidence that the egg was a useful protection device?
Basically, the thing you're measuring (damage to the safety device) has no correlation with the protective abilities of that device. Thus to argue the thing you've measured shows the latter lacks any rational basis.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
In the UK, they used to be certified much better than for just "falling off your bike".
However we're now forced to adopt the crap euro standard for helmets. sad.
I live in Barcelona, Spain, where I have been using the city official bicycle network (bicing.com) as main public transportation for a couple of years now. The city has build bicycle lanes all over the place, an extensive network of stations where you can pick/station a city bike, using a simple card (yearly subscription).The city and company that built the physical & It infrastructure also provides free mobile apps ( for Android, iOS and Windows phones - I have the Android one), which gives you real-time info on available stations (slots to release the bicycle, or available bicycles to pick) , geo-location, hot line, etc.
Although the bicycle network had initial problems, it works quite nicely now. I have seen similar settings in other cities in Spain, like Seville, and others in different countries I visited, like France or Italy.
The adoption of the bicycle as a means of transportation seems to have been a success. Now, to the point: riding these bicycles is pretty safe. You don't need to wear helmets (nobody does), the bicycles have dedicated lanes and accidents are rare. The biggest problem here are motorcycles accidents, and yes, there, wearing a helmet is mandatory
Seems to me that any legislation on wearing bicycle helmets needs to be based on actual statistics, and a number of facts:
Otherwise the State only infantilizes its citizens, and meddles yet again with their freedom to decide for themselves.
The keyword here is "mature urban cycling systems". I'm pretty sure no US cities can even remotely compare to Amsterdam or Copenhagen (I've biked in both and you really notice that the bike is considered the equal of the car, not an afterthought as is so common), neither can my city (Stockholm). When bikes interact with cars to such a large extent and the bike network tends to suddenly disappear, leaving cyclists to biking on roads with motorists who tend not to notice cyclists. This is a big problem in Stockholm and I recently biked in San Francisco where it seems to be an even bigger problem, a motorist completely cut me off in order to park when I was coming fast in the bike lane, I was barely able to brake in time, this is even worse than I've ever experienced in Stockholm where motorists like to use bike lanes as "temporary" parking spots, but at least look around first when driving into a bike lane. In an environment like this, I would never leave the helmet unless I knew I was not going to interact with cars at all during my trip.
Riding a bicycle without a helmet is stupid and increases the risk of death. Not doing sports is stupid and increases the risk of death. So either way, we win. Darwin ftw!
If it's rhetorical, then there's no answer.
rewriting history since 2109
"injuries" during ladder climbing or taking a bath... Are they head injuries? I think there's a reason why helmets are required for cyclists. Of course I had two head injuries from cycling as a child without a helmet so maybe I don't think as good as I think.
Well that finishes me for moving to the netherlands.
Good.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
In general, people aren't good at estimating risk. Most of the time biking is safe, and you don't need a helmet. But if you do crash, you are quite high above a very hard surface, so landing on your head can easily cause a concussion or worse.
So if you ride carefully and avoid crashes, maybe you don't need a helmet? Well, that's where bad risk estimation comes in. In many years of riding I haven't crashed often, but I was never expecting it: once my front wheel got stuck in a rut, once a stick on the road flipped up into my spokes, once a taxi driver who was looking the wrong way drove into me. My wife has crashed less (she lost control on a patch of loose gravel once), but she got a concussion from it. (She wasn't wearing a helmet; I think it would have made a difference.)
I don't think people should be forced to wear helmets, but I think they're taking stupid risks if they don't. Brain injuries take a long time to heal, if they ever do.
When I was driving my bike to high school or college I always knew more about the road than the car drivers. The bike gives a very good field of view for however is driving it and without radio, or a frame surrounding you, you can also hear everything.
That combination kept me safe during all those bike commuting years.
I felt a helmet was obstructing those two big safety advantages of biking far more than it added to safety. Since for the helmet to be of any use you actually have to be in a crash.
Do you cycle much? For Commute? The article is about how there's a correlation between forcing helmets on cyclist and the attractiveness of cycling.
Around here ~70% of daily cycle commuters do use helmets so many people think like you, but on the other hand you are complete wrong about car the dangers of cycling is more about road conditions than cars (20% of reported cycle accidents here in Sweden involve cars).
You're still ignoring the real question, "is spending $25-$50 for a increased chance of serious brain injury worthwhile?" I suppose that your evaluation of the tissue that makes such judgments is completely reasonable.
Well I've lived in London (pre cycle land), Bangkok, and I've lived in Amsterdam, Leiden etc. and I'm with Cloggy on this. They (the Netherlands) have this right, better lanes, better marking is the way to do this, the helmets are not.
As more people travel by bike there are fewer people driving and the roads benefit as a result.
I use to love cycling to work every day, I'd take a detour to go through a park, it kept me fit and healthy.
If you feel unsafe without a helmet, then wear one, but don't make it compulsory because it's fake security that puts people off cycling and does far more damage to their health indirectly than they gain directly.
People in the US bike the same way they drive. GTFO my way you slow moving object. Never been to Amsterdam but when it comes to lack of courtesy when mobile, I think Americans seem to take the gold in that resulting in a larger need for safety measures.
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Over here in Holland, we rarely see people wearing such helmets. Actually the only ones who wear them are some children, and that's only because they tend to be more reckless and/or can't estimate the dangers too well. After the age of 8-9, they too stop wearing them. Almost everybody here knows how to ride a bike and if you see how we do that; driving through busy traffic, together with cars, buses etc. on the same lane, all without helmets. Sure, accidents happen, but I can't remember one incident where a helmet would've proven useful. Most of the times a protective suit like you wear on a motorcycle would've been better :)
If the risk was obvious, I would agree. However I'm not sure that one's vulnerability when cycling is really appreciated - just as people didn't used to feel vulnerable when driving without seatbelts. Even a minor fall onto hard pavement can easily break bones, and if the broken bone happens to be the skull then you can be in real trouble.
A little while ago I took a tumble when a startled animal ran into my bike. I landed on my helmet, which cracked, and was dazed enough to earn a day in hospital. Later, when a road safety group visited my workplace, I got a chance to find out roughly what kind of impact I had taken. They took the remains of my helmet and hit it with a hammer on an undamaged area until it showed damage similar to the original fall. It required quite a serious blow with a heavy hammer. They then delivered a similar blow to a force-measuring stand, which indicated that the force delivered was far more than that needed to break a skull.
In short, even on an empty country lane an unlucky fall can kill you. Until recently I didn't know that, and I suspect lots of other people don't know it either.
"A helmet saved my life!
It's not surprising that people who've been through a crash on their bike and escaped serious consequences but found helmet damage often believe strongly that the helmet has “saved their life”. However, the number of helmet users with this experience seems very much greater than the number of bare-headed cyclists who ever suffer a head injury. This suggests that the reality might not be so straightforward."
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1209.html
Yep, I kinda do - Because falls not related to a car hitting you won't affect your head, and if you do get hit by a car on a bike, that little eggshell won't do much to help you when the rest of your body gets smeared across the pavement like so much squirrel.
If you are not smeared across the pavement but only hit hard enough to be thrown a few meters the helmet will protect you and avoid the your scull cracks open if your skull is first when you hit the curb. (or a signpost or anything else that is not flat road)
Safe bicycle infrastructure promotes faster speeds and more confidence and feeling of ownership of the road by cyclists. These are all components that speak FOR the usage of helmets. Speeds on the danish bicycle lanes are often high enough that if you get graced by another cyclist going past you you will fall (and the curb will be very close)
In Denmark, if you get hit by a car it is by default the drivers fault - it is also an integral part of drivers education to be very much aware of cyclist when making turns - especially right turns.
I do not think helmets should be mandatory, but they should be heavily promoted and maybe even subsidized to make them more easily available. Laws could also be passed to ensure that every bike has to come with a free helmet bundled. "Use it if you like, but we are obligated to give it to you. And please read this flyer on bike safety."
Its like insurance - you don't need it until you do - and at that time it is too late to buy it (or in the case of helmets - put them on)
And this is the stupidest article I've ever read on Slashdot. Helmets don't make cycling seem unsafe any more than seatbelts make cars seem unsafe.
Granted, when seatbelts were first invented, they were worried that they might make the car seem unsafe, but we're WAY past that now, just like we're WAY past any possibility that any reasonable person would think a bike helmet was an indication that cycling was unsafe.
Anything is unsafe if not practiced properly. A helmet is a reasonable precaution against fatal injury. I would rather my tax money pay for treating someone's chronic diabetes than to pay for them to live in an ICU on a respirator for 50 years at $5K/day because they're a skinny vegetable.
There is simply no valid argument against wearing a bike helmet. Period.
Two thirds of fatal cycle accidents are caused by the cyclist entering the blind spot of Heavy Goods Vehicles.
That doesn't work for a number of reasons:
That said, I chose to wear a helmet. I've had too many visits to the hospital. I've cracked a helmet (rather than my head) when I crashed at speed. I've seen the reports of James Cracknell who was taken off the road in America by a truck wing mirror and survived (probably because he was wearing a helmet).
We're all adults we should be able to make our own minds up. We can also encourage our kids to wear a helmet but we don't want to follow our European friends by legislating for it.
Europe has a lot of advantages over the UK. They have bigger wider roads with dedicated cycle paths, they have car drivers who aren't selfish bastards.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
Indeed, truly horrible accidents where helmets make the difference between life and death are pretty rare. Possibly more rare than airplanes making water landings or horrible car accidents. However, if we're fine with (and prefer) conceding to the last two scenarios, why is wearing a small thing like a helmet such a big deal?
Perhaps the author (thankfully) hasn't seen how much a helmet works, but I, and many others, who commute and ride often have certain been in such situations. They work.
I do think that a lot of serious accidents and fatalities are due to cyclists doing completely stupid things like riding against traffic on a major road or blowing stop lights (without looking!) in areas with high car traffic.
" 'But such falls off bikes are rare — exceedingly so in mature urban cycling systems" Sounds like some writer trying to justify his position!
I hit a large dog that had run out from between parked cars while I was doing 25mph, it triped the bike and I landed on my helmet, no damage to my head but the road rash distroyed my jacket. the dog turned around a licked me!
Judge who had been our lawyer always wore a helmet on his bike commute but on a quick trip out to the store didn't want helmet hair so he rode without it. Went inside traffic cones that he thought were there to keep motorist away from workers, wrong, it was fresh concrete. Bike stopped, he flew head first into the curb and died.
Todays helmets are light and airy, once they are on you don't even notice them and I've never heard a person say I won't ride a bike because of the helmet, the shorts yes but not the helmet..
I'm 45.
When I was a school kid, EVERYONE rode their bikes. We rode around town constantly, we'd ride out to friend's houses miles outside of our small town. I'd say 90%+ kids rode bikes.
I don't know a single kid who ever had a serious head injury, in a class of 80+ several years ahead or behind. Say a rough demographic sample of 400 kids.
Today, I see very little bike riding. I know many kids that know HOW to ride a bike, and (apparently) enjoyed it, but simply aren't interested in riding.
I stopped riding for years once I became an adult, until I bought a recumbent and absolutely love it...one of the things I like about it is my posture as I ride makes it far less likely I'm targeting my head if the bike crashes. So I don't wear a helmet, and the dirty looks I get from 'cyclists' (you know who I mean), especially if I discuss it aloud, are frequent.
-Styopa
I do not thing that the problem is the law in itself, the problem is the campaign that always goes with it. Look down at comments under NY times article - those people are genuinely convinced that biking without helmet is deadly dangerous no matter what. Judging form their comments, bicycle driving adult fall down very often and would not it be for helmets, every fall would have horrible consequences.
The fact is that adults using bikes as a transport (not doing freestyle or mountain biking) fall rarely and if they do, nothing happen to them most of the time.
The problem is that safety campaigns exaggerate risks. Showing bloody dead body or claiming immediate huge danger had bigger impact than telling truth and campaign leaders have no insensitive to tell the truth. The result is hype and myths about bicycling dangers. So, safety campaigners everywhere: stop lying. You do more harm then good. You might as well lead a "stop cycling forever, it is too dangerous" campaign.
You don't wear a helmet for all of those accidents that don't happen. You wear one for that accident that does.
Having been in a pretty horrific accident where my helmet saved my life, I'll just keep right on wearing it, thanks.
Helmets are not required for adults in the US, but most states require them for children under a certain age. I see very few, if any, adults riding without one anymore, but when I do it's usually an older person from "back in the day" when helmets were uncool.
There was a time back in the 50's, I think, when car companies were all up in arms about what to do with seatbelts. They wanted to add the "feature," but their marketing people were terrified that having safety features in a car would make the car seem unsafe and discourage people buying them. We look back on that today and laugh at how stupid they were to think that, just like at some point we will look back at this thread in the Internet archives and laugh hysterically at the stupidity.
It has no correlation? Really? That's a pretty bold statement. Helmets are tested in labs. They help protect the head of the wearer against some amount of force. The helmet may absorb energy by deforming and breaking. Just because it isn't made out of titanium and padded with angel fluff doesn't mean it won't stop otherwise injuring damage. You make it sound like hoboroadie was wearing a hat.
When I was a kid, me and all my friends had bikes and rode them EVERYWHERE. We'd ride across town to each others' houses. We'd build dirt ramps in vacant lots. We'd ride for miles and miles and have tons of fun. Oh, and we didn't wear helmets. The roads were commonly filled with kids on bikes. Then they instituted a helmet law. You know what happened? The bikes vanished. No one rode their bikes anymore, and no young kids bothered to begin with. You'd see a single kid on a bike every once in a while with a huge dorky helmet and all the other kids would make fun of him.
In the neighborhood where I am, it's quiet with almost no traffic. It's suburban with a decent density of houses. It seems roughly half the houses have kids in elementary school. Nonetheless, I never see bikes. This would be unheard of 20 years ago. 20 years ago, this neighborhood was full of kids on bike ... with no helmets.
Safety you say? I got into tons of bike accidents as a kid and not once was there any kind of head injury involved. My friends got into bike accidents, many of them with cars. Not once was there a head injury involved. It was knees, elbows, forearms, ankles, shoulders, hands, and even a pretty nasty back injury. Never a head injury though. I can't count the number of accidents and resulting injuries between me and my friends from back in those days and yet no head injuries. Not a single incident where a helmet would do a blasted thing.
You know what helmets are good for? Helmets are good for discouraging people of ALL AGES from riding bicycles, and nothing more.
People won't wear helmets, and thus won't ride bikes, because it messes up their hair.
The reason I don't cycle is because I exert too much force on the crank case, or they are made improperly, and the assembly starts racking around. Everytime I buy a bike I destroy it in about a week. I might weigh to much though, but either way I am sick of wasting money on a hobby like that.
I'm just glad someone is finally remarking how silly this is. I've been saying for years that ladder helmets are necessary. My kids, before doing any dangerous activity, go to the closet and get their helmet out. Whether that be their ladder-climbing helmet, their swing set helmet, or their swimming pool slide helmet, they know that being safe is better than being dead. Anything that requires being more than standing height from the ground requires a helmet. The kids are excited about it, too - for their birthdays this year, they know they'll be getting new "going down the stairs" helmets.
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
So... you're saying that you won't use the ER when you're dying? Or perhaps that you merely want to force others to pay when they go there? Perhaps by paying beforehand? People's behavior affects the costs with or without some insurance mandate.
Instead of arguing about helmets, could we instead agree that if you're going to ride a bike in the US you should really understand how street laws apply to cyclists here? I've seen WAY too many idiots riding their bikes (never with a helmet btw) down the left side of the road head on to the traffic, which means that traffic can do very little to avoid you -- even if they were to come to a dead stop, you still pose a risk because you're closing the gap. On top of all that, these cyclists do this on the narrowest of roads, where there is a small dirt shoulder which they refuse to ride on. Sometimes, they'll even ride side-by-side in the wrong lane like this and don't even make an effort to steer clear of the cars that they are riding head-on at.
Of course, I never ever see a person wearing a bike helmet do any of these stupid things. This only serves to confirm my long-held belief that a person riding a bike without a helmet has nothing in their head worth protecting.
Basically, the thing you're measuring (damage to the safety device) has no correlation with the protective abilities of that device. Thus to argue the thing you've measured shows the latter lacks any rational basis.
Laughable, that is.
I crash often enough I don't bother with bicycle helmets which are designed to disintegrate ablatively. I wear a skater's helmet, which I could bang with a hammer, &c., without damage. When it has gravel embedded into the hard plastic shell and major paint removal all over the surface after I've somersaulted the handlebers I don't feel the need for G-force sensor readings. I have many years of experience crashing bicycles and such, both with and without helmets. I'm pretty sure that the Shoei helmet I cracked flipping over the bars of my RD-400 and landing head-first @ 55mph was a life-saver, but you can continue in this chickenshit debate about data validity if you don't care for my anecdotal evidence. I am fairly sure that most of the damage I've done on bicycle mishaps wouldn't have been fatal, but I absolutely know that I'd have been badly hurt many times if I had not worn a helmet. One benefit in particular is the ability to protect other body parts when I'm tumbling and skidding because the helmet has the head covered, so it allows more options.
I'm sorry if my anecdotal data is too imprecise for you to engage in rational thought.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Maybe you should whip out a calculator for once and calculate g-forces. A mere centimeter more means a lot less braking force to your head.
In physics we call what happens there a "plastic deformation". If you don't wear a helmet that energy, instead of cracking the helmet, will crack open your skull.
AFAICT, in the US, most kids don't ride bikes that much from an early age, the result being that there isn't an ingrained consciousness about biking as they grow up. They end up being drivers who don't really think about biking as a valid mode of transportation. Contrast this to Japan, where it's common for the parents in a household to commute by bike, shop by bike, and do everything by bike, and the kids are riding bikes to school when they're five, so the "bike consciousness" is developed from an early age.
The other issue that keeps people from riding bikes in the US is that you are forced to share the road with cars, rather than ride on sidewalks. I haven't bought a bike since moving back to the US for that very reason; I don't trust the drivers around me enough to watch out for me. It has nothing to do with a helmet. If the US infrastructure wasn't so hopelessly automobile-oriented, and was more accommodating for bikes (wider sidewalks, bike lanes, etc.), I would buy one in a second.
My father has been an avid rider most of his life. Twice, I kid you not, twice, he fell off his bicycle and the helmet saved his life. In the latter case, he would have died instantly. Helmets save lives.
Last summer two of my friends had an accident while riding a bicycle. According to his GPS, one of them was going 35 km/h (about 20 mph) just before the accident. His bike and his helmet was a wreck and he suffered various injuries.
The other did not wear a helmet. He died.
I wear a helmet when I'm riding!
My opinion? See above.
Do you wear a helmet in your car?
70% of fatal car accidents are due to head injuries!
So we know that if you are going head first into the pavement, you want a helmet on. But does wearing a helmet increase the chances of a serious crash by impairing the biker?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Hmmm... how do you know who is and is not an illegal immigrant? Your inciteful prose have convinced me that Walmart and Target definately ignore their analytics software and support systems and just change around their sales strategy based upon your enlightened incites into what they should and should sell at their stores.
More people would drive if we repealed seatbelt laws?
Or...
Maybe if we pass a law that requires people to wear helmets while driving we can get cars off the road and reduce pollution and congestion?
Yes, to a degree, it has been argued before. However the ACTUAL benefits of a condom outweighs the small increase in risky behaviour that this false sense of security gives.
In the case of bikes the ACTUAL benefits of a helmet is very small and only in very limited types of accidents, while the increase in risky behaviour is more dangerous and leads to accidents usually in a way that helmets would not protect against.
1) Huh? I have moved from a "you're kidding" to "mandatory helmet" country so have experience of both. As far as I am concerned right now it's just a thing you do and, on reflection, a good thing. No false security - just a "whatever" and, in my case, demonstrably a good thing. I have never been hit by a car (close though) but in my life I have come off several times due to tram tracks, intoxication, bad luck, gravel, ice. 3 helmets down - still going. I have no idea how any of those situations might have turned out otherwise but I can categorically say that my behaviour was not influenced by me wearing the helmet. It's not fucking bat armour - it's a sensible thing if you might fall over or hit the tarmac at anything over 10 km/h.
2) Don't know. Personally, I consider that a bike is a bike and I assume they're going to be a spaz, turn across or fall over, helmet or not. In fact as they are mandatory I consider someone without a helmet thinks they are "too cool for school" and more likely to be an arse rather than a careful road user. I can't speak for everyone.
I am sad you don't let your kids wear them and consider education instead. Also, hopefully you or any of your friends never have to scoop up a corpse or battered, mangled body up and put them through surgery & IC. Yeah, you pay your taxes so the guys who will do this are out there, but it's really best avoided if you can, for all involved.
Same thing for seatbelts - I think you need to spend a couple of seconds thinking if your right to exercise freedom to not wear one is really actually something you should be doing. Does it make you drive more carefully when you don't? Do you daughters not wear one so other drivers look out? [See also "baby in board" stickers].
"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups." - Abraham Lincoln I'm a cyclist, I ride a road bike, I ride fast. I know exactly what will happen if I fall off... I WILL DIE! I live in the drunk driving capital of the United States. Laws meant to PROTECT CYCLISTS CANNOT HURT THE CYCLING INDUSTRY!! Reason? Because the helmet can mean the difference between living the rest of your life as a quadrapalegic and death. I know exactly what will happen if a car slams into me. I WILL DIE! Is cycling dangerous? YES!
If a car hits you, helmet is mostly irrelevant. It does not improve you chances of surviving being knocked off - not by any measurable margin. What you are experiencing is called a "false sense of security". If you act upon that, you are putting yourself at even bigger danger.
I honestly believe that my helmet has saved my life more than once while riding on the road. I've been hit by two cars and I ride my bike in the winter (I've never been hit in the winter), and I've bounced my head off the pavement a couple times. I've seen the foam compress, and I'm pretty sure I would've had pretty substantial injuries from those incidents. That said, I spend more time not crashing than crashing. I know people that have been hit by cars while walking. It's hard to eliminate risk from your life—that's just life.
And not exercising is a completely different risk you take on. I think people would do well to understand the risks of riding a bike and wear their helmets, but the barrier to entry needs to be as low as possible.
I live in Montreal, where the Bixi bike rental system is incredibly popular. We now have bike traffic jams in the bike lanes. I see women in business suits riding the bikes in their high heels. 90% of these people aren't wearing helmets or they're wearing them so wrong as to make them useless, but they're riding. Heart disease and obesity related diseases kill so many people every year, it's really just a cruel matter of the math: even if the number of people dying in bike related injuries goes up, we're almost certainly saving lives in the long run.
But central Montreal is dense and easy to traverse. The city is well set up for walking and is an utter nightmare to drive in—ideal conditions for a bike culture to come up.
Having been saved by a helmet twice (once, hitting a newly formed pothole during a road race and the other when a truck driver flew open his door just as I was passing...splitting my helmet in half), I would have to say that people's desire to not wear a helmet is more about "freedom" and "looking good vs inconvience.. I have also seen what happens to others who flip over their handlebars after their wheel drops into a improper drainage cover or object in the road. It isn't pretty.
In Europe, they are accustomed to bike riders. Their cities and lifestyle were set up around the notion of cycing. When I was growing up here in the US, it USED to be safe to ride the roads. I could ride the 25 miles to my girlfriends's house and see, maybe five or six cars. Today? Those roads are like a super highway due to the increase in suburban population and housing developments and they AREN"T looking out for cyclists. I won't venture onto those roads any longer.
US drivers are also ALWAYS in a rush. In Stamford, where I now reside during the week, it's a given that when the light turns green, that you need to wait several seconds and then proceed cautiously. Why? People, invariably, run EVERY light as if when a light just turns RED that it's really ORANGE and you need to speed up. There are bike paths along the road...but, drivers will use them to get around individuals making a left even when cyclists are in the lane!
And, it doesn't help when cyclists, themselves, are riding at night or dusk/dawn) without lights (headlight and taillight), reflectors and visible clothing). And, 99% don't use hand signals when riding...changing lanes,stopping ...they are their own worse enemy. Would your ride your motorcycle or drive your car at night without lights or walk down the center of a highway in the dark without light clothing (yeah..I've seen the latter)? Most of us aren't that stupid.
Are helmets the solution? Only partly. Awareness and tolerance of cyclists by drivers and the enforcement of traffic laws when broken by cyclists would be a good a start.
If you want to take your chances riding in the city or suburbia (vs country) without a helmet or proper safety gear, maybe you should pay for the medical care you will probably end up needing entirely out of pocket. I am all for that...you too might be featured on the next installment of Darwin Awards: The Series.
Excellent point.
I have been cycling for 12 years and have riden with and known hundreds of cyclist. Not one chooses to not wear a helmet. It is not a requirement. They wear helmets because they have personally hit their head on the pavement or know someone who has. If you dont want to wear one thats fine with me. I choose to wear one because it is the smart thing to do.
The summary somehow implies that there are adult bicycle helmet laws in the US. Only a small percentage of states even have child bicycle helmet laws.
Here's a list (by state) of the current helmet laws for motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles: http://www.iihs.org/laws/HelmetUseCurrent.aspx.
I have (almost) always worn a helmet when cycling on the road for commuting or pleasure. I have broken three helmets over the past 30 years in accidents not involving a motor vehicle (I ride pretty aggressively and fast).
On each occasion, I am pretty certain that I could well have ended up having to take a job for the rest of my life that did not require my Ph.D. education and the ability to always be learning and discovering new things as a scientist.
I have always given my broken helmets to my physicians treating me after the accidents so that they can show them to their other patients who are cyclists.
Worth thinking about: I am glad that I can still think about it!
I've got a 4yr old and he didn't want to wear his helmet. So I told him he didn't have to. My wife didn't like it but I told her "he's still in training wheels, he can't even go 5mph, short of him getting hit by a car, there's no way he can injure himself bad enough to warrant a helmet. She relented. Then some of the neighborhood moms saw him and freaked out. I reasoned with them, but they wouldn't shut up so finally I told them to mind their own god damned business. So they of course, all got together and ganged up on my wife when I wasn't home, who now insists he use the helmet. So... now he doesn't ride his bike anymore because he doesn't want to bother with the helmet. In fact, the majority of the kids in my neighborhood don't. Last week, while NOT riding a bike, he was climbing over a fence and fell on his head. Go figure.
I've ridden a bike in London's dense, cycle-hostile traffic for 40 years and don't wear a helmet. On the morning commute I'd guess 9 out of 10 wear one but I don't believe a bit of polystyrene would make much difference if went under the wheels of a bus.
Most of the cycle deaths in London are at poorly designed junctions where big stuff can turn across the path of cyclists going forward.Investment in cycle lanes would save more lives than stupid helmets.
Actually he has a very fair point. You claim that a small sacrifice in money and convenience and style and whatever other arguments one might have against helmets is worth it, because your brain is SO valuable to you. (For the record, I quite agree with the basic premise of your theory).
The problem here is that you are not doing all the other small and inexpensive things to protect your brain. Perfect diet, perfect exercise, all the right supplements, using a helmet and neck protection while driving a car, wearing a helmet while walking, and of course most importantly - wearing full body armour (or at the very least a helmet) while getting into the shower/bathtub.
If you argue that you only want to protect your brain when it's at risk from OTHERS, well, then you should still wear one while driving and walking. And you should also easily realize that people in areas where drivers are not insufferable jerks or where there is very little traffic, shouldn't have a single reason to follow your example. Since you argue that you just can't understand the reasoning, there it is, the explanation, in black and white. Either you are deluding yourself because you are not protecting your brain from ALL possible damage, or you are deluding yourself because you expect every other person to make their choices based on YOUR situation and circumstance rather than the world they actually live in.
Please think again.
maybe we should wear helmets when we climb ladders or get into a bath
For literally years, I've been extolling the virtues of wearing a diving helmet when bathing; glad to see someone finally acknowledge the obvious benefits to safety!
To Encourage Biking, Lose the Cars!
The day helmets become mandatory here in Switzerland, is the day i sell my bicycle.
I wear a helmet for insurance. Just in case. I also pay car insurance for just in case. I pay house insurance for just in case. This is stupid. Helmets don't stop people from riding. It is a safety issue. Oh.. might as well tell motorcycles to that they don't need them either since when they get in fender benders they never hit their heads.
I have been hit from behind by a car and my helmet saved my head from serious injury. I have also seen a bicyclist that didn't wear a helmet get run over by another at low speeds on a bike path in Venice beach, CA and they ended up with 50 stitches to the head because they didn't have a helmet. You never know how you will fall off a bike. One time you may fall and roll... but what about that time that you fall and your head hits a curb...
Better safe than sorry.
hehe i have been hit by car zero head injury without helmet just lift your damn arms to protect head oh on side note modern synthetic clothes are so though that after gliding over road that my side got huge palm sized burn... but jacket was just fine, but jeans i was wearing lost it's pocket.
No helmets for motorcycles, no seatbelt laws, in fact people should be encouraged to cross highways at night on foot in the rain.
Oh screw bikes! they're annoying, hurt your back, and riders never obey traffic laws. I know many people who lost over 50 pounds playing Dance Dance Revolution. One US state made DDR mandatory in their physical education curriculum because it works, it's fun, and it's around 1800 calories per hour burned. After playing it for 2 years, I sat down at the leg press at my gym after not having lifted weights for years and did the entire weight stack easily. If people really want to lose weight in a way that's agreeable, get them off the bikes and on the dance mats!
In a lot of other places, you can bike for a long, long, time and not see other people. Generally this is not the case here. Most importantly, your odds of encountering a motor vehicle while bicycling in the US are extremely high. While most of the time bicycles and motor vehicles can share the road without incident, when that does not happen the incident rarely turns out well for the person on the bicycle.
Conversely, when I am on a ladder or in my bathtub, my chance of being hit by a car are quite small. If the US had more bicycle-only trails for people to ride on, then the accident rate would be greatly decreased. Instead they have to share the road with people who are reading and writing SMS messages on their phones, eating breakfast, putting on makeup, tuning their radio, and doing who-knows-what-else when they should be driving and focusing on the road.
Hence a helmet in the US for a bicyclist is important not to protect the bicyclist from themselves, but to protect them from the other people they are sharing the road with.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Yes, agree and plus cyclists that 'undertake' into the blind spot of large vehicles especially when there are railings on the pedestrian side, that's a good way to be crushed.
I live near the infamous Bow/Stratford roundabout and, frankly, I usually get off and walk it, it's the poorly designed junction 'best of breed'.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Did you have a helmet going through that windshield?
Here is a study for you showing motorists give more space to those without helmets.
http://www.drianwalker.com/overtaking/overtakingprobrief.pdf
I do not wear a helmet because drivers give me more space.
What the heck do you do? I am dutch, so I have been biking since I was 4-5 and maybe around that start did I ever hit my head biking. If your helmet is seriously dented and gouged when it was on your head that's insane and maybe you should take a look at what's causing it, since 90% or more of bike related injuries should be wrist and leg scrapes, not hits to the head.
At risk of sounding like an ignorant American, Why do we force bikes onto the road in many areas? I went to school in Wisconsin, and students were occasionally ticketed for biking (or skateboarding or rollerblading) on the sidewalk, rather than the road. It seems to me that the sidewalk is a more appropriate place (bike vs pedestrian = stitches, bike vs car = death or brain damage) Of course sidewalks aren't available everywhere, but where they are, why are bikes forced off the sidewalks?
The real problem getting people to ride bicycles is not the helments, though that may be one (small) factor. Its dangerous enough driving a car with all of the idiots talking (or texting) on the cell phone while driving. Having ridden a bicycle for years, I know that most drivers here in the U.S. consider bicyclists a hazzard, a pain in the ass, and think that they have no right to be on the road. Especially in areas where roads are not designed wide enough for motor vehicals to safley pass bicyclists without encroaching into oncoming traffic.
Stray dogs are another factor. Where I live, this has always been a big problem. Another problem is areas (like where I live) where the town is built on a series of steep hills. In most cases here it is just not practical to bicicle to work or stores as the hills are just too long and steep, and to avoid the hills adds several miles to such trips.
The streets are too narrow, bike paths are far, far too few, and bicycling on sidewalks (even if they were in good enough condition and not obstructed by untrimmed trees and bushes) is not allowed. Here bicyclists are forced to ride within inches of the curbs which are filled with sand and dust.
Also weather is a factor. While our last few winters have been mild, Snow, rain, and ice (especially "black ice" in the early mornings) are not uncommon. Streets have also not been maintained very well here the last few years, creating even worse hazards for bicyclists. Its a sad fact the the hard economic times limit funds for street repair, at a time when bicycling could otherwise save people substantial amounts of money, and benefit their health as well.
I even used to haul my bicycle over 30 miles to a small town where a friend lived. The town was built on flat land, stray dogs were almost nonexistant, and motor vehical traffic was very low on the back streets.
Because condoms made sex much less appealing
In my experience, I think it is best to let the riders decide. The first, and probably obvious point, is that the only victim of a bike accident is probably going to be the biker. I don't know that we need laws protecting us from ourselves.
Secondly, this article is completely correct. I never wore helmets when I was young. The only exception was for BMX biking over jumps and all. Even at a young age, you understand the importance of self preservation. Today, I wear a helmet when I am mountain biking or when I want to better condition myself for wearing a helmet while mountain biking.
Otherwise, I prefer to leave the helmet at home. I've gotten heat stroke before (while biking on safe roads) and I will say that it was far more dangerous than any accident I ever sustained on a paved bike path or road. And helmets do make your head a little hotter. Besides, when you are on a safe trail or road, it's nice to feel the wind on your head and just feel closer to your surroundings. Biking is for more than transportation, it is for the joy of the ride.
I used to ride. ... for a week. We'd cover 50-120 miles in a day. We also did organized rides going across a few different states with 400-10,000 of our closest friends. Calling this fun doesn't convey how much fun the experiences were.
I used to ride ALOT, over 20 miles daily. In the summers, I'd go on long distance rides with friends carrying tent, sleeping bags, clothes, food
When helmets became available (yes, I'm that old), I asked for one for Xmas and got it. I was excited to protect my head. I did the fitting, inserted the foam pads for my comfort and went for a ride. It sucked. It was hot and sweaty. After a few weeks, I stopped wearing the helmut unless I was going to be in traffic. Since I lived on the edge of a metro area, most of my rides were on country roads where zero or 1 other vehicle would be seen per hour.
Then I relocated to a different state. It had a helmet law for children but not adults. I road less, but still a bunch. Especially on the weekends to different outdoor activities. I didn't wear the helmet at all. There is something about a breeze on a 95+ degF day and not having a chin strap.
Then I moved again to a busy metro area with lots and lots of stupid drivers not paying attention on the roads. Talking on cell phones, texting, swerving like drunk drivers. I stopped riding completely. I also switched cars from a hatchback that easly held my bike to a coupe, which did not. Still, I'd drive out to interesting places and ride most weekends, without a helmet. This required both the front and rear wheels to be removed to fit into the coupe trunk. The roads were busier and much more dangerous than the roads from my high school and college years.
About this time, a relative was riding his bike in rural Iowa and got hit in the head by the rear-view mirror form a pickup truck on a back road. The driver stopped and drove him to a regional medical center over an hour away. He remained in in the hospital for over a month recovering. Doctors induced a coma to help with the recovery. He was wearing a quality helmet which saved his life. The man driving the vehicle did the right things and my relatives just had him pay for medical expenses. It was an accident. That relative had blinding headaches for about 5 years, but then they stopped. He is still a college professor with no known side effects from the accident now.
The state where I live added a helmet law for adults on bicycles. With all the other dangers out there, I decided that riding a bicycle on streets is too dangerous no matter where it was. I haven't ridden in over 15 yrs. I still have the bicycle. It is a Bianchi for those who know bikes.
If someone can be nearly killed on an extremely rural road in NW Iowa, there's no chance that I can find a safe place to road ride within 50 mi of my home. There are other exercises that I can do.
I don't think I'll ever ride again. I really should unload my bke on someone.
The suggestion of not requiring bike helmets seems like an effort to loosen rules to encourage doing something healthy. The problem with this is that bike helmet laws are in effect for a reason.
In high school, my father was in an accident on his bicycle where his front wheel locked up and he landed hard on his head. He shattered his nose. Cut up his face. And his bike helmet was compressed down to approximately half its normal thickness where he landed. If not for the helmet being where it was, nobody in my family has any question that he would no longer be with us. So while helmets might be a bit of a hassle (and decidedly uncool looking), they are absolutely necessary.
Personally, while I see adults riding bicycles all the time, the only ones I see that wear helmets are the serious cyclists and children and nobody I've ever known has ever gotten a citation for not having a helmet. In fact, my assumption was that the helmet law was only required for children... which makes complete sense because the children aren't able to take legal responsibilty for themselves and the parents should be required to take every precaution.
Just spent a week in Tokyo where there are more bikes in daily use than I have ever seen anywhere else. Out of the thousands of people that I saw raiding bikes I saw only 1 helmet on a kid who looked about 4 years old.
I used to run a bike shop. Every time I would sell a bike, I would make sure the customer had a good discussion about why they should buy a $30 helmet. The $30 helmet was usually less than 10% of the bike purchase. When they would say "It's not comfortable", I would ask them what their head is worth. Maybe not to them, but to their family. If they had brain damage, what would their life be like? Could they still work? What would happen to their family if they couldn't? Once I sold a bike, and a helmet, to a bright kid who had a major head injury from a car accident. He had been a bright engineering student, after the accident he lived at home with his parents. He applied once for a job, but did very poorly on the math test (~ sixth grade skill level) we gave prospective employees. Head trauma can really screw up your life, so don't take the chance.
I've been in a number of bike accidents, one of which caused a concussion and an overnight hospital stay. No helmet. I've had some where I hit my head, and cracked my helmet, with no head trauma. If had more where I scratched my helmet, with no problems.
The rule with my family is the same as the rules at a triathlon: if you are touching your bike, you MUST have a helmet on.
I began road cycling this year.
I have about 1700km on my bike this summer. I falled 2 times. Both times, my helmet saved me a trip to the hospital.
Just loosing balance and falling sideways at 0 speed on the hard pavement is enough to do permanent severe brain injuries.
Fall from bike are frequent. Stop spreading around false statements only to push your libertarian agenda.
"maybe we should wear helmets when we climb ladders or get into a bath, because there are lots more injuries during those activities"
cops are in favor of laws like this because it allows them even more leeway to legally harass anyone they want
legislators want laws like this because it looks like real work but doesn't require any political risk
bureaucrats love these laws because it makes more government busywork writing regulations, doing studies, creating public service campaigns
the only people against these laws are people who just want to be left the hell alone, and they aren't active in the political process because they just want to live their lives in peace
the fact that the government can make it illegal to ride without a helmet is an indication that the government has too much power at all levels, and needs more limitations. This specific law is just another symptom of the authoritarian disease.
You're right; if we can point to 5 instances where a cm of styrofoam would've (or did) make the difference between a light injury and a very severe one, we should encourage people to wear helmets.
I'm glad you're on board with my campaign to make helmets mandatory while in moving motor vehicles.
Oh, and everyone under 18 and over 50 will have to wear one at all times. Those between can take them off before going to bed.
It's the only sane response.
Do not ride a bike without a helmet faster than you are willing to crash without a helmet.
Give the two big bike accidents I've been in, I've only managed to damage my arms and ribs, and that's without a helmet both times. The lack of a helmet also helps to limit risky behavior. Much like a car without ABS, airbags and traction control is driven much ore carefully than one with all those options.
Also cycling, even though I do it 5 out of 7 days a week has yet to result in any weight loss. In fact I packed about 15lbs of muscle on when I started. I'm just as fat as when I started, though from a heart perspective, I'm much better off.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
What the heck do you do?
Some of us prefer singletrack. It's the closest thing I've yet found to the experience of riding a speeder bike on endor. Sometimes you crash into a tree and blow up, though.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The article makes a good point, and there are arguments on both sides. However, to say that Amsterdam and Copenhagen are places that have a significant portion of the population using bicycles on a regular basis, and they don't mandate helmets and yet everyone's safe is oversimplifying the point in a way that's detrimental to the discussion. Even if we grant that this is the case, which I have no reason to doubt, it's not like everyone woke up one day, ditched the helmets, grabbed bikes and rode around. If a majority of folks in a given place ride bikes, it's safe to say that's a culture that understands and respects bicycling as a mode of transportation, and has experience combining bicycle and motor vehicle traffic in a safe way. Cyclists are comfortable with cars and vice versa. One of the things that helps contribute to accidents is nervous drivers, nervous cyclists, or a combination of the two. I'd also be willing to bet there are more bike lanes in places like those mentioned in the article. Helmets may make cycling seem more dangerous, but living in a car dominated culture where many places do not prioritize bike safety actually does make cycling more dangerous. No, a bike helmet won't protect me much if I'm hit by a car. In that case, I'll be lucky to escape with just broken bones. However, a helmet certainly would protect me if I'm riding between traffic and a row of parked cars (like cyclists in many cities are forced to do if their bike is their main source of transport) and I have to swerve to avoid a car who doesn't see me. In that case, I'd rather be wearing a helmet when I hit the parked car or the pavement. And, I'd rather be conscious and able to get my bike and myself up out of the street rather than being knocked out in the middle of the street and causing a bigger problem because folks have to go around me or come out in the road to help. Helmet laws aren't there to force people who could care less about their skulls to put clunky helmets on. It's to protect the other folks who would be dragged into or affected by an accident that would be exacerbated by someone not wearing one. Bottom line, wear a helmet. Do it for the children.
I fell off my bike with no one's help other than my own ineptitude, and broke my arm. My helmet certainly saved my head from a good whack, too.
Maybe cities are pushing for fewer helmets so we get more organ donors. My experience is that helmets are a very good idea!
--PeterM
. . . for the people who don't want to ride. Helmets are pretty minor, really. I wear one - having spent years in a province where fhey're mandated - though where I live now, they're not, and lots of people don't. A rotation or two on the Neuro wards will do that to you, and It's a small thing to carry around, slung on the side of my backpack.
That said, going from a city where the bike lanes are paint on the road (which the drivers feel entitled to block with impunity) and where bikes are regarded as for sport, recreation, or children, to one which has numerous separate cycle lanes and a large number of adult cycle commuters makes a huge difference. Now I think about it, the helmet thing is probably in part influenced by the association of cycling with children. Still gonna wear mine, though. Miranda Richardson, anyone? Yes, that was skiing, but it was seemingly minor head injury from a fall. Yes, that was a fluke, but if I can go from unlikely to zero without affecting anyone else, still gonna do it. Plus, when I was younger, I found a helmet a nice hard lump to put between me and the guys on transit who liked to get too close.
That's not the question. Of course you should wear a helmet when cycling.
It's whether it should be a law. If it's a law then some people who would have taken the bike will now take the car (because of "those stupid idiot hats"). They then proceed to make more lethal accidents and gain a lot of weight, which makes them susceptible to a whole load of illnesses. Now what's the most dangerous option?
(to be honest I don't wear them, but I know I should).
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
This topic reminded me of what two swede women cooked up as a third option of sorts:
http://www.hovding.com/en/how/
In action:
http://www.hovding.com/en/film/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kZGTOLBvek
It's not that invisible actually. But I liked the concept (actually I was thinking this would be amazing addition to regular helmets for speed bikers and formula one racers)
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
I'm sure he'll still agree that helmets aren't important...
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I mean... REALLY??? :facepalm:
For all the morons here advocating FORCED wearing of helmets; 1. You are just confirming that A. You are American, B. You fear bicycling, as the article states. So yeah... thanks for confirming their data. 2. I don't care if its the law here in the states to wear a helmet, if I ever ride a bike again, I'm not going to wear a f*cking helmet! 3. Bicyclists need to understand that they weigh ~200lbs and a car weighs ~4000lbs. Logic states that the lighter object is more maneuverable. Don't ride your f*cking bike in the street, and always, ALWAYS be aware of your surroundings! I view bicyclists that ride their bike in the street, that clearly says "40mph" and they are doing 15-20mph as committing suicide. Be smart people!
My only certain helmet-saved-my-life story happened the day I learned that a Yamaha RD-400 will flip forward if the brakes are applied too abruptly. My Snell '75 rated Shoei ZG helmet got a ~2cm flat spot and a ~20cm long crack through the plastic shell where I'd bounced on the crown of my head @80kph. I suppose I might possibly have lived, but I really don't think I'd have somersaulted three times then bounced to my feet uninjured and run to a stop if I had not been wearing that helmet. (Kinda cool- everything was in slow-motion as I ran down the highway and my bike floated overhead, then it hit the ground and started shedding parts as I tallied the damage.)
Somersaulting over the handlebars was like, my signature move in the 70s. I avoided a lot of wrist and elbow damage that plagued others who did not have the Judo training I had. Once I had a good helmet (I destroyed three of the ablative type before I switched to the skater type) I was a able to land even more smoothly and safely because I wasn't shielding my head with my arms. One time my bicycle helmet was smashed into three pieces, and the center bit was compressed by ~1cm -that would have hurt. I read your friendly link, and it told me NOTHING THAT I DID NOT KNOW. I crashed many, many, many times before good helmets became available (curiously not once did I crash test my padded foam/leather skid-lid, fortunately as those were not regarded as very adequate.) I speak from experience, and I don't claim to have averted any necessarily fatal injuries with the other helmets I've destroyed, but they have positively saved me from much of the pain and blood loss of incidental injuries.
It is surprising to me how people can disregard physical evidence and anecdotes so they can point to a webpage with vague statistics and random conclusions as real truth.
Hippos kill more people so we should just laugh at folks afraid of lions, eh?
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Look at The Netherlands for example. They have a network of dedicated bicycle paths to keep bikes and autos separated. In the USA, the bicycle lobby pushes for a 'share the road' philosophy. In some cases, abandoning existing bike paths for a painted bicycle symbol on the street. Also, in cities like Amsterdam, bicycles (with their own lane signals) are expected to stop and otherwise honor traffic controls. And these laws are enforced. Here, we have Idaho stops. In The Netherlands, you'll see people riding sedately, wearing business attire, carrying groceries, etc. Its just another form of transportation. Here, everyone is wearing spandex racing gear. And riding as though it was the tour de France. Perish the thought that a stop sign, pedestrian or traffic law should interfere with a rider shaving a few seconds off their previous best commute time.
Forget it. We need helmets here.
Have gnu, will travel.
So, How many people are there from falling off a ladder and/or slipping in a tub?
Just a note, if you helmet is damaged or dented, the material inside has lost some very significant amount of protective value and should be replaced.
The suggestion that a cyclist should NOT wear a helmet is absurd.
Just a few days ago, while taking my morning bike ride, I took the wrong angle going from road to sidewalk, and so fell.
I heard a sharp crack as I fell.
My first thought was that I had suffered a concussion. I then realized that I felt fine. The sound was not from my head hitting the pavement, but from my helmet
hitting the pavement.
Had I not been wearing a helmet I would have been seriously injured and would almost certainly have wound up in a hospital.
I have a good friend who is a pediatric neurologist. He reported some years ago that he was seeing fewer serious head injuries, which he attributed solely to the
increasing use of bike helmets.
thanks,
dave shields
http://daveshields.me
I stopped riding because of the carpal tunnel syndrome that I developed---probably from biking. Hours and hours of holding my hands on the handlebars at awkward angles is just killing me!
Now I have carpal tunnel syndrome.
vehemently disagree.
As an experienced bicyclist and mortorcyclist (I put several thousand miles on each every year), I have had my share of close calls with motor vehicles over the years. Last summer alone, I had two friends that were hit by cars and an acquaintance that was killed. The driver that killed the cyclist got a small fine of less than $200US. She and her husband were riding on a tandem bicycle, close to the right shoulder on a country road. The driver hit them so hard, that it sheared both seatposts off the bike. It was mid-morning, the sun was out, the riders were riding as close as possible to the shoulder and for some unexplained reason, the driver in his shiny corvette killed one and seriously injured the other.
Rather than giving out small penalties (seriously, less than $200 for a death!), we should be making examples of drivers that commit this kind of mayhem. Put them in jail or make them pay a substantial fine (how much is a life worth?). We need to be prudent about it, so we don't penalize drivers for something that's the fault of a cyclist.
For the record, I have had my share of run-ins with drivers, while riding my bicycle. I'm a Lance "wannabe". I clip in. I wear a helmet. I wear the silly spandex kit. I have had soda bottles, coins (mostly handfuls of pennies), trash, and cigarette butts thrown at me. I have been yelled at, honked at, and sworn at (for a while I thought my name was "get your ass on the sidewalk") on so many occasions, I wouldn't attempt to count. Yet I still ride (this year, over 3000 miles). This is the whole rotten apple thing. You get a few drivers that do some really stupid things, and the rest try to give you plenty of room.
I mitigate some of the risk by riding defensively. I don't give drivers the opportunity to hit me. I ride a lot of suburban and rural roads, which by nature are less trafficked. If a car is coming from behind me and another car is oncoming on a two-lane road, I take the lane to prevent the car behind me from passing. I use hand signals to let cars know what I'm doing, and if I have one stuck behind me on a curve in the road, I'll wave them around when it's clear to go. OK, I blow stop signs when there are no cars. I ride two abreast. I ride at breakneck speeds down hills (whee!).
Down to brass tacks
1. The government shouldn't force me to wear a helmet. I agree, but I choose to because I've done the risk analysis and figured it's worth the expense and since I've forgone hair, it doesn't mess with my 'do.
2. There should be stronger penalties for drivers that though neglect or malice, severely injure or kill cyclists. They should be made an example of (just like texting drivers have been of late).
3. If you don't think you need a helmet, then you probably don't.
And I view fellow riders who don't have a helmet as incompetent fools or idiots.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The big picture here is: Elizabeth Rosenthal will change laws with this piece. Its nothing new, but this chick will "change the world". So tell your kids to become journalists. If you want to change the world, be a journalist.
Help eliminate stupid speeding tickets
Most of the cycle deaths in London are at poorly designed junctions where big stuff can turn across the path of cyclists going forward.
That's because when you are in an auto turning left (in the UK) or right (in the USA), you are in the far left or right lane. Just because there is two feet between you and the curb doesn't make it a legal lane for a cyclist to shoot straight through. Bicycles need to observe lane discipline. Stay in line behind the previous vehicle. Or pass them on the correct side (after signaling and checking traffic to switch lanes). Then you won't get run over.
Have gnu, will travel.
There's a place in Lithia Park where the trail jumps over a road cut and lands between two very large Douglas Firs. Miss the 30" slot and die, I think.
You don't wear a helmet, and haven't had an accident where it mattered: enjoy your confirmation bias. Many, many peer-reviewed articles confirm that helmets reduce the chance of head injury in bicycle accidents. http://depts.washington.edu/hiprc/practices/topic/bicycles/helmeteffect.html
Personally, I've been cycling for work and pleasure for decades. I won a door prize three years ago at age 30, going about 15mph on a straightaway in a bike lane. Guy opened the door straight into my face, and I hit the edge of his door with the top of my head. A helmet certainly saved me from serious head injury.
Sure, a helmet won't protect you from every sort of injury from every idiot on the road, but it protects your brain, which is really the best part of you. Or is it?
When I was six or seven years old, I took a Judo class, and learnt to tumble forward and bounce up on my feet. By tucking and rolling I can avoid wrist damage, scrapes, and all that stuff. When I was a teenager, I was legendary for bouncing up and walking away unhurt from spectacular looking crashes. One time I went over the bars on a downslope, bounced to my feet then caught the bike over my shoulder as I ran down the hill. My friends all said it looked like Jerry Rice.
Too bad we didn't have video in those days.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Are head injuries extremely rare? Please cite sources.
Most of the cycle deaths in London are at poorly designed junctions where big stuff can turn across the path of cyclists going forward.
That's because when you are in an auto turning left (in the UK) or right (in the USA), you are in the far left or right lane. Just because there is two feet between you and the curb doesn't make it a legal lane for a cyclist to shoot straight through. Bicycles need to observe lane discipline. Stay in line behind the previous vehicle. Or pass them on the correct side (after signaling and checking traffic to switch lanes). Then you won't get run over.
You've never ridden a bike in traffic, have you? Motor vehicles travel faster than you and often cut you up by passing and then turning.
require helmets for anyone under 16
as part of getting your state ID card (im assuming they would not be getting a drivers license) if you want to "legally" not wear a helmet then you must on the ID form check a box stating " I choose to wave the protection of a helmet while biking AND AGREE TO BE AN ORGAN DONOR"
given that these folks may not have the best brains but the rest of their organs should be useable
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
"The real problem is that I'm an adult and I can decide for myself whether or not I will wear a helmet. The government doesn't need to make this decision for me."
Maybe you should take more attention not to fall...
If the dents and gouges come from mountain or off-road biking : the story is about urban cycling.
Twice I've got my front wheel got caught in a streetcar track and gone down (happens frequently in Toronto). The other time a limo raced away from a red light and knocked me over. (Yes, he was charged, and there was a trial in Old City Hall -- GUILTY.) I've also been in a motorcycle accident (speed wobble on the 401) where a helmet saved my coconut. And my uncle Tim died from a head injury when riding a bicycle (granted, this was in the 1940's).
So you could say that my position on requiring helmets when riding a bicycle is .. inflexible.
And yeah, probably time for a new bike helmet.
These box stores sell what customers want. The problem with cycling for most of us is that RACERS KILLED IT:
1. We don't want toe clips. 2. We don't want handlebars that force you to hunch over. 3. We don't want tires that will go out of true after 200 miles on potholed roads. 4. We don't want to spend any more than $500. 5. Steel is fine. Really. Sturdiness is hella more important than saving a few blasted kg. Yes. I said kg. Not grams. 6. We want a seat you can actually sit on..
Anyway, you see a lot of steel cruisers here with fat tires (but they are slick usually), wide handlebars, steel frames, and AFAIK most have on gear but they have handle brakes. People don't want overpricd finicky racing machines that cost as much as a car. We're not Lance Armstrong.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Shouldn;t we be talking about the shadowy and huge bike helmut lobby that owns all the politicians that create these so called "safety" laws, when we all know its the greed and corruption of said international helmut consortium!
I was in a bike accident as a kid and would have been seriously injured if I wasn't wearing a helmet.
... handguns without safeties.
Lots of theorizing by armchair quarterbacks here. How many of you actually ride a bike regularly? How many ride to work on busy streets in traffic? How many of you have had a head injury on a bicycle? Very few, I'll bet. I can speak to each of these.
My head injury occurred in my driveway when I was a kid. My handlebars came loose and I went down, head hit the concrete and bounced a few times like a basketball. I was knocked unconscious and had a lot of damage to my face. From this experience and as a parent, I support mandatory helmet laws for children on bicycles. Bikes can be dangerous, children are still learning, and we as adults owe it to them to protect them.
As an adult I ride my bike to work several times a week on very busy streets. In the US, there is zero bicycle infrastructure, so you have to share the roads with speeding cars, trucks, and buses. Comparing cycling in the US to cycling in the Netherlands is nonsense. They have dedicated cycling infrastructure - separate bike pathways that are protected from vehicles. We don't. We have to get out there and swim with the sharks.
Do I support mandatory helmet laws for adults? No. I often ride recreationally without a helmet. But if I'm riding in traffic or at high speeds, damn right I'm going to be wearing a helmet. Helmets are ENABLERS for riding in dangerous conditions.
"maybe we should wear helmets when we climb ladders or get into a bath"
;-)
Don't worry, legislation to that effect is already in the works
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
If the problem is getting around quickly without using some sort of engine.
Maybe 3 or 4 wheels and lower to the ground is a better idea? Ice/traction is far less of an issue, you don't have so far to fall and hit your head, you can perhaps be more aerodynamic and thus make up for the extra rolling resistance, and for visibility, you could have a conspicuous flag sticking up?
--PM
Having biked for years in Amsterdam and having recently moved to NYC, I can tell you there is no comparison.
In Amsterdam there is absolutely no reason to wear a helmet, but I wouldn't recommend to anyone biking through midtown without a helmet.
6 years in Amsterdam, riding my bike every single day, and never any incident, or near-incident.
After 1 month biking in Manhattan, the number of attempts on my life is already in the double digits.
In Illinois and Pennsylvania at least, this is the law. I see a lot of cars roll through stop signs too though, including most cops.
Do you even know any drivers who attempt to not exceed posted speed limits on roads by 5-10mph? This may be anecdotal, but almost all people I've met who bitch about cyclists have a history of rear ending other drivers and causing accidents, meaning they are terrible drivers.
You want cyclists to respect cars? Start by respecting the traffic laws. This works both ways.
Further, roads were originally built for cyclists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Roads_Movement
So I crashed on a bike with a helmet (in an urban environment in a commuting situation) and there was a big crushed area in front of my forehead. I suspect my forehead itself would have been crushed in if I did not wear a helmet (I managed to break my arm in that crash as well).
I cringe at the people in Amsterdam smoking and using their cellphone while biking with their kids in the basket and no one has a helmet! But maybe they know something I don't.
By the way, I've fell off of a bike in Amsterdam without a helmet, but at very low speed and took most of the crash on my arms and legs without serious injury. But I think I got lucky!
How is it done? I can't find an answer anywhere. I've never learnt, is it too late for me?
Once you have had a concussion, you'll wonder why you ever resisted wearing a bike helmet. Nausia and potentially vomitting while having a splitting headache is pretty miserable.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
So... you're saying that human bone is the same strength as compressed styrofoam.
To take your comparason to the extreme, if I for some reason chose to wear a sponge cake on my head, but noticed that it was dented after I took a tumble, should I assume that the sponge cake saved my life?
And you're calling out the other guy for not being sciency enough.
No. The protective abilities of a helmet are determined by measuring the force transmitted to the head (e.g. using a dummy head-form instrumented with accelerometers). The damage suffered by the helmet is not only irrelevant, but is simply not at all indicative of the actual force-absorbing capabilities in crash situations.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Yes, I'm well aware of how helmets work. And yet, visual inspection of the damage to a helmet still does not allow you to determine how much force, if any meaningful level, was absorbed before reaching the head. If you want to know that, you need to measure the force at the head. Also, the human skull is much, much stronger than polystyrene. A cracked or dented soft shell helmet by no means equates with a cracked open skull without the helmet.
Basically, I am not disputing a cycling helmet absorbs a significant amount of force in certain impact situations. I am saying the logic of "my helmet was cracked, therefore my head was saved" is, of itself, fallacious.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Things I have never seen: 1. a bicyclist obeying a stopsign. 2. a unicorn. 3. a bicyclist stopping at a crosswalk.
Things I have seen rarely: 1. a perfect 10 on the uneven bars. 2. a car passing a cyclist without giving them a berth of at least 2 extra meters.
Things I see all the time: 1. cyclists cutting off pedestrians. 2. cyclists running red lights. 3. cyclists cutting in and out of traffic.
I live by a college campus. I've talked with a campus police officer about all the bike accidents we've had here. He says the overwhelming majority are the fault of the cyclist. Helmets are small potatoes compared to 1. the devil-may-care attitude toward traffic laws that seems to prevail among cyclists and 2. the unsafe piggybacking of considerations for bicycles onto existing roads. Consider the bike lane: it continues straight through an intersection, ACROSS the right turn lane for cars! Furthermore, drivers are not used to this situation because it's both novel and counter-intuitive. Someone please design a better road and let's all tell our cyclist friends to obey the signs.
Esoteric reference.
As a racing cyclist of 25+ years, I've seen this discussion a thousand times. The fact is you're far more likely to get injured or die crossing the street as a pedestrian than you are riding a bicycle in any environment. The Centers for Disease Control has the mortality statistics to prove that, but just like with Windows fans vs. Mac fans no one wants to look at the facts, but instead they prefer to simply preach own "religious" beliefs regarding the wearing of helmets--and contrary to facts, religion is based on mere faith. BTW, I've had three friends killed while riding bikes over the past 30+ years. All three were wearing helmets. The helmet industry has done a marvelous job at marketing helmets in order to sell them, lots of them. They have preyed on the public not at all understanding or even looking at the actual statistics. Like it or not, that's the bottom line. (P.S. -- I only wear a helmet in races where they are required.)
/.'s Psychic-in-Residence: Psychic to the Geeks
It indicates pebbles not embedded in my skull and scalp that's still attached and not leaking blood. I haven't ever fractured my skull or even gotten a concussion, but I prefer to avoid the pain of smashing my head into the ground unhelmeted, as I have on a few occasions.
Why all this thickness? Is it September already?
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Falls aren't the only things that a helmet can protect you from. If this hasn't already occurred to you, then you must live and bike in one of those magical, sheltered places where assholes in automobiles don't look at you with enough contempt to try to hit you in the head as they pass with their half-empty beer bottles, etc.
Also, perhaps you are riding somewhere that has no trees and you don't worry about their low, over-hanging branches... a helmet is good for a number of things, and NOT just for increasing the odds that you'll survive head-butting Mother Earth.
The correct medical terms for a cyclist who doesn't wear a helmet is "organ donor"
I never did that much and now I don't at all... but I remember how miserable drivers can make things. I've almost been killed by cell phone people or mothers messing with the kids. The city and police ...the culture is just not friendly. I've been threatened with tickets by cops for breaking the law because I go AGAINST traffic. I am alive because I was able to see the distracted moron headed my way - at least if I was hit and lived I could remember what the car looked like and the plate numbers. I seriously do not know why they think it is safer to make bikes go with traffic; it makes some things less convenient for the biker but in a hostile environment it is worth it.
If you want to murder somebody, find a way to get them on a bicycle.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Ultimately it should be a personal choice, but there's an element of wisdom in wearing a helmet.
I've been in two bike accidents (and am not yet 30), both times seemingly random faceplants at low speed. The first one was with a helmet, and I looked pretty banged up for it. The second was without a helmet, and required stitches.
Helmets are that ounce of prevention, and while bicycle accidents are statistically less fatal than car accidents, safety measures are still a very good idea.
That is a pretty weak comparison. When I'm showering I (usually) don't need to be concerned about a bunch of other people moving about, same with my ladder experiences. Bottom line is those dangerous activities put the risk mitigation much more under your own control when compared to hopping on a bike where you must interact with all sorts of risks that are far beyond your realm of control.
You've never ridden a bike in traffic, have you?
Yes I have. Quite often.
Motor vehicles travel faster than you and often cut you up by passing and then turning.
So you wait in line behind them until they've turned. That's the way its done with all other vehicle types. Why are bicycles special? Don't get so offended by being passed where you have to 'get back' at them.
Have gnu, will travel.
That I personally know 3 people that have had their saved by helmets. I'm not even a cyclist!
Wonderful to read the comments on something non-technical! It appears that in spite of their familiarity with math the bulk of /.ers are clueless about logic and structuring logical arguments. I see classic "slippery slopes" and "arguments from the heap" as well as a range of other absurd fallacies disguised as "thinking."
I find the dents and gouges in my helmet to be pretty compelling evidence of injuries and pain that didn't occur..
I take the complete absence of bike-related dents and gouges in my head despite thousands of commuting miles to be pretty compelling evidence that helmeted bikers must feel free to do some really dumb things with theirs.
Here in the Netherlands I'm commuting by bicycle 26 miles /42 km daily for the last 10 years steady without a helmet.
In those 10 years I had one fall that broke my upperarm and shoulder ,
and 2 years before that 2 broken ellbows .
In my whole life of biking (38 years on the bike) I have never bumped my head because of a fall or accident.
It's the arms that will break the fall ,
a helmet would be such a drag ...
Avoid your fears , or wonder at the past
There I said it.
I keep seeing people posting that if they were mountain biking they'd wear a helmet due to greater perceived risk. Having done my bit of both road and mountain biking:
- It's easy to chug along at 15-20 mph on pavement with a road bike.
- On our rough trails, going 8-12mph is *fast*. Our average speeds for trail riding are generally under 6mph because a lot of the climbing is pretty slow.
- While mountain biking I've had to throw on the brakes for deer or elk or turkeys on a trail before. I've pulled over for motos I could hear coming. Cars? Sometimes on a dirt road, but generally they won't fit on what I'm riding. They sure as heck won't be doing 50mph in any case.
- I don't think anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of physics is going to argue with my anecdotal observation that falling on pavement at >25mph (and breaking a helmet FWIW) was WAY worse than landing on my hip in dirt and grass at ~15mph. And the latter was an unusual case... most of my mountain biking tip-overs have been due to stalling out on something at 5mph.
tl;dr version: non-x-games mountain biking (as 90%+ of us practice it) IS NOT more dangerous than road riding. Due to the speeds of the bike and the speeds of the vehicles encountered- if any- off road riding is most likely MORE safe.
In countries where cycling is common (Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan) people regard riding a bicycle as common as taking a walk. Would you walk as much if you had to wear a helmet?
Cycling is not popular in those countries because of helmets or because of the lack of them. Those countries have a culture and an infrastructure supportive of bicycling. The US does not in most places. The US has a culture built around the automobile and bicycles are not regarded as transportation by most adults. I don't have to wear a helmet to ride my bike where I live but the lack of that requirement has had precisely zero impact on the popularity of cycling around me.
The highway code explicitly says it's OK to ride bicycles two-abreast.
That actually varies by locality here in the US. Some places it is fine, others it is prohibited. Usually there is a requirement to not unduly interfere with the flow of traffic. Check your local laws to be sure.
Put real, rideable bikes back in big box stores and you'll see a resurgence in bicycle commters... in about 15 years.
No you won't. The laws, culture and infrastructure were built to support cars. Most adults in the US regard biking as a casual recreation activity, not as transportation. It has nothing to do with the type of bikes found at your local mega-mart.
I even like to bike but I live 20 miles from work and am not about to get up 90+ minutes earlier (while it is still dark out btw) ride that distance, get all sweaty and smelly and gross for the whole working day, ride back home at the end of the day to finally take a shower. Furthermore I live in a location where bike commuting would be absolutely miserable (and dangerous) for 5 months out of the year thanks to cold temperatures and snow.
is the ONLY way I'd advocate for revoking helmet laws, whether they are for bicycles or motorcycles. If you're willing to give up any and all rights to any assistance to cover your medical or other expenses due to injuries that could have been prevented had you worn a helmet, then I'm good with it. That includes not only public assistance, but private (insurance) assistance as well; unless you're willing to pay significantly more given the additional risk you're willfully taking.
I used to have the same attitude that many of the posters have regarding speed and helmets while skiing. That was until a very good friend of mine, who is an expert-level skier, caught an edge while traversing a blue ski run and self-arrested on a rock. By the time I reached him, a halo of blood had formed. Fortunately we were able to get him off the mountain quickly enough that he survived and was able to make a full recovery.
I have another friend who was skating at a very slow speed and was clipped by another skater coming in the opposite direction. He wasn't as lucky, and has permanent brain damage.
You want to ride/skate/ski/whatever without appropriate protective gear, fine, but don't expect me to foot the bill for your stupidity.
My stance on this is simple. If you're doing anything on wheels where your body is exposed and you're going faster than your two feet can carry you - Wear a helmet. The basic act of bicycling may not always require a helmet, but if you're serious about commuting regularly on a bike then you know it's only a matter of when and not if you're going to take a serious spill. There are a multitude of things that can go wrong in a flash: Pot hole, crack, popped tire, unaware motorist, bad weather. I'd prefer to wake up in the hospital without having to relearn how to speak. I've been riding on the streets of Dallas where we're finally getting our bike lanes and sharrows (Within the past month or so). Been commuting this way for 6+ years (and many others for much longer), but why are we seeing an improvement now? Because a while back the bicyclists of Dallas decided to band together and agree that helmets and lights were a necessary part of bicycle awareness. I've seen the largest spike of new cyclists in the past year and am proud to say that the majority of them all wear their helmets and just about all of them have proper lights.
I find the dents and gouges in my helmet to be pretty compelling evidence of injuries and pain that didn't occur.
YMMV, Science Guy.
I think you'll find the dents and gouges in my helmet were probably due to you dropping it. Ether that or you have a strange habit of somehow often landing on your head first when most find other body parts closer to the ground in a crash.
You've never ridden a bike in traffic, have you? Motor vehicles travel faster than you and often cut you up by passing and then turning.
No they're not. I ride my bike in traffic all the time. The cars hold me up because they are moving too slow.
FYI. You should discard your helmet when it has been dented. The expandable polystyrene in the helmet is compressed when you hit the ground and will not bounce back into shape. See for example:
http://bicycleclothingguide.com/Bike_Helmets.html
I went outside and it did not rain. Therefore, if everyone went outside it would never rain. In fact, I can point you to studies in various deserts where people go outside all the time and it never rains. Going outside is healthier, right, than staying inside, so we should all go outside.
Paid for by the Arrogant Cyclists Network
...cyclists the real problem is the way America designs its city streets and they way Americans think about movement. Living in L.A. made me give up driving; the craziness of the freeways, the sprawl of the city and the love of the car all got to me so I decide to chuck the car and switch to commuting by bicycle. I was fortunate in that I lived in Glendale and worked in Burbank which made my commute less then five miles. It wasn't easy to do and some of the biggest problems I found were lack of dedicated space for bicycles on streets, drivers who would pass at high speeds without proper spacing (I think 99% of the drivers weren't even aware I was on the road) and parked cars that would open doors without looking or pull in and out of spaces without checking to see if it was clear. I later moved up to Mountain View, CA and worked in Palo Alto, CA where my commute went up to just a little more then seven miles. The big difference from southern California to northern was the addition of bike lanes some of which even took cyclists completely away from car traffic but there still were problems with drivers and them being aware of cyclists on the road. I have also lived in Chicago, IL and Austin, TX and saw the same problems there. I now live in NYC and have been impressed by how some of the bike lanes are separated or at least shield from most of the moving traffic but I have found there is now a problem with pedestrians that blindly step off the curb into the bike lane without looking because they seem to think they are not stepping into traffic which is sort of true as they are not stepping into car traffic but they are stepping into bicycle traffic. Now I have also been to Germany (Munich & Berlin), Belgium, Amsterdam and Paris and have seen how there just isn't space for cyclists on the road but there is also awareness by both drivers and pedestrians of cyclists and the spaces dedicated for them. In the ten plus years I have ridden there have been at least two occasions that my helmet saved my life; one of which I was not moving at all, I was doing a track stand when a SUV hit me, sent me flying in the air and eventually I landed head first on the street. I always tell people I can break a leg or arm and it wont change who I am but if I break my brain well that is a different story completely and that is why I wear a helmet. I would love to be able to ride without a helmet but until the 99.9% of Americans, drivers and pedestrians, start thinking and seeing cyclists the streets of America will not be safe for riding.
I live in a city where adults love to bike to work, and its very annoying.
Even among adults, few respect the rules of the road, and there hasn't been a week that has gone by where the radio hasn't reported about some bike vs vehicle accident. Of course the cyclists believe that its always the car drivers fault, but I mean, you are in a dense urban environment with heavy commuter traffic combined with the fact that few municipalities actually build adequate bike lanes and routes; its just common sense that even if both cyclist and driver are exercising adequate caution statistics suggest a cyclist is going to be hit by a car, and you know damn well the people in the car are not going to be affected by it.
What is even more frustrating is that I live in a Canadian city where there is snow on the ground 3 - 4 months of the year. I find it absolutely retarded when I see a cyclist on a snow covered, slushy, icy road in the middle of winter. There is no valid reason to risk your life in the middle of winter driving a bike. Your bike cannot handle icy roads well, and cars can't stop on a dime on icy roads either. You are playing with a high risk or injury or death for some petulant reason to commute in the winter on a bike and I think it should downright be outlawed.
Adults have to grow up. Bikes are for recreation and kids, NOT commuter vehicles. Risking your life to get to work just to save a little on gas, somehow believe you are saving the world, or for fitness is just not worth it. Take public transportation or carpool to save the planet and then after work take your bike to an off-road trail or exercise at a gym for health.
I can understand if cities build better dedicated bike routes through the city which mostly avoid heavy traffic routes, then by all means take a bike to work. But bikes are NOT a safe or adequate solution for commuters and its pretty damn juvenile for an adult to get on their bike everyday and expect the world around them to protect their interests.
Grow up and get off the bike.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Wouldn't it be interesting if car companies were behind bicycle helmet laws?
I come here for the love
You've obviously never been hit by a car going above 30mph. You will fly, and you will likely hit your head.
-1
I used to commute by bike everywhere in Washington until the Washington ghetto caught up with me and stole it. Washington has no helmet law, and I think helmet laws for adults are stupid.
I wore a helmet almost every time I rode, because I'd be crazy not to. But the one time I mislaid it, I made the informed decision to continue on to work even though I might get hurt, weighing the small extra risk of brain injury against the risk of getting fired. I'd like the ability to make this choice on my own.
And, as other people have said, the biggest risks to cyclists come from shitty drivers -- and, in Washington, a sorry excuse for a bike lane system constructed by someone who clearly has never ridden a bike.
Now, I get that all you morons are bummed about the big bad government trampling your rights to ride around on a bicycle without a helmet, smear your brains all over the street or whatever. But there are other laws you should be protesting:
1. There's actually a law against killing yourself. Start by protesting this, remember: defiance is the best protest.
2. The water company is legally required to purify water to 'promote public health and safety by providing pure drinking water.' WHAT ABOUT MY RIGHT TO DRINK POLLUTED WATER?
3. You're not allowed to put lead in things anymore, that's fucked up. I want lead candies, paint, toys, etc.
4. By law, cigarette companies are forced to put warnings on cigarettes to decry their unhealthiness, I want to remain ignorant about the poison I'm ingesting, WHAT ABOUT MY RIGHTS?
The fight against helmet laws is stupid, and I really wish that everyone protesting them would start riding without helmets all the time. A little bit of Darwinism between them and a streetcar or a bus would do wonders.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
Safety was never the reason for mandatory helmets; they were introduced through the car lobby. The number of bicycles drops dramatically where the law is introduced and are replaced by cars. Cars kill more people than wars do.
...wearing a helmet if you feel you need one. What I'm against is government forcing me to wear one.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
I don't wear a helmet when cycling because the last serious study I saw on the effects showed that doing so meant that, statistically:
Weighing all of these, wearing a helmet didn't seem like such a good idea.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
While cycling to work on day I had to swerve hard to stay out of the way of a car. Cracked helmet instead of cracked head.
My anectdote cancels yours.
Visit the head trauma unit of any hospital. You'll be glad you aren't there.
This is evolution at work. The slice of population that does not wear a helmet will have a higher incidence of head injury out of the same number of accidents, and a larger portion of them will be removed from the gene pool. To everyone that chooses not to wear a helmet and suffers a debilitating head injury, thank you for your brave sacrifice. It's only fitting that portions of my tax go to your care, after you've courageously taken your genetics off the market for the betterment of the species.
I rode bicycles everywhere in the 1980s when I had no car. There were very few bicycles on the road. However I noticed that there were two types of cyclists. There are those that use a bicycle because it is good, that is, 'good for the earth', reduction of resources and all that, and 'good for the body', health and aerobics and all that other good stuff.
Then there are the people who ride bicycles because they are too poor to afford either a car or even expensive public transportation. In the USA almost all of the people NOW on bicycles are in the 'riding for the goodness of it' category. But back then, it was about 50/50 between the really poor and the 'public good/health' crowd.
There was no way to tell them apart and since the USA is VERY class-conscious country, this made the 'public good' riders quite upset. People would see them on their bicycles and think that they were poor and not understand that they were riding to set an example of righteousness for all BFAC (big fucking American car) drivers. So they needed a way to show everyone that while there were dirt-poor people on bicycles out there, it certainly wasn't them. So they started wearing $100 helmets to show that what was under the helmet was a valuable social resource that needed serious protection, and they weren't just another minimum-wage burger flipper with six kids. Always insisting when asked that helmets were absolutely essencial and that no-one responsible would ever dream of riding without one. But basically they only wore them to not be confused with the burger flippers, who couldn't afford helmets and were smart enough to realize that if you just made sure that you stayed out of the way of moving cars, then you didn't really need a helmet when you're rolling around at 12 MPH on a couple of cheap metal tubes.
I was in both categories: I was dirt-poor and affected with a social-righteousness mentality,. So I saw both sides. When I would point out to people that bicycle helmets were a social class marker more than a personal protection necessity, they would go absolutely ballistic. One thing that middle-class white Americans just can not stand is one of their own pointing out their hyprocisy and stupidity.
But the same people wouldn't DREAM of riding a bicycle 10MPH on a quiet Sunday morning suburban street without racing car head protection think nothing of strapping a couple of boards on their feet and sliding down a snow-covered mountain at 40 MPH wearing nothing on their heads but sunglasses and an Hermes scarf!
In Nov. 2009 I was coasting along (20mph) down the side of a busy 2 lane highway on my road bike. I was just right of the white line near the shoulder.
Next thing I knew I was getting up off the ground. WTF?
Turns out there was a boat trailer grease cap lying on the road (never saw it) and my front tire hit it square, flatted, then it jammed in between the frame and the rear wheel (bent the rim in the braking area) and flatted that wheel too.
Had I not had a helmet, major head injury (as the damage to the helmet was great and my head not at all)
So what am I saying? I will continue to ride with a helmet ;).
but that helmets make a basically safe activity seem really dangerous
those whitecoats haven't biked in barcelona. myself skating dayly through the city for 15 years now i can tell you it's ... well, really dangerous. the danger, as always, comes from others, not from the bike.
however, the point seems very valid. overprotecton is not only unsafe in subtle ways, it also encourages all sorts of bad habits, even a unsensible drone-like mindset. there's already a bunch of small cities that have experienced that removing traffic lights results, somewhat surprisingly, in more careful driving and fewer accidents.
Actually no I hit a traffic calming bump in a badly lit side street in London and obviously knocked my self out and gave my self minor concussion. when I got home in the morning I had bruising a blood all down on side of my face - i had not noticed until then.
I've avoided the price of road bikes as the area I'm in is impractical & they're therefore a recreation activity. My area is too spread-out making road bikes recreation which doesn't justify the price tag. I also typically see racing bikes which just look like a maintenance nightmare & uncomfortable.
Soon I'll be in an area more reasonable for road bikes, but if the goal is a commute, then the tools I've seen are poor fits.
As for a helmet, I see no problem wearing one. Those overly concerned with impressing strangers aren't impressing anyone anyway.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
I agree, It really doesn't take much to put on the helmet. Better than being dead. Good friend of mine, who always wore his helmet ... except the one day he needed to rush home to meet someone and forgot it in his car. Two blocks from home, somebody opened a car door into the bike lane right in front of him and he went over the door onto his head. He got up, looked over his bike a bit, talked with every body that came over to help him. Seemed ok, but about 5 minutes later he said he felt really sick, so he got a ride to the hospital to get checked over. He had internal bleeding and brain swelling and was brain dead by the next morning. Shocked the hell out of all of his bike buddies.
I always wear a helmet when I ride now.
The Netherlands, and particularly Amsterdam, have the most advanced provisions for bike safety of anywhere I've ever seen - dedicated bike lanes separated from the traffic lanes, Bike specific traffic signals, highly bike protective accident liability laws, and very educated drivers who themselves are bike riders.
Yet in 2007, 189 people died in bike accidents in the Netherlands, about half of them hit by cars. Another 7,240 were injured badly enough to merit a trip to a hospital. Those numbers are from traffic ministry data released in April 2008.
Bike injuries were a substantial amount of the total traffic deaths and serious injuries:
In all there were 791 traffic deaths (including cars, pedestrians, scooters and bikes), and total hospitalizations were 16,750.
The helmet may not save your body when hit by a car, but at least your head isn't doing the bongo jig directly on the pavement. And in a bike only accident, the only thing likely to kill you is a head injury.
I'm not sure why so many people are up in arms about helmet laws when there are no laws in the USA which require adults to wear helmets. Seeing as how there is strong statistical evidence that helmets greatly reduce the risk of death in the event of bicycle-vehicle collisions, is it such a bad thing to enforce the usage among children? How many parents would still be smoking in their cars while driving the kids to school if it were not illegal?
http://www.iihs.org/laws/HelmetUseCurrent.aspx
http://www.iihs.org/research/fatality.aspx?topicName=Bicycles&year=2010
Aside from these factors, people will choose to ride or not ride for a variety of reasons. For those who would choose not to ride because they think they have to wear a helmet, we're probably better off without them on a bicycle and giving the rest of us informed cyclists a bad name.
But I have personally seen someone traveling at a slow rate of speed on their bicycle (under 5 mph) hit a crack and fall over. I watched him die in my arms from a head injury I could do nothing about.
I have responded to sever bike accident. Every one of them where someone wasn't wearing a helmet had a head injury to some degree.
The moral?
Wear a FUCKING helmet.
also where one when riding a bike.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you think so. Do what you will - it's not my stupid brain you're putting on the line here.
I might not be a great expert on the topic - but being an urban cyclism fan and convinced user, having the bike as my main means of transportation for over five years now, I can tell you that no matter how expert you are — you will have a fall at some point. I was recently reading that, for well-seasoned cyclists, it's one small fall a year on average, and one that can mean dangerous injuries if not reacted upon quickly every five years. I don't have the bibliography handy, sorry.
So far, I'm faring quite close to this study. I have been hit once by a (slowly, thankfully) moving car, and have had three or four falls. And, yes, I am wearing my third helmet. I exchanged the first one after falling - It seemed in good state, but I recall having bumped my head against the ground, and it usually means its inner structure is not so sound. When the car hit me, my helmet was really broken in two. I remember, yes, the bump — But I would not regard it as something serious. When I took the helmet off, I was really surprised. Were it not for the helmet, I might not be happily writing as I am now.
So, for me, the helmet is indispensable, even for a two block ride. It has probably saved my life - or at least, it has saved me from a much worse accdent.
I have better knowledge of when a helmet should be worn than some bureaucrat who has never ridden, as was the case when MHL was mandated in Australia all those years ago. I have been an avid cyclist for 9/10 of my life. I have competed on several levels in BMX, MTB and Road. I spent 5 years as a bicycle courier in Sydney and I have the scars to prove it.
I know that wearing a helmet on my road bike when doing 50kph with the traffic is a smart thing to do. I know a full face helmet for downhill MTB is wise. I also know that when I ride to the shops with my wife, we shouldn't be required by law to wear a helmet. I know the chance of accident in different circumstances, and the risk is negligible.
Cycling is not the dangerous pass time it is made out to be.
Having said that, here are some tips for motorists:
And cyclists, here's some tips to help keep safe:
As an adult, I simply don't need to be told I need to wear a helmet while riding a bicycle. Considering it isn't even mandatory to wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle (where I live anyway) I find the whole concept beyond silly. People throw out it's to prevent serious injury if you are hit by a car, well you might as well wear one if you walk anywhere. It doesn't lead to a safer activity in all except the most miniscule of situations that it doesn't even register on the map.
Was in Dresden recently. Lots of people not wearing helmets - then the students came back to town (75,000 of them) and the vast majority of them are wearing helmets. Helmets are for smart people. They have heads worth saving and can do the maths.
(BTW life saved twice by helmets)
Because your helmet never leaves your head & never gets put in places it could get dented & gouged?
My guitar has dents & gouges all over it.... does that mean its been protecting my pelvis all these years?
It is already known that since air-bags, people push the limits driving farther than they did before. Why? With the air bag, they are confident they won't die.
I have also noticed this with hikers and hunters and snowmachiners, etc.
They have their rescue beacons, or whatever, and go places and do things they would not have attempted before because they know that rescue is a 9-1-1 call away. I wouldn't mind so much (as a taxpayer funding these rescues), but they tend to leave common sense behind.
Speaking of US laws, can Can we compare the number of lives saved by the TSA to helmets?
I seem to have woken up on the wrong side of the Internet this morning. I looked back over some other stuff I wrote and it was crabby too.
I don't think I'll wake up liking bike shops tomorrow though. The $3000+ purchaser is their best customer, just like the 32 oz. big gulp buyer is the best customer at 7-11. You made me remember that back in the late 80s/early 90s there *was* a "decent bike shop" where I grew up. It started out selling lawn mowers and servicing them. They got into bikes as a sideline. Never pretentious IIRC. This was when bikes were still made in America. Maybe that's part of the problem... OK... I'd better quit before I get crabby again...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I grew up in Holland and never wore a helmet. Currently I live in Canada and it's mandatory to wear a helmet. A couple of years ago I was involved in an accident (not my fault, but in the end who cares about that) that caused me to fly off my bike and land on my head. I was seriously injured and my helmet was cracked. However, I survived this accident thanks to the helmet. Cycling in Holland is safer because the infrastructure is made for it and the drivers are aware of cyclists. In Canada, the infrastructure for cycling is poor compared to Holland and the drivers are less aware of cyclists, thus it's more dangerous to cycle, so wearing a helmet makes more sense.
I'd be dead without mine. Picture this: me moving about 30 miles per hour down a long straight hill in the Bay area, pedaling hard, and misjudging the light I see changing on the side street, I plow my bike full-on into the side of a car turning right in front of me. The 100+ feet of skid marks I left on the asphalt before correctly determining that I would not be able to stop were not enough to avoid the collision. About 30 feet before my bike slammed into the side of the vehicle, I stood up on the left side pedal, timed my departure, and pushed off, jumping from it in time to fly through the air just behind the car as my bike proceeded ahead. It was a cool day, and I had a jacket on. I sailed upside down, face up past the car and landed on my back and head, sliding along the ground on my jacket and helmet for a good 20 or 30 feet farther down the slope. I remember coming to rest and laying there for a while, then getting up to check the car and the accident site. I was fine, though a little shaken up. Traffic had stopped in each direction and people were swarming around the car. The driver got out, completely white. I looked at the dent and my bike, crumpled and considerably shorter than it had ever been from one end to the other. People said they had seen sparks when the collision happened. I told the driver, looking at the dent, "I'm sorry about your car." He said in a high voice, "Never mind about the car! Are you all right?" I said I was fine. I felt pretty wobbly, though, and someone took me the rest of the way home. Later, I took the bike into our local shop, which was a good one. The guy behind the counter turned around from the bike he was working on, and when he saw what I had carried in, he put down the wrench, came around the counter, put his hand on my shoulder and said firmly but gently, "My friend, that bike is history." I would be dead without my helmet. Bikes are not just for tooling around parks slowly, looking at the scenery. And even when you think they are, or just vehicles for ambling gently from place to place, things can turn ugly in an unexpected way very, very fast. *Wear your helmet.*
Please don't mention September around here. Some of us are still waiting for 1 October, 1993.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Oh yes, exactly, had this from a motorbike this week, bad scare AND I [like the [some of] drivers] signal and use road-position to signal 'intention'. Best reason to be out front on the reserved bit at junctions.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
...I find this too be too stupid for words.
Anyone in the longboarding world will tell you that even a fall at low-speed can result in brain damage and/or death.
Wear a helmet or else...
I'm fairly indifferent myself however there's no denying that they are inconvenient, uncomfortable, reduce vision and make head movement for all round vision more difficult. T
"uncomfortable and reduce vision"? WTF are you wearing? (I trust that it's not because your eyes placed somewhere strange ;-) )
I live and commute by car and bicycle. The number of people on bicycles with helmets is not minuscule. I would say that it is roguhly 50-50. Not wearing a helmet is higly frowned upon where I work (Hospital, Department of Neurology).
People run stop signs and red lights all the time where I live. The police catch a few and write tickets. It may deter the person getting the ticket, for a while. It is not a deterrent for the masses who continue to break the law. It is about revenue for the police departments.
At the local university there was a main bridge across a bayou on campus. The bridge had a posted 10 MPH speed limit. Every fall semester the cops would sit at the bridge writing $200 tickets to anyone going even 11 MPH on that bridge. This did not help student safety or deter people from speeding on campus. It was a simple collection of revenue from people unfamiliar with the campus.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
A helmet is a good predictor for an inexperienced or insecure cyclist. This helps me spot them and avoid them, or be more careful around them. I don't expect from a helmet wearer that they have good control of their bike. Making helmets mandatory for everyone kills that distinction.
One problem with helmets is some people believe it gives them license to do whatever they want to without consequence.
Another problem is people wear helmets which don't fit properly so they slide off or are not protecting critical areas and may even contribute to injury.
The thing is a helmet won't save you but it very likely could. As a knowledge worker it's worth wearing to provide added protection to your most valuable asset.
I've ridden countless miles over the past 35 years. In that time I've seen helmets evolve from flimsy padded leather straps to heavy turtle shells to the wonderful designs of today which cool your head and offer outstanding protection. While I don't regret not wearing a helmet while competing on the continent back in the 80's when it was how it was done, I feel fortunate I didn't die or suffer severe injury racing in what was frequent violent and dangerous conditions over mountains, cobblestones through wind, rain and snow. It's what we did.
I have complete confidence in my cycling abilities. I also am confident that in the complex system that is encountered when cycling the open road there are more variables out of my control to list. I wear a helmet every time I ride.
Yes, it is not a silver bullet. However I'd hate to leave my wife behind with a nagging question, "would he still be alive if he'd worn his helmet?"
Bike trail. No motorized vehicles. Back tire blows out. First thing that hits the ground and bounces is the head. Always wear a helmet when biking.
Wearing a helmet does not encourage any sort of jackassery on my part, indeed, I ride my bicycle as nearly akin to a 90-year-old-grandmother as is possible. I learned many painful lessons in the 70s, and use them to inform my actions today. I ride in town primarily on side walks, this may partially explain why my helmet has probably not had to save me from any fatal injury.
When I encounter a pedestrian, I stop the bike and walk.
I am not an ordinary asshole biker.
Allow me to re-reiterate that my helmets have repeatedly saved me from painful head-slams and skin injury, not necessarily fatalities. I find this fact indisputable, and if you knew me at all, you would concur. Pain avoidance is a valid motivation, IMHO, and I use it to justify my helmet use.
I ride off- road a lot. That is another way of avoiding car-human-interface and possible fatality. Unlike in my foolish youth, I do not ride in a reckless or particularly fast style. In fact, I am always the slowest person in sight at any place I have ridden for at least ten years. I generally push my bike on foot up steep ascents, and very frequently get off and walk on steep descents. Mostly I ride on graded fire roads, but I do like a good singletrack. (we called them cow/elk trails in my day.) Tolman Creek Road up to Mount Ashland is my current favorite ride.
I use my skill at somersaulting over the bars as a technique to avoid painful injury. I consider it a routine response to certain situations, and I suppose the alternative for the rest of you is flat crashing, with the attendant contusions and fractures. Painful and avoidable, I will continue to eschew that.
I perfected the somersault method long ago, before bicycle helmets were useful, available, or effective. (I did use a motorcycle helmet for BMX and stunts back in the 70s.)
A helmet allows me more freedom of motion/trajectory when I do a somersault because I don't have to work so hard at protecting the noggin.
Basically the helmet is effective and useful for saving damage to all the rest of the body. All you folks who think a wrist/knee/elbow injury is the worst one should expect are [expletive omitted] doing it wrong. Tumbling is preferable to a flat landing, in fact the last time I remember pain from a crash was when a poorly built front rim collapsed under hard braking and slapped me face-first into the pavement. (Major hand sting, shin dentage.)
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
I think the whole question of helmet encouragement and requirement stems from the perceived responsibility of government and society to safeguard the health and safety of its citizens but is also for its own convenience. Such laws or policies often are enacted to protect those who have to pay for the injuries of individuals who are injured and subsequently require public care. This is the way of the world, but in the process, the rights and responsibilities of the individual get lost or are at least minimized. I haven't worn a bicycle helmet in decades. They are expensive, uncomfortable, a hassle to carry around, hardly stylish, etc. and they have only once prevented a head injury for me, and of course I am glad I was wearing one at the time. But in my many years of riding (I turned 60 last November), I have developed my own personal safety strategy the far outweighs the focus on if and when I might be injured. This includes riding on back streets, extreme shoulder areas, and even sidewalks with due respect for pedestrians. I avoid major roadways without bike lanes especially during peak hours, I avoid major intersections and especially queuing up in a turn lane far from the curb preferring crosswalks until I can get back to a curbside route. I also ride a low cruiser style bike so I'm not high and tilting forward ready to fall. I did have a major accident of this sort with my old mountain bike (I am 6 feet plus and the bike was a high frame) where I hit a traffic circle in the dark (without a light - my bad) at moderate to high speed and I sailed all the way over it flipping all the way over onto my shoulder and back. My head never once hit the pavement although I spent 4 days in the hosipital nursing broken ribs and a totally separated shoulder. Bottom line: I take full responsibility for my personal safety and the consequences of my bicycle riding. I only ask that no one bother me with chides about not wearing a helmet (people do this) or legal requirements that I have to wear one (I hope this does not happen.) In my motorcycling days I rarely wore a helmet out on the road (unless it was raining) but usually in the city. Second bottom line: it was my choice to wear one or not.
Great; that's all we need-- even MORE people encouraged to not wear helmets. Guess what-- a good 50% of them in my city (the supposed #1 bikers' paradise) also ignore all traffic laws and refuse to use bike lights at night. Did nobody think that encouraging people to ignore one safety measure is going to have the effect of making them think they can forget about others, too?
Is autonomous bicycles...
I lived in Falls Church summer 2011 - yeah, it was quite hilly, but there were ups and downs like any hilly area.
I went on a bunch of short rides and occasional ~15mi rides.
My hometown isn't as hilly, though not flat either. I ride a similar amount and distance at home, occasionally going farther.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I've biked heavily for years, in the US even, and my few injuries have involved scraping up my arms and/or legs, not hitting my head.
If I remember my helmet, great. If I don't, I keep on riding and not worry about it.
I ride in the shoulder, sidewalk if shoulder doesn't exist or is occupied. I use crosswalk lights when available. I generally don't have trouble with cars on the road.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
"Elisabeth Rosenthal writes...'Yes, there are studies that show that if you fall off a bicycle at a certain speed and hit your head, a helmet can reduce your risk of serious head injury,'... 'But such falls off bikes are rare... [and that]... many researchers say, if you force people to wear helmets, you discourage them from riding
You don't wear seat belts because most car-rides end in serious injury, you wear them in order to avoid the extremely unlikely occurrence of a car accident.
THINK! It's patriotic
I generally just keep the helmet on during stops. I obviously don't need it while off the bike, but the best way to 'store' it is to keep it on. I had to take it off at the barber shop of course, but that's about it.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I believe that mandatory helmets for anyone riding in a car (driver and passengers) would reduce injuries much more than mandatory helmets for bicyclists. There are many more of them and they are going much faster. It would also be more convenient, since the helmets can simply be stored inside the car when the car is parked.
I like my hands, arms and nuts just as much as my head. And while I can live without those parts, I don't see the government stepping in to protect those parts of me.
Fix the roads, secure the boarders and leave me the fuck alone!
Has not happened to me in the last 35 years of cycling. Currently I'm riding about 9500 km/a and of course I hit the ground every now and then, especially during winter.
Either for psychological or physical reasons so called "helmets" must increase the risk of serious accidents.
can be increased by repealing helmet laws.
I ride a bike in London, don't own a car and am in my 60s, to declare interest. I don't wear a helmet and am unwilling to do so.
The arguments that I citing in the heading are summarised here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Social_Cost that is, neither car nor bike is particularly 'wrong' about any of this. The best thing [that we don't really have in London] is safe bike lanes.
So you've made the assumption that the only way you can have a head injury from cycling is by being hit by a car, and have built an entire argument around this premise then, huh?
Please allow me to relate the following two stories of accidents I've been personally associated with, one where the cyclist was wearing a helmet, and one where they weren't, with differing outcomes, and both occurring on cycling trails completely away from any motorized vehicles:
Back in the late 80's/early 90's, my brother (then a teenager) was riding helmetless on a cycling path, doing a good clip downhill when the front forks on his bike, without warning, broke off completely. As you can imagine from the physics, he landed face first on the pavement. He broke his skull in numerous places, broke his nose, jaw, and numerous teeth, had hair and skin ripped from his scalp, and suffered from a major concussion. At the hospital, my parents were told to expect that he may not make it through the night. He spent over a month in hospital, with his jaw wired shut. My grandmother sat at his bedside every day feeding him pureed watermelon through a straw. And while he has made a full recovery, 20+ years later he a) still has no memory of the incident, b) has numerous dead teeth, and c) bears the scars.
Two years ago I had an accident while cycling to work on a paved commuter cycling trail (a "mature urban cycling system" as someone terms such trails below), when I lost traction on a wooden bridge that spans a creek at the bottom of a hill. After sliding for 10m or so, my front wheel hit the pavement on the other side of the bridge at an angle, and I wound up going down hard. I broke my collarbone, impinged my rotator cuff, bruised all the ribs on one side of my bode, along with associated scrapes and bruises. I suffered no head injuries (and was assessed in hospital for concussion), but the impact at 20+km/h broke the helmet in half. I required a few months of physiotherapy for the collarbone, shoulder, and neck issues, but my head was fortunately unaffected.
So if you think your skull is somehow invulnerable, and there is no possible mechanisms for accidents and skull injuries because there are no cars nearby, then you are a total idiot. Helmets are cheap and effective, and there is no reason why any rational person shouldn't consider them standard gear when cycling. They do save lives -- and more importantly, minimize suffering.
I wouldn't wish what my brother and parents went through on anyone, including you. So good luck on your continued tempting of fate. I hope none of your loved ones ever has to hear the words "we don't know if he'll make it through the night" after you go out for a quick cycling trip.
Yaz
Drunk driving is about 100x more important than this.
I cycle 10-20 miles a day and everything I have seen leads me to believe that my greatest dangers are 1) drunks 2) speeders. I wear a neon yellow helmet and my bike has lots of lights (including EL wire!). I don't care what the law is. The attitude that people in the US have towards casual drunk driving is far far more important than people being used to bicycles on the road.
I've ridden a bicycle now for fifty or so years. I've driven a taxi for the disabled carrying wheel chair passengers who fell over skiing or in the bath or while having sex and every other activity known to man. Bike riders did not figure prominently in the wheel chair population. My contact in a hospital emergency room says that it's because they die because of many things but often because of massive head trauma. He won't ride a bike any more but thinks helmets are sensible. I would like to see more data but can't find it. Yet. Traffic has changed in the last thirty years. Life is more intense, faster and roundabouts are not for the faint of heart. I wear a helmet. After an unavoidable collision with a stray dog, helmet number one was destroyed but my head was intact. During an unsatisfactory shoe clip disengagement when stopping, I fell over and totalled another helmet. [I now no longer use toe clips.] OK - my fault you may say. But humans do make errors. So, tell me - how many times does this have to happen before I say to myself helmets seem like a good idea. A seriously good idea.
"When in airports, railway stations and all public places, keep an eye out for possible exploding penguins."
No one ever really believes in how valuable helmets are until they have personally smashed their second helmet .. and walked away.
"When in airports, railway stations and all public places, keep an eye out for possible exploding penguins."
Helmets are a good thing but there is no need
for extreme helmets for many folk.
I have taken some bad falls as have friends and I can tell ya that helmets
are a good thing.
Stated slightly differently helmets are a tax, there are no helmet hooks or
racks at work. Heck it is hard to get a decent coat hook in California on
a rainy day.
Work places MUST wake up and provide places and hooks for employees...
gone are the days when an engineer worked 24/7 and only needed a dark
box in the corner to nap in (I kid you not).
Women in high heals need sensible shoes to walk and drive in. Again the ... to be sensible.
work place makes this a PITFA
Winter is at hand fellow workers, Demand worthy coat hooks and places to
keep sensible outside shoes in the work place.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
But your question *assumes* that there is a marginal or theoretical reduction in the chance of serious brain injury. That assumption may be dead wrong. As others have pointed out, there are a number of ways in which helmets may lead to an *increase* in the chance of serious brain injury, including:
- you modify your own behaviour to be more risky, eg you cycle more quickly, cut traffic more -- because you feel safer
- other road-users modify their behaviour to be more risky, because they see you as lower-risk
Additionally, you are also only looking at brain injury, and only thinking about yourself. Which is fine for your own calculus, but inadequate for the people setting the regulations. They need to take into account that one way leads to brain injuries, the other way leads to heart disease.
Just as the pro peloton has conditions where helmets are not mandatory there are times that I wear a helmet and times when I do not. To encourage cycling in this country the best thing to lose is the logo covered Spandex, including the Depends inspired shorts. Logo covered Spandex evolved from the more comfortable, functional and beautiful wool jerseys bearing team names of European bicycle racing which professional cyclists are paid to wear. Why serious American cyclists think it is necessary to wear petroleum derivatives covered in advertising they are not being paid to distribute simply in order to take a bike ride is a mystery that is hard to fathom by people who would both enjoy and benefit from including bicycle riding in their lives but can't imagine wearing the cult costume.
Well, I was supposed to wear helmet with electric bike and for 1-2 months I didn't, maybe waiting to see where I could find a cool one, and I knew there is almost no way I could fall in a way to hit my head... you know what? I hit my head at an invisible horizontal pole at good speed, nobody could see that pole even 911 that came to stop the bleeding.. I still don't know what were the injuries to my head.. but I know I never bike now without helmet
I ask both sides to make this entire argument really simple. Just go by the statistics, which are consistent and factual after being gathered and analyzed for at least 20-30 years now by no less than the Centers for Disease Control and the National Highway Transportation Safety Board, neither of which have an agenda either way. And as stated in the topic's starting quoted paragraph, that very large body of data simply does not support the purely anecdotal evidence the pro-helmet crowd without fail uses as justification for their position. The pro-helmet zealots is one group which simply refuses to be swayed by the facts. If they were swayed by now indisputable facts, they'd religiously put on their showering or walking helmets before stepping into the shower or crossing the street as pedestrians--both activities being far more likely to result in bodily harm or death than cycling without a helmet. (This is why I hate religions. Facts are very rarely are taken into consideration. Belief and faith without any supporting evidence whatsoever is good enough.)
/.'s Psychic-in-Residence: Psychic to the Geeks
The same point was made in New Scientist Magazine several years ago. It pointed out that the statistical risk from inactivity was higher by far than the risk for biking bareheaded. I bicycle commuted on rural roads with some pretty crazy drivers for several years without a helmet and grew up riding all over the place on my bikes sans head protection.
The only person I know personally who died in a bicycle accident was wearing a helmet. It didn't protect him from his own lack of judgement and the subsequent broken neck. He crashed on his own gravel driveway practicing for a race. No car was involved.
I wear my brain bucket and armored riding gear when I ride my motorcycles but not on a bicycle.
If we want to mandate helmets for bicyclists lets mandate a year or 10,000 miles operating a motorcycle before a driver gets a license to drive a car too. That would weed the dumb ones out of the gene pool and train the survivors to never take anything for granted while driving.
Yours, Stubborn Old Fart
Charles H. Wilson
This reminds me of a similar counter-argument for increasing car safety: if seatbelts were banned and cars were fitted with a large metal spike on the steering wheel, pointing towards the driver, you could be pretty sure that people would drive more carefully.
As a former skater, skateboarder, cyclist, and rock climber my position is that using helmets for head protection is a must. Even as a skateboarder, protective gloves, knee and elbow pads should always be worn. I also believe cyclists and ATV riders should wear special footwear, knee and shin guards, and protective garments. Even professional motorcyclists know the extreme benefits of wearing protective gear. There is absolutely no excuse for at least wearing head protection. The cranium and skull bones are not adequate protection for the brain and its membranes even when encountering mild impacts. Properly designed helmets can even protect accident victims from serious neck and cervical injuries. Please pursue any or all of the activities I have referred to in my comment. They are not only physically beneficial but also are psychologically beneficial. But please wear the proper protective equipment. You may be exceptional at any of these activities. But it only takes one careless moment or another careless individual to either permanently cripple you or end your life.
you should replace your helmet after each significant accident.
even if it looks ok, chances are that the accident severely impacted your helmets ability to absorb more shocks
Might I once again reiterate: My helmets often have scrapes and rocks imbedded in the shell. They are from somersaulting my way out of difficulties that would injure elbows, knees and shins for all of y'all, but that I bounce up and walk away from UNINJURED. the only two times I've crushed the foam, I tossed the (obviously destroyed) helmet. Helmets have saved me from fatality once, maybe twice or more, but
it's all about not hurting the rest of my body.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
See ya in the hospital as the state pays your bills as you're kept alive as a vegetable.
I hit Ctl+F, typed "china" and went through the 17 pages of stupidity. Sigh. Do i really have to be the one to remind you asshats there are more people riding bicycles in East Asia without a helmet, nay, without even having considered something as laughable as a bike helmet, than there are clowns advocating its use or debating its usefulness in internet forums? Learn to ride.
I find many of the postings on this blog terrifying and ignorant. I am a hard core urban biker - I average well over 5000 miles per year and have done so for the past 10 years. I bike in Madison, Wisconsin - USA which is often recognized as one of the most bike friendly towns in the United States. I would never bike without wearing a helmet.
In the past 10 years I have gone down 4 times. Once when I was hit by a car, once when I was forced off the road accidentally by another biker, once when I skidded on wet leaves and most recently when I simply lost focus and hit a pot hole. Anyone that says experienced urban bikers are not going to go down is a fool. If you bike a lot sooner or later you're going down. It's that simple.
On at least two of my crashed I can say with certainty that my helmet saved me from significant injury. One of them I believe might have killed me. On the other one I have absolute no memory of striking my head - it wasn't until I looked at my helmet that I realized it was cracked - and realized that likely could have been my skull.
It would be all well-and-good if these were only personal decisions impacting nobody but the rider but that simply isn't the case. The impact of head trauma extends to our health care system (where people expect to be taken care of even if they don't exercise personal judgment and care) to our insurance system to our loved ones and even to the life of the momentarily forgetful driver who lost focus and hit me. Wearing my helmet saved both she and I from a lot of terrible consequences.
Incidentally, I used to work in the automotive industry in crash worthiness and I find the ignorant responses on this blog identical to those used by people rationalizing why they didn’t need to wear their seatbelts. Simply no understanding of the mechanics , physics and physiology of impact trauma.
Wearing a helmet has been shown statistically to reduce the risk of head injury by 85%. While many of you consider helmet hair to be profoundly uncool – trust me – cerebral trauma is much less cool.
In 2009, 91% of all bicyclists killed were not wearing helmets.
I’m sure I won’t change many (or maybe even any) minds but I would almost beg you to consider wearing your helmet. They are the very best protection you can have in a very uncertain world.
I just ride on all the side walks in the burbs, this completely buffers me from traffic and feel it is where cyclists belong. I know they say sidewalks are for walkers but guess what share the space. Plenty of room for you, your ugly child and precious dog and myself to pass.
We had a local biker get his foot caught and fall over at the curb. At zero forward speed he suffered brain damage with no helmet. Another had a jogger step in front of her on the rail trail and was killed. My daughter attended MI State. They had far more serious injuries from bikes on campus than cars.
I used to go by bike to high school, I enjoyed it, about 25 km each day, five days a week. At uni too, I would go everywhere by bike, even return drunk from the pub. Since the helmet became mandatory I didn't take the bike more than a few times. It made the whole thing 'unnatural' to me, or perhaps I became lazy all of a sudden, I don't know. During my high school years I had several crashes, into other bikes, into cars, and a car even crashed into me. Still, I don't see how a helmet would have made a difference in any of these situations. Surely I got bruises, and once even fractured wrist, but I never thought my life was in danger. Thinking about it now while I stopped getting exercise, I am probably living of all those years of exercise now.