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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 ?
"car's part of the road" ???
This is a mistake. Where does it say the road belongs to cars?
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.
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!
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.
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"?
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