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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.'"
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.
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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.
It might take a generation to get fully adjusted
Great, so we only have to deal with tens of thousands of people with brain injuries until everyone is adjusted. I have a better idea. Wear helmets, train (and punish if necessary) drivers, and build bike paths at the same time. And by the time everyone is fully adjusted, bike helmets will be the norm and the added safety margin from helmets will remain.
The reality is that you'll be seriously injured anyway if you are hit by a car while driving a bicycle, helmet or not.
By the way, in the Netherlands (where as you might now cycling is very common on the roads) the person driving the car is always liable in a car-bicycle collision. It doesn't matter if the cyclist was running a red light, it doesn't matter if it was on the wrong side of the road: if a car hits a bicycle, it's the car's fault. Always. This makes motorist very aware of cyclists, so despite of everyone cycling everywhere, accidents involving cars aren't actually that common at all.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
You have no idea about what you're talking about. I live in Tokyo. Here hundreds of thousands take their bicycles everyday to go just about everywhere. If what you say was true, then thousands would die every year from bike accidents because wearing helmets is completely voluntary.
Guess what? That isn't happening. People aren't dying left and right.
I can't speak for others, but I can tell you that *I* wouldn't ride my bike as often if I had to carry an annoying helmet with me every time I went somewhere.
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there's also an element of risk compensation.
http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/articles/archive/overtaking110906.html
Drivers percieve cyclists wearing helmets as less fragile and drive closer to them and take more risks when overtaking. this of course means that they're more likely to hit and kill them.
As always the problem can be summed up as:"Bad Drivers"
Also, some research showed that drivers overtook helmeted cyclists with less room compared to unhelmeted cyclists, i.e. the drivers take a higher risk because they assume the helmet is protecting the cyclist.
I get the impression that a number of car drivers are more hostile towards "serious" cyclists than "casual" cyclists (my choice of words). That is, they resent lycra-clad, helmet-wearing cyclists going fast on racing bikes, and are more accepting towards people in ordinary clothes on modest bikes. That might partially explain the result you report.
And in these same countries where cycling is common, cyclists aren't hit by cars at all on a large scale. How could that be? Could it be those people are actually smarter or better at driving, or does it make more sense to assume these motorists are simply used to having cyclists on the road? And if they can become used to it, why couldn't people in other countries as well?
In the Netherlands, if you see a car with a "D" on the license plate (or almost anything other than "NL"), ride defensively. The difference between Dutch drivers' awareness of cyclists and foreigners is immense, not because they are better drivers, but because they're so used to bikes (and most drivers are cyclists, too). They instinctively look to the right before making a turn, slow down to let bikes through, don't crowd, don't pass too close, and leave space for bikes when they are stopped at a light or in traffic. (Which is particularly surprising considering the total disregard cyclists seem to have for the rules.)
Contrast that to (my experience biking in) the US where motorists angrily accelerate around you, often giving you a dirty look for inconveniencing them with your stupid bike as they narrowly miss you with their side-view mirror. And where they just suddenly veer right, into a parking spot, even if there is a bike lane (which they love to double park in) without noticing the cyclist that almost face-plants on their trunk. I've lived in a few big cities in the US, and it was a common joke that you're not really a cyclist until you've been hit by a car (I went completely through a windshield). I've also lived in a few small towns, where you'd have to be crazy to bike because everything is 20 miles apart and uphill and motorists treat you with an odd reverence.
Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
"...in every country where helmets are mandatory, cycling isn't very popular." -- > what a ridiculous generalization! Here in NZ. biking is very popular and one hardly sees a rider without a helmet and other safety / visibility aids. Helmets make good sense. If _you_ can be dissuaded from riding a bike by the fact that helmets are mandatory, please stay the fuck off, I don't want to have to swerve to miss your unconscious corpse because of your fashion hangups.
... but there are lots of European countries where drivers are fully used to having to watch out for people riding bicycles (and small scooters by the way).
"Watch out" is right. Here in Copenhagen the traffic is a nightmare for everybody else than the cyclists because the cyclists have zero respect for the traffic laws and the other parts of traffic. Red lights are routinely ignored by a majority (95% turn right on red and 50-60% ride straight through intersections on red) and if you're driving a car, expect cyclists from every direction in intersections, regardless of the light. People in buses routinely get hurt due to emergency braking as a result of cyclists doing suicidal stuff in front of the bus.
Oh, and they continue to be a nuisance when parked as well because most bike riders seem deadly afraid of walking which results in huge piles of seemingly discarded bicycles packed tightly around entrances to malls, stations and similar. There will be bikes parked against almost all lamp posts, traffic signs, free-standing trees and walls.
The police did a raid a few months ago at a major intersection. They were in uniform and had marked cars with flashing lights parked nearby, and yet they actually managed to run out of fines, writing up over 500 cyclists in less than an hour, most for running the red light or riding on the pavement or crosswalk. Some actually claimed that it used to be legal to ignore the red light, or that the traffic lights plain and simple didn't apply to bicyclists...
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
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.
Of course the injuries depend a lot on drivers' attitude. But this can change *very* fast. Just as an example, I live in São Paulo, Brazil. About 1-2 years ago, it was extremely rare for drivers to stop at pedestrian lanes (in places that did not have a red light). You could walk all day long for weeks and no driver would stop so that you could cross a street. Now, after a safety campaign (not anything out of this world), drivers respect for pedestrians has improved a lot. It is far from perfect, perhaps far from good but it happens often. And this was a change that took a little more than 1 year.
I ride my bike to work and buses were a weapon of mass destruction. After 2 accidents that killed bikers in a very important avenue and bikers made very intelligent (and noisy) protests, buses are no longer as dangerous as they used to be.
I started riding my bike to work about 5 years ago. At that time seeing anothe bicycle on the way was kind of rare and I used to hear about once a week drivers yelling at me that they paid car taxes, implying that I should move out of the street. I haven't heard this sort of remark for years and today on the same route I see a large number of bicycles. Deaths haven't increased (they may have decreased actually) and helmet use doesn't appear to have changed (just plain observation no real stats). As a side note, I should mention that in poor neighborhoods bicycles were always common and that's where most of the deaths used to ocurr (and still does) but in middle class regions bicycles were considered either toys or sport.
The thing is, what makes cycling safe is numbers. Drivers get used to bicycles and know what to expect. And a bicycling culture helps a lot. People talk and suggest better and safer routes, safer riding strategies and if an accident happens we can make sure everyone knows about it.
By the way, I wear a helmet but think that imposing them would be the worst thing for bicycle commuters.
Now you know of one!
Well, technically I don't have to wear a helmet. See, the law here in Sweden says it's mandatory for people up to 15 years of age to wear helmets. Since I hadn't ridden a bike since about that time I had no idea it wasn't mandatory, so for years I was thinking of all the use I could have had of a bicycle but found ways to work around it - mainly walking a lot - because it's too awkward to carry around a bicycle helmet everywhere. It's too expensive to leave on a clothes rack, too bulky to carry around easily. A real annoyance. Of course that's not the case if you ONLY ride for sport, or if you ONLY ride to and from work where you have a locker or whatnot... but if you use a bike as your main transportation you find yourself carrying a helmet with you to cafés, meetings, shops, the cinema, concerts, and so on.
Actually I've seen a guy being refused entry to a concert because he had a bike helmet with him. Apparently the day before someone had swung one around by the straps and smashed someone's face in. So I guess they do have their uses... but really. No.
Anyway, now that I've found out I don't need to wear a helmet, a bicycle is a much more interesting option, that would increase how far from my home I could travel, and let me get to cheaper stores further away and so on. Of course by some coincidence now I live in a place where everything is in walking distance... but if that changes, I'll be getting myself a bicycle. As long as they don't change the law.
If helmets become mandatory, I'll stick to walking and public transport. It's less inconvenient.
Cyclists should wear helmets because it can save their life if hit by a car, not to stop a bruise when they fall over at traffic lights because their fancy shoes didn't unclip.
There was an article on Slashdot a couple of years ago that was a large study that refuted the idea that helmets increase safety. They made three conclusions:
There are several reasons for the last point. Cyclists wearing helmets subconsciously think that they are safer and take more risks. Drivers drive closer to cyclists with helmets because they perceive them as less fragile. Helmets upset the airflow around your head and so reduce your spacial and situational awareness.
I do see a lot of people driving at dusk without lights around here though, and there are lots of studies that show that this significantly increases your chance of being in an accident.
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Kids going outside seems less common now too. I am a parent, so this is something I have noticed a lot. Me and a couple of my neighbors always take our kids outside to play on the weekends. They are all 6 and under, so we still stick around outside, but give them freedom to roam a bit. Or we take them to the park. But there are a lot of kids in the neighbourhood who you never see outside. We only know they exist because you see them going form their front door to the car. Otherwise, they never go outside. That park is almost always empty, except for my kinds and my neighbours.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Drivers who hit and kill cyclists never saw them in the first place, helmet or not. I had this debate with an anti-helmet buddy of mine who two weeks later was hit by a car and suffered a major concussion. The driver thought she hit a squirrel. He still has problems concentrating. I don't agree with helmet laws forcing people to not be stupid, but I know as many bikers who've been hit as I do that haven't.
For me, I'm wearing the helmet. Catastrophic frame failure two months ago - the head tube separated from the top tube and down tube while riding on flat, smooth road. Knocked me unconscious briefly - I took the brunt of the fall on my left temple and it turned that side of my face into goulash.
Two things worked for me - I wasn't going real fast (<15 mph) and I was wearing a helmet. I shudder to think what I could have been up against had my head hit the concrete directly.
I'll probably never have this happen again, nor am I likely to meet someone who has it happen to them (oddly, this bike had about 6000 miles on it). But the inconvenience of wearing the helmet is inconsequential when compared to the benefit.
Regarding recreation vs. transit, it really depends on where you live. Bicycles (and farm implements) are already banned from highways in most states, so you shouldn't see them there. In Chicago, I know far more people that commute by bike than by car. Many of them earn 6 figures, own homes and pay plenty of property taxes, so they're paying just as much for city roads as the drivers, without putting nearly as much wear and tear on them. Some of us live close enough to work that this is easy. Cars on the roads really slow down us bike commuters quite a bit. Bike commuters slow down cars quite a bit. Busses slow down cars. Car traffic slows down busses. Why should one taxpayers choice of commute get preferential treatment over another?