Should bike helmets be compulsory? Lessons from Seattle and Amsterdam | Hacker News Reader

Should bike helmets be compulsory? Lessons from Seattle and Amsterdam

theguardian.com

18 pointschowyuncat70 comments

Many times I've seen Seattle compared to Amsterdam, particularly on the topic of bikes. One simple distinction between the two most often overlooked is topography. Amsterdam is flat; it's proudly engineered out of the lowlands, and it has canals to prove its level. Seattle is quite hilly, and has a major freeway and an interstate which run through its middle, both overburdened with traffic. Consequently one is nigh perfect for the bicyclist, and the other is at best a significant challenge.

Two things make your objection less relevant.

First, Amsterdam had similar problems to the US in the post-war era until the 1970s. That is, the cities were being rebuilt for cars, bicycling infrastructure became worse, and traffic deaths rose. The city had to be re-engineered to get where it is now. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=3&v=XuBdf9jYj7o for a video.

Second, and concerning topology, look to Trondheim, Norway as an example of a bike-friendly city with hills. And from what I've read, Portland, Oregon is also pretty bike friendly, with similar topology to Seattle. So, why can't Seattle be more like Portland in this respect?

> has a major freeway and an interstate which run through its middle...

I'm not sure what this means... are you talking I5 and 99 ? There are underpasses and overpasses for those.

Of course there are limited means to get around, over, and under, those very large sources and attractors of car traffic; in a notably limited space. So attempting coexistence between those and bicyclists is a challenge. That was my only (apparently) poorly expressed point.

Montreal can counter almost every complaint about "we can't do that here!" with cycling.

Montreal has hellish weather, mountains (it's literally the name of the city) and expressways.

They manage to have fantastic cycling as well.

Please state how any of this relates to the effectiveness of helmets, and the trade-off between a reduction of the magnitude you're claiming and the reduction in overall bike usage.

Cars and hills and bicyclists, and a history which doesn't include bicycles and cars in close proximity. You see no distinctions between the two cities as regards bicycle safety, and bicycle safety equipment, as a result of this?

So your point is that Amsterdam is already more safe to ride a bike in, so wearing a helmet doesn't add safety anymore, whereas in Seattle it does? I mean if this is really what you're claiming, then I hope I don't have to spell out the flaws in that argument.

No need to be curt. He's simply saying that if Amsterdam is a much safer and convenient city for cyclists, one would expect both higher participation and lower incidence of injuries. A comparison of these metrics across these two cities would therefore be dominated by non-helmet-enforcement effects, and therefore it's more difficult to tease out the causal relationships than to simply compare the top level statistics.

Surprisingly, there are very few studies on the actual effectiveness of bicycle helmets. Lots of times, articles will just say "X% of people that are injured aren't wearing a helmet". Which of course is next to worthless.

And most studies that have been done, are done by people from the medical field, who are at best only qualified to comment on a slight portion of the issue. Their conclusion is always 'if you fall sideways on a curb without a helmet, you'll be dead' (duh), but then the dangerous part is where they conclude 'so we need to wear helmets always, and make them compulsory'.

That argument could apply to pedestrians as well. We don't make Grandma wear a helmet the day she's issued a walker.

Another interesting thing to study would be whether cyclists change their riding behaviour when required to wear a helmet. Similar to the effect on driving behaviour of mandatory wearing of car seatbelts.

This is indeed one of the main reasons that modern cycling advocates generally consider helmet laws a bad thing.

Helmet laws make the general public less likely to cycle, and as many would then drive instead, thus have an overall negative effect on public health.

There are plenty of studies, the problem with them is that there are arguments made constantly that despite the efficacy of helmets in reducing the severity of head trauma, something about the helmets somehow makes them more dangerous.

I think my favorite stupid argument though is that it increases the size of the rider's head, which increases the likelihood of ground collision in an accident. As though it's so easy to stop yourself from falling as long as there aren't two inches of material strapped on your noggin.

The basic fact is that if you do have a head injury on a bike, a helmet is likely to reduce the severity of it. Everything else is an unquantifiable argument about human behavior.

The main thing is that it's not just a medical issue, so citing medical studies isn't sufficient. Even if wearing a helmet decreases your injuries 100% of the time (and there are a few counterexamples to that), if a helmet law causes more deaths overall, it's still a bad law.

The main negative effect of helmet laws that I've seen cited is that they reduce the popularity of cycling as a transportation mode, and that can have extremely negative effects on public health (due to increased driving, reduced physical activity, and indirectly as a general damper on pro-cycling sentiment and infrastructure changes).

[I think Australia's helmet law is one of the main examples people talk about.]

Yes, also that more cyclists means a greater awareness of them amongst drivers, which improves safety. Making helmets non-compulsory can make riding safer in that way, encouraging more people to ride.

Yup. "Safety in numbers" is definitely an important factor.

In the end, it's far more important (in terms of safety, as well as for other social goals that cycling promotes) to get people on bikes than it is to micromanage the way they do it.

It's worth nothing that helmet usage is extremely low in pretty much all the great cycling nations (Netherlands, Denmark, Japan, etc), all of which have cycling mode-share orders of magnitude greater than any place in the U.S.

[In Japan it is becoming increasingly common to see very young kids wearing bicycle helmets, especially when they're seated on their parent's bike, but they seem to stop wearing them sometime in their grade-school years.]

This argument is remarkably familiar; it's basically the same (on both sides) when the motorcycle helmet laws were being argued in the 1980s. It's easy to forget that people actually argued that motorcyclists might be safer without helmets, but they did.

This argument? Which exactly? There are multiple to choose here, and I'm not seeing how they apply to motorcycle helmet laws.

In any case, the helmet discussion is a silly one. You wouldn't argue that the victims in a school shooting should have been wearing bullet-proof vests. I mean, I'm sure there are studies on the remarkable efficacy of bullet-proof vests when faced with bullet impact, and clearly everyone of us should wear one. But we don't, because we fully understand that a much more sane course of action is to make sure there are no high-powered bullets hitting school kids.

Similarly, when faced with the impact of a 2 ton car at speed into squishy flesh it is a hopeless task to effectively diminish the forces involved with a piece of styrofoam. The clear factor in traffic mortality is the presence of machines with enough power to satisfy the electricity demands of a suburb street. There is no solution that doesn't involve eliminating the source of danger.

In what ways is it safer to ride a motorcycle without a helmet?

Unlike most bicycle helmets, typical full-face motorcycle helmets impair your ability to see and hear what is around you. It is actually illegal in some jurisdictions to drive a car while wearing a motorcycle helmet for this reason. Because most motorcycle crashes are the result of the motorcyclist being hit by another vehicle, no helmet means you have a better shot at avoiding an accident.

That said, I wouldn't go near a motorcycle without a helmet. You're going to fuck up and hit your head eventually.

It's easier to see what's going on around you, and you can hear better. I don't consider this worth the risk of head injury personally, but the difference is there, and it's noticeable, particularly vision.

It's also somewhat less tiring to eschew the helmet, but I similarly always wear the helmet anyway.

Helmets reduce field of view, reduce hearing, and may make a rider "feel safer" which can lead to carelessness. Don't know if statistics back any of that up, but those are the common reasons I've heard. Better to avoid an accident than survive one.

Sounds nice in theory, but I've never once been involved in a bike accident that was caused to any degree by my helmet, and I've been unvolved in two accidents that weren't of my doing (or even avoidable), both of which destroyed my helmets.

Accidents, by definition, aren't entirely avoidable.

I'm not for helmet laws, but let's be reasonable about the benefits helmets provide, with very little downside.

Never, even at low speeds (this applies for cyclists, too). But apparently the argument is that motorcycle riders will approach their riding with more caution. To a certain degree, I will agree (when I wear less gear and no leathers, I ride with paranoia set to 80%, and assume the car behind me is going to drive with the intent of attaching me to the front bumper).

People fall and hit their heads and die walking and running all the time. Why not make pedestrians wear helmets?

Or how about you stop using the law (violence) to protect people from themselves.

EDIT: Laws like this are also a great excuse for police to harass people. We don't need more of these.

I wear a helmet, because I want my daughter to wear a helmet when she rides and so I set a good example. But I have no idea why anyone believes it's appropriate to make a law about this. Risky behavior that puts others at risk is fair game -- you can't speed in your car, for instance. But to have another adult forcibly stop me, scold me, and fine me if I don't want to put a piece of plastic on my head? That's insane. Same goes for motorcycle helmet laws, seatbelt laws, and drug laws. With that in mind, the premise of the article is flawed. I do not care which policy "saves more lives." I don't care which is safer. If I see another adult riding around without a helmet, the thought doesn't occur to me "Oh no! How unsafe! Won't someone compel him to protect himself?" So should I accept the same sentiment applied to everyone collectively? (And if someone wants to argue that my getting injured imposes a cost on society, blah blah blah ... we're just not going to agree about the responsibilities of the individual to the collective and the role of government therein)

The argument is that if you get severely injured the tax payers get stuck with the bill (US may be different) so other people are affected; I'm in favour of compulsory motorcycle helmets and seat belts, if you want to opt out fine, but pay a higher insurance premium.

I know that's the argument, but I disagree with the premise -- you're essentially saying that it's valid for the government to enforce healthy decisions when it wants to limit the chances of a future payout. This would mean that the government can use its status as the "insurer" (in the sense that it operates the safety net) and the "enforcer" (in the sense that it alone can use force to compel you against your will) in complementary ways. Why not make a law that I can't have junk food? Or that I must exercise? Obesity has a cost on society as well, no?

You do have a point but unlike eating junk food, having a seatbelt on is a binary and can be detected without much argument.

I think you should wear a helmet, but I think it is ridiculous for the government to require you to wear one.

Same with seatbelts, frankly.

Agreed, I just finished writing the same thing in many more words before seeing the point had been made.

As I understand it, making helmets compulsory makes people use their bikes less, making them get less exercise, shortening their lives more than they would have saved (statistically) by wearing a helmet.

While I'm not one to subscribe to conspiracy theories, I've always thought that bicycle helmet laws and related press were pushed by helmet manufacturers.

There's been fairly interesting data piling up about mandatory helmet laws.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/29/business/a-bicycling-myste...

> The number of head injuries has increased 10 percent since 1991, even as bicycle helmet use has risen sharply, according to figures compiled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. But given that ridership has declined over the same period, the rate of head injuries per active cyclist has increased 51 percent just as bicycle helmets have become widespread.

...

> Many specialists in risk analysis argue that something else is in play. They believe that the increased use of bike helmets may have had an unintended consequence: riders may feel an inflated sense of security and take more risks.

Cars are more reckless around bicyclists and drive closer to them when they see they are wearing a helmet:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10bike.html

We also see here that bicycles are the lowest risk of head injury while traveling streets and sidewalks:

http://www.howiechong.com/journal/2014/2/bike-helmets

Turns out you're much more likely to suffer a head injury in a car, or walking than on a bicycle. Should helmets be mandated for driving and walking? Evidence suggests it would make more sense for those activities.

Wearing helmets increases the likelihood of neck injuries: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457500...

Feds had to stop claiming bike helmets prevent 85% of head injuries (a commonly cited statistic) after their statistical analysis was found to be bogus:

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19036/feds-will-sto...

The type of cycling in Amsterdam is certainly different than what I see here in DC. In Amsterdam, most bikes are the classic "Dutch" style utility bike - slow, stable, and easy to step down/off the bike. Here in DC, cyclists are almost universally on some variant of the "10 speed" - most with drop bars, higher COG, and higher average speeds.

As a cyclist myself, I ride with or without helmet based on conditions. On my road bike or mountain bike? Helmet, always - I've had enough concussions to know I don't want another. My cruiser - usually no helmet, but it's use is almost exclusively below 10mph and on a bike trail, not roads.

Some of that is just the preference of the demographics likely to bike, but in urban cycling with cars particularly, speed equals safety. Hence why female riders bear the brunt of harassment such as close overtakes.

Much healthier to be able to be assertive and occasionally accelerate away.

It's been compulsory in New Zealand since the late 80's or early 90's. I'm sure initially people felt like dorks but after 20+ years its normal. People will get over it.

Where is the argument? Reading the comments on HN becomes worse every day. People just writing some stuff to prove, I don't know, that they are very cool or extremely liberal or whatever.

The argument that people won't wear a helmet because of a fashion statement? It's not in the article - but its a fact that kids for instance won't wear helmets because of pair pressure. The same as people used to not wear seatbelts before they were compulsory.

Ever been to NZ?

Kind of where I live.

...

Are you using New Zealand as an example of how to effectively enable cycling? Are we talking about New Zealand the island east of Australia, or another one?

No, the drivers and cyclists in NZ are almost at war with each other for some stupid reason, the same as plenty of other countries I might add. I'm just saying that people get over what prejudices they have about cycling with a helmet.

NZ isn't an island (chain) to the east of Australia, Australia is a continent to the west of New Zealand :P

Right, so we're talking about the same NZ, so no cycling-related policy as enacted there should be used as a positive example of how to enable cycling (or cutting off reliance on cars as the only mode of transport, but that's another discussion).

People didn't 'get over' it, there are very few cyclists there (rightfully, because you'd have to be insane to drive a bicycle for e.g. the commute through Hamilton I used to have, which is not even a big or busy city, although in terms of distance it would have been perfectly fine). All these things exacerbate each other - the lack of bike lanes, the lack of awareness by car drivers, compulsory helmet wearing, lack of supply of suitable bicycles and supplies, lack of legal protection of cyclists, ...

Bike helmets are not just vanity a problem:

   - where do you put your helmet when you arrive?
   - ho do you prevent looking unsightly after you arrive? Hair gets smashed, sweat builds up, helmets and straps leave impressions on your face, ...
   - additional cost and general cognitive overhead

All in all, bicycle helmets have very few benefits, benefits which are absolutely negated by their negative consequence - especially having helmets being required by law.

I commute by cycle frequently in Wellington, have done so for more than ten years. Before that I spent my entire childhood cycling the width and breadth of Auckland City, and while I haven't had a big accident I can think of two off the top of my head which happened to people that I know and would undoubtedly have been a lot worse if they were not wearing a helmet.

NZ's cycle culture has nothing to do with helmets, it has more to do with prejudices and a lack of city planning to accommodate cycling.

> NZ's cycle culture has nothing to do with helmets

Your statement includes a bias error because by definition, NZ's cycle culture does not include people who are too negatively affected by a helmet law.

For example, this mohawk-wearing cyclist in London, https://www.flickr.com/photos/37423935@N00/4627678338 , could not be part of NZ's cycle culture and still wear a Mohawk. Those with large hairstyles ( http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-p9Hg7lXpZyo/Tfdg2zqZK-I/AAAAAAAABk... and https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/04/fb/1d/04fb1d715...) are less likely to be part of the NZ bike culture.

Nuns ( http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/24/saturday-poem-n... ), Sikhs (http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/619324/sikh-in-cour... ), and others who wear religious headgear are not as likely to be part of NZ's cycle culture.

It also excludes those who would prefer to wear more appropriate gear for the weather ( https://dutchindublin.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/purple-lad... ) or a fancy hat instead ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2356789/Queen-Maxima... ).

I say no fines for not wearing a helmet. It is only an excuse for local law enforcement to make more $$.

It's actually the same question as should marijuana be legalized

Bike helmets should be compulsory only if

- Having a five-point harness for every car is compulsory (alright, I'll admit this is somewhat overkill and rhetorical)

- Cars are certified yearly as being road safe (not the case in all states in the US, but I think this is the case in the EU)

- Drunk driving has extremely severe penalties (10+ years in prison) beginning with the first offence.

The motorist is driving a much more dangerous vehicle capable of causing serious injuries to themselves and other parties. Let us all behave in a responsible manner.

I'd add "Mandatory and significant jail time for leaving the scene of an accident". A local lawyer just got off with a 30 day sentence after he hit a cyclist and drove off because he claimed he thought he hit a deer or rock. And this was after he admitted that he just came back from a function where he was drinking. The prosecutor was looking for a felony hit-and-run, the judge reduced it to a misdemeanor because "This could have happened to anyone." So, the moral of the story is -- if you hit someone while drunk, don't stop, just drive home and sober up, then claim you thought you hit a deer.

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/S-F-attorney-who-killed-...

Exactly. If being at-fault in a severe traffic accident cost you driving rights long-term, then I'd be understanding that we're taking safety seriously. Until then, talk of mandatory helmet laws is just trying to get the cyclists off the road.

/wears a helmet when cycling.

>Drunk driving has extremely severe penalties (10+ years in prison) beginning with the first offence.

Maybe you haven't noticed, but at some point, a meaner nastier criminal justice system does little or no additional good at the expense of harming innocent people. That point's long been passed with DUI laws, and people still do it.

Which, given how many repeat DUI offenders there are, is great justification for long prison sentences.

If a person can't be trusted to put either the bottle or the keys down, then they need to be restrained. I'd rather find a cheaper way than prison, but it's insanity that you can drive drunk and receive a punishment that serves as almost no disincentive to continue to do it.

Most of my friends would be in prison under your idea, and their children would have grown up without their parents, and I fail to see how the world would have been better off that way.

Oh sure, they MIGHT have killed someone because they were a little bit over an arbitrary and always decreasing blood alcohol limit, but they didn't, so I'm not sure what a 10 year prison sentence would accomplish.

I suppose at some point you can create such massive penalties for every possible misdeed that people become too terrified to leave their homes, but I don't want to live in that world.

Most of your friends have children, then drink and drive? And "my idea" is what's wrong here?

I don't even know where to begin...

Look around you next time you're out at a restaurant. See all the beers and glasses of wine? You think they all took Uber or have a designated driver?

Everyone drinks and drives. That's not even illegal. But it's not that hard to take one sip too many and break the law. Seriously, get off your high horse. There are over a million DUI arrests per year in the US. That's just the tiny percentage they catch!

It's not a high horse, so much as it's an avoidable problem. $59B/year in the US is spent on alcohol-related crashes. (Just crashes, not the insane amount of crime that's alcohol-related.)

There's a death every 51 minutes from it. 31% of traffic-related deaths.

17% of children under 14 who die in a car crash involving an alcohol-impaired driver. Over half of those are in the vehicle driven by the drunk driver. That's utter insanity, and I wonder how many of those people were close to the limit and something you'd deem just fine.

I'm not naive enough to think everyone at the restaurant took Uber or have a designated driver, but I trust you're also not naive enough to think that it's not a serious problem, and it's one that, more often as not, kills innocents.

The problem is that people can get away with it, and largely do. (As you allude to.)

Please don't pretend it's a small problem, and that discussing whether longer/harsher/different sentences would motivate more people to take Uber or get a designated driver is the problem. That's as counterproductive as adopting a smug tone when discussing policy.

Edit:

> I suppose at some point you can create such massive penalties for every possible misdeed that people become too terrified to leave their homes, but I don't want to live in that world.

Enough with the straw man, BTW. I'm pretty Libertarian. But the moment you demonstrate that you can't safely manage the responsibility of driving, then I'm all in favor of strongly limiting your ability to do others harm. It's the height of American selfishness to think that the current system is sufficient relative to the problem that exists.

> Maybe you haven't noticed, but at some point, a meaner nastier criminal justice system does little or no additional good at the expense of harming innocent people.

Agree, and I think a similar approach should be followed regarding civil penalties for not riding your bike with a helmet. $5 fine – okay, I'll take it. $100? That's a quarter or half of what my bike costs.

I don't follow your logic. Safety on modern cars is taken pretty seriously. I don't think many people die in cars today in 10 mph wrecks, but that's plenty fast enough to die on a bike going head-first into the ground.

> Safety on modern cars is taken pretty seriously.

Yes, at the time of manufacture. How about maintenance? If your car has severe mechanical problems, you are endangering everyone around you (and of course yourself as well).

> I don't think many people die in cars today in 10 mph wrecks

Not that many cars go 10mph. Why should it be some kind of benchmark for car safety? Freeway speed limits are usually between 55 and 70mph, and are violated with a level of casualness that varies by state.

Safety on modern cars is taken pretty seriously by regulators, but not by law enforcement.

If you kill somebody when you're behind the wheel, and you were sober?

You'll usually get dinged with "failure to yield", which basically means "there was an accident and it was your fault because your car was where it was when it had no right to be". Like turning when the intersection isn't clear or something.

That comes with a $500 fine. A $500 for taking a life by negligence.

Yeah, besides airbags and seat-belts, we collectively don't give a crap about vehicular safety.

You going to give a cost benefit analysis of any of these? I don't see any reason to see a better cost-benefit than wearing a biking helmet.

As said above helmet usage is compulsory in NZ (As is yearly warrant of fitness for cars younger than 10 years old and six monthly check-up for cars over 10 years old). The five point harness is not the same thing though as you aren't harnessed to a bike. Compulsory seatbelt wearing and air bags are more apt, and these things are currently in place.

One thing that is interesting is that compulsory wearing of helmets has not decreased fatalities to any great extent. But if I ever have an accident I am sure glad that I wear one.

> As said above helmet usage is compulsory in NZ (As is yearly warrant of fitness for cars younger than 10 years old and six monthly check-up for cars over 10 years old).

Yes, this sounds pretty good. I think the situation on car safety is much better in the EU and other countries compared to the US.

> But if I ever have an accident I am sure glad that I wear one.

As will I. I do wear a bike helmet a lot. What pisses me off is that I can be fined $100+ for not wearing it when the guy next to me with a car that seems to be running on coal and two tires with questionable pressure goes scot free.

They would be fined for not wearing a seatbelt though.

> One thing that is interesting is that compulsory wearing of helmets has not decreased fatalities to any great extent.

I don't think that's the point: I don't think most bike fatalities are from the kinds of injuries that helmets mitigate. I think the point of helmets is reducing the incidence and severity of a certain class of non-fatal injuries that are experienced without them.

Exactly, if you get hit by a truck a helmet isn't going to do much, but if you go over the bonnet of a car that pulls out without looking then it might mean the difference between a few scrapes and a long stint in hospital.

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