Comment by gpm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gpm | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I live in Toronto and bike to my university on a daily basis. If helmets were mandatory here I wouldn't, and if I wasn't I probably wouldn't even own a bike. I also bike recreationally to nice parks and stuff - stuff I wouldn't be doing since I wouldn't have purchased a good bike in the first place.

I've tried to explain why below, but the real point is just "from personal experience I can't image it isn't detering people from riding bikes".

The main reason a helmet is such a problem is just convenience. A bike, like a car, I can just lock up wherever I go. The helmet I would have to carry around with me all day. That makes whole day just slightly more inconvenient, and it's honestly just not worth it to me.

The second is that wearing a helmet makes me feel substantially less safe. There are two direct reasons that I can articulate for this, but I'm not sure they fully explain the effect. There are also statistics that support me, showing that wearing a helmet is correlated with a increase in collisions.

The first reason is wearing a helmet substantialy impedes my hearing. This is probably a bit foreign to people who are use to driving, but hearing is incredibly useful for knowing when a car/truck/bus/etc is coming up behind me. A helmet increases wind noises to the point where the signal is much less useful, I'm not confident I will always hear a car in time to react with one on, and I'm worse at pinpointing the location. Incidentally I find the lack of sound when driving fairly disturbing and scary, since I'm so used to being able to use it.

The second is that the extra weight on my head seems to make looking around take more psychological effort, so I end up doing it best, so I end up having less awarness of cars around me. This is a rather surprising (to me) effect, but I'm certain it's real. Of course it's not the end of the world because I do still make substantial effort to look around, it's just epsilon less often which makes me epsilon less safe.

A lot of those convenience problems are solved with airbag helmets since they do not affect hearing, sit on the neck, weight less and take significant less space when carried around. They do however cost about the same as a whole (on the cheaper end) brand new bike. If/When those drop to the cost of regular helmets then I can see how mandatory helmets make more sense.

What kind of helmet have you been wearing that causes loss of hearing and wind noise? That's news to me - I've been cycling with a helmet for 15+ years and have never had a helmet (gone through a bunch of them) that's made any noise. Quite the opposite of you, if I'm on a bike without a helmet I don't feel safe. Been biking in Austria, Poland, London for years.

Something like this: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1178/5804/products/Airflow...

It's not total hearing loss, but it catches the wind which makes noise once you're going a reasonable speed. Similar to the noise you experience if you orient your head the wrong way when there is a reasonable amount of wind going by you, but you can't get rid of it by turning your head. I also find I'm much worse at pinpointing direction all the time with it on (presumably because of sound bouncing off of it... since ear's generally pinpoints sound via echo).

I've found other people who agree with me on this, and other people who don't notice it. My best guess is that the people who don't notice it just never learnt to use sound as such an important queue while biking, particularly with respect to direction, but I don't know.

From Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson, 1992):

“My question is, you are covered from head to toe in protective padding. So why don’t you wear a helmet?”

“The suit’s got a cervical airbag that blows up when you fall off the board, so you can bounce on your head. Besides, helmets feel weird. They say it doesn’t affect your hearing, but it does.”

“You use your hearing quite a bit in your line of work?”

“Definitely, yeah.”

Uncle Enzo is nodding. “That’s what I suspected. We felt the same way, the boys in my unit in Vietnam.”

[…]

“Our job was to go through the jungle making trouble for some slippery gentlemen carrying guns bigger than they were. Stealthy guys. And we depended on our hearing, too—just like you do. And you know what? We never wore helmets.”

“Same reason?”

“Exactly. Even though they didn’t cover the ears, really, they did something to your sense of hearing. I still think I owe my life to going bareheaded.”

I felt similar until I got hit by a car while riding my bike. Now I don't really mind dealing with the helmet at all as I ride around. I also got older, and don't really mind looking "lame" caring a helmet with me.

What’s wrong with just putting the helmet with the bike when you lock it up?

You will shortly no longer have a helmet. Locking it to the frame is difficult in direct proportion to how effective locking it up would be.

I’ve locked a helmet up with my bike all my life, in several different cities; It’s a complete non issue to me. What is the concern; that someone will use a blade to cut the helmet strap so that they can steal your broken helmet? It’s effortless to leave your helmet attached to your bike.

Edit - I’m not saying I support laws enforcing helmets for adults; I just don’t think that helmet theft is a big concern.

This really depends on which city you're in and where in the city you leave your bike+helmet.

I've had the ultra-cheap lights on my bike stolen. I've seen plenty of other bikes stripped of everything except the frame itself.

This is why I always take my helmet (and my lights) with me, lock my bike and the front wheel with a good lock, and chain lock my seat down for good measure. Haven't had anything stolen since -- even in some sketchy areas.

> This really depends on which city you're in and where in the city you leave your bike+helmet.

London, famous for rampant bike theft, and I've never had a locked up helmet stolen. Lights, I take with me; I'm not mad.

A broken strap isn't a broken helmet. Anything not bolted to a bike gets stolen, including lights and seats.

It's just kind of a privileged thing to believe. Many people don't live in places they can safely leave their possessions alone in public.

And even if the actual rate of crime is lower than the perception, it's still an anxiety people have to add to their daily routine.

I agree with your presentation - the issue boils down to it not mattering how easy it is, it's the perception of how easy it is. Once people see they can leave their helmet with the bike and it won't get messed with or stolen then it can become normalised and the perception falls away. But the inhibition is in the perception that requiring a helmet makes it difficult.

Unrelated anecdote: the first time I went out with a helmet was the first time I banged my head, I ducked under a branch as I normally would, only I'd not allowed the extra room, banged my head hard and came off my bike (gently). I still wear and encourage helmet use.

I've considered it. A combination of

- Rain (possibly solvable with a bag of some sort, but this becomes increasingly complex, consider locking).

- Locked bikes are annoyingly often bashed slightly. My bike can take the abuse, but a bashed up helmet becomes even more useless, sometimes without even showing it.

- Makes locking the bike substantially harder. If I don't want my helmet stolen I'd have to lock it through the actual helmet and not the straps. That would be a pain in the ass with a ulock (and other lock types are considered even less secure for the bike).

Why is it such a big deal to put you helmet on you presumably:

put your coat on

check you have your phone and keys

Pick up your briefcase/backpack

before you leave for work?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com