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Comment by willis936 | Hacker News Reader

Biking isn’t safe enough to not wear a helmet just because there have been changes to make biking less likely to have an accident. If putting on a helmet is too much work then physically moving yourself to your destination is wayyy too much work. That is to say, it isn’t too much work and it isn’t a barrier to entry. At the very least citizens should appreciate the danger of biking without a helmet even if they choose to do it. Willing the problem away because biking is good on paper isn’t good enough.

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Biking isn't completely safe. Do helmets really help all that much? Very questionable[0]. Wearing a helmet, for example, promotes less safe behaviour by both cyclists and by drivers around them.

The sense of safety a helmet gives you when you cycle is mostly a false one. Lack of cycling infrastructure is a far greater danger anyway. In countries with the best cyclist safety records, no one wears or owns bike helmets, like not figuratively 'no one', but literally, no one. Can't be a very significant standalone determinant of bike safety then, can it?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet#Effectiveness

From the re-analysis cited in the wikipedia article:

"Do bicycle helmets reduce the risk of injury to the head, face or neck? With respect to head injury, the answer is clearly yes, and the re-analysis of the meta-analysis reported by Attewell et al.(2001) in this paper has not changed this answer."

https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.aap.2012.12.003

If it's behavior that's being targeted by policies around helmets, then why would a more care-free attitude towards biking make it safer?

It doesn't make cycling safer for the individual, it makes society safer and people healthier. Individually riding with a helmet is safer than riding while not wearing a helmet, but if everyone rides a bike without a helmet, fewer people die and people live longer because there are far fewer cars on the road.

Fewer people are driving cars which are much more lethal to non-drivers, so fewer people get killed. People are more active and live longer because of increased physical activity.

Making bikes more appealing/ easier to access by not requiring helmets makes people collectively safer and healthier.

> Biking isn’t safe enough to not wear a helmet

Could you explain why you think that? That’s a pretty general statement. Are you imagining city biking here, or something more like racing in the country-side?

Some data about how this is dangerous could be convincing: https://youtu.be/Boi0XEm9-4E count the helmets.

Just to be clear, I’m not against helmets (I wear one, as is custom in my country).

Great video! Demonstrates Dutch cycling culture really well. Thank you.

No, I don’t have the data on hand or the time to hunt down studies that may well not exist. That shouldn’t keep people from knowing what they know. City biking regularly gets up to 15 mph. No I don’t have a citation. Falling over the handlebars is likely when coming to a sudden stop. Brain injuries are not going to be rare occurrences in such cases. No I don’t have a citation.

> Falling over the handlebars is likely when coming to a sudden stop.

Only if you are riding a bicycle completely unsuitable for commuting or general urban use; like a mountain bike or racing bicycle.

Commonly used bicycles in Denmark and the Netherlands look like this:

https://omidbikes.nl/wp-content/uploads/mat-zwart-7.jpg

Note the handlebars and upright rider position that basically prevent going over the handlebars during an emergency stop. That kind of accident just doesn't happen here.

I still prefer reverse-pedal brakes (terugtraprem).

Of course, even then, as a teenager I still managed to get myself into some interesting situations a couple of times. But never went over the handlebars :-P

Can you say whether you are yourself an active cyclist?

Yes I am. It’s nice for all the reasons people beat the drum about, but the biggest one for me is convenience. Driving and parking in a city is a nightmare. Biking is marginally slower than taking the bus and by comparison biking grants much more freedom. Frankly, I think it’s insane that anyone who regularly bikes would not wear a helmet. I push back so hard against this notion of not wearing a helmet because of how catastrophic a tiny incident can be.

Thanks. I also bike for my day-to-day transport, and love it.

I go back and forth about the helmet issue personally. Though I've almost never not worn one.

My general feeling is that it's not much of a burden to me. And while the cases where it's actually going to help are narrower than most people think (especially people looking from the perspective of a car impact), it does improve the outcome in those cases quite a bit. So it's worthwhile.

If nothing else helmets are good places to mount lights, which are definitely an important safety measure! :)

I guess I can't disagree with you on that, because ultimately I agree bikers should wear helmets and if I biked I would wear a helmet. It's just that the infrastructure to protect from cars is vastly more important.

As a pedestrian who walks about 30m each way on my morning commute, it terrifies me that if a car strikes me at 31MPH I have a 50% chance of severe injury. At 42 MPH, it's a 50% chance of death ( https://aaafoundation.org/impact-speed-pedestrians-risk-seve... ). Atleast I have a separated sidewalk most of my commute, minus street crossings. I would never consider biking in my city because I have to be there on the street next to a bunch of cars.

Cars are not the only reason to wear helmets. Simply falls are enough of a reason: you're not a pedestrian when you're on a bike, and you're susceptible to injuries that pedestrians simply are not, even if the bike is not moving. Standing/sitting on a mechanical contraption simply is not normal for the human body, and it's very easy to get your leg trapped in a way that you break it, or your ankle, or hit your head on a curb or the pavement. Don't forget, the roads that we cycle on are also not natural in any way, and our bodies were not evolved for them. Concrete and asphalt are hard, not like dirt, and hitting your head on it can cause severe injury or death, again even if the bike is not moving. Do people fall over on bikes? Not that often, but probably a lot more often than pedestrians do, and because of the bike getting in the way, you're more likely to hit your head on something.

You are not debating the same thing. Nobody is suggesting that riding without a helmet is as safe as riding without.

The lack of helmet laws makes me safer on my bike regardless of whether I wear a helmet or not because it means fewer people are driving cars. Cars are far more likely to injure/ kill me than a solo crash, adding barriers to getting people to adopt bikes makes cycling more dangerous. The more people on bikes, the more cars expect people on bikes, better bike infrastructure, and it makes people in cars more alert to the presence of cyclists.

We have a fairly popular bike-share program here. People can poke a few buttons on their phone and get access to a bike instantly. With a helmet law, that's not the case, they have to be prepared in advance. The presence and popularity of that bike share makes me safer. Removing several hundred motorists from the road every day in our city has a far bigger impact on cyclist safety than the presence/ absence of a helmet.

I'm not advocating for mandatory helmet laws in that post, I'm just pointing out why you should wear a helmet on a bike, regardless of any laws. You, personally, will be safer with a helmet; it's a simple fact of physics. Sure, fewer cars means it's safer for cyclists, but you keep focusing on cars and ignoring other dangers with cycling: other cyclists, pedestrians, slippery/uneven roads, or just plain mistakes by the rider, all of which can result in a fall where your head contacts the ground.

Do you also wear boots, an armored jacket and pants? Gloves? I bike to work every day, and spent a good part of my childhood on a bike- mountain biking on trails in the woods.

I have had countless banged up knees, elbows, ankles and hands, but never had a head injury. I used to ride a motorcycle, and wore the full getup aside from pants, and I feel cyclists would be far more protected wearing a jacket and gloves.

Anecdotes aside- figures from the UK (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1119262/) show that it takes 8000 years of cycling to produce a clinically severe head injury and 22000 years for one death. From that same source, roughly 1% of all head injuries admitted into hospitals are from cycling, and 60% are alcohol related. Yet people would find it ridiculous if you suggested they wear a drinking helmet.

The fixation on helmets really confuses me. Its not helped that a lot of it seems to be pushed by people who seem to use it as some kind of virtue-signaling issue. There is just such a focus on a fairly burdensome piece of equipment that in a small percentage of rides in which an incident occurs, and in a small percentage of those incidents, this piece of equipment may help reduce the severity of your injuries, while all other equipment is left out of the conversation.

>From that same source, roughly 1% of all head injuries admitted into hospitals are from cycling, and 60% are alcohol related.

This stat means absolutely nothing. It's coming from a place where not that many people cycle, the summary even says that cycling experienced a decline, so of course there's not going to be that many injuries from cycling when very few people are doing it. By contrast, British people drink a LOT, so of course they're going to have a lot of alcohol-related injuries. It's just like America: there's very little cycling, and a LOT of drinking and drunkenness, so it doesn't take any great intelligence to predict that there will be far more alcohol-related injuries than cycling-related ones.

And yes, maybe people there should wear drinking helmets, with the way people in those two countries love to get drunk so much.

>There is just such a focus on a fairly burdensome piece of equipment

"Burdensome"? Are you kidding me? Something that weighs a few ounces? I guess you think seatbelts are "burdensome" too.

And yes, I do wear gloves when cycling; they have pads to absorb vibration, and can be helpful if I fall and scrape my hands. They're far more "burdensome" than a helmet, since they take more time to put on (which still isn't very much).

I have to carry around a helmet- yes I find this burdensome. Real estate is hard to come by in NYC- and my commute requires a partial subway commute. When I rode a motorcycle to my job and had a cube I was annoyed by the MC helmet, but felt the risk tradeoff was worth it and could at least tuck it away. Now I am subject to the hideous open office trend, it would be a PITA. Its not the weight, its the volume, and the fact that I would have to redo my hair once I went anywhere, all to prevent an event that seems about as likely to me as winning the jackpot on a scratch off ticket. Seatbelts don't bother me at all, they are built in to the car.

Still my point about a drinking helmet stands- drinking is a dangerous activity- 60% of all hospital admissions for head injuries involve alcohol. Clearly we could reduce the severity and incidence of these injuries with helmets. It would be interesting to see how many "drinking years" it would take on average to get a head injury worthy of a hospital admission.

Driving is dangerous too- and in virtually any accident it seems likely your head is going to come into contact with something- even if it is an airbag, and the mv^2 is much higher- we could reduce the severity and incidence of head injuries if everyone wore a helmet, especially an NFL style helmet with a faceguard...

And you accept that wearing gloves is ok, but you don't wear a jacket- so you know you may fall, and possibly scrape along the ground a bit, but you don't wear a jacket that most motorcyclists consider to be basic standard gear.

Do you understand where I am going here? You assess risk a certain way and make tradeoffs in what you are willing to do to protect yourself, as do I. However, what your risk assessment has determined wearing a helmet as necessary and foolish not to, I see as just another unnecessary burden, choosing instead to wear armored gloves in winter, and accepting other risks. You may feel not wearing a helmet is something a fool does, but my years of riding have given me intuition (in other words, my developed common sense) that the head is highly unlikely to be injured, and statistics back me up on this.

If I did a lot of high speed road cycling, it would probably change things, but my rides around town where I top out cruising around 15mph and if I go down a hill hit 30 for a brief minute or two, its just not necessary or reasonably useful.

So wear your helmet, but I feel denigrating those that don't because your "common sense" tells you its necessary is misguided and somewhat ignorant.

>I have to carry around a helmet- yes I find this burdensome.

Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of biking to work yet, but if I did, I'd be using a backpack for what I hope are obvious reasons. Any good backpack these days designed for cycling has a clip on it that attaches to your helmet so you don't have to carry it around. I even did this years ago in college when I biked to class; it wasn't a burden at all.

>And you accept that wearing gloves is ok, but you don't wear a jacket- so you know you may fall, and possibly scrape along the ground a bit, but you don't wear a jacket that most motorcyclists consider to be basic standard gear.

Jackets are incredibly hot. Bicycles don't go fast enough to mitigate this. Some skin scrapes are preferable to getting heatstroke.

>but my years of riding have given me intuition (in other words, my developed common sense) that the head is highly unlikely to be injured

The problem is, if your head is injured, it's either game-over or you suffer mental problems for the rest of your life. Other bodily injuries you can usually heal from. A broken leg? It sucks, but it heals. Skin scrapes? Not a big deal usually (not at bicycling speeds). Worst case you get a skin graft but that's not normal for cycling. But a concussion can leave permanent damage; the brain doesn't heal the way the rest of your body does. To make a computer analogy, I feel like you're talking about the relative risks to various computer parts, and equating potential damage to your laptop's screen to its hard drive. The screen isn't important, nor is the rest of the laptop: you can replace them at any time. But the hard drive is unreplaceable (going back to the last backup, which unfortunately we don't have for brains yet): if anything happens to the hard drive at all, you lose all your data and all your work, and you can't replace that.

> From that same source, roughly 1% of all head injuries admitted into hospitals are from cycling, and 60% are alcohol related. Yet people would find it ridiculous if you suggested they wear a drinking helmet.

That is a hilarious and wonderful comparison. I'm gonna save that one for future discussion of helmets and safety.

+1 gloves

> but you keep focusing on cars and ignoring other dangers with cycling: <

I ride bikes a lot, I rode 7 miles this morning on those "slippery/ uneven roads". Most of my friends ride bikes and we all know someone who has been seriously injured or killed by a car. If you eliminate cars bikes are extremely safe (for riders with reasonable hand/ eye coordination). The only injury type that comes remotely close to cars is mountain bike crashes or crashes while racing road bikes and those injuries are far less common and far less lethal than cars.

So yeah... I focus on cars, because they are by far the single biggest danger to cyclists.

I agree that cities should make motions to make biking more mainstream. My city has very prevalent biking and there are many dedicated paths and roads were bikers are given equal right of way. It’s great. Helmets are mandatory and no one complains. Are there some that don’t bike because of this? Probably a few, but if that is the barrier, then I don’t think they’re treating biking the right way.

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