Helmets are for sports. Ebikes have a ~50% market share in Belgium where approximately nobody wears a helmet ever. It's really not an issue.
I live in Austria where few cyclists wear helmets yet my girlfriend who works in the local hospital sees patients coming in with serious head injuries on a daily basis from biking accidents that could have easily been prevented by wearing a helmet. Since then we both wear our helmets religiously.
You don't even have to get hit by a car. An unfortunate collision with a texting pedestrian, some dog on a leash jumping in front of you or another cyclist could be enough to smack your melon on the asphalt.
Just because you hear Europeans aren't wearing helmets doesn't mean it's the model to follow. I see wearing a helmet the same as wearing a seatbelt. Sure I never needed it since I never had an accident and it feels slightly uncomfortable but I know it could save my life.
It's up to you how much you value your head.
I highly doubt ebikes have a 50% share in Belgium. Do you have any references on that claim? Last year I visited Belgium's 4 major cities and almost every cyclist I saw was on some old half broken bicycle.
You can lock helmets with bikes if you want. I used to lock my helmet with my u-lock on my bike, so if they cut off the helmet, then it isn't a very useful helmet. I now bring it with me in my bag mostly for hygenic reasons although.
Expanded foam helmets are fragile by design. They are design to be disposable with even small knocks. So even accidentally banging them against your frame, dlock or solid post is a bad idea even if you can’t visibly see any damage.
You’re recommended to replace them at regular intervals also due to sweat damage.
Then again 3cm of expanded polystyrene foam vs a metal box with a engine in it... probably like a surfer forgetting to replace their “anti-shark bite” medallion anyway.
Very popular here in Sweden. A little easier to stuff in your bag.
"According to the Velofollies survey as well as other sources last year’s [2018] e-bike sales stood at slightly over a quarter million units; some 251,500 to be more precise. This accounts for a big 14.3 percent growth compared to the total of the year before. It makes electric bicycles by far the biggest category of the Belgian market with a market share that stands at close to 50 percent."
https://www.bike-eu.com/sales-trends/nieuws/2019/07/market-r...
analysis: https://www.treehugger.com/bikes/why-dont-americans-wear-hel...
A head injury that results from speed or post-strike collisions is still recorded as a "cyclist head injury" so I don't think your points change the numbers.
Please note, I'm not trying to argue against helmets. The point is that arguments over helmets deflect the conversation away from the people sailing around recklessly in two ton metal boxes. Every time there’s a collision involving a cyclist, the question is "was he wearing a helmet?", not, "was the driver paying attention?"
The safest places to bicycle are in the nations where there's the lowest rates of cyclists wearing helmets. This is a car problem, not a bicycle problem.
Once I hit a curb, went over the handlebars, and skinned up my hands/knees and my wrists hurt pretty bad for a week or so after. Another time I wiped out at the bottom of a hill, tore a huge gash in the side of my knee. Then there was the time I chipped a tooth on a curb when trying to ride no-handed.
In all the falls I experienced, none of them involved a head injury that a helmet would have prevented (the chipped tooth incident could have been prevented by wearing a mouth guard, or by not being stupid). So based on that, it feels like helmets are useless.
Of course, in reality there is a huge difference between a kid riding a bicycle at single-digit MPH on neighborhood streets and back-woods trails, vs. going 15 - 20 MPH on roads or paved trails. At those speeds, it would probably be impossible for me to break my fall using just hands and feet, not to mention the possibility of getting distracted hand running into a street sign or tree branch. Logically I'm aware of all this, but still I have trouble with maintaining proper helmet discipline.
Also, the style of bicycle is often different. Hybrid and town bikes are far less common the US than Europe. I suspect that an easy-step over, big tire, upright town bicycle is easier (and this safer) to use.
Mostly, I'm suggesting better bicycle infrastructure is one reason people may be less likely to wear helmets in Europe vs the US. And not making any claims about how safe a helmet in the US actually is or is not.
An acquaintance of mine was killed running into a slightly raised piece of ground that he didn’t see... wasn’t wearing a helmet and was thrown over his handlebars. Doctors say he would have walked away if he had been wearing a helmet.
There's also evidence that requiring helmets reduces cycling among the general population. Partially because it's an extra thing to buy/maintain, but it also creates more work for commuters - they have to redo their hair at the office.
Residents of Amsterdam don't seem to wear helmets at all, except for high-speed training rides/racing. And they seem to do ok like that.
1)Most cities suck at biking infrastructure, including Europe if you exclude the poster childs like Amsterdam or Copenhagen.
2)It's not wearing a helmet that reduces cycling throughout the population it's the lack of infrastructure. Helmet necessity is a direct effect of that not the cause.
3)You can't make helmets a requirement, it's up to you if you can live(pun not intended) with the consequences of an accident without a helmet or not.
There's potentially more damage from that, to society.
No, it's easy to argue because cars inarguably cause way more deaths than bikes. So when people switch to cars from bikes, it's indirectly killing more people. Any measure that prevents bike use leads to more deaths.
If you are shunted in the rear on the way to work in your car you might have a inconvenient morning and an insurance claim. If the same thing happens on your bike you could quite literally die from a head injury.
I skated for a long time and didn't wear a helmet because of comfort/looks. I've become a bit more wise since and won't share the road with cars without my helmet when I'm cycling
- Driver mergers in to me too soon
- Passenger or driver opens door in to my path
- Driver making turn cuts me off and I have to swerve or brake suddenly
- Driver does a right-hand hook across bike lane to make a right turn.
In almost all these cases I’m going to be crushed by a moving vehicle. A helmet won’t save me.
As for being rear ended... I’ve personally never felt like I had a “rear end” close call on a bike.
And with the boom of food delivery,mostly done by bike, the situation got a lot worse
Just two hours ago a guy working for glovo merged on the sidewalk while I was trying to cross on the zebra walks and almost hit me.
He was using one hand, wasn't looking, with the other hand was speaking at the phone and didn't stop at the red light
No need to specify they are not allowed on sidewalks, but who's gonna fine them?
It happens constantly, but bikers usually think that cars are to blame, when cars usually let me cross when the light is green, they usually stop at the red light and they usually don't ride on the sidewalk
Give people bikes that can go at 30km/h and you have the recipe for a disaster
We already have regular and e-mopeds but at least they are heavy regulated and need a mandatory insurance (at least in Italy)
That said, unless someone is already frail being hit by a bike is nothing like being hit by a car. I’ve had two red-light running bicyclists crash in to me (once while biking, once while skateboarding). I’ve also been in three separate cars that got rear-ended (none of those times was I driving). The level of pain is an order of magnitude different.
You're completely right!
Cars are engineered to reduce the damages of a direct impact.
Bikes are not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_safety_through_vehi...
Studies agree that the damages are mostly caused by speed
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24435732
E-bikes can go at very high speeds (30km/h is more than enough to be deadly) and can do it effortlessly, which means the even bikers that aren't expert can go at such high speeds, increasing the risk of hurting someone else or themselves.
Add to that the fact that a car can break or avoid obstacles in a much more efficient way than a bike could ever do (think about heavy breaking with a bike at 25 km/h under heavy rain on the pavet and then think about it on a car).
I'm not a supporter of cars, I've been car free for a few years now, but I don't think bikes are less dangerous for pedestrians.
There are simply less of them around.
> The level of pain is an order of magnitude different
The maximum level of pain I suffered was because of my bad teeth
I was in a very bad car accident (a tire detached from my car while driving on the highway and I lost control), the pain was a joke compared to that.
Pain is not a strong indicator of dangerous physical damage.
For example internal bleeding is usually painless.
>Add to that the fact that a car can break or avoid obstacles in a much more efficient way than a bike could ever do
That's obviously false. Just consider the stuff that BMX bikes can do in terms of maneuvering. Or even normal bikes. Try driving on a car through a busy pedestrian street. On a bike it's a piece of cake, and you won't have to stop even once.
First of all, it's all in the news, I'm not making things up
https://nypost.com/2019/08/31/nyc-bicyclists-are-killing-ped...
Or you can look at this, specifically the chapters "Cyclist Deaths and Impairment", "Cyclist Helmets Statistics" and "Staying Safe while Cycling"
https://bayareabicyclelaw.com/safety-laws/bike-stats/
and we don't have enough data (AKA it's not been collected until few years ago) to say that "it's barely even an issue"
Secondly, bikers most of all kill themselves.
"One in five people injured on Australian roads and paths is a cyclist, according to a new Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report"
https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/injury/pedal-cyclist-injury-...
Is it because of the road conditions, the presence of cars or other vehicles?
Or is it because cyclists underestimate the risks?
According to the same study, motorcyclists only account for 2.7% of the hospitalizations.
They share the road with cars as well, they go faster than bikes on the same roads.
What could be different?
Could it be that the safety measures engineered in motorbikes and the safety measures motorbikers take to protect themselves are actually useful to reduce physical damages?
Even Netherlands has a big problem with bikers dying more than ever because of underestimating risks.
https://www.iamexpat.nl/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/death-toll-...
> That's obviously false. Just consider the stuff that BMX bikes can do in terms of maneuvering
An expert biker on a BMX you mean!
If I give a BMX to my mother, 71 years old, she couldn't even ride it.
It's like saying "now look what this rally pilot can do on terrain with their fine tuned 4wd monster car"
Bike helmets are designed for low speed crashes NOT involving vehicles.
Now I still wear one myself but I don’t fool myself that doing so brings me any protection from someone driving an SUV who thinks they’ll be late getting to a 24 supermarket if don’t just squeeze by me.
It’s like putting an oven glove on an egg and hitting it with a hammer.
A quick look a Strava’s stats will show you that even weak club cyclists like me, living somewhere pretty flattish, can already cruise about at over 20mph pretty easily.
Pedal assist ebikes just expand that ability to a wider number of people.
Just look at the number of people who regularly crash in amateur crit races.
We generally survive non-vehicle related crashes at these speeds pretty well and people on ebikes will too.
It's just that piloting multi-ton metal vehicles at bone-shattering velocities has been normalized. It's always been insane and deadly, but there was an actual concerted effort to normalize it and that worked. I'm not even joking. "Speed demons" were replaced by "Jay walkers" and people have been getting maimed and killed ever since.
"The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime" (Adam Ruins Everything) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM
If you stop a moment and think carefully, they already do!
it's called airbag and it's been a required safety feature for more than a decade now...
Also, you really -want- to have a helmet on in a race car - you'll typically have an unpadded roll cage right by your head, and the FIA-approved padding for roll cages is designed to work well with helmets, not with heads. I used to dread long road sections on rallies as I knew that an accident would be a real mess if there was any contact with the cage. There's more room in a road car, and there's padding / airbags etc to cushion you from impact on hard structures.
I have a 1500w motor and share a road with semi trucks
0. Ivers R. Systematic reviews of bicycle helmet research. Inj Prev. 2007;13(3):190. doi:10.1136/ip.2007.015966 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2598379/
By the way, helmets on bicyclists tend to make car drivers behave like even bigger jackholes than usual. https://psyarxiv.com/nxw2k "... public health research might be best served by shifting focus to risk elimination rather than harm mitigation."
Once you factor in all the variables, the helmet is only a small part of the equation, and probably not going to do you much good should you find yourself under the wheels of a semi-truck. Yet having that piece of styrofoam strapped to your head has given you the (possibly misplaced) confidence to go fast with semi-trucks.
Alternatively, if it's a modified bicycle, it's simply illegal on public roads.
Now I do wear a bike helmet when biking for other reasons, but I give trucks wide leeway.
EU vehicle category L1e, if you want to look up the exact word in your own language.
I don't think there are specific speed limits for bike lanes, or bikes, anywhere in the EU (but of course I could be wrong).
My 18 miles commute is 2 miles of sleepy suburban traffic and 16 miles on the SF Bay Trail (IOW: flat dirt track with no cars allowed.) Even if it were all dirt track, I'd still be wearing my helmet.