Still, as a parent from Sweden, seeing so many pictures of biking kids and no helmets is jarring.
I know that selling bike safety ideas to the Dutch is like selling ice to the Innuit, but it's still weirding me out.
Edit: typo.
Sure, helmets would make cycling safer. Helmets would also make walking on the sidewalk safer. But I bet you don’t wear a helmet there. This implies there is some level of risk you’re willing to take before you wear a helmet.
My theory is that cycling in the Netherlands is safer than it is in most countries. Just some factors:
- People mainly cycle for transport, not for sport: you sit upright, you go relatively slowly
- Every car driver in the Netherlands is also a cyclist sometimes, so people know how cyclists behave and respect them
- Cycling is everywhere: you don’t encounter cyclists only in the center of big cities, basically every road except (often, not always!) highways will have cycle paths in parallel so as a car driver you encounter cyclists everywhere and anywhere
- The bicycle infrastructure is fantastic: if possible bike lanes are separated from car lanes by greenery or trees or something, bike lanes don’t cross right next to intersections (so you’re not in the blind spot of a car making a turn - the car already turned and then crosses the bike path) etc.
50,000 serious injuries in one year seems considerable.
For those people, I’d indeed recommend or mandate a helmet.
Do consider that in the Netherlands, people cycle 15,000,000,000 kilometers per year (that’s over 800 km per year per citizen, including babies etc.) to put the 50,000 injuries into perspective.
(Dutch source: https://www.fietsersbond.nl/ons-werk/mobiliteit/fietsen-cijf...)
I'd love to see evidence of this (either proving or disproving) but it seems like a hard thing to measure.
That said, I always wear a helmet when biking, but I never wear a helmet when driving, and I am aware of the irony.
Helmets should probably be mandatory for e-bikes, though. They go a lot faster, and more importantly: faster than people realise.
A helmet should be required for ebikes.
I'm 40, lived for all of my life in the Netherlands, I hardly saw any accidents, and I never ever saw any accident where a helmet would be of any use. Yeah it's anecdotal, but I feel it's just safe enough. I feel the same about biking as I do about walking. Helmets wouldn't make it safer. But, show me the data to convince me otherwise. Still, lets say it makes things safer, I wonder if the net effect would still be negative because it would drive people into cars, where you don't need a (stupid!) helmet.
I think it's difficult for people from other places to imagine just how little cars you encounter with good bike paths, and how people drive around you when everybody is a "cyclist" (hate the word, it's just normal here) and a driver. For example in a collision, it's always the car's responsibility [0], because pedestrians and people on bikes are considered vulnerable, they always get 50-100% off their damages paid. It creates a certain culture.
[0] https://www.anwb.nl/juridisch-advies/aanrijding-en-dan/aansp...
While probably true, I think the emphasis is misplaced. The primary reason helmets aren’t as encouraged as elsewhere is the immense bike infrastructure that keeps cyclists safe. The risk is much much much smaller than in car focussed places.
In the last 20 years large shift happened in skiing, for example. 20 years ago almost no-one would wear ski helmet is US, now almost anyone does, although it's not required.
Yeah I saw it in skying, one year nobody wore a helmet then suddenly I felt very self-conscious about it. Same thing for MTBing. Skying, Snowboarding and MTBing are much more dangerous though and I happily wear a helmet going down slope over 25 km/hour. Biking 10 km/hour, essentially running speed... No. Bikes look like this here [0] and they are everywhere, don't forget, it's very different from this: [1]
[0]: https://denhaagfietst.nl/wp-content//uploads/2020/02/DHKruge...
[1]: https://www.triathlon365.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Vrouw...
Many people also don’t realize that many Dutch cyclists typically don’t cycle very fast. The average speed of people on bicycles is 12.4km/hour (https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2018/01/02/dutch-cycling-...). That’s a speed that young runners also can reach fairly easily. Should they wear helmets, too on the road?
And those who go faster often _do_ wear helmets.
Recommended reading: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2019/08/05/bicycle-helmet...
The two manners of riding are so different. They both feel equally safe.
I do have a scar on my nose from falling head first onto the road. That was riding my city bike. While carrying a TV. In a rainstorm. With no hands on the handlebars. So 100% my fault :)
Lol! That's the best saying I've heard in a looong time :D
It's interesting that you love the Netherlands as a Swede. From my point of view, it's always the nordics (iceland, norway, sweden, finland) that have the insane happiness, social mobility, etc. ratings, and I love (at least the mental picture of) warm homes in a cold, snowy, foresty climate/environment. If y'all spoke English (or Dutch, I guess) over there as a primary language, I'm actually quite sure I'd have moved there, at least for a couple years. (Currently living in and learning German(y) and I find it very hard, so for me the language is kind of prohibitive unless I'd be sure I wanted to move away from my current life and fully commit to fitting in somewhere new.) Living for two months in Finland didn't destroy that mental picture at all, and though I was impressed with the English being absolutely impeccable from anyone under 60 years old, the colloquially used language is clearly a local language. A local hacker space was very welcoming, but many things are in Swedish/Finnish because that's simply what everyone there speaks.
I'd be interested in this 'long story' if you are willing to share it!
About English, that's kind of a point of pride up here (English was taught from age 11 when I was that age ~35 years ago, but these days it's from age 7 and my oldest kid is starting to have classes and understand more and more).
I would say that you can get very far using English in Sweden, both in business and in private. Probably quite a few Swedish people's English will start to fail if you e.g. open a random kitchen drawer and ask them to name all the things, but still. You can get by.
See also references like [1], I'm pretty sure I'm not making this up just to rose-tint all the blue and yellow. Or something.
[1]: https://studyinsweden.se/blogs/2018/03/26/people-in-sweden-s...
With enough beer, im convinced we would be able to speak the same language at a certain point.
The number of bicycle accidents is quite small and the number of serious head injuries even smaller, helmets would save less than 5 children yearly [1]. This is mostly due to education, both primary school cyclists and driver's license and road design separating cars and bicycles.
[1] https://swov.nl/nl/fact/fietshelmen-hoeveel-slachtoffers-zou...
> “There are many misconceptions about helmets,” Richter told British trade magazine Cycling Industry News on July 6.
> “We do not design helmets specifically to reduce chances or severity of injury when impacts involve a car,” said Richter.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2020/07/10/bicycle-...
A bike helmet is not specifically designed to protect against a brick falling from a building and hitting your head. But would you rather experience such an event with a bike helmet, or without?
Also you should take any article singing the praise of MIPS for regular bike helmets with a huuuge grain of salt. MIPS as it's been designed and tested for motorbike/downhill racing/etc. is a definite advantage. But those are all systems where the helmet is so tight it's almost glued to your head. And if you look up the research papers on MIPS, they use test stands with a crash test head and literally glue the helmets to the head before testing. A bike helmet is so far from firmly attached that the 10-15mm rotational slip offered by MIPS is obviously pointless.
I’d wear a helmet in most of Denmark too.
Increasingly, it has become mandatory to wear helmets on the several varieties of slow motorized vehicles like scooters. I think we're now down to the slowest category of 30km/h.
As a result, that industry collapses. Once a helmet is mandatory, we dump it.
I grew up and still live in the Netherlands.
Right after writing my post above I had to google "dutch bike helmets" and found stuff like [1] which really makes it very clear that you (as a nation, I mean) just really aren't much into helmets. Cool that there are exceptions, although of course there always are at this level. :)
Yes, if I was travelling 300kmph in my car, I would wear a helmet.
As an adult, I have catastrophically wrecked, at high speed, on asphalt, both while cycling (destroyed the front fork) and while rollerblading, without a helmet, and in both cases flipped and skidded on a shoulder without touching my head. As a child, I had done that when falling from horses.
EDIT: Also traffic calming is pervasive, so even if somehow you do get hit by a car it's at a much slower speed and therefore much more survivable.
It's striking to look at comparison pictures of cities in the Netherlands between the 1970s and today. The old photos could just as well be a lot of cities in the US today: https://exploring-and-observing-cities.org/2016/01/11/amster...
On side streets with little car traffic it often does make sense not to separate infrastructure, but traffic calming is then particularly important.
http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2010/11/reality-vs-myth...
That said:
> Every accident I had was one where I was in a designated bike lane, and the car crossed it to turn or enter a parking lot in an opening.
A "designated bike lane" that's just a strip of paint is also not enough for exactly that reason, and if the bike lane (even a protected one) is frequently interrupted by curb cuts into parking lots that's likewise not bike-friendly design.
In Germany bicycles and pedestrians have right of way on roundabouts or driveways. So everyone is used to looking out for cyclists when entering or exiting a roundabout or driveways. It's perfectly natural.
In Australia cyclists and pedestrians don't have right of way. Often on foot you have you wait at a roundabout until there are no cars. I think this is a much more dangerous approach as it makes for building bad habits of not having to look out for others.
My near misses and accidents generally are because either someone tries to quickly get in front of me so they can turn in front of me, or because they didn't notice the bike lane at all when turning.
I think the Australian rule would be nearly impossible to follow in a major city, as it's difficult to predict when a car quickly overtaking you may want to "get one over you" and gun it and turn into a driveway in front of you, which is a major cause for my hits / near misses.
In Germany being given way feels pretty much ingrained. It is a very different experience.
And yes, crossing across sidewalks or bike lanes with poor visibility is a common bad one. Both when being the one driving and on foot or bike.
The US is not a single jurisdiction for traffic laws, and whether bicycles are considered vehicles and whether and how they are treated differently than cars at intersections or for other purposes varies widely by state.
Its actually quite common for them to have special treatment in the rules of the road, either being classed as vehicles with special privileges (beyond just use of bike lanes and sonetimes sidewalks) or not as vehicles at all; in fact, it is so common that I would argue it is by far the norm, the difficulty is that it is not at all consistent what the special treatment is.
> a one hour bike ride can easily go through several novel jurisdictions
The relevant jurisdictions here are thr 50 states, the District of Columbia, and (pedantically, but good luck including them with others ona bike ride) other territories. Its possible to get several on a one-hour bike ride, but only if it is carefully planned for that purpose.
> If a frenchman were to tell me the rules for right of way in bicycles in France I would not consider him wrong if there were some town in French Guiana where the rules are different (despite it being part of France).
Sure, but just on Idaho stop rules alone, there are differences from the majority “just like a car” rule in 9 states covering about 10% of the US population. The exceptions aren't equivalent to “some town in French Guiana”.
I would never advise cyclists to consider what you've stated as the actual rules. In practice the rule you should follow is the person turning will turn if they reasonably believe you have time to stop, and prey they do not alter the deal further. De facto vs De jure.
Dutch commuter bikes are slow and upright, and many have a low top tube and are thus very easy to hop off of— a 9-12 mph bike crash is not unlike slipping while jogging, whereas a 18-35 mph crash on a road bike is a lot more risky. Lower-speed cycling is enabled by Dutch land use which does not require many long-distance trips: https://www.peopleforbikes.org/news/best-kept-secret-dutch-b...
However, don't under estimate how much you can hurt with a low speed fall from a bike.
Also... this is just what I was asking. I was not intending my ask as a challenge that they are wrong. I'm genuinely interested in the data.