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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

Just wear a helmet.

It protects you from brain damage.

Are you implying to always wear a helmet? When you are in a car, in public transportation, walking down the street, going down the stairs or just always? The last time, I hit my head was in a house.

The closest I came to a concussion was when I slipped while walking on ice.

It is quite likely, I spend at least 10,000 of biking so far without a helmet. I had some small accident, but non where I got any brain damage. In most cases the accidents was the result of my own stupidity: being too hurried, not watching the traffic, or doing putting on a rain coat while biking.

I've seen a cyclist lying motionless on the street. Eyes open, blood coming from her nose. No helmet.

I've also seen helmets from friends who have crashed where the helmet is completely destroyed. It just isn't worth it.

Your argument is the same as that against seatbelts. I've driven hundreds of thousands of miles but never had an accident. I still put my seatbelt on.

If you really hate helmets, you could use one of these instead: https://hovding.com/

Not very practical for daily commutes. If I would not feel safe biking, I would rather wear a helmet than a device like this.

Here in the Netherlands, biking (without support) at speeds around 15km/h if you are in good health and of sound mind, is not more dangerous than walking or traveling by some other means. Recently, the number of traffic causalities has gone up, that those are mostly related to the use of e-bikes by elderly people and younger people. I feel that if you need support for biking when you do not have the strength (due to old age), you probably are not fit for biking at all. Many young people using e-bikes remove the speed restriction allowing them to bike at speed up to 30 km/h. At those speeds, the chance of accidents go up very quickly.

True, a helmet is better in all kinds of ways. It doesn't need a battery, it still works even when things hit you rather than you hitting things, and it's an order of magnitude cheaper to replace after a knock.

But if someone will wear one of these things who wouldn't otherwise wear anything at all...

Cycle routes in the Netherlands are awesome! Things are slowly improving here, but we're still a long way from that level of care placed into the design.

What possible reason is there to not wear a helmet when riding a bike?

Though for many people wearing a cycling helmet would not change their present riding practices, there's an expectation children / people on small profile bikes would benefit the most from wearing one, (ie safer,) however there are good reasons not to make them mandatory.

As already mentioned it can interfere with constant checking habit for extra safety, as well as cold weather appropriate headgear. Personally I gave up cycling once compulsory helmet laws were introduced in Australia since for sun protection I had an already heavy enough wide brim weather proof hat. It's probably not that common, but I have a weakened neck from a poorly treated bad whiplash (forced over the edge of road on a bicycle with a wooden road marker being right at the spot my head / neck area would land.) Additionally trying a helmet (not all helmets are the same and possibly there are brands out that have addressed certain problems) I found the straps sitting proud interfered with other distant road noises, not an issue in town traffic, but it would certainly drown out vehicles approaching from behind driving on non urban roads, with many drivers not looking for cyclists sharing that road.

I'll chip in with my main reason, as a London cycling veteran of nearly 10 years: shoulder checks.

I whip my head back and forth over my right shoulder constantly to check the state of traffic behind me.

Before I maneuvre, I check, check and check again. Always checking. Always fully aware of what's behind me.

Having something attached to my head makes it harder and less comfortable to do these rapid checks. I think this makes me less safe overall.

Several of the reasons are shown elsewhere in this thread, but here's one I haven't seen here yet:

Because I like my head not freezing when it's ten degrees below freezing? When I bring this up, sometimes people tell me about thin membrane caps that fit under the hat, but they don't work when it's actually really cold out. Helmets absolutely do not fit over warm-weather hats (or any hats, really). (Other people have said "why would you be biking if it's below freezing", which shows that they don't understand the entire conversation.)

I think I might be quite warm naturally but those thinner caps that fit below the helmet work just fine for me when I bike in cold Sweden in the winter. -10 °C and below.

The helmet itself gives some wind protection which helps as well I think.

I've got a thin balaclava I've worn under a bike helmet down to 0°F that's kept me warm enough. Let out the band on the helmet a few clicks and it fits perfectly.

Same reason for not wearing one in a car, bus or when crossing the road, I guess. Some people just like to take risks.

I do not like taking risks and I think i am a risk avoiding person.

Here in the Netherlands, I guess that my risk for getting involved in an accident, is not any higher than walking and other forms of transportation. I am not using an e-bike and I usually bike at a speed of about 15km/h. I do not use a racing bike, but a bike where you sit in an upright position allowing you to look around easily. I also take care of using routes that are safe. Here in the Netherlands, where are more bikes than cars, and biking is an important means of transportation for daily commutes and doing shoppings. We have good infrastructures for bikes.

Having to carry it around. People who say you can just clip it to your bike haven’t lived in any city I’ve lived in.

What possible reason is there not to wear a helmet when driving a car?

Seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones.

Helmet hair. Once my hair gets compressed by a helmet, nothing other than a shower can fix it, and we don't have showers at work [not an issue as I'm remote now].

I live less than a mile from my former cubicle, and my old commute was mostly through a park with two road crossings. There was no reason to wear a helmet.

If I'm on a longer road ride, or riding off-road, I religiously wear a helmet. If I'm riding lift-assisted downhill, I wear a full-face helmet.

I wear a helmet 99.9% of the time on a bike. They are not zero hassle. If you live somewhere where stuff gets nicked in public and you’ve got a nicer helmet, you bring it inside your destination with you. They mess up hair too.

They’re not GOOD reasons but let’s not pretend there aren’t any at all.

What's your grudge with helmets? Strange hill to die on.

That's not quite fair. They could be dying in ditches, on hoods of cars, against walls or trees, not just on hills.

That's a fallacious argument. There is no activity that could not be made more safe by wearing a helmet. Yet we don't because the arguments like yours are simple and wrong.

Multiple cases have been documented of children strangulating themselves wearing a bike helmet while mucking about on playgrounds and the like. Entire education campaigns have set out to prevent the wearing of helmet in activities that turned out to be made less safe by them.

But I agree with your general point, if the marginal safety gain during cycling was enough to make them mandatory, few activities would remain without mandatory protective headwear (my last bike-related head injury happened while walking through the kitchen during maintenance).

how is this wrong? A helmet protects your head and thus your brain. It makes sense wear helmets in situations where your head is more prone to be damaged (e.g. construction work, or in this case biking).

It absolutely makes sense to wear a helmet while cycling but it just shouldn’t be compulsory.

Having proper cycling infrastructure protects you far more.

Okay? Mandating helmets don't prevent cities from building better cycling infrastructure.

If they reduce cycling, they do in fact prevent that. The old 'nobody cycles so why should we build that' argument is highly persuasive.

With proper infrastructure and cycling culture a helmet adds little benefit. Meanwhile it has several negatives including making cycling a more burdensome activity. Such as having to have your helmet, have to carry it with you in the store or leave it on the bike in the rain or to be stolen, etc. Mandatory helmet laws do more to reduce cycling then they do to protect cyclists.

It's not either/or.

E.g. while driving. All the professional racers do it, I guess they know a thing or two about dangers while driving.

They wear them because:

Their cars are custom built (e.g. F1) and don't have air bags or crumple zones and are open top.

Their cars are modified to be lighter weight, so air bags and other safety equipment is removed. Instead they are fitted with roll cages and wear a helmet.

They're also racing around at high speeds where rolling a car is a real possibility.

Yes, let's equate that to a road car with a proven safety record (NCAP) tests.

Let's see how many tests of a cyclist smashing their head into the ground shows that it's harmless...

> Let's see how many tests of a cyclist smashing their head into the ground shows that it's harmless...

I'm sure that you can provide evidence of helmet-wearers doing the same to show that it's harmless one you put on a foam hat?

On a related note, thousands of drivers dying from head trauma each year demonstrate that NCAP is no immortality cheat either.

So all drivers should be required to wear a helmet? If not, why not ?

just don't leave your house. it protects you from getting run over, being robbed at gunpoint, heartbreak, etc. do you see where your logic fails?

this is not news. wearing helmets has been associated with a range of negative issues for years now. (https://road.cc/content/news/268605-wearing-cycle-helmet-may..., https://www.bicycling.com/culture/a29802208/helmet-laws-safe..., https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060911102200.h...)

correction: i pasted the wrong bicyling.com link, this is the one i meant https://www.bicycling.com/news/a20009468/people-take-more-ri...

Demand bicycle safe cities!

Helmets should be optional. Taking risks should be legal.

> Just wear a helmet.

You do you. Next up we gonna enforce pedestrians to wear air-bag suits "for their own safety", forbid roller skating, etc.

Disclaimer: living in the Netherlands.

> Taking risks should be legal

What's the difference from a seat belt law? As long as I'm paying for everyone elses' healthcare (which is the norm in developed countries), their personal risk taking is my concern. Even in places without publically funded healthcare, everyone pays for others' risks through premiums so the difference isn't as big as it would seem.

Bicycling makes you fitter and healthier, reducing overall disease burden, as well as providing mental health benefits, reduced traffic, consequently reduced air pollution which also is a major win for public health.

Cars literally don't do any of those things. They're convenient (at least when your city isn't subject to awful traffic) and that's it.

> What's the difference from a seat belt law?

You found a risk reducing law that probably does make sense. Very small investment (Volvo relinquished the patent, thanks Volvo) and very large benefit.

But this "their personal risk taking is my concern" argument of yours makes me shiver. I'd never want someone else's risk taking to be my concern: I've got more important stuff to attend to, thank God.

All right, let's suppose for a minute that self-interest is literally the only thing to be considered.

Your personal risk preferences impact me in a variety of ways:

* my cost of living goes up, because damage control is much more expensive than prevention; someone has to pay for it, and dead people can't.

* my personal risk goes up, because resources I might need such as emergency doctors' time are occupied dealing with the consequences of your decisions instead.

* my quality of life goes down, e.g. I have to spend more time waiting in traffic jams while the bodies are scraped off the roads.

If you take your risks in a space I am forced to share with you, whether physical, societal or economical, your choices affect me.

And we will live in the most boring Brave New World where all danger is eliminated because of this reasoning.

Sports will be gone, only the gym survives as it has the lowest risk factor. No more alcohol and drugs. And there will be condom police checking up on you when you cozy up with anyone except your wife.

Sure, go and try to make it happen. But I will also try to subvert it :)

There was a commedian saying cars should be make more dangerous for the driver: "that will teach 'm". He claimed car's driver safety features made them less safe for everyone else, as driving like an idiot had little negative outcome for the driver.

"Put a sharp pin in the steering wheel and forbid belts and airbags." he jokingly argued.

There's quite some truth to it.

Dead people can't learn.

But they wouldn't be dead, because no one would be brave/stupid enough to drive such a car at high speeds while texting on their phone.

I dunno, people are generally wired to ignore high-severity but low-frequency bad events. You can drive like an idiot for a long time and have nothing happen.

Seat belts laws also shouldn't exist

You also shouldn't be paying for everyone elses' healthcare

Interesting take, so we should allow people to ride without helmets and then when they're bleeding out on the street we should just leave them there if they can't pay.

Yes, we should allow people to ride without helmets.

No, I'm not saying we should just leave them there to die.

But if they can't pay, society will have to. Granted, I guess this isn't technically paying for everyone else's healthcare.

You can contribute voluntarily to charities to help people pay medical debt, to charities that provide free medical assistance or there could be free/less expensive medical treatment given by universities as training to medical students

A priori, you don't know if someone won't be able to pay for treatment, so there's no reason someone should be left to die

The important part is that things should be voluntary and not forced

And if charities/universities are unwilling or unable to give all of the emergency medicine needed?

The same thing that happens when hospitals are unable to give care today in any country

In same vain we could ban ice hockey then :)

Even in the US you would be paying for the risktaking of others because their premiums depend on whether everyone in their insurance pool wears a seatbelt or not.

I don't know if this is legal now in the US, but insurance should be allowed to charge more for people with higher risk-taking, either because of past offenses, or other behaviors

Motorists and street furniture in bike lanes are not the only things helmets protect you from. Pedestrians, other cyclists, mechanical failure, rubbish in the road, oil patch, black ice; any number of things can result in you hitting the ground even when entirely separated from motor vehicles. Meanwhile, more and more people are using e-bikes and spending a larger proportion of their time on the bike doing 20-30mph or more.

Hitting concrete with your body at speed is not going to be great for you regardless of the exact cause or exact body part. Just wear the helmet, pity's sake. Why be a meat crayon?

You do you. I want helmets for those who want helmets.

I'm fine without, thank you for being considerate.

The article makes a point, I agree with: don't put barriers on cycling.

I agree wholeheartedly. And I have trouble with most safety laws: they can be recommendations, but not laws (yes seat belt was mentioned, I know, I know).

Indeed, you should wear a helmet in cars and trains too.

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