I had a motorcycle for well over a decade. We have helmet laws here and I carried that heavier helmet or placed it on my bike. It was fine. Part of the cost of having a bike.
It's another thing to make a law forcing everyone to agree with you, or else.
The paradoxical result shown in this article, which has been seen repeatedly, is that forcing people to wear helmets does more harm, by discouraging people from riding bicycles, than the benefit it creates by pushing some small number of the bicyclists who remain to take safety precautions they would otherwise have neglected.
The reasons for requiring this for the "greater good" are:
* Younger people are easily influenced and without such a law wouldn't use a helmet, seatbelt, etc.
* Costs of healthcare after a bad crash can be serious. Yes, my country like pretty much everyone outside the US, has single payer. We would foot the bill, regardless.
* It's proven that regulation and legislation can help. Regulation for seat-belts, airbags, crash testing, etc. has saved many lives. IMO this is what government is about, saving people. Sometimes from their stupidity and ignorance.
It may be proven that regulation can help, in general, but it has also been proven that this specific type of regulation does more harm than good.
The key sentence in the article is: " Financial struggle for popular bike sharing systems"...
That's where the money is and that's who made up that nonsense. Lots of people die because of those terrible motorized bikes and scooters. They're trying to get cyclists to fight their regulatory requirements by making up fake science.
For me, however, this idea is old news. People have been investigating this issue for years and the results seem to be generally consistent. I have been reading reports about the link between helmet laws, reduced cycling rates, and reduced overall safety for at least five years now.
I live in Seattle, where the surrounding county passed a mandatory helmet law back in 1993. After decades of experience, this law was seen to do more harm than good, and the Board of Health decided earlier this year to repeal it.
I think it's entirely plausible that the article was written by a PR company, and that is one possible reason (though not the only) they were paid to do it.
I'll quibble with you on a few points though:
Much research only find correlation. Just because it's not conclusive about causation doesn't mean it's not research.
As much "those terrible motorized bikes and scooters" might have lead to people dying (I've heard the anecdotal horror stories, I've just not looked at the data, so I'm ignorant to the overall effect), there have been plenty of attempts (some successful) at non-motorized bike sharing systems. One could reasonably imagine that when those systems are successful, it is likely there's a net increase in cycling within the community, thereby increasing overall safety of cycling via the "safety In Numbers" effect cited in the article, not to mention a possible reduction in the amount of driving. It therefore follows that one could make an argument that improving the success rate of such systems helps improve bike riding safety (though I'd like to see THAT data). It might even be true (and again, I have not seen any data on this) that for all the terrible deaths from motorized bikes & scooters, that adoption of them still increases the safety for cyclists, because if the alternative is the same person being in a car/truck/SUV, then a cyclist being hit by a motorized bike or scooter, even if they get hit more often, might be far less dangerous.
I think we shouldn't presume any particular PR motive for the article necessarily means it is not in line with the interests of cyclists. Ad hominems aren't don't really undermine the arguments presented in the article.
So why not do that too?
We do also do that too.
Every car is built with a fancy headrests and seatbelts and airbags -- the entire car is literally a helmet, and we require this on every new vehicle sold for decades. (And we require the seatbelt be worn too, legally enforceable by law in most areas)
We even check every single car sold to make sure the Helmet-worthiness of it is safe for the general public (see https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle/2019/CHEVROLET/VOLT/5%252520HB... as an example of a vehicle results)
When an occupant of the car is small enough such that the built-in helmet-worthiness of the car might be rendered insufficient, we also require they get extra helmet-like protections wrapped around their head/neck/body - see https://www.dmv.com/car-seats for specifics -- and even these are also legally enforceable by law in most areas
Of course all of this is simply to say, that there is a line, where the marginal safety gain is outweighed by the cost, both economic and otherwise. Different people and organizations are going to have differing opinions on where this line should be, but arguing purely on the side of harm reduction misses a great deal. This is aside from personal responsibility, liberty, etc.
I did feel this aspect of the effect of regulation was not well addressed in the article at least. I think there's an implication that the effect of regulation has been to reduce cycling, and therefore the effect on youth has been more to discourage cycling altogether than to encourage cycling with helmets, but I don't think that's well established. IIRC, the positive effects of seat belt laws are generally much more pronounced after a generation or two.
> It's proven that regulation and legislation can help. Regulation for seat-belts, airbags, crash testing, etc. has saved many lives. IMO this is what government is about, saving people. Sometimes from their stupidity and ignorance.
There's also plenty of evidence of cases where regulation and legislation has harmed, or had no effect. Arguments that regulation & legislation intrinsically help or harm are, at best, specious. Regulation & legislation are tools that obviously can be helpful; the debate should always be about whether a particular regulatory/legislative approach is helpful.
Or do what happened in Australia and just don't bother riding a bike and drive your car instead.
I sound flippant but I'm just reflecting _what actually happened_, which is where conversations need to be grounded.
The amount of discomfort (psychological fear of theft or physical nuisance of carrying it) is very likely going to discourage its use. But then you're liable for a fine for not having a helmet, so you choose to not ride the bike.
Just don't require helmets for bike riders over some age.
The idea that use would be discouraged because of that is ridiculous when you consider the alternative: cars or public transport. Both are terrible options. Parking, traffic, etc.
I'm 47 and had a crash recently. How does my age have to do anything if someone suddenly jumps in my lane or a car runs into me?
If anything my healthcare bill will be higher.
The same argument applies to children of course - where do you put your helmet after you've cycled to school? Attach it to the bike loosely and someone will steal it, it's too big to carry in your rucksack all day, and you don't want to have to go back and forth to your locker potentially on the other side of school if you have one at all.
Also if it's locked to the bike you would break the lock and steal the bike. The helmet is the cheaper part. Helmets are often designed so locks can go through them.
Why not? A good bike helmet is several hundred dollars. That's not life-altering money of course, but it adds a decent percentage to the cost of replacing the stolen bike.
Unfortunately you can't glance at a cyclist and decide affirmatively that they're an idiot for riding without wipeout skills.
We went through this same nonsense with motorcycles. Stop acting like it's the end of the world to put a piece of foam and plastic on your head for a little bit.
If someone asked me to wear a helmet while running, I would find that ridiculous. Same thing when riding my (non-road) bike.
Bike speeds > 20km/h are normal and easily achievable for the untrained on flat ground. Downhill, you'll quickly go past 30km/h. This isn't something that you're doing while running for longer periods of time while you're still half-asleep.
Helmets annoy me too, but "the fastest runners can peak at speeds higher than what I reach every other day on my bike and they don't wear helmets" is a weird argument.
For rides where I go faster, I will take my road bike and wear a helmet.
For rides where I go slower, I would prefer not to wear a helmet, but mandatory helmet laws don’t make that distinction.
As you alluded, even between bike trips, I weigh the risks differently when I think about a casual spin down a protected lane or a recreational trail as compared to an aggressive commute inches apart from vehicle traffic.
My local bike share program has started blurring things even more for me lately as they introduce progressively zippier e-bikes. Any more, it’s trivial for me to move with traffic on these huge heavy clunkers of bikes, while to my impulses it still feels like the low-effort casual kind of ride I’d instinctively rate as not warranting a helmet.
Still, I’m glad to be judging for myself how to mitigate the specific risks of a specific ride.
You don't need that helmet until you do.
Let me assure you, if you've decided cycling safety is a binary contingent on whether or not you're wearing a helmet, you're doing it wrong. It's no better than superstition. There are so many other variables.
* Avoiding the crash in the first place
* Knowing how to fall if you crash
* Helmet, and potentially other protection, when unable to execute crashing properly.
(Edit: Changed ’security’ to ’safety’)
I got three stiches in my chin. I lost two teeth; one was driven through my lip, and I had 13 stiches in that lip (there are three layers in a lip: outer skin, muscle, inner skin). I needed two root-canals. I fractured my mandible, which is now joined to the maxilla on only one side. I was concussed, and wound up sleeping about 15 hours a day for the next 3 months. I couldn't chew for ages.
A motorbike helmet might have helped; but not a bicycle helmet.
Of course, the helmet is only 10% of cycling safety. But it's for that important 10% when your head crashes into the ground. Suggesting that it would never come in handy is naive.
Since you seem to believe in the power of personal anecdote, I am an experienced cyclist and have crashed directly on to my head before. It was just once, but it prevented a serious head injury.
Tying a helmet to a bike can result in theft and weathering (rain).
The article goes to describe that it is the secondary effects that are important. Ie, it's better to have 100 cyclists on a road with 50% helmet usage, than it is to have 3 with 100% usage.
I've seen campaigns and memorial stickers asking drivers to watch for motorcycles. So it is not dissimilar for pedal bikes, except the safety effect for driver awareness is even more important for non-motorized bikes. Which is essentially the non-intuitice conclusion of the article.
Yes, but that additional cost does discourage people to use a bike. And many countries want to encourage rather than discourage bike use, for several reasons:
* bikes don't endanger other road users the way cars do
* bikes pollute less
* bikes take up less space
* bikes put less strain on the road
* bikers get more exercise and are therefore healthier
All of these are important positive effects, so a lot of countries would prefer to stimulate bike use rather than discourage it. They don't have the same reason to encourage car or motorbike use, so having the extra cost there is fine. The alternative for a car is likely to be better for society, so it's fine to discourage their use. The alternative for a bike is likely to be worse.