Bike helmets: what the science says about an American safety obsession
slate.com
slate.com
> Regardless, experts I spoke to were unanimous about what these flaws don’t mean: that helmets are useless. They all believe you should wear one.
This is one of those articles that reads like a lot of claims against something, even though the conclusion is very clearly in favor of it.
There are some valid concerns about how bike safety needs to extend beyond just the helmet, but the middle sections trying to suggest that maybe helmets are bad just feels like bait.
Asking the "why" one or two more levels, we end up in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism_bias. Which suggests you should let someone else evaluate the risk to you.
Better for all would be to reshape society so that helmets weren't required, but in the US, at least, that's not where we are, so for now: wear a helmet.
Yes, wearing a helmet will protect you from a head injury from falling, but some things should be people centered and "it protects you" is really reductive. North America is really centered around automobile usage, even pedestrians are relegated to beg buttons and cycling nor simply walking about often doesn't feel like the casual activity that it can be.
The Dutch cycle because it's easier than driving. The reason it's safer comes down to many factors. Just the city planning and redevelopment to make it safe counts for most of it. They didn't get to this point by not requiring helmets.
By comparing cycling to the injury risk of falling on ice or just tripping over your own feet, I'm appealing to people's intuition on the importance of balancing the mild inconvenience of a helmet, with the low risk of falling and the severity of injury of falling.
The article establishes that helmets are not designed for collision injury mitigation but instead falling. Helmet usage on ice typically increases with vigor of activity, and in the Netherlands you see the same intuition with helmet use: low velocity commuters rarely wear helmets, almost all high speed sports cyclists wear one. Laws and these debates on usage instead rarely show such common sense.
Comparing single factors between Netherlands and any other country is fraught. They have a hundred years on the rest of us, with an endemic cycling culture and physical safety considerations to keep most cyclists separated from traffic.
The numbers of commuters on a bike involves more than requiring a helmet or not.
Slipping on ice isn't comparable. This is a low speed accident where you often get to control your descent and protect the valuables. In the UK, 85% of on-road cyclist fatalities involved another vehicle, and that remaining 15% will include pedestrian collisions; the vast majority of deaths aren't from simple misadventure. They involve some speed.
So why bother? Because being "designed for" falling doesn't means they only work for falls. The article was pretty clear here, they lower impact damage, turning fatalities into hospitalisations and hospitalisations into [largely] unreported bumps.
Correlating sports cyclist helmet usage won't tell you much. Sports cyclists are usually required to wear a helmet by their events' and their personal insurers. You train in the same conditions.
These are hard things to discuss intelligently. Even looking at a single country, it's nearly impossible to subtract other factors to see if helmet laws worked. But it's still clear that hitting your head is a stupidly simple way to die, and those same impacts don't kill you if you're wearing a helmet.
Because unless you live and work in some of the pre-WW2 communities/cities/neighbourhoods, you probably live in car-centric suburbs, so the distances involved are impractical.
I was consulting in Atlanta once and people thought I was insane to walk two miles to the office.
Don't get me wrong, the infrastructure is car centric, but the culture is very anti pedestrian and anti bicycle. It is a vicious cycle where the infrastructure pushes people to car culture and that drives the infrastructure. However the flipside of the culture is a lack of sympathy for pedestrians and cycling which creates a lot of tension and with it danger.
In North America, it seems to me, people view cycling as a child's activity or a dangerous sport. People push safety in both cases. In the Netherlands, at all distances, people are more willing to view cycling as an ordinary human activity from a commute to a vacation across the continent.
Culturally in the US South, walking is viewed as having a high correlation with poverty, so it's a low-class thing to do that people avoid as a signaling measure.
A relation that runs for exercise visited a semi-rural area there, and people would stop their cars and offer a ride because "not being in a car" was strange.
“While car accidents contribute about 14% of the aggregate TBI cases in the US, they are the leading cause of TBI-related deaths among children and young adults”
https://treatnow.org/knowledgebase/car-accidents-and-brain-i...
Speaking from experience treating traumatic brain injuries, the brain injuries that are common in a car (as long as you are wearing a seatbelt and don't get the) is something called diffuse axonal injury (DAI) also know and traumatic axonal injury (TAI) which is diffuse brain injury caused by the (de)acceleration/rotational acceleration. A helmet would not be much help against those types of injuries.
What percent of bicyclists have been in an accident that would benefit from a helmet? Must be at least 10x the percent of car occupants who have been in such an accident.
It means accidents involving a car; many will be car vs pedestrian and car vs [motor]cyclist.
Making me ride on the shitty pavement at the edge of the road, and watch out for cars everywhere slows me down, and reduces my danger. :P
In car v bike, a helmet may or may not help, I'm definitely going to lose, either way. Thankfully, I've never had a car v bike, but I've had plenty of solo crashes, although I think I've been lucky enough not to hit my head.
Statistically, it does not.
That really doesn't happen in the Netherlands, however. I mean, ya, those grannies on bikes seem aggressive, but they aren't going very fast, Dutch bikers wearing suits are not like Americans bikers wearing spandex. Biking as a normalized transportation thing means speed isn't as common compared to biking as some kind of recreational sport.
Most large cities are fully built out. You can't design infrastructure better as the infrastructure is already there. Maybe on brand new places being built, but that won't help Chicago or San Francisco or Los Angeles. You can't just use eminent domain and take out all buildings and highrises on both sides of Market Street in San Francisco to build a 10 foot wide roadway only for bicycles on each side.
It's the same with public transportation as well, especially light rail. To put in light rail in some cities, you would have to rip up tens of thousands of homes and businesses.
I never did get this whole argument.
It's like saying that you should make a better infrastructure for the human body. I for one, would like it if my anus would be right over my achilles tendon, that way if I shit my pants, it wouldn't dribble all down my leg, it would just be there on the ground already with minimum fuss.
Yes but it needs constant maintenance. Choosing to keep repairing it in order for it to keep serving its current purpose (as a pathway exclusively for large motorised vehicles) might be the easiest option, but it's still a choice that has to be made. Undoubtedly the existence of buildings/residences/other infrastructure puts restraints on what you can do to redesign particular roads etc., but it doesn't make it impossible. And from what I recall, many (most?) of LA's freeways look as though they were simply built over the top of an already "fully built out" city anyway.
Yes, however, it's not happening now. There are no more freeways being built in the city of Los Angeles.
It's all just so silly to me. For example, you take a street like Santa Monica Blvd in Los Angeles. It's a large main artery within the city. It goes from the Pacific Ocean to the Silver Lake district where it meets up with Sunset Blvd, which also goes from the Pacific Ocean to Downtown Los Angeles.
So are you and others saying to completely disallow any cars at all on those main arteries? To turn them into one long bike path? So that all the cars have to go down the side streets and clog up all those side roads, which will definitely be infinitely worse for traffic? Or are you saying to ban cars altogether and not allow any cars to be used anywhere, for any purpose, and we go back to horse and carts?
Right now, bicyclists can use the suburban side streets. Despite being in Los Angeles, the side streets are empty almost all of the time. I walk a lot and don't use the main arteries, but use the side streets. Hell, I walk right down the middle of these suburban side streets if I want, there are so few cars. Despite being Los Angeles, these LA suburban streets are the same as those in Lincoln Nebraska or Little Rock Arkansas, traffic-wise. Not in Downtown LA, of course, but that's the exception, not the rule. The downtown area is tiny compared to the city of LA.
LA is completely filled with non-busy suburban streets. Go to Google maps and look yourself.
It's the exact same with San Francisco or Sacramento or any other city. Not everywhere, not in the highest density of downtown areas. But people really are not specifying that they are only talking about those areas. They are talking about cities in general, the entire city, which is a LOT bigger than just the extreme downtown areas of any major city.
I just fail to understand what the issue is. To me, it really isn't about bike paths or pedestrian paths or anything like that. That's just an excuse. The real reason is just to get rid of cars, to get rid of cars. If that's the case, just be honest about it.
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.09075,-118.3372144,3a,75y,27...
Or you could put those bike lanes a block or two over.
Lots of ways to do this without 'completely disallowing cars'.
Personally, I would just go down Lexington Street which is one block over and no traffic. I see these bike lanes in super heavily traffic arteries and no way would I personally go down them. All it takes is one tiny slip on the part of the bike rider or the auto driver and you end up as a grill decoration.
I'm NOT anti bike. I just think as a bike rider, you have the responsibility to figure out alternate routes. I would feel this way for myself. I don't ride a bike now, but when I did, I always tried to find alternate routes that kept me off main thoroughfares. Maybe you do, I don't know, but that's not my point, really. I just think that there are a certain vocal minority that wants the same rights on public roads as automobiles have, and that is the only reason. And they do, I always give bikers wide berth and respect them. But the fact of the matter is that main arteries are by nature going to be more dangerous, even with those little tiny bike lanes. What is the problem with going the side streets, if you can? I'm not saying it is always possible, but when it is, why not?
I work on a major thoroughfare in LA but walk every day, but do it on the side streets. It's a million times better - no traffic noise, no cars. As I said, I can walk right down the middle of the street, which I have done on occasion. For sure I can do that street crossing where you saunter diagonally across the road, not worried about a crosswalk. Every driver that goes by is going 25 mph, so easy for each to see each other and reaction time is better.
That to me suggests you've had very little exposure to cities that haven't so thoroughly given themselves over to one single mode of transport.
Or that all the issues from having so many people depend on private cars to get almost anywhere simply don't bother you - but there are more than a few of us who feel very differently.
I'd think LA is almost an ideal city for a (necessarily slow) transformation away from car dependency, given its density, climate and terrain, and indeed it would happen anyway if so much time, effort and money wasn't dedicated to maintaining such a massive road network - though simply neglecting it would obviously result in a fairly unpleasant transition for most. It would definitely require far more vision and willingness to break away from "what we've always been doing" than I suspect any of those currently in charge have. LA is certainly not exceptional in that regard - I'd say the same for basically all major cities in Australia too.
Things like protected intersections (https://momentummag.com/protected-intersections-latest-trend...) do not take more space.
Things that play against many American city is that density might not be sufficient, but for cities like SF density is probably enough and you have so much space dedicated to cars that you can reclain.
On Market Street i can see some non protected bike lane that were already reclaimed from car lane. In some years this might turn in protected bike lane.
By just reducing the width of car lanes (which help reduce speeding) you can probably build bike lane in many US streets ...
Everyone always compares Europe to the USA. What works there is a non-starter in the USA because first, yes, we have a different culture, but also, the density in Copenhagen is way different than in most USA cities. It can work in some places, but not in all. Sure, in the city centers you can have the intersections, that's fine. But in California, like in Los Angeles, it is so huge that some people would have to ride 30-50 miles to their workplace. Because the USA is a lot bigger. Also I noticed in the photos you linked to that the streets are just one lane each direction. Totally a no go, it wouldn't work. It would be totally impossible on main city arteries.
However, even in Los Angeles, if you go down the side streets, there's hardly any cars there. Shit, I walk down the middle of these suburban streets with no problem. Not at 8 am or 5 pm when the commutes begin, but during the day there's hardly any traffic, even on the streets the next one over from the main city artery streets. Just about any bicycle rider should be able to get to wherever they want using the back streets - the streets off the main arteries. So it is a little out of the way and not a straight shot, but that's the whole point of riding a bicycle, is to be on the bicycle and also to get exercise, so who cares if one goes out of the way just a little bit. But it just seems like bicyclists want to use the main vehicle arteries....just because. I mean, even if you make these arteries more bike friendly, believe me, they will still be fantastically more dangerous than just taking the side streets. It's nuts. I only walk on the side streets everywhere, it's so much more satisfying than the noise of main arteries.
As far as Market Street in San Francisco goes, you can ride your bike down Minna, for example. But what I'm saying with San Francisco does not really have to do with bicycles. I'm talking about Muni, not bicycles. I used Muni for years, and it makes sense in a city like San Francisco. It is great - go downtown, you avoid d traffic and don't have to worry about parking. But this is not the same in other cities. It's ridiculous in Los Angeles, for example, which is spread out all over fuck.
Also, people always seem to compare to Copenhagen. First, it is their culture. We have a different culture, and I'm not even talking about cars vs bikes. But it is unfair comparison because Copenhagen is unique. You don't have this in London, or Berlin, or any other country. Copenhagen is an outlier, probably the only one.
And additionally, while super hardcore and super fit bicyclists might be able to ride anywhere in San Francisco, let's see a normal person take a bike ride up California Street from the Financial District to Pacific Heights. Good luck with that one.
>By just reducing the width of car lanes (which help reduce speeding) you can probably build bike lane in many US streets
It depends, but honestly, I don't see it. Like on Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards, no way, just no way. Those are the main arteries from the Pacific Ocean to downtown LA. Going down to one lane? Nope. Just impossible.
However, there are tons of suburban streets, that I mentioned that are a way better and massively less stressful for a bike rider. You have to sometimes zig and zag, but so what? It's a block or two to go around a park or whatever. This is in Los Angeles. And even in San Francisco, must of the city is suburban streets. Sunset, Richmond, Excelsior, Potrero Hill, Noe Valley and the rest - all of these you can ride on off the main arteries. But sure, downtown is always different. But bike riders are going to want a bike lane ALL the way down Mission Street, just because. No reason, except "just because." I mean, I know I'll always get pushback. There will always be, "yeah, but this and that."
The goal isn't to create pedestrian and cyclist space from building footprints, it's to repurpose the existing roads and streets away from cars, to pedestrian and cyclist use.
Here are a few links to examples of successful conversions. Please note that no buildings were torn down to make any of this happen.
https://globaldesigningcities.org/publication/global-street-...
https://www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2022/06/21/seven-stroads-ha...
I live in a suburb of Dallas, Texas. Most people would say it's "fully built out" despite the oodles of new construction happening just slightly farther away from the city center. Still, light rail is being built right through Plano and Richardson and Addison, all existing built-out suburbs. The "Silver Line" will be done in a few years without tearing down tens of thousands of existing homes and businesses.
https://dart.org/about/project-and-initiatives/expansion/sil...
First of all, I don't get why it would be necessary to convert those streets on the first link you provided. On the first photograph, the sidewalks look empty. There are no impediments to walking down that street, although really, it is a dishonest comparison - one that is probably the worst black and white photo to make the first one seem as bleak as possible, and the second in color with people there dressed in summer clothes. But be that as it may, it's only aesthetic purposes only. It's not like some life-changing functionality.
Also, as I look at it on Google maps in that example that you gave of Strøget in Copenhagen Denmark, it's only one street. The rest of Copenhagen is chock-a-block full of regular city streets, same as any other major city. Color me unimpressed.
In Santa Monica, there's a pedestrian shopping street where no cars are allowed. It's on 3rd Street. All kinds of stupid shit like palm readers and people preaching Jesus, although it is "upscale." So what? Lot's tourists walk up and down, but I've never been a guy who is into tourist traps that attract suckers to places with a lot of shops and sidewalk cafes that people pay high prices for mediocre food. But that's just me. It's all overhyped. Like Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco.
That whole street in Capenhagen that you linked to is hilariously funny, now that I look at it. I'm on Google street maps, and it is completely lined with shops like Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci and other super high-end shops. I guess it is a great place for ultra-high end people to go to to spend $10,000 on a purse. I'm sure it keep the riff-raff out. The poor don't deserve a pedestrian place, I guess.
Just so not impressed.
And then, to walk down this Stroget in Copenhagen, you still have to drive there, and then park somewhere, probably far away, and walk down city streets a long way to get there.
And for me, for my money, if one wants to visit a nice place, instead of me going to this high-priced tourist trap, that quite honestly I'll go to some place I have to walk down a sidewalk next to a busy street to a store that is honest, run by honest people, rather than a Gucci store in some high-end place like 3rd street in Santa Monica. And furthermore, if I want a nice place to walk and get away from everyone, I'll just drive for 5 more minutes and go to Topanga State Park, a massive park, with almost unlimited walking trails. Why would I give a shit about some walking street tourist trap? A place to walk around and buy shit, or should I say shit, and contribute more to the global warming by buying shit. Gucci handbags for $10,000. So yeah, having a pedestian place to walk is so great. For the well-heeled crowd.
.
As far as light rail, that has to be the most stupidist of the stupid. Yes, it works in dense population areas like San Francisco and New York, for sure, but those places are rare in the USA. When I lived in Sacramento, California, and they put in a light rail. What a complete joke. I had to drive over some light rail tracks at least twice a day, during all hours. I never saw more than 3 people per car. Ever. Even in the morning commute hours. Because Sacramento is so spread out. It's ridiculous. They spent $500 million on it. Plus the ongoing maintenance of the rail cars, rails, the administrators, the railcar drivers and their benefits and pensions, and on and on for ongoing expenses.
If you use the light rail, it costs $2.50 per ticket, so $5 for the day to commute. If you have a 10 mile commute to, and 10 mile commute back, if your vehicle gets 20 miles to the gallon, it costs $4.50 to drive, and this is at current gasoline prices. A few years ago, it cost $3 instead of $5. Plus you have the added flexibility with a car to pick up your kids from school, go to a shop, or whatever. Why would transportation, that carries 60 people in a train car, maybe with 3 cars total of 120 people, or whatever it is, and the cost averaged out between all the riders, cost more than the cost of driving the same distance? It doesn't make any sense at all. Maybe if rides cost 25 cents or 50 cents, yeah, ok, maybe.
As far as I'm concerned, these light rail projects are more resume builders for the city council and mayor. They will spend $1 billion just to say that they did it under their watch. Bragging rights. "Look at me, look at me, look what I did, I spend $1 billion on a light rail project."
But most of the USA is not like Europe, so what works in Europe is not the same as the USA. So it's comparing apples to oranges.
Though the goalposts shifted from "cannot build bike lanes without destroying thousands of homes and businesses" to "there is no visible impediment for pedestrians," even that understates the extent to which designing for safety and comfort make a huge difference in usage. Walking along a high-speed road with no barrier is a radically different experience from walking along a low-speed road or a road without cars, or even a road with a barrier for pedestrians.
Just like widening a road draws more traffic, creating pedestrian-friendly and cyclist-friendly spaces draw more pedestrians and cyclists, so a lack of perceived demand given current infrastructure doesn't mean much.
I provided two links, just two arbitrarily-chosen out of many, and yet even then the comment to which I'm responding focuses on disagreement with only the first, which is apparently an unimpressive case study because the current shops are too expensive. The seven examples in the second link might have helped, but I'm perhaps not. There are many, many more resources about how to build pedestrian-friendly streets[0] specifically, and a lot of information available about how to build strong towns[1] generally, if one is actually interested.
About light rail, I described the system in suburbs of Dallas, Texas, pretty far from Europe, which it turns out are even less dense than Sacramento, California[2]. And yet my experience with the existing light rail lines is largely positive. While they aren't jammed full of people twice a day like trains I've experienced in other cities, I've definitely been on the train when there was standing room only more than once. It seems as if systems well-designed to match the areas might be more effective than systems that are possibly political pet projects. Where tracks and stations are located and how much tickets cost are all choices made by someone somewhere, and sometimes those decisions are better made than others.
Dallas is very, very far from an ideal place for mass transit, given cultural factors and topography and geography that is very spread out, and yet three different train systems (for Dallas, Denton, and Fort Worth) seem to be able to work together and provide popular options for a good number of people anyway. It can be done, and it might help to focus on success stories more than perceived failures.
All in all, I find city design fascinating, but obviously many people don't.
0. https://nclurbandesign.org/pedestrian-friendly-street-a-grea...
1. https://www.strongtowns.org/streets
2. https://www.opendatanetwork.com/entity/1600000US0664000-1600...
>Though the goalposts shifted from "cannot build bike lanes without destroying thousands of homes and businesses" to "there is no visible impediment for pedestrians,"
Not really, just having a wide ranging discussion.
>Just like widening a road draws more traffic, creating pedestrian-friendly and cyclist-friendly spaces draw more pedestrians and cyclists, so a lack of perceived demand given current infrastructure doesn't mean much.
Not necessarily. I've seen many bike paths and pedestrian streets that have little to no bike/pedestrian traffic. I was listening to a radio show once and they were talking about a light rail project on the east coast. It cost way more than originally planned - instead of $200 million it cost $1 billion. This is because design changes all the time. They started building it and then the bike brigade, along with other special interest groups, came along and wanted a bike path. Well, the guy they talked to said that for all that extra expense, nobody uses that bike path. Maybe the bike path cost $100 million, and so it comes out to $10 million per person who rides their bike on it. The whole segment was about why civil structure undertakings cost more than planned.
I think there is a massive misunderstanding of the whole "build it and they will come" thing. That's not how it works.
I do think all of these types of capital outlays for bike paths and pedestrian streets are for the Gucci crowd. Nobody is going to spend $50 million creating a pedestrian street in Compton or wherever the gangs are in Los Angeles, or in the Tenderloin of San Francisco or the south side of Chicago in the baddest part of town.
Maybe spending that $100 million or whatever it costs would be better spent on getting more police in the bad parts of town, or something that can benefit the poorest of us all, instead of the bike riders who are riding $15,000 bikes. But I guess the $15,000 bike crowd has more clout than a bunch of riff raff gang members or working poor or homeless.
And yes, it is a zero sum game.
I don't have anything against what you're saying, I just think money could be spent better elsewhere.
But, I guess it is good that people can shop at Gucci or Prada without worrying about stopping for stoplights - they can just walk where they want. And the people who can't afford the shops and buy $2,400 pair of shoes can sit at the coffee shops and buy a cup of coffee for $9.87 and pretend that they can, instead of going to their local greasy spoon diner and buying a cup of Folger's coffee for $1.25.
I'm not trying to be a dick, it's just what I think about it all.
It's all good.
When it comes to the dangers threatening cyclists, wearing a helmet is like bringing a knife to a gunfight. America’s top-selling vehicle model, the Ford F-Series, weighs up to 7,500 pounds. Its hood stands 4.5 feet tall—at the height of my chin.
I asked my grocery store clerks, who always wore masks during the height of the pandemic, if anyone got covid. None did, because they all wore masks. And they waited on tens of thousands of customers weekly.
Meanwhile, 35 out of 40 of Donald Trump's inner circle got Covid because they didn't wear masks.
So some people want to wear helmets and some don't.
I say, whatever you want to do is fine. But just like the masks in the pandemic, don't you come whining to me if you realize after you get f-ed up that maybe you should have after all worn the mask or the helmet. Don't want to hear any none no whining no way negative uh-uh go away shut up.
I've also been hit on the head by an acorn. Thats mild, but it could be startling enough to loose control, but it was just a noise for me.
Like, if the problem you notice is 7,500 pound vehicles designed to kill pedestrians, isn't the logical solution to anyone with a functioning brain to propose restricting those vehicles? What kind of lead paint eating logic does it take to conclude that the best solution is to get rid of bike helmets?
I think the author is actually a bit careful. It is actually quite possible to make the infrastructure so safe that helmets offer little additional protection -and thus people stop wearing them-. This is (rather in a nutshell) what has happened in the Netherlands.
This situation still so far from the typical (North America) experience at this moment that I would fully understand if you don't quite believe it.
However, hopefully you can see there has to be some reason why all the people in eg. this video [1] aren't wearing helmets. They can't all be crazy, after all.
See also [2] for a very short summary of specific bicycle infrastructure.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynwMN3Z9Og8 (Utrecht Vredenburg)
[2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/z5dvqhYQACY A Quick Intro to Dutch Bike Paths
>Regardless, experts I spoke to were unanimous about what these flaws don’t mean: that helmets are useless. They all believe you should wear one.
The problem is cars. Cars kill the people they hit.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/523310/netherlands-numbe...
In my opinion, it's great (and in general very healthy) that the elderly are still biking a lot in the Netherlands. However, it does seem that it's a bit riskier for them than for the general population.
It's bad enough when people jump in with incomplete multivariate comparisons and jump straight to a conclusion. You can't just compare cyclist fatalities between two cities on different sides of the planet without also why people are cycling, what they're cycling on, what's been done to cities and roads to make it safer already, etc, etc.
Then you throw helmets in. More cyclists wearing helmets died? But wait, your data only shows hospital admissions from RTAs. How many cyclists in helmets rode away from their accidents? How many more road cyclists wear helmets anyway?
Then you do a Dr Ian Walker and start muddying all that with psychology.
Then what happens if your enforce helmets?! Everybody stops cycling and obesity rates rocket? What data says that?
It's a mess. There are so many variables. Too many variables. We chase after them, trying to explain human behaviour and prove that helmets are magic, or evil; quickly forgetting how easy it is to die by one simple head trauma, and how easy it is suffer that coming off a bike.
Yes, safe infrastructure appears to be a massive factor, but cities and countries that need it most can't just regenerate their road networks overnight. We should be talking about helmets as a stop-gap; a way to make cycling safer right now with the goal that regeneration follows to improve things for everyone.
The wooden deck was thus very slippery, and about one second after touching the brakes the bike was horizontal and I smacked the side of my body and helmet against the wooden deck. Since it happened so quickly, my hands were still holding the handlebars when I hit the deck.
While not concrete, that wood wasn't exactly pliable and while I have no idea what would have happened without a helmet, I'm quite glad I didn't get to find out.
I've been riding my bike for 50 years and I wear a helmet when I feel like it could potentially help but most of the time I don't. Statistically what I do makes no sense at all but wearing a helmet is enough of an annoyance that I only do it in specific situations.
Wearing a helmet is no different of a concept.
One could argue that insurance is required by law in a lot of cases.
People are ok with that, but not laws requiring helmets.
The whole point of wearing a helmet is because accidents are rare and usually unexpected. It isn't like someone leaves the house expecting to get into an accident.
Similar reason why I wear a seat belt. Being involved in a car crash is rare and unexpected, but the consequences of not wearing a seat belt when involved in a crash can be significant, so I use it.
"Single minded devotion to the helmet" makes for engaging controversy, but it isn't what I observe out here in the trenches. People wear helmets, but they almost always choose routes with less car traffic when possible. In my opinion, route choice is probably the single most important cycling safety measure. What it suggests to me is that real riders are actually making pretty good safety choices.
There's a strong cycling culture around here. Some of them ride in packs on some major roads. I'd never do that, with or without a helmet. Recently there was a major incident. One death, a bunch injured. The dead one had their head severed. The helmet didn't help.
[edit: I usually do wear a helmet for any major ride]
Edit: actually, repealed last year due to racism [1]
[1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/kin...
But that's sort of the point in America. The act of not being in a car is a non-standard and dangerous option compared to the rest of the world.
Of course it's dangerous. I would personally barely ever ride without a helmet. I see so many arguments like this postulating on hypothetical situations where life without helmets would be better, but they all come across as justifications for not really wanting to wear a helmet.
I think it's very important to have them required by law, so that it is not seen as a cool or rebellious thing to not wear one. It's just normal.
I think that governments should make the roads so incredibly safe that helmets become (largely) redundant.
Only a couple of countries have gotten near to this goal so far, sadly (and we can still always do better).
Similar to protective gear in hockey actually increasing injuries I suspect that the impact of helmets is bimodal: some people respect the risk of going XX mph nearly unprotected and others view their protective gear as a shield.
I’m also willing to bet that the biggest change in safety for bike helmets is actually people outside of the urban areas most likely to have safety mandates
I am pro helmet, but anti-nanny laws. I don't wear my helmet when I'm making a local trip to the grocery, but will on longer varied rides. God help me if I were ticketed for not wearing a helmet. I ski too... and don't wear a helmet... I'm not a maniac on the slopes. My 2 cents.
Having grown up in Australia where they're mandatory, I don't think twice about it. I find the bickering about helmet safety in the US something very similar to your gun laws and gun violence.
Stop bickering and splitting hairs and wear a damn helmet. You have to wear them when you're on two wheels with an engine.
"A Florida attorney who opposed the state’s helmet law dies in a motorcycle crash. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. Ron Smith, who spent over a decade fighting Florida laws that required the use of helmets, represented a number of clients who violated state motorcycle requirements."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/florida-attorney-oppose...
In most of the countries I know of where normal commuters don't wear helmets on their bicycles, people do wear them on racing bikes, mountain bikes, mopeds, motorcycles etc.
They are in different risk categories.
FYI, there are states in the US that don't require motorcycle helmets, which is also part of that bickering.
In terms of risk... a head injury is a head injury... it doesn't necessarily matter how fast you're going or on what vehicle.
I spent 4 years living in Vietnam. Helmets are mandatory there, but few people wear ones that would actually help you in an accident. They just wear a plastic cap that gets past the law. Other countries in SE Asia are similar.
Lower power motor scooters used to be popular in Europe because they didn't require helmets. When the law was changed to make them required, people upgraded to higher power motor scooters (or cars) instead.
(other modes of transport still require helmets though, and sometimes also padding)
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...
Some people want to mitigate your injuries in an accident. Helmets definitely stop you banging your head in an accident.
Other people feel that every accident is one too many, and want to prevent accidents outright. If you hardly have any accidents in the first place, the role of helmets is more limited.
(You should still wear a helmet if you're riding a road bike or a mountain bike or what have you, since those kinds of bikes are more dangerous. You should also consider at least wearing a helmet and taking extreme care if your local infrastructure is not (yet) designed to be safe. )
There are some things in life that you don't get a choice about, so that more often than not you get to go home to your family and so you're not a burden on your public health system.
But I understand your point, either way, Bicycles share the road with motorists and can be hit by a car in the same way a motorcyclist would.
Can you translate that into dutch?
No, thanks, keep it!
Wear these if you feel like it:
https://www.gettyimages.de/fotos/michelin-man
I won't!
That doesn't mean they have to be enforced legally, of course. So rather than attacking the merits of helmets, the argument made in the article would be more compelling if it focused on the unalienable right of humans to get severely injured doing stupid stuff for fun or profit.
He came in to visit about a year later. He could sort of talk and walk a little by that point.
Few years earlier my office Kate declared on Friday he was going to buy a motorcycle. Came in Monday with a broken leg.
To each their own. But I’ll stick to a car with a high safety rating.
If I'm riding on the road do I expect a helmet to help if I'm run over or hit at high speed? Not really. But if someone clips me and I hit the pavement I'd rather something than nothing.
Skateboard helmet saved me from taking a piece of rebar to the temple. Mountain bike helmet saved me from taking a jagged rock to the back of my head. Ski helmet saved me from taking the corner of a park rail to my forehead.
There's there more than one kind of crash and more than one kind of serious/fatal head injury.
I've known a few people who have become brain damage cases riding around without a helmet and life isn't great for them. One of them followed me when I went camping at one point and lost his only pants in the forest on the first night kind of level.
It certainly makes sense to wear a helmet while doing mountain biking, BMX tricks or road racing.
I think if you're maybe in one of those exceptionally bike-friendly places like Amsterdam that these hazards may be mitigated enough, but at least in the Americas people are actively hostile towards bike riders on the road and I think it's just a matter of civil infrastructure planning more than anything in terms of that sentiment.
As a lifelong cyclist, I can assure you there is no way to mitigate hazards enough on a bike, even in as cyclist-friendly place as Amsterdam, to justify not wearing a helmet. Even something as simple as an awkward fall can result in a head bouncing off the pavement.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVhYcJH_m5o 100s of Kids & Parents Bicycle to one Amsterdam School
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8h_DalTjV0 Amsterdam Bicycle Rush Hour.
Had I gone fully over the door head first, I suspect a helmet would have been a welcome companion for both the impact and the road rash. In all those above cases I was wearing one precisely because of that suspicion.
I think there are plenty of low speed urban bicycle accidents a helmet is good for based on this.
That said, a childhood friend of mine who became a sponsored snowboarder suffered a severe head injury while shooting an ad, and is still mentally and physically disabled from it (wheelchair bound to this day).
All to say, I’m well aware of the risks and have a list of anecdotes to support any direction you want to take them, but none of it has made me a fan of helmet laws for adults.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-injuries-stairs-id...
If something goes wrong with that, a mere helmet can only help so much, as you might expect.
I think we can agree that multi-ton vehicles are not permitted to enter houses. Because of the dearth of such vehicles, the inhabitants feel (relatively) safe, and go about their day helmet-less.
A similar approach has been used in eg. the Netherlands for bicycles. Where needed (& as much as possible, & more and more often) , bicycles are given their own paths, preferably in such a way that no motor vehicles can enter. Since the danger is thus much reduced, bicyclists on those routes also typically go about their day helmet-less.
At least, this is one way to intuit why people in the Netherlands don't normally wear helmets (as often at least: they still do when racing or mountain biking or etc where there is increased risk. Just not for the normal 9-5 commute, which is considered ~safe)
The roads in the Netherlands are nicely separated from the cars in most cases and also well paved. That doesn't prevent you from riding off the side of the road into a ditch and hitting your head though.
Having had a freak accident on a bike (on a safe road) and cracked a helmet, I'm sure glad that I had it on. I always ride with a helmet.
If you're riding a fast racing bike or a mountain bike, you're probably engaged in slightly more risky activity, and people do wear helmets on those bikes.
Bike rides off the side of the road, fall over, hit head on a rock.
Run head on into a pole.
Certainly, the style of bike helps and those are safer bikes... they don't prevent head trauma though. A helmet does.
This is also similar with skiing. I learned to ski when I was a kid and never wore a helmet. People wear helmets now. Even on bunny slopes. Kids wear them too. You're on snow, it is soft. Helmets are still a good idea.
It is the accidents you're not expecting that tend to hurt you the most.
But I understand why you might feel different. I do hope you agree that the other measures should be taken too.
Just so long as it doesn't end with people thinking that just wearing a helmet makes everything ok. It's not ok if bicycle riders and pedestrians still get run over on a regular basis.
[ (edit) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3-o5naTPT4 <- interviews of some dutch people on why they don't wear helmets. Views are varied, of course! ]
If anything, learn to set a good example for others. To me, it seems absurd to think that anyone would go so far as building nice roads for bikes, which sets a great example, and then stopping short at protecting your noggin with a piece of foam.
I'm not for mandates that people must wear them, it just seems like basic common sense to me. If people don't want to use their sense, or just take the risk on their own, sure... whatever.
The surgeons mention children and e-bikers being the most at-risk categories.
If you look at the interviews I linked, you'll see 2 different e-bikers there having a semi-split of opinion, the gentleman was already wearing a helmet (because it was a fast e-bike) , while the lady wasn't wearing a helmet yet, but was considering getting one (because she felt her [new?] e-bike was too fast and thus more dangerous).
I also posted a video elsewhere here where you actually see some of the children indeed wearing helmets. In the interviews I think one of the people was of the opinion that beginner/inexperienced cyclists could definitely wear helmets more often.
On the other hand, you see that people on slow city bikes think that a helmet there is probably the wrong call. eg. "On one of these bikes, if you fall you are more likely to bang your hip" (this is also my own experience on city bikes tbqh). Other bikes are certainly different.
But this is all arguing over details I think. The most important take home message is that it is a wise investment to bolster your infrastructure and make the roads safer for bikes. (Or better yet to make them safer for everyone, not just bikes)
Of course, individual bikers can also still wear a helmet, but they should also demand proper biking infrastructure.
It's totally possible that a helmet saves your life/head with no cars involved. Happened to me a couple months ago.
Helmets should be required and infrastructure should be great.
The article cites the Netherlands, where bicycling is extremely popular, but helmets are not. The "safety" comes from the infrastructure which reduces hazards that make bicycling unsafe. Visibility, and isolation from 3000+ lb metal objects are the two most important things.
There's a fun catch-22 here. You need more riders to create safety (groups of cyclists are visible. large groups of cyclists can advocate for bike lanes, etc), but without safety you can't attract new riders.
/s
You mean, I think, that it fails to improve it in the way you would like. Or are you actually asserting that making people wear helmets actually reduces safety?
Yes, if it's done instead of improving biking infrastructure, as it often is.
Honestly, this whole "don't ask me to exercise personal responsibility until you've changed the world for me" thing seems a little petulant.
A bit, but I'm claiming it will help way less than improving the infrastructure, and there's a long way to go in improving the infrastructure before focusing on wearing helmets makes sense (at a societal level! individuals can still focus on that, of course).
Even in the Netherlands, which has comparatively speaking amazing biking infrastructure, the majority of biking deaths are due to a collision with a car, not people falling down [1]. That to me says that even there, focusing on further improving the infrastructure still makes more sense than focusing on helmet wearing.
However, looking at the data [1], I did find one (almost) exception: for people over 70, biking deaths without a collision approached those with a collision (though the latter were still a majority). So I'll concede that for people over 70, telling them to wear a helmet when biking might make sense.
[1]: https://www.cbs.nl/-/media/_excel/2022/37/maatwerktabel-fiet... (xlsx file)
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Edited to address the edit:
> Honestly, this whole "don't ask me to exercise personal responsibility until you've changed the world for me" thing seems a little petulant.
I'm asking society to focus their efforts on the measures that have the best ROI for improving safety. My claim is that focusing on improving infrastructure has a better ROI than focusing on asking bikers to wear helmets.
That is not to say that individual bikers shouldn't wear helmets. I'm also not arguing about whether or not they should take individual responsibility or not. I'm only claiming that at a societal level, focusing on individual responsibility reduces biking safety. I believe that is backed up by data quoted in the article.
The argument you are making is appealing, to be sure. I'd even go so far as to say I agree with it. Strictly, it is a non-sequitur to the point that is being made.
The only mention I saw of this in the article is a study where the cyclist wearing a helmet had a shorter average distance between bike and car than when not wearing a helmet.
Do you have another source, or are we going to base legislation on one study by one individual in one city?
If you want safe biking, you need visibility and isolation. The visibility here is helped by, say, biker wearing blinking lights and reflectors. But also, just having constant presence of bikers on the road such that drivers get used to sharing it. The isolation is space between bikes and 3000+ pound hunks of accelerating metal, e.g. dedicated bike lines / bike barriers.
The bus is an easy comparison, as even on a bus, you would be safer with a seatbelt. But the added danger of not having a seatbelt is more than offset by the reduction in cars.
I'll note that the one you referenced is not really that interesting. Trying to get individual behavior out of it may work, but it is the population wide metrics that were telling.
And this is absolutely no different than cars. Your gut is probably that we require seatbelts. But school buses are a glaring omission from that is. Public transit, in general. Even works on boating. When taking a ferry, just a boat, we do not require active vest usage.
Would they make you safer? Probably yes in both cases. Is it the needle mover in population wide metrics? Getting people out of an individual's vehicle and into a community one is seen as more important for safety. Similar logic seems to apply to bikes. Get people out of cars and onto bikes. Whatever increase in danger you may see in lax helmet laws could be offset by them not being in a car.
The part where the other direction of the causation probably crops up is that, when a society focuses on wearing helmets for biking safety, biking safety will be lower than in societies that focus on biking infrastructure.
That's definitely not a right, so it would be less convincing than just sticking to statistics (or as you refer to them, dances.)
It's funny how reports of ejections from a crashed motor vehicle never mention that the driver wasn't wearing a seat belt as if their death was an act of god but cyclists have to be chastised as a blame shifting exercise to justify continued ostracism.
And that comes from someone who rides 10k+ miles a year and always wears a helmet.
The Netherlands didn't change their infrastructure overnight. They changed the infrastructure standards instead, and whenever a road needs to be redone, they upgrade it to the new standards. This took ~30-50 years, but had amazing results.
Of course it can be done faster if you want, and then it will be more expensive as well. But if you want to do it cheaply, you can absolutely get a very high ROI this way.