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Comment by richardlblair | Hacker News Reader

That's like saying "I don't wear a seatbelt because I drive the speed limit".

This is some of the worst logic I've seen on here in a while. I'll keep an eye open for your Tell HN post "I should have wore a helmet"

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A major argument against making bicycle helmets compulsory is that it would make people stop cycling (helmets destroy your hair, and where would you store your helmet when parked?), and that would cause more deaths due to cardiac arrest and the like than helmets would prevent. Hard to test, but IMO not an unreasonable argument (I think there are scientific papers on this, too)

And of course, the infrastructure is way different in the Netherlands, as is the culture. The fraction of car drivers that has regularly ridden a bicycle through traffic probably is very close to 100%; the fraction that has done so recently or has a kid that has done so probably still is over fairly high.

Net effect is that, despite all those helmetless cyclists (many of which break traffic laws many times a trip), dutch traffic is one of the safest in the world.

A scientific paper on this topic: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1368064

Its conclusion: "In jurisdictions where cycling is safe, a helmet law is likely to have a large unintended negative health impact. In jurisdiction where cycling is relatively unsafe, helmets will do little to make it safer and a helmet law, under relatively extreme assumptions may make a small positive contribution to net societal health." The negative health impact is "increased morbidity due to foregone exercise from reduced cycling" as a consequence of mandatory bicycle helmet laws.

I don't wear a helmet in my car because I drive the speed limit. Race car drivers wear helmets in their cars because they go very fast.

It's a matter of degree. Many random accidents could probably have been prevented by helmets, but we do not advise pedestrians to wear them.

Maybe people should be required to wear a helmet in their car too? A UK study on the effects of cycle helmets found that if pedestrians and motorists wore helmets it would save 12 times more lives than if cyclists wore them.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8799597?dopt=Abstract

From the paper: "CONCLUSIONS: There is no justification for compelling cyclists to wear helmets without taking steps to improve the safety of all road users."

Do you wear a helmet when you go out for a walk? You choose to draw your own risk line somewhere else, but you still draw it.

Do you usually walk on footpaths, or on the road in between cars?

But bike helmets are not for accidents involving motor vehicles. They may help in some of those accidents, but they are not rated for that.

The right question is, when was the last time you fell while out for a walk, or crashed into something, such that you banged your head?

When was the last time you needed brakes in order to come to a stop when out for a walk?

I think there's something to say about it being safer to bike in general in Netherlands vs in the US. Often in the US you are riding next to busy traffic, while in NE the bikes are better protected. Along with other things too: like a car driving population that is careful about bicyclists.

So, it's not exactly like saying I don't wear a seatbelt because I drive the speed limit. Rather it's like saying I don't wear a seat belt because I live in a different country where accidents are less probable.

Accidents may be less probable, but if you happen to be one of the unlucky ones who does have one you could still die or suffer severe brain damage, so why not just wear the helmet? Sure it makes you look a bit goofier, but that's a small price to pay to protect your melon.

I do a lot of downhill mountain biking, snowboarding, etc, so I'm not one of these people that tends to be overly worried about safety, but whenever I get on wheels or something that can easily slide out of control I wear a helmet, period. I'm (pun intended) painfully aware of the amount of impact force a rotational component can add to an otherwise relatively low-speed, low-altitude fall.

Maybe the drivers are more cognizant of bikers in the Netherlands vs the US, but I still wouldn't trust them, they are not infallible and it only takes one of them one fuckup to mess me up. A helmet is a very effective (though non-perfect) fail-safe for this that costs virtually nothing (amortized over time of use before it is needed, hopefully never) and has no real downside other than pure cosmetics.

Something to say? There is no way to disagree with that. http://www.policy.rutgers.edu/faculty/pucher/Irresistible.pd..., figure 10 shows that fatality rates per 100 million km cycled of 1.1 and 5.8 and injury rates per 10 million km cycled of 1.4 and 37.5. In 2007, it was 5 to 25 times as dangerous to ride bicycle in the USA as in the Netherlands.

I doubt that has changed for the better for the USA since.

(Found via http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2008/09/three-types-of-..., a great article on safety on a great site about dutch cycling infrastructure and culture)

Anecdotical evidence: when my (Dutch) son of 18 went on a student exchange to the US, he woke up in intensive care after six weeks of helmet-less biking. Nothing ever happened on his 6-year daily 45 mins commute to school in Amsterdam.

When in the US, where nobody is used to bikers, and there are no bikelanes: wear a helmet, when in The Netherlands: nobody does it.

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