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Comment by joshfraser | Hacker News Reader

In countries where people bike a lot, biking isn't treated as an inherently risky behavior. Instead, it's more akin to how we treat walking or driving a car, which we feel comfortable doing without helmets even if they would save lives on occasion. This alternative attitude to biking risk encourages more people to bike, which makes it safer for everyone as drivers become more accustomed to seeing and watching out for bikers. Keep in mind, most people don't die from accidents, they die from disease. Riding 20 miles a week on a bike cuts your chance of heart disease in half. Given that heart disease is our biggest killer in the US, we'd do well to stop treating biking as a risky behavior and instead encourage people to bike whether they choose to wear a helmet or not.

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Do you actually bike? I ask because the statement "in the US, we'd do well to stop treating biking as a risky behavior" will come as a surprise to anybody who spends any amount of time in the saddle on US roads.

https://sites.google.com/site/bicyclehelmetmythsandfacts/

Do you live in sprawling suburbia? In a lot of major cities it's fairly safe, and it becomes safer the more people bike. What's stopping people is that it's perceived as being risky. I don't think we need to abolish helmets for that, but the perception that you will die of head trauma if you're riding a few blocks to the coffee shop is a bit much.

Suburbia definitely contributes to this problem with large multi-lane roads, hostile to both cyclists and pedestrians alike. A lot of their cycling projects also seem to be focused on multi-use paths, which are unlikely to bring up the count of commuter cyclists. They're poor to use as transportation or training options, which often leaves suburban drivers confused or frustrated when "there's a perfectly good path for you over there."

I don't own a car and my bike is my primary form of transportation. I live in San Francisco and bike almost every day.

So based on your experience biking in the most bike-friendly city in the nation, you're recommending that everyone in the U.S. go sans helmet? This seems, at best, naive.

I never said people should ride without helmets. And there are way more bike-friendly cities than SF.

I live at a block with a two way stop at the intersection. A few weeks ago a student was pedaling at a healthy clip --25-30 mph, I was walking on the same direction as she was. The street she was pedaling down has a stop sign, the cross street does not. A lot of cyclists kinda sorta slow down a bit at the stop sign. This day, a car was coming down the hill on the street with no stop sign. The cyclist didn't stop ---not did the car (it did apply its bakes) which had the right of way.

She was wearing a helmet and she left a nice dent in the side of the car. She came out of it stunned but alright. I doubt she would have had the same outcome had she not worn a helmet.

She wouldn't have needed a helmet if she had heeded the stop sign and the fact that the car had right of way. I don't know if it's a regional thing, but a disturbing number of cyclists in the Bay Area ride like idiots. I've had numerous near-misses with bikes as a pedestrian, and I've seen some astonishingly bad behavior by riders who caused minor accidents and then tried to blame the driver of the car they careened into. I intervened in one such situation (where the rider was screaming racist obscenities are a car full of elderly passengers that he had just plowed into and threatening them with arrest and legal action) to point out that not only had he been going far faster than the car he hit, which was pulling in to park, his bike had no brakes. 'I own several bicycles,' he puffed 'and my other ones have brakes. I'll just show one of those to the police when I file the incident report.' He was less than pleased when I took a picture of him with his bike and told him to try it.

I don't think I have an anti-bike bias - I don't own one now, but I rode for years and the only motor vehicle I've owned was a motorcycle; I don't like driving a car unless I have to.

What you day is true but we wear safety devices in the event something unforeseen happens --in this case an accident. Maybe she was tired wasn't paying attention, etc. This provided protection from this event. The world isn't perfect nor are we so its not unreasonable to try to hedge against an accident within reason...

I'm neutral on helmets. I'm just perplexed as to why a population that claims to feel so much at risk on the road also exhibits a disturbing lack of regard for traffic rules and the safety of others.

Yes, I agree. Both motorists and cyclists need to understand each other. Myself, both a cyclist and motorist, can assume some negative aspects --for example, feeling exasperation at a cyclists slowing down traffic --for example when they ride side-by-side. But also when I'm a cyclist, I can assume some negative aspects exhibited by cyclists --not coming to a full stop, etc... It's about education and becoming cultured in both transport modes... That is not seeing stopping at a stop as 'inconvenient' (the same way we don't feel inconvenienced by having to wait for a crosswalk light.)

So a helmet allows you to survive cycling incredibly unsafely?

Was the student going down a hill? I'd have to be facing some major deadline to be going 25mph on a bike on a straightaway.

From my understanding, she was on her way to work from the uni. I think it was more accurately about 20mph.

Yes, helmets do provide some protection, but so would helmets for pedestrians, five-point safety belts in cars, safety belts in buses, etc.

Unless it was seriously down hill or with a serious tail wind, and she was extremely lucky, I bet she wasn't doing 25-30 mph.

I think that bet is safe because the world one hour record for women is about http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hour_record#One_Hour_records_... 29 mph.

Also, a bicycle helmet doesn't do much good in a head-on impact at 25 mph. It only gives you a few mm of deceleration distance. So, if the impact was at 25mph, that dent in the car likely did way more for her than her helmet.

While I agree that going that fast minimizes or negates the saftey of the helmet, your hour-record link is useless here. While cycling on a flat surface, I easily club up to 30 mph (for a stint). On a downhill, I've had to use my breaks to stay below 40 mph. The parent post did not say she was sustaining that speed for a whole hour, plus this was downhill. Despite how fast she was going, she should have been going slower and riding defensively.

You're right she was likely going about 20 mph. She was on a 'ten' speed. The street she was on is on a slight downward incline. I think helmets provide protection for some scenarios a d agent either useless or burdensome. In other words they are worth their while and I think it provided her with protection in this case.

I've heard this argument and don't buy it. Technically I think you are correct--if you presume there's an inverse correlation between helmet use and cycling rates, the health benefits of riding would save more lives than would be lost by the lack of helmets.

But it's not a tradeoff. Cycling rates have skyrocketed over the last 5 years in SF and NYC, without any real change in attitude towards helmets. We can thank bike lanes.

The car analogy doesn't hold water either--the most effective safety device for cars is the seat belt. Nobody thinks seat belt use is a sign of a risk-obsessed driver, and likewise, wearing a helmet doesn't mean you treat biking as a risky behavior. In both cases they're just sensible precautions for a common activity.

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