> We’re already at the point where every car-on-bike “accident” (police always assume it’s an accident; drivers are allowed unlimited “oopsies”)
Is he implying that some significant portion of alleged car-on-bike accidents are actually purposeful assault from the automobile driver? I find that very difficult to believe.
> That’s why whenever you read about a cyclist who’s been injured or killed, the article mentions helmets, regardless of whether this detail in any way relevant. (“The cyclist’s legs were flattened by the runaway steamroller. No criminality suspected. The victim was not wearing a helmet.”)
I question whether media reports of a victim not wearing a helmet when a helmet clearly would not have helped are actually that common, or if this is just the author's bias (i.e. he notices and remembers these reports more than others).
> Here’s why the auto industry, the insurance industry and the officials they lobby want helmet laws. First, forcing people to wear helmets shifts responsibilities onto cyclists and absolves governments from having to build better cycling infrastructure and drivers from having to obey traffic laws.
I have little doubt that the auto industry wants helmet laws, but I highly doubt that shifting responsibilities onto the cyclist has anything to do with it. The second reason the author provides ("helmet laws discourage people from using bicycles for everyday transportation by making it inconvenient") feels like a sufficient reason to me.
> Meanwhile, in countries like the Netherlands and Denmark, where lots and lots of people ride bikes, a helmeted bicyclist is about as rare as a helmeted driver here in America. And yet they seem to be managing pretty well — maybe because they’ve got bike infrastructure, and because they still subscribe to the notion that the person operating the giant machine on public roads needs to be responsible for not killing people with it.
As I mentioned in another comment, all these phenomena might be caused by the fact that the Netherlands simply has (and has had for some time) a higher ratio of bicycles to automobiles than the United States. Of course, this ratio is likely affected by the US auto industry, as well as other things like income and population density.
> What? How oblivious are you? Nobody should have to “scream out” to you to get your attention while you’re driving a car. You should already be giving it, and undividedly so.
By that same logic, we shouldn't have horns, brake lights, reflective lines and road markers, or anything else that might help focus a driver's attention and thus increase the odds that the driver behaves in the manner he or she already should already behave.