You know what they say in the news: if it bleeds (or maybe could bleed) it leads. It’s all about sensationalism, especially when people are looking for the potential trainwreck to remind them of how lucky they are to be alive. You have to wonder about people who can’t stop gawking, or imagining the worst that could happen and obsessing about it – what in their past is haunting them, what do they feel guilty about?
Plus “WILL NO-ONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!” always makes for a good sensationalist storyline… Let’s try not to think how much worse off the children are for being strapped into a box in traffic every day instead of doing any activity themselves.
Actually, I think it’s funny her name is Ms. State. First name easily could be Nan, Nanny, or Nancy based on her apparent age and common names in that age group. Clever naming, Rick…
worrying about the negatives feels powerful. You feel smarter, more prepared, and more in control. This is especially effective if you worry about the problems you don’t have to personally fix, and ignore the ones you can’t. Some people get so caught up in the feeling they forget to apply reason.
Now, if only granny there can work herself up to a fit of apoplexy, and in the process take out the reporter and the editor in one convenient case of car vs boulder.
Why is the answer always, “But why not get the __________ a helmet?” I don’t get the obsession over helmets. I assume they’re some kind of perfect aura of protection?
when you spend your morning holding a child’s head together because he chose not to wear a helmet, you will have the answer to your question. I refuse to ride or skateboard with anyone who doesn’t have/wear a helmet if only because I am tired of blood on my clothes
That’s strange, because in my own childhood no one wore helmets and neither I nor any of my friends ever had any serious injuries from riding either bikes or skateboards. There was plenty of blood, but that was from scraped knees and elbows or bloody noses, and we just accepted that as part of being a kid. Of course, this was when skateboards were still very new. I remember all of us being herded into the auditorium at school in the fifth or sixth grade to watch a short film on how dangerous skateboards were and why we should never, ever ride one. Most of us had never heard of skateboards, but when we saw them in the film they looked pretty cool. So we all went home and got our Dads to help us build them out of scrap wood and old roller skates. (You couldn’t buy them in stores then.) Mine was painted silver-grey with fluorescent green racing stripes.
I’m one of those freaks who likes to go fast on a skateboard, there is a group of us that gathers in a particular place to skate. Over time a lot of people (young and old) who probably shouldn’t be on the roads we skate have shown up and had accidents on these roads (myself included though I wear full gear and have only received bumps and bruises). Now I’m not saying that this kid wouldn’t have ended up in the hospital had he been wearing a helmet. Chances are he would have anyway (he hit really really hard) but he certainly wouldn’t have left a pint of blood on the ground. Seems like a helmet is cheap insurance to me
When they came out, my Dad built one for my kid sister from a skate and a piece of 1/2″ Mahogany.
It handled very badly as it didn’t flex like a piece of plywood. The front and back wheels had been separated and screwed to the wood firmly so no flexibility = no steering.
It was consigned to the ‘useful scrap’ pile fairly soon after Sis needed a lot of Medicare for grazed knees
I still have my first (and only) skateboard from 1962 – it’s usually good for a chuckle and some admiration from the skater crowd when I pull it out. When we rode, we didn’t have helmets, knee pads, elbow pads or any other form of body armor. And we survived, very nicely in fact. Yeah, kids went down, got bloodied, occasionally ended up in a cast, and had a hell of a good time. And (most importantly) that kind of injury was considered a very normal part of childhood.
Thinking back, I find it amusing that when articles were being written about the dangers of those faddish skateboards (and yes, there were quite a few, and parents were somewhat up in arms primarily over that their kids had figured a new way to get injured while playing), the big, big, big worry about those nasty skateboards was . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . broken arms. Followed by collarbones and legs. Nobody was panicking about split skulls, probably because it didn’t happen all that often. And nobody was trying to sell a certain piece of safety equipment.
Keep in mind, too, that those old boards were incredibly un-maneuverable slugs compared to anything sold in the last twenty years. When the kids try my old board out, I usually have it back in less than three minutes with the comment, “I can’t believe you were actually able to ride that.”
The only halfway serious skating accident of any kind I remember from my childhood happened on roller skates, not a skateboard. The older brother of one of my friends was going very, very fast in a skating rink. A much younger child tried to cross the rink in front of him and fell. Not wanting to run over the little boy, my friend’s brother turned abruptly and slammed into a wall at full speed. He instinctively tried to stop himself with his outstreched arms and broke both of them, and had to wear wrist-to-shoulder casts for several months. (That’s how I broke my elbow on my bike a few years ago; fell to the left and instinctively tried to break my fall with my left hand. The shock traveled up my arm and broke the end off the radius inside my elbow.)
Regardless, it’s the law, at least where I live. And while a bakfiets is way cool, even when my wife rides helmetless (I never do), our 7 year old does.
Actually, considering the number of head injuries in motor vehicular accidents, helmets should be required for all motor vehicle occupants as well. And full face helmets too. Imagine how many vehicular accident related head, face and neck injuries may be prevented by requireing people to wear helmets while in vehicles.
How do we start a campaign? For the children, of course.
1) Studies have shown that motorists pass with more room and at a slower speed when going around cyclists without helmets. Helmets have been drilled into everyone’s head by a group of morons as the saviour of the head – no harm can come to anyone wearing a magickal foam hat. Motorists drive accordingly.
2) It’s a bakfiets. Wearing a helmet in a bakfiets is pretty much the same as making the kid wear a helmet in a car, in bed, or while going to the bathroom.
You said “Studies have shown that motorists pass with more room and at a slower speed when going around cyclists without helmets.” You’re probably referring to Dr. Ian Walker’s 2007 study at . No, Walker did not show that. Please see Dan Gutierrez’ response at before citing Walker.
The biggest problem with Walker’s results regarding helmets is that he didn’t control for the critical variable affecting passing distance: the cyclist’s lateral position in the lane. Regardless whether the cyclist is wearing a helmet or not, both Walker’s results and Gutierrez’ replication results indicate passing distances are larger and more consistent as the cyclist moves farther from the curb.
To get safe passes around her bakfiets, she must control lanes that are too narrow to share. Offering to share a narrow lane invites close passes.
Maybe this ‘State of the Nation’ should be given a diferent, less harmful, subject to obsess about?
Maybe Yehuda or somebody will go see her and talk about something to get her missionary zeal working on…
Do you seriously think the reporter is going to seek out Yehuda or Thistle and try to get a balanced story?? Trust me, our characters are going to get blindsided by this in much the same way the woman in Oz did. The only clue they’ll get before this hits the airwaves is if the newscam vehicle follows them around and films them like happened just last week in Sydney.
I’ve been hauling my son behind me in his Burlee since he was about 6 months old helmet free. At first we would just strap his infant car seat into the chariot. Now, he’s 19 months, he sits in the Burlee by himself but not quite tall enough to wear the helmet proper. So it just sits next to him.
I have an idea: citywide, 24/7 15mph speed limit to start with. That would be the step in the right direction to protect all the children on the streets. That would include those on sidewalks and crosswalks as well.
I like that too! Where there is mixed use traffic, auto/bike/pedestrian make the speed limit low enough that human reaction times / human powered speed / and minimized human injury come together. Even auto/auto accidents would be significantly less serious.
In my city there is a helmet law for kids on bikes. So my son wears one whether on his own bike or the back of my longtail cargo bike. We cover a lot of miles carfree this way and I am happy wearing a comfortable well-vented helmet that passes CPSC and Snell tests. Several friends have had bad accidents (with and without cars involved) and may not be here today without the helmets which absorbed impact and showed it afterwards. So, even if a bakfiets isn’t as high up as a regular bike, I see no harm if a properly fitting helmet is worn. How would gi like to be the parent of the (helmetless) child who didn’t make it in the accident. I would probably always wonder… yes there is no such thing as 100% safety, but to me a helmet is sensible on the bike.
For kids, the most common type of accidental death comes from riding in a car. Look it up Those deaths way outnumber bike deaths, and most of them are from head injuries. How would you feel if your (helmetless) kid got kid got killed riding in your car? There’s no harm wearing a helmet in a car, is there? Why wouldn’t a helmet be sensible in a car?
Seems to me the car industry does a great job of hiding their death counts from parents. Too bad the bike industry is too small and scattered to pull that off!
Well, that’s apparently they way they want to go in Australia, if the news $HERE are anything to go by – the other day they reported that there is a school in Australia where kids are no longer allowed to run, make handstands, etc. during the breaks for fear of the school getting sued if the kids get injured… …the report also mentioned that it is not legal for children under the age of 12 to be outside on their own… I haven’t verified it, but if it IS true, that’s precisely “keeping them all inside”… ARRGH!
• I hope that he can put the comment we are typing a response to immediately above the comment box as I have memory problems and keep having to scroll up and down to remind myself what I am responding to!
• What happened to the ‘Bold’, ‘Italic’ etc buttons we used to have?
• Where are the ‘reply’ buttons for responding to replies? We have to put a response to a reply below all the replies to the comment making it difficult to reference to what we are replying. Maybe a bit of code that will add ‘Reply to xxx’ at the start of our comment automatically if we press the ‘reply’ button for a reply?
(Sorry I can’t help being dyslexic and forgetting names as soon as I am not looking at them)
Why not put the kid in a bike helmet?
Why not put the kid in a full-face motorcycle helmet?
Why not put the kid in a life jacket?
Why not fence off all trees?
Why not pad the walls of the kid’s room?
Why not hire a food taster?
Why not . . . ?
As cyclists, we can only control motor vehicle behavior in the long term (with road design and drunk driving laws, for example). Short term we can only control ourselves and provide cues for vehicles to notice, and protect ourselves.
I hate helmet discussions, whatever position you have you end up feeling so righteous and willing to defending to the bitter end, regardless of all the evidence for and against wearing one.
You know what they say in the news: if it bleeds (or maybe could bleed) it leads. It’s all about sensationalism, especially when people are looking for the potential trainwreck to remind them of how lucky they are to be alive. You have to wonder about people who can’t stop gawking, or imagining the worst that could happen and obsessing about it – what in their past is haunting them, what do they feel guilty about?
Plus “WILL NO-ONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!” always makes for a good sensationalist storyline… Let’s try not to think how much worse off the children are for being strapped into a box in traffic every day instead of doing any activity themselves.
Amen. Plus, how if we protect them from every possible little fall or failure, they’re going to be real set for life once they reach adulthood.
Absolutely! They all grow up to be good little Socialist Liberal citizens of the Nanny State ™!
That’s Ms. Nanny State to you.
Actually, I think it’s funny her name is Ms. State. First name easily could be Nan, Nanny, or Nancy based on her apparent age and common names in that age group. Clever naming, Rick…
worrying about the negatives feels powerful. You feel smarter, more prepared, and more in control. This is especially effective if you worry about the problems you don’t have to personally fix, and ignore the ones you can’t. Some people get so caught up in the feeling they forget to apply reason.
Now, if only granny there can work herself up to a fit of apoplexy, and in the process take out the reporter and the editor in one convenient case of car vs boulder.
make that the sensationalist reporter who gets tasked to take this story… The current one doesn’t sound all that convinced that this is a story.
But why not just get the kid a helmet? Seriously.
Why is the answer always, “But why not get the __________ a helmet?” I don’t get the obsession over helmets. I assume they’re some kind of perfect aura of protection?
when you spend your morning holding a child’s head together because he chose not to wear a helmet, you will have the answer to your question. I refuse to ride or skateboard with anyone who doesn’t have/wear a helmet if only because I am tired of blood on my clothes
That’s strange, because in my own childhood no one wore helmets and neither I nor any of my friends ever had any serious injuries from riding either bikes or skateboards. There was plenty of blood, but that was from scraped knees and elbows or bloody noses, and we just accepted that as part of being a kid. Of course, this was when skateboards were still very new. I remember all of us being herded into the auditorium at school in the fifth or sixth grade to watch a short film on how dangerous skateboards were and why we should never, ever ride one. Most of us had never heard of skateboards, but when we saw them in the film they looked pretty cool. So we all went home and got our Dads to help us build them out of scrap wood and old roller skates. (You couldn’t buy them in stores then.) Mine was painted silver-grey with fluorescent green racing stripes.
I’m one of those freaks who likes to go fast on a skateboard, there is a group of us that gathers in a particular place to skate. Over time a lot of people (young and old) who probably shouldn’t be on the roads we skate have shown up and had accidents on these roads (myself included though I wear full gear and have only received bumps and bruises). Now I’m not saying that this kid wouldn’t have ended up in the hospital had he been wearing a helmet. Chances are he would have anyway (he hit really really hard) but he certainly wouldn’t have left a pint of blood on the ground. Seems like a helmet is cheap insurance to me
When they came out, my Dad built one for my kid sister from a skate and a piece of 1/2″ Mahogany.
It handled very badly as it didn’t flex like a piece of plywood. The front and back wheels had been separated and screwed to the wood firmly so no flexibility = no steering.
It was consigned to the ‘useful scrap’ pile fairly soon after Sis needed a lot of Medicare for grazed knees
I still have my first (and only) skateboard from 1962 – it’s usually good for a chuckle and some admiration from the skater crowd when I pull it out. When we rode, we didn’t have helmets, knee pads, elbow pads or any other form of body armor. And we survived, very nicely in fact. Yeah, kids went down, got bloodied, occasionally ended up in a cast, and had a hell of a good time. And (most importantly) that kind of injury was considered a very normal part of childhood.
Thinking back, I find it amusing that when articles were being written about the dangers of those faddish skateboards (and yes, there were quite a few, and parents were somewhat up in arms primarily over that their kids had figured a new way to get injured while playing), the big, big, big worry about those nasty skateboards was . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . broken arms. Followed by collarbones and legs. Nobody was panicking about split skulls, probably because it didn’t happen all that often. And nobody was trying to sell a certain piece of safety equipment.
Keep in mind, too, that those old boards were incredibly un-maneuverable slugs compared to anything sold in the last twenty years. When the kids try my old board out, I usually have it back in less than three minutes with the comment, “I can’t believe you were actually able to ride that.”
The only halfway serious skating accident of any kind I remember from my childhood happened on roller skates, not a skateboard. The older brother of one of my friends was going very, very fast in a skating rink. A much younger child tried to cross the rink in front of him and fell. Not wanting to run over the little boy, my friend’s brother turned abruptly and slammed into a wall at full speed. He instinctively tried to stop himself with his outstreched arms and broke both of them, and had to wear wrist-to-shoulder casts for several months. (That’s how I broke my elbow on my bike a few years ago; fell to the left and instinctively tried to break my fall with my left hand. The shock traveled up my arm and broke the end off the radius inside my elbow.)
Regardless, it’s the law, at least where I live. And while a bakfiets is way cool, even when my wife rides helmetless (I never do), our 7 year old does.
Actually, considering the number of head injuries in motor vehicular accidents, helmets should be required for all motor vehicle occupants as well. And full face helmets too. Imagine how many vehicular accident related head, face and neck injuries may be prevented by requireing people to wear helmets while in vehicles.
How do we start a campaign? For the children, of course.
Why not get the kid a helmet?
1) Studies have shown that motorists pass with more room and at a slower speed when going around cyclists without helmets. Helmets have been drilled into everyone’s head by a group of morons as the saviour of the head – no harm can come to anyone wearing a magickal foam hat. Motorists drive accordingly.
2) It’s a bakfiets. Wearing a helmet in a bakfiets is pretty much the same as making the kid wear a helmet in a car, in bed, or while going to the bathroom.
You said “Studies have shown that motorists pass with more room and at a slower speed when going around cyclists without helmets.” You’re probably referring to Dr. Ian Walker’s 2007 study at . No, Walker did not show that. Please see Dan Gutierrez’ response at before citing Walker.
The biggest problem with Walker’s results regarding helmets is that he didn’t control for the critical variable affecting passing distance: the cyclist’s lateral position in the lane. Regardless whether the cyclist is wearing a helmet or not, both Walker’s results and Gutierrez’ replication results indicate passing distances are larger and more consistent as the cyclist moves farther from the curb.
To get safe passes around her bakfiets, she must control lanes that are too narrow to share. Offering to share a narrow lane invites close passes.
Trying again with unbracketed URLs:
Walker is at http://drianwalker.com/overtaking
Gutierrez is at http://tinyurl.com/walker-rebuttal
Maybe this ‘State of the Nation’ should be given a diferent, less harmful, subject to obsess about?
Maybe Yehuda or somebody will go see her and talk about something to get her missionary zeal working on…
Do you seriously think the reporter is going to seek out Yehuda or Thistle and try to get a balanced story?? Trust me, our characters are going to get blindsided by this in much the same way the woman in Oz did. The only clue they’ll get before this hits the airwaves is if the newscam vehicle follows them around and films them like happened just last week in Sydney.
The news media’s sensationalist report: http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8524906
The cyclist’s viewpoint: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2012/09/01/is-aca-playing-the-mum-on-cycling/
I urge everyone to bookmark these two URLs and see how this plays out as opposed to how Rick does the fictionalized version.
Like mandatory helmets for motor vehicle occupants?
I’ve been hauling my son behind me in his Burlee since he was about 6 months old helmet free. At first we would just strap his infant car seat into the chariot. Now, he’s 19 months, he sits in the Burlee by himself but not quite tall enough to wear the helmet proper. So it just sits next to him.
I have an idea: citywide, 24/7 15mph speed limit to start with. That would be the step in the right direction to protect all the children on the streets. That would include those on sidewalks and crosswalks as well.
Oh, that’s evil… I like it!!!
I like that too! Where there is mixed use traffic, auto/bike/pedestrian make the speed limit low enough that human reaction times / human powered speed / and minimized human injury come together. Even auto/auto accidents would be significantly less serious.
In my city there is a helmet law for kids on bikes. So my son wears one whether on his own bike or the back of my longtail cargo bike. We cover a lot of miles carfree this way and I am happy wearing a comfortable well-vented helmet that passes CPSC and Snell tests. Several friends have had bad accidents (with and without cars involved) and may not be here today without the helmets which absorbed impact and showed it afterwards. So, even if a bakfiets isn’t as high up as a regular bike, I see no harm if a properly fitting helmet is worn. How would gi like to be the parent of the (helmetless) child who didn’t make it in the accident. I would probably always wonder… yes there is no such thing as 100% safety, but to me a helmet is sensible on the bike.
@ 2wheeler
For kids, the most common type of accidental death comes from riding in a car. Look it up Those deaths way outnumber bike deaths, and most of them are from head injuries. How would you feel if your (helmetless) kid got kid got killed riding in your car? There’s no harm wearing a helmet in a car, is there? Why wouldn’t a helmet be sensible in a car?
Seems to me the car industry does a great job of hiding their death counts from parents. Too bad the bike industry is too small and scattered to pull that off!
Shouldn’t all kids be kept inside till they head off to High School? Not!!! Get a life granny…
Well, that’s apparently they way they want to go in Australia, if the news $HERE are anything to go by – the other day they reported that there is a school in Australia where kids are no longer allowed to run, make handstands, etc. during the breaks for fear of the school getting sued if the kids get injured… …the report also mentioned that it is not legal for children under the age of 12 to be outside on their own… I haven’t verified it, but if it IS true, that’s precisely “keeping them all inside”… ARRGH!
And so it continues…
“All the fits; that’s news to print!”
Would have clicked on the “Like” box, but they seem to have disappeared!
Rick is still working on the software.
Here are few points for my wish list:
• I hope that he can put the comment we are typing a response to immediately above the comment box as I have memory problems and keep having to scroll up and down to remind myself what I am responding to!
• What happened to the ‘Bold’, ‘Italic’ etc buttons we used to have?
• Where are the ‘reply’ buttons for responding to replies? We have to put a response to a reply below all the replies to the comment making it difficult to reference to what we are replying. Maybe a bit of code that will add ‘Reply to xxx’ at the start of our comment automatically if we press the ‘reply’ button for a reply?
(Sorry I can’t help being dyslexic and forgetting names as soon as I am not looking at them)
Seems to me from frame 2 that the reporter is just humoring her. Maybe he is going to take the story the other way than what “granny” wants??
Why not put the kid in a bike helmet?
Why not put the kid in a full-face motorcycle helmet?
Why not put the kid in a life jacket?
Why not fence off all trees?
Why not pad the walls of the kid’s room?
Why not hire a food taster?
Why not . . . ?
Exactly. And why not let Darwinism work…
Given the age of the complainant, isn’t that evidence that it’s not working?
She’s got nice legs for an old lady.
Perhaps she’s a cyclist.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH…
She probably works out at a gym, to which she drives, of course…
Control the danger, not the endangered.
Excellent point! Short and true statement. I like it. T-shirt idea?
Control what you can control is a better motto.
As cyclists, we can only control motor vehicle behavior in the long term (with road design and drunk driving laws, for example). Short term we can only control ourselves and provide cues for vehicles to notice, and protect ourselves.
I hate helmet discussions, whatever position you have you end up feeling so righteous and willing to defending to the bitter end, regardless of all the evidence for and against wearing one.