I’ll be the first one to start off the inevitable helmet debate. Just wear a helmet. It’s not a big deal. Yes, it won’t prevent potential deaths from vehicle collisions and high-speed impacts in to a wall, but if you ever slip on the pavement or clip the side of a car or some object, something that could lessen the potential impact of your head hitting something will help.
Don’t confuse “helmet debate” with “helmet law debate”. The former IS a distraction, the latter is very, very important for cyclists to be involved in as it is the sort of rubbish that gets passed when we’re complacent…
In Australia, we’re stuck with a bloody helmet law for ALL cyclists at ALL times whenever a bicycle is between your legs…
Wear a helmet if you like. Don’t wear one if you like. Cycling is safe. End of story. HelmetFreedom.org
Wearing a helmet reinforces perception of cycling as being especially dangerous and distracts attention away from the real issues concerning road safety.
Much in the same way that seatbelts makes driving look dangerous? I’m not in the US and maybe I can’t really relate, but isn’t this a bit far fetched?
Besides: There actually ARE risks involved when riding in traffic. I’m not in favor of helmet laws, but many of these anti helmet arguments seem like grasping at straws to me.
The problem is that twofold :
- there is very little scientific evidence
- bicycle helmets aren’t designed for the kind of speeds of bikes these days
Also consider this : a helmet for a motor bike that is driven at 30+ Km/h is heavier than a bicycle helmet, yet that’s the speed both can achieve with relative ease.
Seat belts otoh have a track record of proof that can’t be denied and there’s simple physics that make them work all of the time. I would however argue that the standard seat belt isn’t quite as safe as the ones used in racing cars.
Tons of studys showing helmets do work and I have posted links repeatedly but yet to have seen one posted by folks saying tons of evidence to the contrary. http://helmets.org/
Skulls are indeed harder than helmets but that is not what the helmet is for. The foam is to reduce the g-forces when your head comes to a sudden stop when the second collision with the ground happens after being struck in the original collision and that is where most of the debilitating head injuries come from.
Don’t wear my helmet all the time but the statistics are strong enough for me to wear most of the time. Won’t shun someone not wearing one but someone saying no evidence of their effectiveness just isn’t right. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts. Sorry. Do the research folks.
Broken Record for Facts, I’ve done the research and your claims are quite false. There are not “tons” of studies showing that bicycle helmets work. There have only been a few studies, and the newer studies do not support the claims of the few older studies.
Here is a meta-analysis of conclusions of all the known studies, the
“Publication bias and time-trend bias in meta-analysis of bicycle helmet efficacy:
A re-analysis of Attewell, Glase and McFadden, 2001″ by Rune Elvik
The conclusions were that, “According to the new studies, no overall effect of bicycle helmets could be found when injuries to head, face or neck
are considered as a whole.”
Cycle helmets are not designed to provide protection against motor vehicles. They are good for cyclists learning to ride in a park and that’s it.
Cycling on the road is less dangerous than walking, it just doesn’t seem so. Compare pedestrian fatalities per mile with cycling fatalities per mile and then tell me why cyclists should wear helmets but pedestrians not. “Walking just does’t feel as dangerous” is not an answer if real-world accident figures show that is.
Seat belts protect car occupants against the type of injury that they are most likely to suffer. Bike lids provide an illusion of protection against the type of injury that people are most worried about.
Be guided by facts, not fears.
re: ‘yes.. seatbelt wouldn’t be necessary if cars’d go at cycling speeds’
This is just some thoughts I have had after reading that. I am neither agreeing nor opposing the view…
Many bikes are capable of 30mph – even my old thing can reach 40 on some roads around here with me riding!
If cars simply go at 30-40mph, many deaths still occur because of the momentum involved etc.
In fact, according to the safety adverts, travelling over 20mph is when many fatalities happen.
Seatbelts give a false sense of security but are absolutely necessary because they do save lives etc and as not everyone has the common sense to take suitable precautions, it seems we need a law to encourage us to do so.
As for helmets – if the type of helmet were to reflect the riding, most of us would be wearing full-face m/c helmets with ‘HANS’ type neck protection etc. Not forgetting gloves, joint protection etc, etc.
Thinking about most of my cycling injuries over the decades, the foam lid I currently have is adequate to reduce the road rash etc I have suffered. My m/c helmet would be a more advisable lid if I was to be able to take up road-race speeds etc.
There is no simple answer that fits everybody I think. In order to comply with the law and please the cops, we should wear appropriate protection IMHO. I do, however, agree with the notion that we should be given a free choice to do what our conscience demands.
the risks usually involve the speed, wideth and type of urban ocupation of the street and neighbourghood.
In this way, a map (and really learnin urban geography) is much more important than a helmet (or hat, or light, or cyclepath). Even for pedestrians, I might say.
One can’t buy safety. But one can learn languages, and trafic is a grammar as anything else.
wearing a helmet when riding in a car is safer than not. a 5 point harness is safer than a seatbelt. those facts are undeniable yet every day thousands of bike helmet advocates get in cars wearing only a seatbelt. do you know how many lives could be saved every year if people wore helmets and 5 point harnesses in cars?
All it takes for a helmet to pass is a simple drop from +/- 2 meters ? (the ‘best’ test according to http://helmets.org )
That might help protect your head if your stopped, but it doesn’t even come close to hitting that same surface while travelling at walking speed and above or a collision with a motor vehicle that’s moving …
It’s not shallow of me to say that. It’s not aesthetic matters, as we know the better dressed pedestrians and cyclists are, the more they are respected (and more noble and midtown the neighbourghood of the metropolis is, idem idem).
Besides, helmets doesn’t protect cyclists from dangerous that can really be prevented by wearing things: rain, flu, cold, heat. On the other hands, good hats does. And hats really make cars pass more far, and more slow. Quod Demonstratur Erat.
negligible need for a piece of styrofoam coz i already wear a skull. its made of thick bone, very light and durable, has a layer of fat and skin which prevents interlocking with surfaces of any kind..
That’s *exactly* the way I feel about it! When people tell stories about how their helmets cracked and “saved” them from injuries, I just think, “Skulls are tougher than helmets. Too bad you you couldn’t have worn your helmet *inside* your skull where it would be protected, and then neither you nor your helmet would have been damaged.”
We normaly have strong reflexes who try to prevent our heads from reaching the ground. Often the head stops just 1/2″ before it would hit the ground. Helmets add some weigth >2 inch to the head. often just enough to crash the foam in an accident where the head would not even have touched the ground. I estimate 95% of the “my helmet has saved my life” storys have their orign in this fact.
Just count the helmets and the storys, and you will ask yourself “were are the millions of dead non helmet users?”
Yes, I always reflexively jerk my head away from the ground when I fall on my bike, sometimes so violently that I have a sore neck for days afterwards. The last time it happened (when I fell on my left side and broke my arm in 2008) my head never touched the ground, but the sudden sideways jerk of my head not only made my neck hurt a LOT but made me dizzy and gave me tunnel vision and a roaring in my ears for several minutes after I stood up.
To complain about helmets breaking is to completely miss the point; it’s what they’re designed to do and how they prevent injury. Your “strong” skull might not break as easily but it will still cause brain trauma when you decelerate rapidly
So sorry, Binks, helmets are NOT designed to break. They are designed to crush in a controlled manner under compression and supposedly to decelerate the brain in a straight line under 300 gees. Trouble is the straight line and 300 gee thing is way out of date and out of synch with what science now knows about brain injury.
Ok, one more time: it’s not your skull you need to worry about, it’s your brain. Impacts that do not damage the skull can kill from brain injury. Helmets increase deceleration time which reduces overall forces on the brain itself *inside your very durable and lightweight cranium.* Concussions may kill or cause permanent brain injury with loss of function or death. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_injury#Concussion )
I’ve been knocked uncoscious twice in my life: Once when I was thrown forward in a car in a sudden stop, and once when I was hit in the head with a baseball bat. Neither incident required any medical treatment; after I woke up and the swelling went down I was fine. I really doubt that falling off a bike is going to cause a greater impact than that baseball bat did. I can’t back up that guess with personal experience, though, because since I began riding more than 50 years ago I have never yet hit my head in any of my bike crashes.
Unfortunately, this demonstrates a VERY irritating aspect of “Life in these United States” – all it takes is one complainer to ruin “it” (whatever “it” may be) for EVERYONE else.
It’s not just the punishment of non criminal, non-dangerous behavior. MHLs have shown to negatively impact cycling in almost every area they’re implemented. In fact, the numbers from Australia show that MHLs reduced the number of people cycling, more than they reduced the number of cyclists being killed. What was meant to be a safety law has proven to be dangerous for the very people it was meant to be safer for.
Given that bike helmets have never been proven to prevent brain injuries (even the helmet companies have admitted to that much) and that they have been shown, in some circumstances, to increase the chance and severity of torsional injuries (AKA diffuse axonal injuries) someone sited for not wearing a helmet could argue in court that they weren’t wearing out of a legitimate concern for their safety. Given that U.S. law is based on precedent, how long before the law becomes unenforceable?
Honestly, the real fun is when someone brings up the little known fact to the council that motor vehicle occupants are the group of road users at greatest risk of severe head injury, not cyclists. If they’re truly concerned for safety, then they need to enact a helmet law for motorists. You know, none is ever going to vote for that law.
If the police are already stretched why give them another task? If they’re not then why aren’t they enforcing existing laws more rigorously? As Yehuda says, it’s a car problem, why ask cyclists to solve it with a foam hat?
Why give the police another job? – because its an easy one. In the UK – probably other places too – funding for public bodies depends on demonstrating that you are doing the job successfully. If you can point to statistics showing you are (for the police) achieving higher prosecution and conviction rates, then the politicians in charge can be hornswoggled into thinking you are doing a good job, making it easier to make a case for higher funding. It’s easier to get results for doing harmless helmetless cyclists than dangerous texting drivers or burglars, so the easy target gets aimed at. All to do with massaging statistics.
I feel like there was an amateur “study” done that showed that motorists give bare-headed cyclists more passing room than those wearing helmets. But the best protection for this (male) “researcher” was found to be when wearing a long-hair wig. Helmets don’t only affect the outcomes of collisions. They also affect the behaviour of motorists (“Oh, he’s wearing a helmet, he’s a seasoned cyclist, he’s protected, I can pass with only 3 inches instead of 3 feet”).
Maybe THAT’S why everyone seems to give me a wide berth – long hair and skirts flying in the wind. Of course, they’re in for a shock when the see me in their rear view mirror!
Sorry Lizardizzle, wearing a helmet is a big deal. Hot, uncomfortable, inconvenient. If’s not such a big deal for you, wear one while riding in a car, or bus, or plane. Far more people die and suffer head injuries in cars. Since cars have air-con and the helmet can be stored in the car, it makes even more sense. Maybe you should visit a hospital road trauma centre before wanting a discriminatory & nasty nanny state based on your own selfish preference.
Dondare, don’t worry, since the helmet fines have tripled (at least in Vic by previous state govt), police are now happy to pull over cyclists and criminalise them.
My key points to end helmet law:
1) The perception of cycling is changed from safe & fun to dangerous & uncomfortable.
2) Grossly exaggerated benefit of helmet means cyclists take far greater risks and govts act far less on real safety issues.
3) Discriminatory. Head injuries and fatalities of motorists are far more egregious to society. Where’s the call for helmets there? Lifejackets would end beach drownings. Ban all fatty & sugary food to prevent heart disease, diabetes and obesity. Ban sunbaking to prevent skin cancer. Ban smoking.
4) Repealing the law does not affect an individual’s CHOICE to wear one. It just means that if one is not worn, the cyclist won’t be treated as a criminal just for doing something good for their health and the environment.
Blah blah this… yada yada yada that… busybodies should be …..
Will everyone take a deep breath, get on their bikes today (with or without skull styrofoam) and go for a ride???
As Latka on Tax would say: Thank you very much…
Here we go again, treating the symptom instead of the problem. Nanny State can’t be bothered to watch where she is driving, so she places the blame on someone else, and forces them to change so she can keep on with her maladaptive life. If drivers not paying attention are the problem, FIX THAT PROBLEM!
This isn’t an issue involving the use or non-use of helmets, its about drivers lack of attention. The helmet law is just a bandaid for the situation.
I always wear a helmet and try to talk others into doing the same, but the idea of mandatory helmet laws still makes me steam.
A helmet law discourages the very people who depend most on their bikes for transportation and only leaves a very small group of advocates and recreational cyclists. The marginalizing effect of giving police a reason to constantly pull over cyclists is much greater than any hypothetical effect of enforcing helmet use.
Sadly, using an unnecessary law to harass a group, as the councilman suggests, is not so far-fetched.
well, you shoudn’t talk others into doing so: you are increasing their risks, being boring and uninvited, and spreading Fear Industry.
I myself usually discourave people for using helmet. And make mock of the morrons who do use them. Sarcasm and aesthetic elitism may not save the world, but make it much more sofisticated and clever. Dixis Oscar Wilde.
(Cyclechic? Me? No, it’s a eufemistic definition: what I am have no name already.
And yet, when going to the beach it’s trunk, flip-flops, sunglasses and nothing else. Much sexier…!)
Yes, it’s not my native language (it’s brazilian portuguese, indeed). Thanks for the complement. I rarely write in english, and I’m much better in speaking or reading (even because I do translate some poetry as trainning).
After I wrote, I noticed that there were some grammar errors. Sorry for that.
But it was suposed to be nonsense! Samuel Becket style – much more than deny helmets, we need to esquizophrenize than. Make it as mad as a hatter, a dodo-bird, some thing that would only exist in a Lewis Carroll tale.
When I talk with other people, I encourage them to obey the laws, not wear a helmet. In fact, they did a study of riders and found that riders that usually wear a helmet ride more dangerously, negating any reduction in accident rates the helmet provide.
With or without a helmet, riding a bicycle in the U.S. is about 1/4 the death rate of riding in private automobiles.
The three most dangerous activities, causing obesitiy and related diseases, is travelling by private automobile, watching TV, and sitting down while working.
This brings up a pet peeve of mine about bicycle advocacy. We are always referring to “studies” that are about on par with a middle-school science project. The fact is that we are arguing a niche interest and there are few, if any, legitimate studies.
If all cycling were more or less equivalent (think riding slowly on the sidewalk vs racing on rural highways), if there were a much higher volume of research, if there were well-defined measures of safe and dangerous behavior, if other conditions were equal in every test site, then maybe we could speak empirically about bicycle safety. In the absence of all of those things, throwing “studies” around only further confuses the issue.
Decisions about helmets, like other bike gear, depends on context. As an experienced rider in my area, I encourage others to wear helmets, based on my own knowledge and impressions of riding around here. Somewhere else, I might not give a crap.
My brain, and likely my life, have life has been saved because I wear a helmet. I think it is idiocy to ride without one. Personally, I’m a little tired of the helmet law debate. Wear one, don’t wear one, I’m not concerned whether or not there is a law.
That said, a child in a carrier, a child in a bikefies, or other on their own bike with training wheels Must wear a helmet.
You don’t realise how important helmets are until you’ve seen one save the life of someone you know.
Riding downhill on a winding country road at top speed he comes off his bike. The friction with the road surface takes off most of his uncovered skin and his head hits the floor and bounces. An air ambulance arrives to pick him up and take him to hospital. He only suffers minor brain damage and walks out of hospital a few days later.
Just looking at the damage on the helmet makes you realise that he wouldn’t have survived if he hadn’t been wearing a helmet.
Yes, it didn’t save him from needing a skin graft and rehabilitation but it’s a better result than it would have been.
I have never yet seen anyone offer definitive proof that damage to a helmet in any way relates to damage that “would have been” caused to the person if he had not ben wearing the helmet. To me, a damaged helmet on a person with minor (or no) injuries proves only that helmets are more easily damaged than people.
Why, exactly, should a child riding a bicycle be required to wear a helmet, yet not in a car? Feel free to cite comparative statistics showing that the relative danger is higher on the bike. Otherwise, “same roads, same rules”, right?
Free clue: have a look at the Netherlands and children there. Bicycles are not inherently dangerous. Cars and broken driving culture are.
“Give her a 3-wheel bicycle” – any good linguistic pedant will let you know that the technical term for such a contrivance is “tricycle”. It’s all because of the Greeks or Romans or something.
I just get a feeling of fear deep in my stomach when this issue comes up. to me it’s an issue of making a currently pleasurable event into a fight. When i ride I feel free. The wind lifts me, the bike glides, and I feel like I could go anywhere, do anything, and nothing can get in my way. I could ride a bike across bald prairie, I don’t need the city streets, they’re just in my way. When people want to pass a law like this, it means being forced either to comply with a seriously inconvenient nuisance, or be prepared to evade the law at every turn. Ultimately, this choice will drive me to my car keys! What’s my problem with a helmet? Well it doesn’t fit over my hair when it’s in a bun, the only way to reasonably keep a meter of fine blond hair in winter. I would need several sizes to accommodate winter gear under it as I can sometimes wear up to two hats and two scarves to cope with our severe cold. In summer, of course, it’s the issue of having to wear a hat no matter the weather, one which neither insulates well, cools well, nor keeps rain from one’s neck, and which prevents one from effectively wearing proper hats for the above tasks. Finally, and I assure you this matters more to me than my safety, I think they’re fugly and I don’t want to be caught dead in one, let alone have my life saved by one, assuming the propaganda is true and these things are useful at speeds over a light trot.
Yes, and then there’s that, the things don’t even work that well. You can wear three knitted toques and get as much protection (I’ve hit my head in winter on the ice and the toques prevented even a bump). If I wanted true life-saving protection at high speeds, perhaps because I’m cycling on the open highway, I would not trust a styrofoam shell made for 20km impacts. I would wear a DOT approved motorcycle helmet. Besides which, they come in far nicer designs and you can look a lot better in them. So since I am not going around trying to stop people from wearing their helmets, trying to badger them into not wearing them, and coming up with a million reasons why they shouldn’t, why can’t they do the same for me and let me make an adult decision and live with the consequences like a grown adult? Stupidity SHOULD be fatal, dammit!
Ugh, not loving this story line. Friction between cyclers and other road users, and the old pointless, divisive helmet should’s or shouldn’t's are two of my least favorite pointless endless debates.
Believing in helmets is like an religion, no point in argue. Even the studies the bring are full of “it is assumed that” or “we believe that” or “it is obvious that”. “bikes helmetse save lives” is as obvoius as “earth is flat”.
PS Am I the only one who is really uncomfortable with all the hateful, ageist comments accompanying this storyline? Would YM commenters be as free with their prejudices if the antagonist here were an ethnic minority? Yes, this character is a jerk. No, we shouldn’t imitate the behavior.
“An estimated 24,000 people are killed by lightning strikes around the world each year and about 240,000 are injured” : Breaking News: All bicycles MUST be fitted with lightning conductors.
i have rode my bike for more than 20 years and i dont ever recall falling off of my bike and hitting my head.
your arms,shoulders,legs and feet hit the ground first.
i feel that having laws that force you to wear a helmet is a waste of time they have em in victoria and i have lived there
I’ll be the first one to start off the inevitable helmet debate. Just wear a helmet. It’s not a big deal. Yes, it won’t prevent potential deaths from vehicle collisions and high-speed impacts in to a wall, but if you ever slip on the pavement or clip the side of a car or some object, something that could lessen the potential impact of your head hitting something will help.
Broken record. Live and let live I say. Don’t let Ms Nanny State make laws!
Don’t confuse “helmet debate” with “helmet law debate”. The former IS a distraction, the latter is very, very important for cyclists to be involved in as it is the sort of rubbish that gets passed when we’re complacent…
In Australia, we’re stuck with a bloody helmet law for ALL cyclists at ALL times whenever a bicycle is between your legs…
Wear a helmet if you like. Don’t wear one if you like. Cycling is safe. End of story. HelmetFreedom.org
“Like!”
ditto
Exactly! I wear my foam hat, but damned if someone (besides USA Cycling) is going to tell me to do so!
Wearing a helmet reinforces perception of cycling as being especially dangerous and distracts attention away from the real issues concerning road safety.
Much in the same way that seatbelts makes driving look dangerous? I’m not in the US and maybe I can’t really relate, but isn’t this a bit far fetched?
Besides: There actually ARE risks involved when riding in traffic. I’m not in favor of helmet laws, but many of these anti helmet arguments seem like grasping at straws to me.
The problem is that twofold :
- there is very little scientific evidence
- bicycle helmets aren’t designed for the kind of speeds of bikes these days
Also consider this : a helmet for a motor bike that is driven at 30+ Km/h is heavier than a bicycle helmet, yet that’s the speed both can achieve with relative ease.
Seat belts otoh have a track record of proof that can’t be denied and there’s simple physics that make them work all of the time. I would however argue that the standard seat belt isn’t quite as safe as the ones used in racing cars.
Tons of studys showing helmets do work and I have posted links repeatedly but yet to have seen one posted by folks saying tons of evidence to the contrary.
http://helmets.org/
Skulls are indeed harder than helmets but that is not what the helmet is for. The foam is to reduce the g-forces when your head comes to a sudden stop when the second collision with the ground happens after being struck in the original collision and that is where most of the debilitating head injuries come from.
Don’t wear my helmet all the time but the statistics are strong enough for me to wear most of the time. Won’t shun someone not wearing one but someone saying no evidence of their effectiveness just isn’t right. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts. Sorry. Do the research folks.
Broken Record for Facts, I’ve done the research and your claims are quite false. There are not “tons” of studies showing that bicycle helmets work. There have only been a few studies, and the newer studies do not support the claims of the few older studies.
Here is a meta-analysis of conclusions of all the known studies, the
“Publication bias and time-trend bias in meta-analysis of bicycle helmet efficacy:
A re-analysis of Attewell, Glase and McFadden, 2001″ by Rune Elvik
http://www.cycle-helmets.com/elvik.pdf
The conclusions were that, “According to the new studies, no overall effect of bicycle helmets could be found when injuries to head, face or neck
are considered as a whole.”
Cycle helmets are not designed to provide protection against motor vehicles. They are good for cyclists learning to ride in a park and that’s it.
Cycling on the road is less dangerous than walking, it just doesn’t seem so. Compare pedestrian fatalities per mile with cycling fatalities per mile and then tell me why cyclists should wear helmets but pedestrians not. “Walking just does’t feel as dangerous” is not an answer if real-world accident figures show that is.
Seat belts protect car occupants against the type of injury that they are most likely to suffer. Bike lids provide an illusion of protection against the type of injury that people are most worried about.
Be guided by facts, not fears.
Citation needed.
yes.. seatbelt wouldn’t be necessary if cars’d go at cycling speeds.
re: ‘yes.. seatbelt wouldn’t be necessary if cars’d go at cycling speeds’
This is just some thoughts I have had after reading that. I am neither agreeing nor opposing the view…
Many bikes are capable of 30mph – even my old thing can reach 40 on some roads around here with me riding!
If cars simply go at 30-40mph, many deaths still occur because of the momentum involved etc.
In fact, according to the safety adverts, travelling over 20mph is when many fatalities happen.
Seatbelts give a false sense of security but are absolutely necessary because they do save lives etc and as not everyone has the common sense to take suitable precautions, it seems we need a law to encourage us to do so.
As for helmets – if the type of helmet were to reflect the riding, most of us would be wearing full-face m/c helmets with ‘HANS’ type neck protection etc. Not forgetting gloves, joint protection etc, etc.
Thinking about most of my cycling injuries over the decades, the foam lid I currently have is adequate to reduce the road rash etc I have suffered. My m/c helmet would be a more advisable lid if I was to be able to take up road-race speeds etc.
There is no simple answer that fits everybody I think. In order to comply with the law and please the cops, we should wear appropriate protection IMHO. I do, however, agree with the notion that we should be given a free choice to do what our conscience demands.
with ‘cycling speeds’ i certainly didnt mean a reachable maximum.
the risks usually involve the speed, wideth and type of urban ocupation of the street and neighbourghood.
In this way, a map (and really learnin urban geography) is much more important than a helmet (or hat, or light, or cyclepath). Even for pedestrians, I might say.
One can’t buy safety. But one can learn languages, and trafic is a grammar as anything else.
wearing a helmet when riding in a car is safer than not. a 5 point harness is safer than a seatbelt. those facts are undeniable yet every day thousands of bike helmet advocates get in cars wearing only a seatbelt. do you know how many lives could be saved every year if people wore helmets and 5 point harnesses in cars?
i sound pretty stupid, don’t i?
@Broken Record; I trust that website for helmet facts about as much as I’d trust the Church of Scientology. Nor do I like their tone.
All it takes for a helmet to pass is a simple drop from +/- 2 meters ? (the ‘best’ test according to http://helmets.org )
That might help protect your head if your stopped, but it doesn’t even come close to hitting that same surface while travelling at walking speed and above or a collision with a motor vehicle that’s moving …
Plus, it’s usualy ugly and unelegant.
It’s not shallow of me to say that. It’s not aesthetic matters, as we know the better dressed pedestrians and cyclists are, the more they are respected (and more noble and midtown the neighbourghood of the metropolis is, idem idem).
Besides, helmets doesn’t protect cyclists from dangerous that can really be prevented by wearing things: rain, flu, cold, heat. On the other hands, good hats does. And hats really make cars pass more far, and more slow. Quod Demonstratur Erat.
And why is it so important for you to force someone else to do it your way?
negligible need for a piece of styrofoam coz i already wear a skull. its made of thick bone, very light and durable, has a layer of fat and skin which prevents interlocking with surfaces of any kind..
That’s *exactly* the way I feel about it! When people tell stories about how their helmets cracked and “saved” them from injuries, I just think, “Skulls are tougher than helmets. Too bad you you couldn’t have worn your helmet *inside* your skull where it would be protected, and then neither you nor your helmet would have been damaged.”
We normaly have strong reflexes who try to prevent our heads from reaching the ground. Often the head stops just 1/2″ before it would hit the ground. Helmets add some weigth >2 inch to the head. often just enough to crash the foam in an accident where the head would not even have touched the ground. I estimate 95% of the “my helmet has saved my life” storys have their orign in this fact.
Just count the helmets and the storys, and you will ask yourself “were are the millions of dead non helmet users?”
Yes, I always reflexively jerk my head away from the ground when I fall on my bike, sometimes so violently that I have a sore neck for days afterwards. The last time it happened (when I fell on my left side and broke my arm in 2008) my head never touched the ground, but the sudden sideways jerk of my head not only made my neck hurt a LOT but made me dizzy and gave me tunnel vision and a roaring in my ears for several minutes after I stood up.
To complain about helmets breaking is to completely miss the point; it’s what they’re designed to do and how they prevent injury. Your “strong” skull might not break as easily but it will still cause brain trauma when you decelerate rapidly
So sorry, Binks, helmets are NOT designed to break. They are designed to crush in a controlled manner under compression and supposedly to decelerate the brain in a straight line under 300 gees. Trouble is the straight line and 300 gee thing is way out of date and out of synch with what science now knows about brain injury.
That’s why they just haven’t made a difference. All they do is produce gobs of “It broke so it must’ve saved me” stories. You and Broken Record should look at things like http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=4641 and http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=4689 among much else.
Ok, one more time: it’s not your skull you need to worry about, it’s your brain. Impacts that do not damage the skull can kill from brain injury. Helmets increase deceleration time which reduces overall forces on the brain itself *inside your very durable and lightweight cranium.* Concussions may kill or cause permanent brain injury with loss of function or death. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_injury#Concussion )
I’ve been knocked uncoscious twice in my life: Once when I was thrown forward in a car in a sudden stop, and once when I was hit in the head with a baseball bat. Neither incident required any medical treatment; after I woke up and the swelling went down I was fine. I really doubt that falling off a bike is going to cause a greater impact than that baseball bat did. I can’t back up that guess with personal experience, though, because since I began riding more than 50 years ago I have never yet hit my head in any of my bike crashes.
And since we can’t delete comments, I can’t go back and correct the spelling of “unconscious” in that last one.
Oh my… there we go again…
Unfortunately, this demonstrates a VERY irritating aspect of “Life in these United States” – all it takes is one complainer to ruin “it” (whatever “it” may be) for EVERYONE else.
Busybodies should be shot.
But what should we do about the busybodies looking out for the busybodies? Death and carnage everywhere… LOL
Snort! Good point.
It’s not just the punishment of non criminal, non-dangerous behavior. MHLs have shown to negatively impact cycling in almost every area they’re implemented. In fact, the numbers from Australia show that MHLs reduced the number of people cycling, more than they reduced the number of cyclists being killed. What was meant to be a safety law has proven to be dangerous for the very people it was meant to be safer for.
Given that bike helmets have never been proven to prevent brain injuries (even the helmet companies have admitted to that much) and that they have been shown, in some circumstances, to increase the chance and severity of torsional injuries (AKA diffuse axonal injuries) someone sited for not wearing a helmet could argue in court that they weren’t wearing out of a legitimate concern for their safety. Given that U.S. law is based on precedent, how long before the law becomes unenforceable?
Honestly, the real fun is when someone brings up the little known fact to the council that motor vehicle occupants are the group of road users at greatest risk of severe head injury, not cyclists. If they’re truly concerned for safety, then they need to enact a helmet law for motorists. You know, none is ever going to vote for that law.
If the police are already stretched why give them another task? If they’re not then why aren’t they enforcing existing laws more rigorously? As Yehuda says, it’s a car problem, why ask cyclists to solve it with a foam hat?
Now now. We can’t have anything fragile in the china shop, the bull might break it.
More likely, Grant, Tory, or Carrie might break it…
CORRECTION… Grant, Tory, or Kari might break it…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk_zpMory-0
HA! Yep. Then the Socialist-Liberal Nanny State ™ would have to pay for it – so its in the State’s interest to CONTROL things like this.
Why give the police another job? – because its an easy one. In the UK – probably other places too – funding for public bodies depends on demonstrating that you are doing the job successfully. If you can point to statistics showing you are (for the police) achieving higher prosecution and conviction rates, then the politicians in charge can be hornswoggled into thinking you are doing a good job, making it easier to make a case for higher funding. It’s easier to get results for doing harmless helmetless cyclists than dangerous texting drivers or burglars, so the easy target gets aimed at. All to do with massaging statistics.
If the bill were to pass, I have this mental image of Yehuda using it as a codpiece… “What do you mean? I’m using it to protect myself…”
Or strapped to his back like a knapsack. ”Yes, officer, I’m wearing my helmet…..”
He could easily add stripes to his cap so that it looked like a helmet. But that would be to lose the point.
I feel like there was an amateur “study” done that showed that motorists give bare-headed cyclists more passing room than those wearing helmets. But the best protection for this (male) “researcher” was found to be when wearing a long-hair wig. Helmets don’t only affect the outcomes of collisions. They also affect the behaviour of motorists (“Oh, he’s wearing a helmet, he’s a seasoned cyclist, he’s protected, I can pass with only 3 inches instead of 3 feet”).
Study done by Professor Walker of Bristol University (if I recall correctly).
Correction – Dr Ian Walker of Bath University.
Maybe THAT’S why everyone seems to give me a wide berth – long hair and skirts flying in the wind. Of course, they’re in for a shock when the see me in their rear view mirror!
Has Yehuda tried that yet?
I thought it was John Stossel
Sorry Lizardizzle, wearing a helmet is a big deal. Hot, uncomfortable, inconvenient. If’s not such a big deal for you, wear one while riding in a car, or bus, or plane. Far more people die and suffer head injuries in cars. Since cars have air-con and the helmet can be stored in the car, it makes even more sense. Maybe you should visit a hospital road trauma centre before wanting a discriminatory & nasty nanny state based on your own selfish preference.
Dondare, don’t worry, since the helmet fines have tripled (at least in Vic by previous state govt), police are now happy to pull over cyclists and criminalise them.
My key points to end helmet law:
1) The perception of cycling is changed from safe & fun to dangerous & uncomfortable.
2) Grossly exaggerated benefit of helmet means cyclists take far greater risks and govts act far less on real safety issues.
3) Discriminatory. Head injuries and fatalities of motorists are far more egregious to society. Where’s the call for helmets there? Lifejackets would end beach drownings. Ban all fatty & sugary food to prevent heart disease, diabetes and obesity. Ban sunbaking to prevent skin cancer. Ban smoking.
4) Repealing the law does not affect an individual’s CHOICE to wear one. It just means that if one is not worn, the cyclist won’t be treated as a criminal just for doing something good for their health and the environment.
Blah blah this… yada yada yada that… busybodies should be …..
Will everyone take a deep breath, get on their bikes today (with or without skull styrofoam) and go for a ride???
As Latka on Tax would say: Thank you very much…
+1
I had a great ride into work this AM. Overcast and cool. The perfect day for a 75 mile ride. Only 71 more miles to go!
Here we go again, treating the symptom instead of the problem. Nanny State can’t be bothered to watch where she is driving, so she places the blame on someone else, and forces them to change so she can keep on with her maladaptive life. If drivers not paying attention are the problem, FIX THAT PROBLEM!
This isn’t an issue involving the use or non-use of helmets, its about drivers lack of attention. The helmet law is just a bandaid for the situation.
Mike and The Don;
Just looked up that article. Absolutely brilliant!!!
If drivers wore helmets, that would save more lives than if cyclists did.
Also, the shower. Yes, helmets in showers.
I always wear a helmet and try to talk others into doing the same, but the idea of mandatory helmet laws still makes me steam.
A helmet law discourages the very people who depend most on their bikes for transportation and only leaves a very small group of advocates and recreational cyclists. The marginalizing effect of giving police a reason to constantly pull over cyclists is much greater than any hypothetical effect of enforcing helmet use.
Sadly, using an unnecessary law to harass a group, as the councilman suggests, is not so far-fetched.
well, you shoudn’t talk others into doing so: you are increasing their risks, being boring and uninvited, and spreading Fear Industry.
I myself usually discourave people for using helmet. And make mock of the morrons who do use them. Sarcasm and aesthetic elitism may not save the world, but make it much more sofisticated and clever. Dixis Oscar Wilde.
(Cyclechic? Me? No, it’s a eufemistic definition: what I am have no name already.
And yet, when going to the beach it’s trunk, flip-flops, sunglasses and nothing else. Much sexier…!)
That was nonsense.
I thought it rather clearly-written for someone whose native language apparently is not English.
Yes, it’s not my native language (it’s brazilian portuguese, indeed). Thanks for the complement. I rarely write in english, and I’m much better in speaking or reading (even because I do translate some poetry as trainning).
After I wrote, I noticed that there were some grammar errors. Sorry for that.
But it was suposed to be nonsense! Samuel Becket style – much more than deny helmets, we need to esquizophrenize than. Make it as mad as a hatter, a dodo-bird, some thing that would only exist in a Lewis Carroll tale.
“esquizophrenize THEM” – sorry.
When I talk with other people, I encourage them to obey the laws, not wear a helmet. In fact, they did a study of riders and found that riders that usually wear a helmet ride more dangerously, negating any reduction in accident rates the helmet provide.
With or without a helmet, riding a bicycle in the U.S. is about 1/4 the death rate of riding in private automobiles.
The three most dangerous activities, causing obesitiy and related diseases, is travelling by private automobile, watching TV, and sitting down while working.
This brings up a pet peeve of mine about bicycle advocacy. We are always referring to “studies” that are about on par with a middle-school science project. The fact is that we are arguing a niche interest and there are few, if any, legitimate studies.
If all cycling were more or less equivalent (think riding slowly on the sidewalk vs racing on rural highways), if there were a much higher volume of research, if there were well-defined measures of safe and dangerous behavior, if other conditions were equal in every test site, then maybe we could speak empirically about bicycle safety. In the absence of all of those things, throwing “studies” around only further confuses the issue.
Decisions about helmets, like other bike gear, depends on context. As an experienced rider in my area, I encourage others to wear helmets, based on my own knowledge and impressions of riding around here. Somewhere else, I might not give a crap.
@ Ben: “I always wear a helmet and try to talk others into doing the same…”
Do you also try to change them to your church? Good God, man, leave them alone!
Yaaaaaaaaaawn…….
Nanny has undiagnosed Alzheimer’s and has no business driving a car anyway. Give her a 3-wheel bicycle and move her to a retirement community.
My brain, and likely my life, have life has been saved because I wear a helmet. I think it is idiocy to ride without one. Personally, I’m a little tired of the helmet law debate. Wear one, don’t wear one, I’m not concerned whether or not there is a law.
That said, a child in a carrier, a child in a bikefies, or other on their own bike with training wheels Must wear a helmet.
You don’t realise how important helmets are until you’ve seen one save the life of someone you know.
Riding downhill on a winding country road at top speed he comes off his bike. The friction with the road surface takes off most of his uncovered skin and his head hits the floor and bounces. An air ambulance arrives to pick him up and take him to hospital. He only suffers minor brain damage and walks out of hospital a few days later.
Just looking at the damage on the helmet makes you realise that he wouldn’t have survived if he hadn’t been wearing a helmet.
Yes, it didn’t save him from needing a skin graft and rehabilitation but it’s a better result than it would have been.
I have never yet seen anyone offer definitive proof that damage to a helmet in any way relates to damage that “would have been” caused to the person if he had not ben wearing the helmet. To me, a damaged helmet on a person with minor (or no) injuries proves only that helmets are more easily damaged than people.
Why, exactly, should a child riding a bicycle be required to wear a helmet, yet not in a car? Feel free to cite comparative statistics showing that the relative danger is higher on the bike. Otherwise, “same roads, same rules”, right?
Free clue: have a look at the Netherlands and children there. Bicycles are not inherently dangerous. Cars and broken driving culture are.
“Give her a 3-wheel bicycle” – any good linguistic pedant will let you know that the technical term for such a contrivance is “tricycle”. It’s all because of the Greeks or Romans or something.
I just get a feeling of fear deep in my stomach when this issue comes up. to me it’s an issue of making a currently pleasurable event into a fight. When i ride I feel free. The wind lifts me, the bike glides, and I feel like I could go anywhere, do anything, and nothing can get in my way. I could ride a bike across bald prairie, I don’t need the city streets, they’re just in my way. When people want to pass a law like this, it means being forced either to comply with a seriously inconvenient nuisance, or be prepared to evade the law at every turn. Ultimately, this choice will drive me to my car keys! What’s my problem with a helmet? Well it doesn’t fit over my hair when it’s in a bun, the only way to reasonably keep a meter of fine blond hair in winter. I would need several sizes to accommodate winter gear under it as I can sometimes wear up to two hats and two scarves to cope with our severe cold. In summer, of course, it’s the issue of having to wear a hat no matter the weather, one which neither insulates well, cools well, nor keeps rain from one’s neck, and which prevents one from effectively wearing proper hats for the above tasks. Finally, and I assure you this matters more to me than my safety, I think they’re fugly and I don’t want to be caught dead in one, let alone have my life saved by one, assuming the propaganda is true and these things are useful at speeds over a light trot.
Yes, and then there’s that, the things don’t even work that well. You can wear three knitted toques and get as much protection (I’ve hit my head in winter on the ice and the toques prevented even a bump). If I wanted true life-saving protection at high speeds, perhaps because I’m cycling on the open highway, I would not trust a styrofoam shell made for 20km impacts. I would wear a DOT approved motorcycle helmet. Besides which, they come in far nicer designs and you can look a lot better in them. So since I am not going around trying to stop people from wearing their helmets, trying to badger them into not wearing them, and coming up with a million reasons why they shouldn’t, why can’t they do the same for me and let me make an adult decision and live with the consequences like a grown adult? Stupidity SHOULD be fatal, dammit!
Ugh, not loving this story line. Friction between cyclers and other road users, and the old pointless, divisive helmet should’s or shouldn’t's are two of my least favorite pointless endless debates.
Believing in helmets is like an religion, no point in argue. Even the studies the bring are full of “it is assumed that” or “we believe that” or “it is obvious that”. “bikes helmetse save lives” is as obvoius as “earth is flat”.
PS Am I the only one who is really uncomfortable with all the hateful, ageist comments accompanying this storyline? Would YM commenters be as free with their prejudices if the antagonist here were an ethnic minority? Yes, this character is a jerk. No, we shouldn’t imitate the behavior.
I’m anything but ageist but there’s no getting away from that Nanny State is an interfering old bat.
a world that cannont stand sarcasm is a worst world.
I don’t bother making sexist, racist, chauvinist and ageist jokes – precisely because I know they are only jokes.
When some does that to me, I don’t get ofended. Sarcasm is exactelly a way to avoid agression, it’s not agression itself.
We could be much better if we didn’t want to be so good. Says Freud, and I agree.
“An estimated 24,000 people are killed by lightning strikes around the world each year and about 240,000 are injured” : Breaking News: All bicycles MUST be fitted with lightning conductors.
Don’t say that too loudly. Some idiot will try to make into a LAW. Now remember that LAWS are oh-so-sacred.
I think america should have a car helmet law.
And pedestrians too…
i have rode my bike for more than 20 years and i dont ever recall falling off of my bike and hitting my head.
your arms,shoulders,legs and feet hit the ground first.
i feel that having laws that force you to wear a helmet is a waste of time they have em in victoria and i have lived there