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mytherin | 3 years ago
Nobody in the Netherlands bikes with a helmet, and it is incredibly safe to bike here (around 10X fewer fatalities per KM ridden than in the US). If you want evidence that biking without a helmet is perfectly safe - there you go. A case study done by an entire country with 18 million inhabitants for a period of 100+ years.
Bike safety is an infrastructure problem. Nothing else.
Wearing a helmet will not make up for bad infrastructure - biking with bad infrastructure and a helmet is still incredibly dangerous. After you have good infrastructure, biking is already safe, especially when you use a Dutch bike that forces you to sit upright [1] making it far less likely you will fall on your head.
Wearing a helmet might improve safety by a marginal amount beyond that - but so would wearing a helmet while walking, or wearing a helmet while in a car.
Comparing helmets to seat belts is nonsensical. A seat belt is attached to your car. A helmet has to be carried with you after you leave your bike. Once you use a bike for everything that means you must carry a large helmet with you everywhere you go. It is very inconvenient for people that actually use bikes as their daily mode of transportation, from going to work to going grocery shopping to going to the gym.
autoexec|3 years ago
I see a lot of helmets with holes in them... I wonder if it couldn't be made easier to run bike locks through them and leave them chained/locked to your bike while you're away.
jacquesc|3 years ago
musicale|3 years ago
What is the rate for non-fatal yet debilitating head injuries?
Personally I wear a helmet biking around "safe" areas to reduce the likelihood of serious head injuries, such as those that might be incurred if another cyclist collides with you, or if you fall to the ground somehow.
Ski/snowboard helmets seem like a decent idea as well.
moving_sofa|3 years ago