This article is great but it does itself a pretty big disservice by pretty much ignoring a lot of why many of the European cities which have successful programs are successful. Namely they have made significant investment into infrastructure to make bicycling safer, many times prioritizing bike traffic over auto traffic.
I ride quite a bit, live in Berkeley which has numerous "Bicycle Boulevards [1]" and I'm pretty comfortable riding sans helmet. I happily rented a bike in Amsterdam and never even considered using a helmet. Riding my bike to work in SF (or to the articles point NYC)? You're damn straight I'm wearing a helmet.
[1] Bicycle Boulevards are streets (open to bikes and cars) that tend to run parallel to primary traffic arteries that tend to have fewer Stop Signs and every 3 or 4 blocks auto traffic isn't allowed through (usually big planters in the middle of the street) so it keeps the auto traffic down.
Why do people insist on pretending all of Europe is full of bike lanes? In most inner cities there often isn't room for bike lanes, or the lane is just a line on the asphalt.
I bike to work every day in Amsterdam, not a single bike lane on my route, I have to share the road with cars, trams, buses, trucks and scooters. The only traffic that actually poses a regular challenge because of their erratic movements and tendency to step into the road without looking are American tourists on foot...
Bike lines are convenient, but no more than that, and just as much of a red herring as helmets when it comes to safety. Safety in urban traffic is a people problem.
In Japan there are no bike lanes whatsoever and people use bike everyday in dense cities to go from one place to another, because it's pratical and saves you time. Nobody wears helmets and you would look like a fool here if you were the only one to do so. On top of that, there is no need for bike lanes in Japan because cyclists are not supposed to go on the roads where the cars go. Instead, cyclists are supposed to stay on the sidewalk/pavement with the pedestrians. Of course this means you need to have sidewalk/pavements larger than usual but this does the trick: you are technically avoiding very dangerous collisions this way, since most collisions would happen between pedestrians and cyclists rather than between cars and cyclists.
I do not look the news for that kind of things but I have never heard of any cyclists getting killed in Japan at least in the recent past.
Helmets are stupid because the biggest problem is to avoid car and cyclists collision in the first place. Having something on your head will never save you if you get into a collision at 50km/h.
You are absolutely right. Streetfilms.org is a great place to see short videos that show how the Europeans/Scandinavians do it. Here are a few examples:
Here in Italy, most places don't seem to have all that much in terms of programs or much to encourage cycling - or at least if they do, they're fairly recent.
What they do have are densely populated cities, making driving expensive and inconvenient, and cycling a better option in terms of the number of places you can reach in a given amount of time.
I live in Bucharest, which pretty much is as bike unfriendly as you can get. There are some bike lanes, but all of them are on the sidewalks where you might see a car parked or you might have to avoid a tree or a bus station, so they are pretty much unusable in my opinion. On top of that, there is a large number of aggressive or simply ignorant bike riders, so you can occasionally get some strong words simply because you're riding your road bike on, you know, the road.
That being said, I never wear a bike in the city. There are a couple of reasons for that:
First, it hinders my sight. I'd rather be able to catch a glimpse of a car trying to overtake me than have my head protected when I hit that car. Second, most road bike helmets offer some sort of protection only when you hit the road with the top front of your head. They offer little protection when you fall sideways, which is probably the most common type of fall. Third, I'm not so sure that a helmet might do anything for me: I ride a bike, ski and even skate a bit and I've fell down a lot, but I've never hit my head once because my instinct was to protect my head with my hands.
Last, it's a matter of personal taste: I sweat a lot and I'd feel awkward if I had to wash my hair every time I ride my bike somewhere.
That being said, I always wear a helmet when I plan a medium or long ride. I usually ride faster than in the city and a helmet might make the difference. Also, I always wear a helmet if I'm riding my mountain bike in the forest because there are branches that seem high enough, but guess what, they aren't. I also wear a Road ID, just in case.
As a bottom line, I strongly believe that bike helmets don't offer safety. A little, yes, but hitting your head hard where it's protected by your helmet is just one of the injuries, especially when you ride next to the curb. I think it's a lot better to watch out and try to prevent any accidents.
Don't forget to mention that dooring isn't really problem in European cities. Most European cities separate the bike lane from parked cards. For people in bike lanes, that's the main risk that would cause an accident where a helmet would help prevent injury.
As a driver, those bicycle boulevards, like Vermont Ave, in Berkeley are confusing to me. I just don't know what is supposed to be different about those streets, they seem like regular streets except for the designation.
There is no evidence that segregated cycle facilities improve cyclist safety. The majority of serious bicycle accidents are right-of-way disputes, occurring at junctions. It is just as likely that segregated facilities could increase the number of accidents, by making the movements of cyclists less predictable to motorists when they merge onto general roads. It is known that sidewalk cyclists are significantly more vulnerable than cyclists who use the roadway, possibly because their movements are more difficult for motorists to predict.
The evidence for the efficacy of cycle helmets is extremely poor. There are a great many people with strong opinions on helmets, but we simply do not have the evidence and it is likely that they are a relatively unimportant factor. While we know that helmets moderately reduce head injuries, we do not have good evidence that they improve rider safety overall. We do have some evidence of risk compensation, with both drivers and riders taking more risks when helmets are used, based on the belief that the helmet provides safety. Head injuries are an important class of injury, particularly in the most severe incidents, but they represent only a minority of the serious injuries suffered by cyclists.
The best available evidence shows that one factor completely overwhelms all others - the number of cyclists on the road. Most Americans believe that the numbers of cyclists will increase when action is taken to improve safety, but in fact the inverse is true. An increase in the number of cyclists invariably leads to a decrease in the number of accidents per km. That is the key message and everything else is just noise. Meaningful improvements in cycle safety are wholly reliant on increasing the number of cyclists and normalising cycling. Motorists cannot be blamed for struggling to predict the movements of a type of vehicle which they encounter rarely and do not understand.
> The majority of serious bicycle accidents are right-of-way disputes, occurring at junctions.
Makes sense, really. I recently started regularly driving a car again, and I've noticed that there's just no way motorists can be reasonably expected to anticipate something that's in the pedestrian right-of-way but moving at five times the speed of normal pedestrian traffic. In a denser area where a driver's view of the sidewalk might be obscured by parked cars, it's probably more-or-less impossible to adequately check for that kind of hazard.
Heck, pedestrians can't do it either. 6 or 7 years ago a woman was killed a couple blocks away from my house when a sidewalk cyclist hit her. There was a tall hedge at the corner impeding visibility, and they both rounded the corner at the same time - the pedestrian at a walking (i.e., perfectly safe for the sidewalk) speed, and the cyclist at bike (i.e., completely reckless for the sidewalk) speed.
By contrast, a cyclist who's in the vehicular right-of-way where they belong (and not erratically dipping into and out of the parking lane) is every bit as visible as motorized traffic. And, assuming they bother to use turn signals and at least pay lip service to traffic laws (which many don't in my city), just as predictable too.
When one ton of metal hits you naked at 50kph (the legal speed limit in traffic areas of cities here in France) the acceleration alone can tear or damage your aorta with impressive odds (IIRC about 50% chance). A helmet is an extremely marginal protection.
On a pure energy analysis, I'd rather have cyclists navigate with pedestrians than with cars. The latter result in a basically non-elastic collision transmitting most of the kinetic energy (1T@30~50kph) to the human body (75kg@5~20kph) while the former is much, much more even.
I don't know the state of streets in the U.S but his is especially true in old european cities, where streets are often narrow and there's simply not enough room for both cyclists and cars on the road, especially when cycling is thought of after the fact.
> The best available evidence shows that one factor completely overwhelms all others - the number of cyclists on the road. [...] Motorists cannot be blamed for struggling to predict the movements of a type of vehicle which they encounter rarely and do not understand.
The reason for increased safety may have less to do with better prediction and more to do with the fact that the motorized traffic speed slows to slowest cyclist speed as the number of cyclists increases. There is no way to go fast if there is a cyclist every 100ft in the same lane as the cars.
To Encourage Biking, Cities should do two things, and two things only:
- Bike lanes. Physically separated bike lanes. This is not rocket science. Trains have rails, airplanes have a nice bit of tarmac and bikes should have a space tailored to their specific needs as well. Typically in the Netherlands, bikes are banned from roads that are 50km/h and up. And they don't need to battle it out with fast traffic, for there are bike lanes. And the limited space in this country means that something truly has to give when adding them.
This how the dutch design an intersection. Note the absence of the ridiculous ASL boxes, and most important, no crossing of lanes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA
- Traffic laws that protect the weaker participant in traffic. Again, case in point, the Netherlands where in a (civil) dispute after a bike-car accident the burden of proof lies with the car. Not to mention the dreaded article 5 that broadly states that endangering traffic is a felony.
This helmet discussion imho is just a way to deviate from arguably more costly and difficult choices when it comes to embracing the bicycle. And while we are are at it. I am convinced that making helmets, 4 point harnesses and leathers mandatory in cars for all occupants would save lives as well.
What perhaps surprises me the most in the car-bike entanglement is the seemingly bad engineering. Cities like Londen, Geneva, all (claim) to cater for bikes, have rental programs, paint the odd lane, but their intersections tell a different story. In the information age, it just baffles me.
I assume this doesn't allow cars to make a right turn during a red light. That, and the long path for cyclists to make a left turn are probably what would make a lot of people in the US resist this design.
Cities can do that, but states need to do three things as well: compulsory registration, licensing, and insurance for bicycles.
Why? Nobody knows how many bikes are really out there, and noboby does any enforcement of traffic laws wrt them. As I walk to work, I observe all manner of braindead behavior on the parts of cyclists. Also, cyclists don't behave consistently unless they are real enthusiasts -- many of them don't know the rules of the road. (becuase they don't know them!)
Registration or licensing would at least establish a minimum standard of training. Insurance would enforce compliance -- cyclists with bad records would become uninsurable. Insurance would also bring a powerful lobbying force to the state legislatures to improve road conditions for bikes.
Traumatic brain injury is real, completely life debilitating and can happen at very slow speeds. Many parts of your brain are protected only by soft tissue. Brains do not grow back like a broken arm/leg. Imagine permanently losing 100 IQ points by not paying attention for the wrong five seconds. Cyclists are extremely vulnerable on streets shared by cars. Think slow moving ~<180lb two wheeled bean bags vs. 1500+lb high speed steel boxes. It's pretty irresponsible and absurd for the NYT to print articles like this. I suppose we shouldn't use seatbelts or car bumpers either based on mean effects? Helmet safety is totally cheap (basic, OK helmets are $20-30) and easy to use. Although I would certainly like to make everyone "healthy" and build a cycling utopia, the fitness argument this article makes is completely absurd. Obese, unhealthy people casually cycling for ten or fifteen minutes across a city are unlikely to receive any significantly health benefit (reach aerobic thresholds) and are the the most likely to experience falls and collisions since they are inexperienced.
Until there is a distinct change in driver attitudes, riding without a helmet in most of the US is just nuts. Sure, there are places like Portland with dedicated bike lanes and an overall emphasis on pro-bike culture, but it is a rare spot.
In the bay area, there is a very large biking community -- road, mountain, around town, etc. The problem is, the infrastructure isn't there for bikes compared to Amsterdam. We have "bike lanes" that any vehicle can enter within, say, about 150' to make a turn onto another street. Vehicles don't look for bikes. The bike ways in Amsterdam, certain parts of Munich, and other towns are often separate from the roads. When not, people expect them and are courteous to them much more than here.
Cycling is extremely appealing if you separate roads for cars from roads for bikes. Boulder is a city that gets this right. As a cyclist in Boulder, you can get almost anywhere in town with minimal riding on a normal street. The network of bike/pedestrian paths is so well integrated into the city.
I loved biking everywhere in Boulder. In Austin or New York I would rather walk and take public transit. NYC and the Connecticut shoreline are keeping me enthralled for now but I will move back to Boulder for the bike paths (and the general paradise vibe) at some point.
Nostalgia is taking hold now. Warm memories of a satisfied ride with a Flat Iron mountain backdrop. In my backpack was just a modest check, but it was a check for the sale of my first venture, and we were happy, and living in Boulder and the future was ours for the taking...
"HEAT suggests that a law making helmets compulsory for cyclists may result in an overall increase in 253 premature deaths – 265 extra deaths from reduced cycling less 12 deaths saved among the reduced pool of cyclists receiving fatal head injuries."
"The overall cost of a law would be between £ 304 million and £ 415 million per year. In addition, there would be a one-off cost to the remaining cyclists of £ 180 million to equip them with helmets"
So many people have turned this into a 'are helmets safe or not'.
That's really arguing the wrong point - of course helmets improve survivability of a bicycle accident.
The point here is, for bike-sharing programs, should helmet use become mandatory?
The answer should be : no.
Ultimately few people are going to climb on a bike and think it is safe riding without a helmet. They will know that they are doing a dangerous thing.
The idea with bike-share programs is to get people using shared bikes to move around a city instead of either public transport or private cars. If carrying your own helmet (or using a publicly shared-helmet) is a requirement, fewer people are going to use the bike-sharing.
This is a simple argument about the increased use of bike sharing programs against the increased number of people with head injuries from that bike sharing program. I don't know what those numbers are, but it would mean higher head injuries but also higher bicycle use. The number of head injuries can only be measured by the set of people who chose to ride the bike without a helmet, who had an accident and hit their head. Some people (regular users, for example) would choose to still use helmets when riding bike sharing, so it's not like removing the law will mean nobody wears a helmet anymore. At the margin there will be more injuries, but also more bike-miles ridden. It's up to people to make a decision which is more desirable.
It might sound like a tough decision, but really, this type of decision is everywhere. Speed limits are set with the balance of people who will be injured or killed in more serious accidents, balanced with the ability for more people to get to their destination more quickly.
Not once does the "journalist" mention the absurd price of NYC's program (up to $77 for 4 hours) vs. the $2 she pays in Paris.
Further, let's not forget the safer bike lanes or areas in European cities. Getting hit while riding in NYC is not an 'if', it's a 'when.' The number of cycling deaths here are absurd. I'd hate to see the figures if we actively discouraged helmet use.
The NYT should be embarrassed they ran this piece.
As a keen cyclist (I'm building http://www.cyclinganalytics.com/), I wish we didn't have mandatory helmet laws, but there are a lot of points on both sides of the argument worth pondering.
* Making helmets mandatory makes cycling look dangerous. What other things do you wear a helmet while doing? Between this, ruining peoples' hair, not looking as chic, and the inconvenience of it, helmets discourage people from cycling.
* Although it is possible to get seriously injured on a bicycle, the research that I've seen suggests that the health benefits of cycling outweigh the risk of injury considerably (even when not wearing helmets), so, from a public health point of view, it makes sense to encourage cycling, and even cycling without wearing a helmet.
* Therefore, it seems that helmets directly save lives (in crashes, although, for my own anecdotal evidence, they haven't helped me in any of the crashes I've had), but they cost lives indirectly by discouraging people from cycling in the first place. This makes it harder to sell.
* Laws are not about making things as safe as humanly possible. It would save more lives to have people in cars wearing helmets, but we don't do that (yes, I know more people travel by car). For that matter, it's legal to drive cars that would be considered death-traps by modern safety standards. Even if helmet laws did save lives, that doesn't automatically mean they should become laws.
* The drivers in different countries have different attitudes towards cyclists. In Australia (and probably America), we have a strong driving culture, and a very "us vs. them" view of the whole thing. Earlier this year, Shane Warne (one of the most famous Australian sportsmen of the last decade) had an altercation with a cyclist on a busy Melbourne road which led him to comment on Twitter about how cyclists should pay registration and show license plates. Views like that are very common amongst the general public, and often stem from the view that "bikes are okay for a gentle Sunday ride with the family to the park, but they shouldn't be used as serious transportation devices". Compare that with the attitude of the average driver in many European countries (from what I've heard), and you might be able to make a case that we aren't ready for scrapping mandatory helmet laws, because cycling really is more dangerous.
One thing to remember is that Copenhagen had many bikers before it had many bike lanes. Bike lanes on the main traffic arteries of Copenhagen is pretty much a thing of the last 10-15 years or so. Before that bikers in central Copenhagen rode their bikes on the streets (with a few exceptions).
Now, many of the suburbs of Copenhagen were designed with biking in mind and have had extensive networks of bike lanes for the last 30-40 years. Of course, people moving from there and into Copenhagen took their biking habits with them.
Copenhagen has other incentives that makes biking the choice: Huge taxes on cars (first a 25 percent VAT, then 105 percent fee for the first roughly 14,000 dollars of the value of the car (incl. the VAT), then 180 percent on the exceeding value of the car), huge taxes on gasoline (the gasoline tax alone is around 3.5 dollars per gallon, then there is the 25 percent VAT, bringing the total price per gallon up around 8 dollars). Further, in many parts of Copenhagen the daily fee for parking exceeds 20 dollars.
Also, Copenhagen is relatively dense, compared to many American cities, and many families living in the suburbs have at least one parent working locally (typically in public sector jobs such as teaching, day care, elderly care, the local municipality etc.). Biking is only a realistic means of transportation if distances are small. It may work for New York City one day, but probably not for Houston or LA...
As a kid in the 1970s, I rode my bike everywhere, never wore a helmet (nobody did), and here I am today. Of course helmets can help avoid head injury, not riding bikes probably helps even more. I mean where do you draw the line on the fear vs. the actual chance of something happening.
On the subject of community shared bicycles, our town tried that about 10 years ago, all the bicycles were stolen within the first month (or maybe it was the first week) and it basically died at that point.
Absolutely... Just visit Amsterdam, Copenhagen, or Paris and see all the cyclists... What a joy. Instead of helmets the US cities should try to implement cycling lanes for a change.
Folks in the US need to start demanding bike lanes from their elected officials. They're super cheap to build and so it's more of an issue of simply having the political will to remove a lane of traffic from exclusive car use.
Such political bravery can pay off. Vancouver BC's Gregor Robertson (and his councillor slate) has been elected twice with strong mandates in large part because of his commitment to bike lanes.
This article is rampant with dishonest usage of statistics and anecdotes:
“Statistically, if we wear helmets for cycling, maybe we should wear helmets when we climb ladders or get into a bath, because there are lots more injuries during those activities.”
Ok, but how about the severity of the injuries? This is like saying that most car collisions in the US happen in parking lots. Also, there are lots more injuries per instance, or absolute numbers?
"The European Cyclists’ Federation says that bicyclists in its domain have the same risk of serious injury as pedestrians per mile traveled."
Of course, but bicyclists travel many more miles. That's the point of riding a bicycle. It would be more fair to compare against people who ride buses.
“Nobody wears helmets, and bicycling is regarded as a completely normal, safe activity. You never hear that ‘helmet saved my life’ thing.”
Of course not. If you don't wear a helmet and you have a fatal accident in which a helmet could have saved your life, you're dead. The dead don't speak.
EDIT: who downvoted my comment and why? I'm just stating obvious flaws in the article. Answer instead of downvoting, please.
A two-year-old bike-sharing program in Melbourne, Australia — where helmet use in mandatory — has only about 150 rides a day, despite the fact that Melbourne is flat, with broad roads and a temperate climate. On the other hand, helmet-lax Dublin — cold, cobbled and hilly — has more than 5,000 daily rides in its young bike-sharing scheme.
As for the Melbourne part of that sentence: the city is spread out vastly over 8,694 km² (acc. to Wikipedia). Some of my co-workers ride their bikes to work, but unless you happen to live in a close-by suburb, you cannot really get anywhere by bike. Besides, Melbourne really is a car city, and made to be one, with 8-lane highways cutting through its geography. There are a few bike lanes, but parking is permitted on them, so in practice they don't exist.
But from all that you cannot deduce that Melburnians are fat and lazy people at the risk of a heart disease. In fact, like most Australians, people here love sport. Hardly ever seen so many joggers ever before. And yet there's rumour that people South of the Yarra river, that divides the city from East to West, run while people North of it ride bikes.
I guess they don't participate in the bike sharing program because if you ride a bike on a regular basis, you own one.
There is an association in France that is lobbying against helmets for bike commuters (and advocating them for competitive cyclist) and they have collected a pretty large amount of data on the issue:
I've ridden bike thousands of times. And I've never worn, owned, or even touched a helmet. Like nobody else my age ever does in my country. It started to become a trend to let children wear a helmet here since the last 5 years or so though, and of course those coureurs with their flashy bicycle clothing have been doing it forever already...
I have a bike helmet but only wear it for some rides - i.e. the long-distance or fast ones. When I ride into town for shopping, I don't wear it. I hope it will always remain my personal choice.
Anyway, the arguments are:
a) Mandatory bike helmets mean you can't run a bike-share scheme because who wants to wear a much-used sweaty helmet? How can the people running the scheme sanitise them?
b) Mandatory bike helmets put people off riding. They are inconvenient to carry around with you if you cycle to get somewhere (work, meeting, lunch date, etc) rather than just for recreation. It's estimated that 30% of cyclists (in Melbourne, I think) stopped cycling when helmets became mandatory. This is hailed as a success by politicians in Australia because cycling fatalities also fell by 30%. Miracle!
c) They probably don't protect you that much - anything over 12mph or a collision with something other than the pavement, and they're not guaranteed to do anything to help you. (Specialized helmets are made to the older Snell standard, which is a bit safer; I have a Specialized.)
d) They give the impression that cycling is super-dangerous and you need all sorts of safety gear, which puts people off. In some areas, it is dangerous (I'm thinking parts of the US which seem actively cyclist-hostile) but the risks of inactivity (heart disease, diabetes, stroke, etc) outweigh the very slight risk of traumatic head injury, in many parts of Europe at least. So, get people on bikes regardless, you'll save lives as people become fitter from cycling.
e) More of a political point, but the main danger of riding a bike comes from reckless or distracted motorists. Helmets represent masking the symptoms rather than dealing with the real problem. They also shift the blame from dangerous drivers to cyclists: how many times do we see descriptions of car-on-bike collisions with the stock phrase "the cyclist was not wearing a helmet"? Victim blaming, especially in cases where the cyclist was crushed to death by a 30-ton vehicle (little bit of polystyrene won't fix that, sorry).
The main ways I protect myself when riding are visibility (always use bright lights, my back light can be seen even in bright sunlight) and safe, assertive riding (e.g. taking the lane when necessary, approaching a junction for example). So many cyclists fail badly at safe riding that I think mandatory training would be better than mandatory helmets. But really I don't support either. For me, cycling is a safe activity and a helmet is usually not needed.
I find this the most important question. They aren't expensive (£15) and if you're going to bike then you're going to get sweaty, rained-on, etc with or without a helmet.
So I guess if you're put off cycling by a simple helmet then I really cannot seeing you sticking with it through any kind of adverse weather either.
And nothing is wrong with the idea of safer flights by banning weapons.
The implementation is crap and (mostly) useless though, in both cases.
If bikes _need_ to wear helmets, that's just taping about other problems. If bikers cause problems on their own (crossing red lights, driving insane and ignoring the law) I'd suggest that they wear helmets or stop using that bike.. If bikers are regularly hit by idiot car drivers and 'wearing a helmet' seems to help, soemtimes, somewhat, maybe, then the problem is elsewhere and should result in
- harsher penalties for the car drivers (20 times the mass, 80+ times the horsepower). Let them bleed in court, if the bikers bleed literally
- better infrastructure (note that this is point 2 for me. There's no excuse for being an ass even if there's no dedicated bike lane)
So .. the question you totally ignored is 'Why helmets in general and why do people force them on others in the first place'. Why?
I commute to work by bike in Philadelphia, and not just in the good weather. In the last year I've missed three days--once the day after I cracked a rib going down in snow and twice when I woke up to a flat tire and didn't have time to swap it out and make it to work on time. (I've got better tires and am much better at replacing a tube, now.)
You know the old saying, cheap/good/fast, pick two? With bike helmets it's attractive, comfortable, or cheap: pick one. You can get a sweaty, dorky Bell for $30, or you can get a sweaty, cool Bern for $70, or you can get a comfortable, dorky Rudy Project for $200.
Yah, the author claims that we Americans cling to our "helemet = safety" notion dogmatically, but then she takes it as fact that people won't ride bikes if the law says they have to wear a helemet. But I don't think wearing a helmet is really that bad that it's keeping people from riding.
Like the fact that biking is aerobic exercise and people hate that.
The policy implications are very interesting and I'm sure it might affect behavior at the macro level, but for me as a cyclist, I'm going to wear a helemet AND ride a bike, so it seems like I don't fit her model.
Seriously: The more vulnerable you look, the wider a berth car drivers will give you. If you ride erratically down a road, swerving a bit as if drunk, cars will go yards out of their way to pass you.
If you ride confidently in a straight line, they woosh past with inches to spare. That's just human nature: The more likely something is to cause a problem, the further away from it you stay.
By the same token, drivers will give helmetless cyclists a wider berth than those with helmets - they rate higher as a potential hazard.
The statistics show that introducing and enforcing helmet laws reduces the number of people cycling by about half. That's bad for the health and fitness of your whole society.
[+] [-] mikeryan|13 years ago|reply
I ride quite a bit, live in Berkeley which has numerous "Bicycle Boulevards [1]" and I'm pretty comfortable riding sans helmet. I happily rented a bike in Amsterdam and never even considered using a helmet. Riding my bike to work in SF (or to the articles point NYC)? You're damn straight I'm wearing a helmet.
[1] Bicycle Boulevards are streets (open to bikes and cars) that tend to run parallel to primary traffic arteries that tend to have fewer Stop Signs and every 3 or 4 blocks auto traffic isn't allowed through (usually big planters in the middle of the street) so it keeps the auto traffic down.
[+] [-] rickmb|13 years ago|reply
I bike to work every day in Amsterdam, not a single bike lane on my route, I have to share the road with cars, trams, buses, trucks and scooters. The only traffic that actually poses a regular challenge because of their erratic movements and tendency to step into the road without looking are American tourists on foot...
Bike lines are convenient, but no more than that, and just as much of a red herring as helmets when it comes to safety. Safety in urban traffic is a people problem.
[+] [-] ekianjo|13 years ago|reply
I do not look the news for that kind of things but I have never heard of any cyclists getting killed in Japan at least in the recent past.
Helmets are stupid because the biggest problem is to avoid car and cyclists collision in the first place. Having something on your head will never save you if you get into a collision at 50km/h.
[+] [-] MikeCapone|13 years ago|reply
http://www.streetfilms.org/cycling-copenhagen-through-north-...
http://www.streetfilms.org/copenhagens-car-free-streets-and-...
http://www.streetfilms.org/copenhagen-cargo-bikes/
They also have many films about infrastructure, like physically separated bike lanes;
http://www.streetfilms.org/physically-separated-bike-lanes/
You can also look up films about places like Amsterdam for more.
[+] [-] davidw|13 years ago|reply
What they do have are densely populated cities, making driving expensive and inconvenient, and cycling a better option in terms of the number of places you can reach in a given amount of time.
[+] [-] andreimaxim|13 years ago|reply
That being said, I never wear a bike in the city. There are a couple of reasons for that:
First, it hinders my sight. I'd rather be able to catch a glimpse of a car trying to overtake me than have my head protected when I hit that car. Second, most road bike helmets offer some sort of protection only when you hit the road with the top front of your head. They offer little protection when you fall sideways, which is probably the most common type of fall. Third, I'm not so sure that a helmet might do anything for me: I ride a bike, ski and even skate a bit and I've fell down a lot, but I've never hit my head once because my instinct was to protect my head with my hands.
Last, it's a matter of personal taste: I sweat a lot and I'd feel awkward if I had to wash my hair every time I ride my bike somewhere.
That being said, I always wear a helmet when I plan a medium or long ride. I usually ride faster than in the city and a helmet might make the difference. Also, I always wear a helmet if I'm riding my mountain bike in the forest because there are branches that seem high enough, but guess what, they aren't. I also wear a Road ID, just in case.
As a bottom line, I strongly believe that bike helmets don't offer safety. A little, yes, but hitting your head hard where it's protected by your helmet is just one of the injuries, especially when you ride next to the curb. I think it's a lot better to watch out and try to prevent any accidents.
[+] [-] malandrew|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] btipling|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdietrich|13 years ago|reply
The evidence for the efficacy of cycle helmets is extremely poor. There are a great many people with strong opinions on helmets, but we simply do not have the evidence and it is likely that they are a relatively unimportant factor. While we know that helmets moderately reduce head injuries, we do not have good evidence that they improve rider safety overall. We do have some evidence of risk compensation, with both drivers and riders taking more risks when helmets are used, based on the belief that the helmet provides safety. Head injuries are an important class of injury, particularly in the most severe incidents, but they represent only a minority of the serious injuries suffered by cyclists.
The best available evidence shows that one factor completely overwhelms all others - the number of cyclists on the road. Most Americans believe that the numbers of cyclists will increase when action is taken to improve safety, but in fact the inverse is true. An increase in the number of cyclists invariably leads to a decrease in the number of accidents per km. That is the key message and everything else is just noise. Meaningful improvements in cycle safety are wholly reliant on increasing the number of cyclists and normalising cycling. Motorists cannot be blamed for struggling to predict the movements of a type of vehicle which they encounter rarely and do not understand.
[+] [-] bunderbunder|13 years ago|reply
Makes sense, really. I recently started regularly driving a car again, and I've noticed that there's just no way motorists can be reasonably expected to anticipate something that's in the pedestrian right-of-way but moving at five times the speed of normal pedestrian traffic. In a denser area where a driver's view of the sidewalk might be obscured by parked cars, it's probably more-or-less impossible to adequately check for that kind of hazard.
Heck, pedestrians can't do it either. 6 or 7 years ago a woman was killed a couple blocks away from my house when a sidewalk cyclist hit her. There was a tall hedge at the corner impeding visibility, and they both rounded the corner at the same time - the pedestrian at a walking (i.e., perfectly safe for the sidewalk) speed, and the cyclist at bike (i.e., completely reckless for the sidewalk) speed.
By contrast, a cyclist who's in the vehicular right-of-way where they belong (and not erratically dipping into and out of the parking lane) is every bit as visible as motorized traffic. And, assuming they bother to use turn signals and at least pay lip service to traffic laws (which many don't in my city), just as predictable too.
[+] [-] lloeki|13 years ago|reply
On a pure energy analysis, I'd rather have cyclists navigate with pedestrians than with cars. The latter result in a basically non-elastic collision transmitting most of the kinetic energy (1T@30~50kph) to the human body (75kg@5~20kph) while the former is much, much more even.
I don't know the state of streets in the U.S but his is especially true in old european cities, where streets are often narrow and there's simply not enough room for both cyclists and cars on the road, especially when cycling is thought of after the fact.
[+] [-] pacala|13 years ago|reply
The reason for increased safety may have less to do with better prediction and more to do with the fact that the motorized traffic speed slows to slowest cyclist speed as the number of cyclists increases. There is no way to go fast if there is a cyclist every 100ft in the same lane as the cars.
[+] [-] maurits|13 years ago|reply
- Bike lanes. Physically separated bike lanes. This is not rocket science. Trains have rails, airplanes have a nice bit of tarmac and bikes should have a space tailored to their specific needs as well. Typically in the Netherlands, bikes are banned from roads that are 50km/h and up. And they don't need to battle it out with fast traffic, for there are bike lanes. And the limited space in this country means that something truly has to give when adding them.
This how the dutch design an intersection. Note the absence of the ridiculous ASL boxes, and most important, no crossing of lanes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA
- Traffic laws that protect the weaker participant in traffic. Again, case in point, the Netherlands where in a (civil) dispute after a bike-car accident the burden of proof lies with the car. Not to mention the dreaded article 5 that broadly states that endangering traffic is a felony.
This helmet discussion imho is just a way to deviate from arguably more costly and difficult choices when it comes to embracing the bicycle. And while we are are at it. I am convinced that making helmets, 4 point harnesses and leathers mandatory in cars for all occupants would save lives as well.
What perhaps surprises me the most in the car-bike entanglement is the seemingly bad engineering. Cities like Londen, Geneva, all (claim) to cater for bikes, have rental programs, paint the odd lane, but their intersections tell a different story. In the information age, it just baffles me.
[+] [-] mmagin|13 years ago|reply
(I think it looks like a good idea, however.)
[+] [-] Spooky23|13 years ago|reply
Why? Nobody knows how many bikes are really out there, and noboby does any enforcement of traffic laws wrt them. As I walk to work, I observe all manner of braindead behavior on the parts of cyclists. Also, cyclists don't behave consistently unless they are real enthusiasts -- many of them don't know the rules of the road. (becuase they don't know them!)
Registration or licensing would at least establish a minimum standard of training. Insurance would enforce compliance -- cyclists with bad records would become uninsurable. Insurance would also bring a powerful lobbying force to the state legislatures to improve road conditions for bikes.
[+] [-] bickfordb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmspring|13 years ago|reply
In the bay area, there is a very large biking community -- road, mountain, around town, etc. The problem is, the infrastructure isn't there for bikes compared to Amsterdam. We have "bike lanes" that any vehicle can enter within, say, about 150' to make a turn onto another street. Vehicles don't look for bikes. The bike ways in Amsterdam, certain parts of Munich, and other towns are often separate from the roads. When not, people expect them and are courteous to them much more than here.
[+] [-] willholloway|13 years ago|reply
I loved biking everywhere in Boulder. In Austin or New York I would rather walk and take public transit. NYC and the Connecticut shoreline are keeping me enthralled for now but I will move back to Boulder for the bike paths (and the general paradise vibe) at some point.
Nostalgia is taking hold now. Warm memories of a satisfied ride with a Flat Iron mountain backdrop. In my backpack was just a modest check, but it was a check for the sale of my first venture, and we were happy, and living in Boulder and the future was ours for the taking...
[+] [-] brey|13 years ago|reply
"HEAT suggests that a law making helmets compulsory for cyclists may result in an overall increase in 253 premature deaths – 265 extra deaths from reduced cycling less 12 deaths saved among the reduced pool of cyclists receiving fatal head injuries."
"The overall cost of a law would be between £ 304 million and £ 415 million per year. In addition, there would be a one-off cost to the remaining cyclists of £ 180 million to equip them with helmets"
[+] [-] brc|13 years ago|reply
That's really arguing the wrong point - of course helmets improve survivability of a bicycle accident.
The point here is, for bike-sharing programs, should helmet use become mandatory?
The answer should be : no.
Ultimately few people are going to climb on a bike and think it is safe riding without a helmet. They will know that they are doing a dangerous thing.
The idea with bike-share programs is to get people using shared bikes to move around a city instead of either public transport or private cars. If carrying your own helmet (or using a publicly shared-helmet) is a requirement, fewer people are going to use the bike-sharing.
This is a simple argument about the increased use of bike sharing programs against the increased number of people with head injuries from that bike sharing program. I don't know what those numbers are, but it would mean higher head injuries but also higher bicycle use. The number of head injuries can only be measured by the set of people who chose to ride the bike without a helmet, who had an accident and hit their head. Some people (regular users, for example) would choose to still use helmets when riding bike sharing, so it's not like removing the law will mean nobody wears a helmet anymore. At the margin there will be more injuries, but also more bike-miles ridden. It's up to people to make a decision which is more desirable.
It might sound like a tough decision, but really, this type of decision is everywhere. Speed limits are set with the balance of people who will be injured or killed in more serious accidents, balanced with the ability for more people to get to their destination more quickly.
[+] [-] dbreunig|13 years ago|reply
Not once does the "journalist" mention the absurd price of NYC's program (up to $77 for 4 hours) vs. the $2 she pays in Paris.
Further, let's not forget the safer bike lanes or areas in European cities. Getting hit while riding in NYC is not an 'if', it's a 'when.' The number of cycling deaths here are absurd. I'd hate to see the figures if we actively discouraged helmet use.
The NYT should be embarrassed they ran this piece.
[+] [-] davidjohnstone|13 years ago|reply
* Making helmets mandatory makes cycling look dangerous. What other things do you wear a helmet while doing? Between this, ruining peoples' hair, not looking as chic, and the inconvenience of it, helmets discourage people from cycling.
* Although it is possible to get seriously injured on a bicycle, the research that I've seen suggests that the health benefits of cycling outweigh the risk of injury considerably (even when not wearing helmets), so, from a public health point of view, it makes sense to encourage cycling, and even cycling without wearing a helmet.
* Therefore, it seems that helmets directly save lives (in crashes, although, for my own anecdotal evidence, they haven't helped me in any of the crashes I've had), but they cost lives indirectly by discouraging people from cycling in the first place. This makes it harder to sell.
* Laws are not about making things as safe as humanly possible. It would save more lives to have people in cars wearing helmets, but we don't do that (yes, I know more people travel by car). For that matter, it's legal to drive cars that would be considered death-traps by modern safety standards. Even if helmet laws did save lives, that doesn't automatically mean they should become laws.
* The drivers in different countries have different attitudes towards cyclists. In Australia (and probably America), we have a strong driving culture, and a very "us vs. them" view of the whole thing. Earlier this year, Shane Warne (one of the most famous Australian sportsmen of the last decade) had an altercation with a cyclist on a busy Melbourne road which led him to comment on Twitter about how cyclists should pay registration and show license plates. Views like that are very common amongst the general public, and often stem from the view that "bikes are okay for a gentle Sunday ride with the family to the park, but they shouldn't be used as serious transportation devices". Compare that with the attitude of the average driver in many European countries (from what I've heard), and you might be able to make a case that we aren't ready for scrapping mandatory helmet laws, because cycling really is more dangerous.
[+] [-] flexie|13 years ago|reply
Now, many of the suburbs of Copenhagen were designed with biking in mind and have had extensive networks of bike lanes for the last 30-40 years. Of course, people moving from there and into Copenhagen took their biking habits with them.
Copenhagen has other incentives that makes biking the choice: Huge taxes on cars (first a 25 percent VAT, then 105 percent fee for the first roughly 14,000 dollars of the value of the car (incl. the VAT), then 180 percent on the exceeding value of the car), huge taxes on gasoline (the gasoline tax alone is around 3.5 dollars per gallon, then there is the 25 percent VAT, bringing the total price per gallon up around 8 dollars). Further, in many parts of Copenhagen the daily fee for parking exceeds 20 dollars.
Also, Copenhagen is relatively dense, compared to many American cities, and many families living in the suburbs have at least one parent working locally (typically in public sector jobs such as teaching, day care, elderly care, the local municipality etc.). Biking is only a realistic means of transportation if distances are small. It may work for New York City one day, but probably not for Houston or LA...
[+] [-] ams6110|13 years ago|reply
On the subject of community shared bicycles, our town tried that about 10 years ago, all the bicycles were stolen within the first month (or maybe it was the first week) and it basically died at that point.
[+] [-] Cbasedlifeform|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|13 years ago|reply
Such political bravery can pay off. Vancouver BC's Gregor Robertson (and his councillor slate) has been elected twice with strong mandates in large part because of his commitment to bike lanes.
[+] [-] Pkeod|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neves|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diego|13 years ago|reply
“Statistically, if we wear helmets for cycling, maybe we should wear helmets when we climb ladders or get into a bath, because there are lots more injuries during those activities.”
Ok, but how about the severity of the injuries? This is like saying that most car collisions in the US happen in parking lots. Also, there are lots more injuries per instance, or absolute numbers?
"The European Cyclists’ Federation says that bicyclists in its domain have the same risk of serious injury as pedestrians per mile traveled."
Of course, but bicyclists travel many more miles. That's the point of riding a bicycle. It would be more fair to compare against people who ride buses.
“Nobody wears helmets, and bicycling is regarded as a completely normal, safe activity. You never hear that ‘helmet saved my life’ thing.”
Of course not. If you don't wear a helmet and you have a fatal accident in which a helmet could have saved your life, you're dead. The dead don't speak.
EDIT: who downvoted my comment and why? I'm just stating obvious flaws in the article. Answer instead of downvoting, please.
[+] [-] kleiba|13 years ago|reply
As for the Melbourne part of that sentence: the city is spread out vastly over 8,694 km² (acc. to Wikipedia). Some of my co-workers ride their bikes to work, but unless you happen to live in a close-by suburb, you cannot really get anywhere by bike. Besides, Melbourne really is a car city, and made to be one, with 8-lane highways cutting through its geography. There are a few bike lanes, but parking is permitted on them, so in practice they don't exist.
But from all that you cannot deduce that Melburnians are fat and lazy people at the risk of a heart disease. In fact, like most Australians, people here love sport. Hardly ever seen so many joggers ever before. And yet there's rumour that people South of the Yarra river, that divides the city from East to West, run while people North of it ride bikes.
I guess they don't participate in the bike sharing program because if you ride a bike on a regular basis, you own one.
[+] [-] carlob|13 years ago|reply
http://www.fubicy.org/spip.php?article191
it turns out that head injuries are not very common when riding at slow speed. An helmet would actually be more useful for a pedestrian.
[+] [-] Aardwolf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m0nty|13 years ago|reply
Anyway, the arguments are:
a) Mandatory bike helmets mean you can't run a bike-share scheme because who wants to wear a much-used sweaty helmet? How can the people running the scheme sanitise them?
b) Mandatory bike helmets put people off riding. They are inconvenient to carry around with you if you cycle to get somewhere (work, meeting, lunch date, etc) rather than just for recreation. It's estimated that 30% of cyclists (in Melbourne, I think) stopped cycling when helmets became mandatory. This is hailed as a success by politicians in Australia because cycling fatalities also fell by 30%. Miracle!
c) They probably don't protect you that much - anything over 12mph or a collision with something other than the pavement, and they're not guaranteed to do anything to help you. (Specialized helmets are made to the older Snell standard, which is a bit safer; I have a Specialized.)
d) They give the impression that cycling is super-dangerous and you need all sorts of safety gear, which puts people off. In some areas, it is dangerous (I'm thinking parts of the US which seem actively cyclist-hostile) but the risks of inactivity (heart disease, diabetes, stroke, etc) outweigh the very slight risk of traumatic head injury, in many parts of Europe at least. So, get people on bikes regardless, you'll save lives as people become fitter from cycling.
e) More of a political point, but the main danger of riding a bike comes from reckless or distracted motorists. Helmets represent masking the symptoms rather than dealing with the real problem. They also shift the blame from dangerous drivers to cyclists: how many times do we see descriptions of car-on-bike collisions with the stock phrase "the cyclist was not wearing a helmet"? Victim blaming, especially in cases where the cyclist was crushed to death by a 30-ton vehicle (little bit of polystyrene won't fix that, sorry).
The main ways I protect myself when riding are visibility (always use bright lights, my back light can be seen even in bright sunlight) and safe, assertive riding (e.g. taking the lane when necessary, approaching a junction for example). So many cyclists fail badly at safe riding that I think mandatory training would be better than mandatory helmets. But really I don't support either. For me, cycling is a safe activity and a helmet is usually not needed.
[+] [-] UnoriginalGuy|13 years ago|reply
So I guess if you're put off cycling by a simple helmet then I really cannot seeing you sticking with it through any kind of adverse weather either.
[+] [-] darklajid|13 years ago|reply
And nothing is wrong with the idea of safer flights by banning weapons.
The implementation is crap and (mostly) useless though, in both cases.
If bikes _need_ to wear helmets, that's just taping about other problems. If bikers cause problems on their own (crossing red lights, driving insane and ignoring the law) I'd suggest that they wear helmets or stop using that bike.. If bikers are regularly hit by idiot car drivers and 'wearing a helmet' seems to help, soemtimes, somewhat, maybe, then the problem is elsewhere and should result in
- harsher penalties for the car drivers (20 times the mass, 80+ times the horsepower). Let them bleed in court, if the bikers bleed literally
- better infrastructure (note that this is point 2 for me. There's no excuse for being an ass even if there's no dedicated bike lane)
So .. the question you totally ignored is 'Why helmets in general and why do people force them on others in the first place'. Why?
[+] [-] cshesse|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmcginn|13 years ago|reply
You know the old saying, cheap/good/fast, pick two? With bike helmets it's attractive, comfortable, or cheap: pick one. You can get a sweaty, dorky Bell for $30, or you can get a sweaty, cool Bern for $70, or you can get a comfortable, dorky Rudy Project for $200.
[+] [-] hartleybrody|13 years ago|reply
Like the fact that biking is aerobic exercise and people hate that.
The policy implications are very interesting and I'm sure it might affect behavior at the macro level, but for me as a cyclist, I'm going to wear a helemet AND ride a bike, so it seems like I don't fit her model.
[+] [-] oneandoneis2|13 years ago|reply
Seriously: The more vulnerable you look, the wider a berth car drivers will give you. If you ride erratically down a road, swerving a bit as if drunk, cars will go yards out of their way to pass you.
If you ride confidently in a straight line, they woosh past with inches to spare. That's just human nature: The more likely something is to cause a problem, the further away from it you stay.
By the same token, drivers will give helmetless cyclists a wider berth than those with helmets - they rate higher as a potential hazard.
Citation: http://psychcentral.com/news/archives/2006-09/uob-wah091106....
[+] [-] zik|13 years ago|reply