I am always annoyed with articles promoting safe cycling when illustrating pictures show cyclists without helmets or any other form of protective gears.
In Belgium there is a small movement promoting bikes and there are all kind of hipsters, bobo and 50 years old grey hair vegan on fake vintage bikes riding without helmets and without any sense of road conduct. Good bikers wearing yellow jackets and helmets are really rare ; I am beginning to think the formers are ruining the latters's image.
The largest danger in cycling comes from automobiles; Denmark's infrastructure, which keeps cyclists away from automobiles and automobiles at low speeds in shared areas, and their high standards for driver skills and behavior, make their country one of the safest places in the world to bicycle:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cyclists-thre...
This safety in numbers declines with every onerous requirement one proposes to ride a bike. Australia has less cyclists & is a more dangerous place to ride on account of a mandatory helmet law:
http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/2019/australias-helmet-la...
Why should a bicyclist be required to wear a yellow helmet & jacket to be called "good"? Certainly reasonable road conduct should be demanded from all road users, but first from automobile drivers, who cause the vast majority of injuries & deaths on the streets.
"Why should a bicyclist be required to wear a yellow helmet & jacket to be called "good"? Certainly reasonable road conduct should be demanded from all road users, but first from automobile drivers, who cause the vast majority of injuries & deaths on the streets."
1. First of all, it is mandatory in my country.
2. Wether the accident is the biker's fault or the car driver's fault or anything else you are way better wearing a protective helmet if you fall off your bike. Head trauma is not something to be dismissed on the basis that wearing an helmet isn't mandatory or - gasp - fashionnable.
3. Regarding the yellow jacket: without it most bicylists are simply invisible in night traffic. In broad daylight there are easier to see and thus one can be more cautious around them. Remember that cyclists are "weak" road users.
4.
> Why should a bicyclist be required to wear a yellow helmet & jacket to be called "good"? Certainly reasonable road conduct should be demanded from all road users, but first from automobile drivers, who cause the vast majority of injuries & deaths on the streets.
Wearing a helmet and yellow jacket are really good signs that the biker knows what he is doing. Especially in a country (mine) where it is mandatory. Especially in a country (mine) where car culture is overtly agressive towards cyclists.
There is absolutely no reason not to wear protective gear when riding a bike (especially in a city).
> you are way better wearing a protective helmet if you fall off your bike. Head trauma is not something to be dismissed on the basis that wearing an helmet isn't mandatory or - gasp - fashionnable.
You'd probably also be better off wearing a helmet while driving a car if you were in a collision, but that doesn't mean we do. There are comfort tradeoffs, and really I've biked in Amsterdam (which is a bit more sketch in some areas than Copenhagen by the looks of it) and definitely did not feel I need a helmet.
Helmets are for sport racers (they go really fast downhill and collisions are likely) and cyclists who have to mix with automobile traffic or deal with poor quality roads (e.g. storm drains, potholes, etc.)
You're also committing fallacious thinking by arguing for the way something ought to be by appealing to the way it is (i.e. the laws in your country).
> There are comfort tradeoffs, and really I've biked in Amsterdam (which is a bit more sketch in some areas than Copenhagen by the looks of it) and definitely did not feel I need a helmet.
Regarding comfort: from the day I decided to wear an helmet (and it had been a long time I hadn't rode) it only took me 2 trips to feel "naked" without it. Just like I feel uneasy when there are no seatbelts in a car.
> Helmets are for [...] cyclists who have to mix with automobile traffic or deal with poor quality roads (e.g. storm drains, potholes, etc.)
Which is my case in Belgium. However, I still believe that even in a safe environnment such as Amsterdam or Denmark, with or without car on the road, you'd better fall with a helmet than without one.
Sorry again for the fallacy, I just wanted to give more context to how things are here.
On a side note: I remember when helmets weren't mandatory in the "tour de France" and in "Liège Bastogne Liège". I thought it was really weird people were complaining about "the ridiculous helmets" and didn't really fight the safety arguments of pro-helmets.
I strongly feel the bicycle helmet "debate" is almost the same as the one for the car seatbelt made mandatory in the 90's (in Belgium): people were screaming they were all going to get strangulated, that the incomfort would bring more accidents, etc.
You are ignoring the side effects of helmet use.[0] Mandatory helmet use is just as bad as mandatory drug administration when helmets can have lethal side effects.
* The mean motorist passing difference being several centimetres smaller for cyclists wearing helmets - increasing the chance of a collision. [1]
* Mandatory (and increased) helmet use correlates strongly with increased rates of cyclist fatalities. [2]
* Strangulation caused by straps around neck on catching helmet. (There is a mandatory legal disclaimer about this on every helmet in the UK)
* Increased risk of head injury due to increased head diameter
* Increased risk taking by the wearer based on reduced percieved risk
* Reduction in number of cyclists and "safety in numbers" due to making cycling a percieved risky activity.
* Diffuse axonal Injury injury caused by increased friction between helmet and tarmac
I personally do wear a helmet because the road conditions in London are made hazardous by motorists.
Helmet campaigns are really just victim blaming. Motorists kill more young people than aids and malaria combined and somehow society is ok with it.[3]
There was a study that showed having pedestrians wearing cycle helmets would save 100x as many lives and drivers 10x as many - as making cyclists wear them.
Partly this is because there are a lot more pedestrians/drivers than cyclists but also because above children speed a bike helmet doesn't do much for you. If you are cycling at 20-30mph you need the same helmet as a motorcycle doing the same speed.
ps. this was also before airbags became ubiquitous. a lot of non-seatbelt wearing drivers die of head injuries in common low-speed impacts.
It's true I always wondered why "small motor bike" drivers had such an hardened and heavy helmet compared to "styro-foam carbone fiber" made bike helmet.
I read some the abstract of the studies contradicting the health benefits of a helmet and the studies contradicting those very studies. I am convinced that helmets benefits outweight naked head benefits. The rare case where someone has a neck injury directly because of the helmet seems to be extremely rare.
From the wikipedia page regarding the "australian bicycle helmet law" I read this:
For example, one recent French study analyzing over 13,000 cyclist casualties during a ten-year period "confirms the protective effect [of helmets] for head and facial injuries," and finds that "the reduction of risk is greater for serious head injuries. The study is inconclusive about the risk for neck injuries."[45] The most widely quoted case-control study, by Thompson, Rivara, and Thompson, reported an 85% reduction in the risk of head injury by using a helmet.[46] It has been suggested that these studies may be fundamentally flawed.[47][48][49][50] [51] [52] Thompson and Thompson have rejected these criticisms.[53]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet#Case-control_stu...
Are you suggesting something along:
1. Cyclists wearing helmets are prone to take risks because they are wearing helmets ? ;
2. people don't want to ride bikes because they don't want to wear a helmet because they don't like the look of it and as a result of that they might do less exercise activities than if they could have ride helmet free ?
There are some frightening points being made (and contradictory to my position) but I have some tingling doubts about some. Have to read it with more attention later.
Make helmets mandatory and people choose to take their cars instead of cycle. More cars on the road = more cyclist (and driver and pedestrian) deaths.
Suppose for example that train passengers were required to wear motorbike helmets - would it save lives? Well there has probably been a very rare train accident where somebody died of a head injury. But if all those train passengers decided to drive instead there would be a huge rise in deaths.
Why do you assume they are going to take their cars instead of their bikes ? Public transportation can be as convenient on bike distances.
I am not going to take off my silly hemlet and take more risks so fashionistas can ride their bike.
Did car drivers stop driving cars because seatbelts were made mandatory at some point ?
Anyway, from what I read, I am more at risk with my silly helmet because car drivers think I am safe and more prudent so they take more risks around people like me[1].
So it's a catch-21 or something to me. I'll get back to my car.
Or maybe we should enforce mandatory helmets for car drivers too. Since they _have_ to wear in any case they might stick to bicycle :)
[1] source: those australian articles all around the web
The idea is to persuade car drivers onto bikes - then if they have to wear a helmet they might switch to busses, but it's more likely they would stay in their cars.
I'm not going to take my helmet off either - but if a change in the law converted 10% of the cars passing me to other cycles I would be happier and safer.
>Did car drivers stop driving cars because seatbelts were made mandatory at some point
Unless there was an alternative MORE deadly form of transport they could adopt it doesn't matter. If they said, "I'm not driving with a seatbelt - I will drive my jet fighter to work" it might have had a negative effect on accident rates.
[1] The research was by an ex-collegue of mine at UCL. He also proved that drivers give blonde women more space. Although since he did the field work himself (in a wig) he couldn't discount the chance that car drivers gave more space to very unconvincing transvestites! ;-)
>> 1. First of all, it is mandatory in my country.
>
>This is a bit of a circular argument, isn't it?
Sorry, I should have been more explicit. I stated that fact to give more context and because I wanted to link the mandatory helmet to the fact that bikers not wearing one in my country are more likely to be bad bikers than those wearing it. Moreover, I wanted to also state (I should have make 2 different bullet points) that we (in my country) must wear helmets because it's the law (not only because I, in my personnal opinion, think it's better - I often answer to people who asks me why I wear a stupid helmet that "it's just the law").
Wearing a helmet is a pretty strong hint but it's not a proof.
I am always annoyed with articles promoting safe cycling when illustrating pictures show cyclists on fancy bikes wearing fancy clothes.
You don't need fancy clothes and a fancy bike to commute to work, in fact those are often a liability.
Pretty much the only people in Copenhagen that wear helmets are racers. Yet the fatality rate in Copenhagen for cyclists is an order of magnitude less than it is in North America, where a good percentage of cyclists wear helmets.
Sorry, in Denmark there are plenty of good bikers that are not wearing yellow jackets and helmets. Why should they? The cycle superhighways are about safe-for-biking infrastructure, so you can dress as you like when biking. In central Copenhagen quite a lot of people bike in suits which is awesome.
Having survived a cycling accident that probably would have killed me if I hadn't been wearing a helmet that occurred on a perfectly "safe" traffic free track I would urge everyone to always wear a cycling helmet.
By track I meant a rural unsurfaced road - the accident was completely my own fault, but I fell off and my head hit a post at the side of the road. My helmet broke into fragments and although I was unconscious for a while (I had no idea how long) it was my helmet rather than my skull that broke into pieces.
There are more requirements for "safe" than "traffic free". In fact, there are arguments that 'safe' and 'traffic free' are semi-orthoganal, that is you can have safe conditions with traffic, and unsafe conditions without it. For instance, an unsurfaced road provides many ways in which a bicycle can easily be toppled - loose gravel/dirt, weird bumps caused by rocks, washouts, etc, hence probably not 'safe', at least compared to a smoothly paved surface which is kept obstacle free.
You probably realize this but I just want to note that helmets and skulls have very different failure modes (by design in helmet's case) and just because your helmet split into pieces doesn't necessarily mean your skull would have as well.
Indeed, I can't find the link to the video where they show many different brands of cycle helmet splitting into pieces when heading a football (soccer) dropped from a certain height (which causes no injury for someone heading it without wearing a helmet).
(Pro-choice and anti-compulsion on the helmet issue. I choose not to wear one. I cycle 5,000 miles a year - 10,000 miles in a good year - cycle commuting in London, UK and leisure riding or touring.)
Probably, but as I was knocked out by my head hitting the post as I skidded along the ground still attached to my bike I hate to think what would have happened if I wasn't wearing a helmet. It's not exactly an experiment I want to re-run.
I wear one too since I had a close call, but I wonder whether that is actually an improvement. That time I only grazed my head because of martial arts falling training that told me to turn in midair and roll - but I wonder how that move would have ended with a few centimetres more material on my head.
If I walk in suit, or rather, in business-casual clothing, I get sweaty in much of the US. When cycling I'm aiming for minimally-covering clothing, and a shower is still helpful.
Much of continental Europe is cooler than the US, northern Europe even more so.
The yellow jacket is really only useful in low-light conditions. Bright flashing lights are a much better form of identification than this, imho, and it's one piece of safety equipment nobody in DC ever seemed to own, though their fashionable bike safety apparel was quite solid.
I find that "road conduct" is not something most bikers have until they've been hit by a couple cars. At that point they become aware of the fact that cars either don't see them or ignore them, and they become much safer cyclists.
I am a happier cyclist having moved to a country without pointless restrictions in the name of collective safety. If people want to brain themselves that should be their own choice. Encouraging people to take responsibility for their own actions is more important than some dictated decree from above.
What is the advantage of no gear? Well, I can get on my bike and get to and from the store in 5 minutes (I live in a safe country, I don't even lock my bike up most of the time). Five minutes. The roads around my home are so complex and steep that it is nigh on impossible for a car to travel faster than a cyclist. Having an arbitrary requirement would only act to discourage people from cycling.
For the record, I routinely cycle around 80km a week, mainly commuting. I am only on a road for 30 seconds in the entire trip (basically, the last part to my house). With practically no enforcement (I've never seen police on bike paths or talking to cyclists) cycling is safer and easier than what I have experienced elsewhere. When the main risk is to your own wellbeing, most people are sensible enough to not kill themselves without the nanny state holding their hand.
To a dutch person (and probably to a danish person too) this is as strange as saying that people walking on sidewalks and crossing the street should wear yellow jackets and helmets. Cycling, like walking, is not a dangerous activity.
Oh the horror, reckless cyclists riding unprotected! Would be funny to see your reaction when you find out that people in Denmark often smoke on a bike.
In Belgium there is a small movement promoting bikes and there are all kind of hipsters, bobo and 50 years old grey hair vegan on fake vintage bikes riding without helmets and without any sense of road conduct. Good bikers wearing yellow jackets and helmets are really rare ; I am beginning to think the formers are ruining the latters's image.