This sounds ridiculous until you go to Amsterdam see that few wear helmets there. And everyone is cycling.
They might be more inclined to cycle because they don’t need to wear a helmet.
After years of cycling with helmet you get so used to it and it doesn’t bother you. But how many skip the bike because they never got used to wearing a helmet?
I biked through Amsterdam as a commuter along with everyone else for a week, and it just blew me away. Everyone was absolutely predictable and part of the “school of fish”. No hesitation or ill-conceived politeness.
It was only a week but it was so refreshing. I think about this experience daily when driving because I think of how much time would be saved if people just knew absolutely when to take their turn and took it; instead of processing each decision and deciding based on their current mood. People knew the damn rules and norms.
So, I think it’s a function of having a critical mass, being necessary, and being embedded already as a norm. I don’t believe a city could make riding without a helmet legal and expect any sort of increase in safety …
1. Almost everyone cycles. So all drivers are themselves cyclists. So they treat other cyclists with consideration.
2. The road/cycle infrastructure is set up to separate cars and bikes wherever possible. And where they share routes, cars are often explicitly second class users ("auto te gast" - cars, you're guests).
3. In any collision between a car and a bike, the driver will almost always be the one found at fault.
Biking in Amsterdam is leagues safer then biking in most places in the US, though. The risks are different. Helmets aren't as important if most of your crashes are going to be with another low-speed, mostly-soft bodied cyclist. Traffic and pedestrians are pretty separated and you have your own lanes to cycle in. I'm also pretty sure that a lot of biking is convenient: The local grocery store is just a short bike ride but it'd take 15 minutes by car.
Most biking in the US is biking shared with cars. You probably won't have a bike lane. Most likely, you aren't commuting or going to the grocery store - the grocery store might take 15 minutes of driving but 30 minutes of biking - if you can even go the most direct route legally. Longer biking sessions generally means more risk. I'll take the helmet in places that I must defend myself against automobiles on an unsafe path.
Just remember not to get lulled into a false sense of security just because you're wearing a helmet. PPE is by far the least effective safety precaution.
If you have to ride alongside cars, make sure you practice defensive riding.
Yes this is annoying in all these same debates which point to Netherland / Denmark - the infrastructure elsewhere is just not there. Lanes shared with cars (or just taking away from car lane so no normal cars fits in anymore) isn't a solution, just adding friction danger zone. Or dedicated bicycle lanes wide enough for a single row of cyclists, if even that.
Also look at those 'old' basic bikes they use there, you don't need more on those flatlands and everybody is fine with 20-25kmh. Add tech bros or generally young folks with fast ebikes and escooters going 50kmh and things change.
Yes but there was room for it, you noticed the wide streets? Most European city centers don't have that extra room for 1 dedicated bike path on each side, at least not cities I've lived in. That's cca 4m each side requirement, you would have to tear down whole rows of 150-500 year old buildings which are often protected.
Even Amsterdam has streets which have 0 room, but generally city center is blocked/too expensive to most car traffic to even enter so they manage.
If it would be a easy problem to solve, it would be done or at least almost done at this point. And something tells me it requires certain type of population where respect to others is way above average, that's not granted.
> Yes but there was room for it, you noticed the wide streets? Most European city centers don't have that extra room for 1 dedicated bike path on each side
Many Dutch cities don't either, that's why they disallow cars entirely. Really only Rotterdam has spacious roads thanks to the bombings. Ann I understanding you correctly?
> And something tells me it requires certain type of population where respect to others is way above average, that's not granted.
I'm not sure where you are the casuality here. In my experience it's the more human centred infrastructure design that encourages a higher level of social engagement and respect for others.
But regardless I would find it tragic to condem certain cultures as being inherently incapable of these things.
> If it would be a easy problem to solve, it would be done or at least almost done at this point.
It wasn't begun that long ago in the Netherlands. The vast majority of infrastructure has been built since the turn of the century. It takes a while for other places to really realise that their current models aren't working, and even longer for them to really learn the lessons of the Dutch.
But if you look at cities like London, Leipzig, Barcelona, Paris or further afield to Montreal for example then many cities are actually beginning to successfully integrate Dutch design practices.
Dutch bicycle infrastructure didn’t just happen, our postwar governments were all set on building car infrastructure. They were even planning to demolish huge parts of old Amsterdam to build a highway right through the city. It took two decades of protest and a lot of traffic deaths before the government started the development of dedicated bicycle infrastructure in the 1980’s. You can read more here: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...
Amsterdam’s answer to faster vehicles is to move them to the main road with other faster traffic. Although it is now moving to slow down nearly all traffic inside the city to a 30km/h limit, which will improve cyclist safety a lot.
Counter point: in the last 40 years I have come off my bike only about 10 times and on 2 of those my helmet was so badly damaged that I think without it my head would have been seriously hurt. Those were both low-speed accidents, one was being hit from behind by a car and the other was hitting a nasty pothole.
I've also seen a friend have a high-speed impact: he was airlifted to hospital, survived and has mostly recovered. Looking at the state of his helmet I have no doubt that he would have died at the scene without it.
In Amsterdam they are commuting, and in a fantastic infrastructure where cars get red lights when bicycles approach on an intersecting cycleway. That's probably the main reason for safety and why they ride so much.
There's very few places where the light changes automatically for bikes in Amsterdam - all that I can remember now, don't. The large majority of lights do respond to input from pressing the cross button (also pressable by bycicles), but it's not automated.
They do use "change on approach" lights outside of the cities way more, but in cities it's usually only for trams and buses.
Since Amsterdam is a "peak biking" city, I wouldn't trust the cited study to even apply there and would think that an independent study would be needed since it would be likely an outlier.
Is it that ridiculous? Big tech tracking shows that basically any inconvenience at all causes people to drop off. The page taking half a second longer to load and now you’ve lost a few sales.
There isn’t going to be anyone consciously thinking “I’m not gonna ride because I have to wear a helmet” but instead “eh I can’t be bothered riding” without digging too much in to why.
Bicycle helmets are big. You can't just put them away in your bag when you're done with them. So you will have to carry the helmet alongside your bags etc.
In Denmark, I don't even lock up my helmet. My bike, sure. But the helmet just casually hangs on the handlebars. I've never experienced, nor heard of, anyone losing their helmet when doing this.
Helmets aren’t uncomfortable if you try them before buying them. There are different shapes, materials, sizes and settings.
About finding my helmet, I always attach it together with the bike with the U lock. Unless I’m parked in a secure place where I let it hang on the handlebars.
I’m not especially advocating for mandatory helmets and I’m the first to say absence of helmet shouldn’t prevent you to ride, but if you are a regular cyclist, having one at hand is not a ridiculous idea.
> Helmets aren’t uncomfortable if you try them before buying them. There are different shapes, materials, sizes and settings.
Come on man, I have never rode a bicycle more expensive than $100 despite riding at least 5000km annually. I bet that your helmet costs more than all of my 3 bicycles.
The down-voted comment of mine tells that gloves are far more useful than helmet for a bicycle rider. But I know I have messed with the holy cow so c'est la vie.
I'm a pretty proficient cyclist (lifetime mileage in the tens of thousands) but there have still been a handful of incidents where I've been very grateful to have had a helmet.
It might be the case that helmets are a net negative for casual riders. But whenever I've done a spontaneous unplanned dismount at 20mph I didn't find that knowing how to fall helped me much.
> But whenever I've done a spontaneous unplanned dismount at 20mph I didn't find that knowing how to fall helped me much.
What was the circumstances (type of road and type of bike)? Have you touched the ground with any other parts of body except of palms, elbows and knees? If yes then consider to keep learning how to fall because your falling skill is not that proficient. If not then the helmet was not that useful.
More cyclists on the road makes it safer for cyclists. Combined with risk compensation, this seems enough to make helmet laws a net negative. Well studied. Wear a helmet though, they work!
A better alternative law would be to provide free helmets. People can choose not to use them out of preference but at least they'll have one to make that choice with.
Everyone that comments that "nothing is free" is just being a pedant in a way that means the conversation can't usually go forward as easily.
People do understand that with government programs, "free" means taxpayer funded. As in, almost everyone understands that. The comment isn't needed. Those comments are the reason I put things like "fare free public transport" - not because it is more realistic, but because arguing with these comments is exhausting.
Society is full of things other people helped pay for - and you most definitely use them. Your health insurance company pools money together to cover everyone's ills, for example. You don't pay individually for your infrastructure use - other people help you pay so that you can get electricity. And so on. You can't have modern society without this.
Saying other things that aren't free doesn't make the first thing become free.
People who don't use helmets don't do it because they are too expensive. They do it because it's not convenient to carry, because it's not cool, because it messes your hair, because you need somewhere to store it. (Not) Free helmets solve zero of these problems, it's just a bad idea.
You are just nitpicking on semantics. If the total cost of publicly funded healthcare is reduced from people using helmets then that could result in not increasing what you are "making other people pay" even though you are also offering helmets at no cost. That is what most people would consider free.
People who don't use helmets for whatever reason would be more inclined to do so if they could just go pick one up, and didn't have to pay for them in a store. Even if those reasons are not that they are expensive. It's a great idea.
Well we disagree. I think there's way more effective things you can do, and this is demonstrated by the netherlands where I live. For an idea to be good it doesn't just have to in theory be net positive, many things can be net positive if you use tax money for them. The problem is we don't have an infinite government or infinite resources or time, so we should pick good measures.
All the cities maintaining a bunch of locations full of helmets for free pickup would just create more waste. I bet people would pick them up and just discard them when it wouldn't be convenient to use them. And nobody wants to pickup and wear a discarded helmet that is dirty and was in the elements so there would be huge waste. You can have a similar effect without any waste by just having a class that teaches children to ride bycicles at school and tells them the benefits of helmets and keeps helmets there for that one class. This memory would be with you for life, and you'd make your own decision.
If helmets were cost prohibitive I'd be with you, I believe in using tax money for that kind of stuff, but price is not the reason people don't use helmets.
I’m not the op of this proposal, I never said it was a good idea (neither that it’s bad, I just don’t know). I just said that IF it was a good idea, it would cost less overall.
Except roads for car drivers and then people wonder about this mysterious infinite latent demand for free roads that they call "induced demand". The demand for things that cost nothing is infinite.
Roads have huge utility to society. Unless you want the ambulance to go get you on a unpaved mess and take you back to the hospital banging all over the back. Or that they fetch you by bycicle.
Well obviously roads have benefits. Nobody is saying to abolish roads. But the marginal benefits of more road density really fall off beyond the minimum of “having a road”. Compare two options within a city
1. Redesign a 2-lane (each direction) highway into a 4-lane highway at the cost of several hundred million tax dollars, over the course of a few years.
2. Leave the highway smaller. Re-zone a city to allow small shops within residential neighborhoods, and up-zone all residential land to allow up to 4-story townhomes and condos. Spend tens of millions of tax dollars building a robust cycling highway, and make it safe for people to accomplish basic errands within a close proximity to their home.
For #2, spending of tax dollars is less and people are healthier. You still have roads, but people need to drive on them much less often.
So when the next city proposes an $840M highway revamp [1], consider how you could spend 10% of that funding to increase mobility around the city for residents ($84M could build a lot of safe separated bike highways). While at the same time allowing private development to make natural improvements to neighborhoods by opening new corner stores and shops along bike routes
There's real data out there that while a helmet has better survival rates than not; but cars give more room to bicycles without helmets, so the incident rate is lower.
I think that's pretty true in my demographic - kind of old fat, at risk of heart attacks and a casual cyclist. For us lot heart attack deaths are like 1000x+ more than cycle head fatalities. On the other hand for young cycle racers I'd go with compulsory helmets.
Kind of tacky, but I had a strange "what if" kind of conversation with someone about alcohol. The premise was that more people are born due to drunken sexual encounters than are killed by drunk drivers.
There was a ted talk that said bicycle helmet laws would kill more people than save.
The reasoning was preventing people from riding would also prevent increased fitness, and more lives were lost from that than saved from accidents.
EDIT: I think this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07o-TASvIxY