While I don't think they should be required, I do think they should be worn. I've had a low-speed spill where the helmet saved my head considerably - I hit the pavement so hard my glasses were flattened out. You fall much faster, even at low speeds, and you fall much farther from a bike, than a pedestrian would fall.
For elderly and young children a helmet may make sense, due to the significantly higher risk of such injuries (due to reduced physical responses and inexperience). And for racing bicycles wearing a helmet is the norm.
A helmet can significantly reduce the impact of a fall, but the risk of that fall is so low that the measure becomes statistically meaningless. It is akin to always wearing a hard hat when you leave your home, because it would save you from serious brain injury if a brick fell on your head. Of course, bricks don't generally fall out of the sky, but you can never be too sure…
This doesn't mean that all safety measures are nonsense — having working lights and functioning brakes do reduce the chances of accidents. It is also tempting to compare the helmet to seatbelts in a car, but there the chance of needing them is simply much higher.
One well-researched source on the negative effects of bicycle helmets if made mandatory in the Netherlands (in Dutch): https://www.fietsersbond.nl/nieuws/fietshelmen-en-veiligheid...
I'm willing to bet that a lot of the same people who think that not wearing a bike helmet (and especially allowing a child not to wear one) should be a criminal offense would think the idea of having to wear a helmet driving is just silly.
The attitudes around helmets for downhill skiing have gone through a similar shift. It used to be that essentially no one except racers (and then snowboarders) wore helmets. Now, at least some people will chastise you if you don't.
And it's not just a US thing. Copenhagen and Amsterdam are both big bicycling cities but a fair number of people in Copenhagen do wear helmets and you don't see nearly as many of the bare headed young kids perched on top of the handlebars that you see in Amsterdam.
Although I don't think biking without a helmet should be a criminal offense for adults, I think the comparison with cars isn't quite right. We do require people to use safety equipment like seatbelts and airbags when riding in a car. A helmet probably won't do much for you in a car crash but can if you wreck your bicycle just like a seatbelt would be silly on a bike.
Also, race cars aren't really comparable to normal driving situations since they go much faster and have a different set of constraints than normal cars. The racing helmets, rollcages, and 5 point harnesses aren't really as necessary at 70mph as they are at 200mph
https://www.treehugger.com/cars/why-all-cars-should-be-hi-vi...
https://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/get_the_facts.html
The data disagree with you.
So no, based off of your links I wouldn't say the data disagrees with me.
That's an easy thing to assert and a difficult thing to prove. I just assume the rules are the way they are because the Netherlands is a democracy and they want things that way, not because they're especially great at risk assessment (what population of people really is?).
I gather this is still a rather active topic of discussion and research in the Netherlands?
https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/03/top-hat-bike-helmets-w...
Combining your two sources suggests that making helmets mandatory would have a large negative effect on public health. (the downtick in injuries would be overshadowed by the reduction in biking)
But a spokesman for the SWOV acknowledged that the protective head wear might be a hard sell in the Netherlands. ‘Helmets aren’t often worn in the Netherlands and we are aware of the arguments [that cycling could decrease if they were obligatory],’ he said.
I'm not invested in what happens in the Netherlands at all, but I wonder if a lot of people are just taking "the downtick in injuries would be overshadowed by the reduction in biking" for granted.
As a safety heretic I fully agree with you that people can make their own decisions on helmet use but why should cycling get special treatment here? On every other issue of physical safety the HN gods have ruled the other way.
I also use a raincoat with cap and rain pants, which should fall over your shoes. However, I only use this in heavy rain, because with light rain I get wet anyway from my own sweat (wet rain gear usually does not breathe enough for me).
Then there is the rain radar [1], but is probably not available for your locale ;)
Weather should really be one of the least concerns on anyone's list for cycling.
I find it handy to simply have a pannier with my rain gear:
* https://www.rei.com/c/cycling-jackets
* https://www.rei.com/c/cycling-tights-and-pants
It's not heavy, though a bit bulky, and if it does actually start coming down, one can just pull over and put it over one's regular clothes. If you can, try to ensure that whatever over-gear you get says "breathable": wearing the equivalent of a garbage bag reduces comfort.
I personally wear the funny-looking cycle attire as well, but that's because I like to pedal hard to get some cardio (instead of going to the gym). If you pedal at a slower pace then you may not work up a sweat--at least not after ~2 weeks once you're in better shape.
A change of shoes and socks can also be appreciated if it's tipping it down.
In Cambridge, UK, where I used to live it once took me quicker to ride to the same destination than a taxi. In fact it’s well known that cycling in Cambridge’s city centre is much faster than taking a car.
The danger comes mostly from bad infra design and other heavier traffic (cars). Those can be addressed separately, and it turns out pretty well. Leading causes of bike-accidents are now cyclists being distracted by their phones and skipping red lights (common especially in large cities). Public awareness campaigns are addressing the former, law enforcement the latter.
You're right, strictly speaking wearing helmets is safer, and you are free to do so. But then again, 4 point safety belts in cars too (but we don't), driving slower (but we don't), not calling while driving/cycling (but we do) and so on. There's a balance between safety, practicality and getting people to their destinations, it seems helmets are simply far less impactful than other measures.
Source (in Dutch): https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/fietsers-voor-h...
I don't think it's about looking cooler, it's about barrier to entry.
It's like adding a 15 character requirement to passwords on your application and rotating them weekly. Most people will give up on your application before they even give it a try.
OPs point is that cities should make it a goal for biking to be safe regardless of if you have a helmet. I daresay biking without a helmet in Copenhagen is vastly safer than biking with a helmet in any city in the states.
The sense of safety a helmet gives you when you cycle is mostly a false one. Lack of cycling infrastructure is a far greater danger anyway. In countries with the best cyclist safety records, no one wears or owns bike helmets, like not figuratively 'no one', but literally, no one. Can't be a very significant standalone determinant of bike safety then, can it?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet#Effectiveness
"Do bicycle helmets reduce the risk of injury to the head, face or neck? With respect to head injury, the answer is clearly yes, and the re-analysis of the meta-analysis reported by Attewell et al.(2001) in this paper has not changed this answer."
https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.aap.2012.12.003
If it's behavior that's being targeted by policies around helmets, then why would a more care-free attitude towards biking make it safer?
Fewer people are driving cars which are much more lethal to non-drivers, so fewer people get killed. People are more active and live longer because of increased physical activity.
Making bikes more appealing/ easier to access by not requiring helmets makes people collectively safer and healthier.
Could you explain why you think that? That’s a pretty general statement. Are you imagining city biking here, or something more like racing in the country-side?
Some data about how this is dangerous could be convincing: https://youtu.be/Boi0XEm9-4E count the helmets.
Just to be clear, I’m not against helmets (I wear one, as is custom in my country).
Only if you are riding a bicycle completely unsuitable for commuting or general urban use; like a mountain bike or racing bicycle.
Commonly used bicycles in Denmark and the Netherlands look like this:
https://omidbikes.nl/wp-content/uploads/mat-zwart-7.jpg
Note the handlebars and upright rider position that basically prevent going over the handlebars during an emergency stop. That kind of accident just doesn't happen here.
Of course, even then, as a teenager I still managed to get myself into some interesting situations a couple of times. But never went over the handlebars :-P
I go back and forth about the helmet issue personally. Though I've almost never not worn one.
My general feeling is that it's not much of a burden to me. And while the cases where it's actually going to help are narrower than most people think (especially people looking from the perspective of a car impact), it does improve the outcome in those cases quite a bit. So it's worthwhile.
If nothing else helmets are good places to mount lights, which are definitely an important safety measure! :)
As a pedestrian who walks about 30m each way on my morning commute, it terrifies me that if a car strikes me at 31MPH I have a 50% chance of severe injury. At 42 MPH, it's a 50% chance of death ( https://aaafoundation.org/impact-speed-pedestrians-risk-seve... ). Atleast I have a separated sidewalk most of my commute, minus street crossings. I would never consider biking in my city because I have to be there on the street next to a bunch of cars.
The lack of helmet laws makes me safer on my bike regardless of whether I wear a helmet or not because it means fewer people are driving cars. Cars are far more likely to injure/ kill me than a solo crash, adding barriers to getting people to adopt bikes makes cycling more dangerous. The more people on bikes, the more cars expect people on bikes, better bike infrastructure, and it makes people in cars more alert to the presence of cyclists.
We have a fairly popular bike-share program here. People can poke a few buttons on their phone and get access to a bike instantly. With a helmet law, that's not the case, they have to be prepared in advance. The presence and popularity of that bike share makes me safer. Removing several hundred motorists from the road every day in our city has a far bigger impact on cyclist safety than the presence/ absence of a helmet.
I have had countless banged up knees, elbows, ankles and hands, but never had a head injury. I used to ride a motorcycle, and wore the full getup aside from pants, and I feel cyclists would be far more protected wearing a jacket and gloves.
Anecdotes aside- figures from the UK (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1119262/) show that it takes 8000 years of cycling to produce a clinically severe head injury and 22000 years for one death. From that same source, roughly 1% of all head injuries admitted into hospitals are from cycling, and 60% are alcohol related. Yet people would find it ridiculous if you suggested they wear a drinking helmet.
The fixation on helmets really confuses me. Its not helped that a lot of it seems to be pushed by people who seem to use it as some kind of virtue-signaling issue. There is just such a focus on a fairly burdensome piece of equipment that in a small percentage of rides in which an incident occurs, and in a small percentage of those incidents, this piece of equipment may help reduce the severity of your injuries, while all other equipment is left out of the conversation.
This stat means absolutely nothing. It's coming from a place where not that many people cycle, the summary even says that cycling experienced a decline, so of course there's not going to be that many injuries from cycling when very few people are doing it. By contrast, British people drink a LOT, so of course they're going to have a lot of alcohol-related injuries. It's just like America: there's very little cycling, and a LOT of drinking and drunkenness, so it doesn't take any great intelligence to predict that there will be far more alcohol-related injuries than cycling-related ones.
And yes, maybe people there should wear drinking helmets, with the way people in those two countries love to get drunk so much.
>There is just such a focus on a fairly burdensome piece of equipment
"Burdensome"? Are you kidding me? Something that weighs a few ounces? I guess you think seatbelts are "burdensome" too.
And yes, I do wear gloves when cycling; they have pads to absorb vibration, and can be helpful if I fall and scrape my hands. They're far more "burdensome" than a helmet, since they take more time to put on (which still isn't very much).
Still my point about a drinking helmet stands- drinking is a dangerous activity- 60% of all hospital admissions for head injuries involve alcohol. Clearly we could reduce the severity and incidence of these injuries with helmets. It would be interesting to see how many "drinking years" it would take on average to get a head injury worthy of a hospital admission.
Driving is dangerous too- and in virtually any accident it seems likely your head is going to come into contact with something- even if it is an airbag, and the mv^2 is much higher- we could reduce the severity and incidence of head injuries if everyone wore a helmet, especially an NFL style helmet with a faceguard...
And you accept that wearing gloves is ok, but you don't wear a jacket- so you know you may fall, and possibly scrape along the ground a bit, but you don't wear a jacket that most motorcyclists consider to be basic standard gear.
Do you understand where I am going here? You assess risk a certain way and make tradeoffs in what you are willing to do to protect yourself, as do I. However, what your risk assessment has determined wearing a helmet as necessary and foolish not to, I see as just another unnecessary burden, choosing instead to wear armored gloves in winter, and accepting other risks. You may feel not wearing a helmet is something a fool does, but my years of riding have given me intuition (in other words, my developed common sense) that the head is highly unlikely to be injured, and statistics back me up on this.
If I did a lot of high speed road cycling, it would probably change things, but my rides around town where I top out cruising around 15mph and if I go down a hill hit 30 for a brief minute or two, its just not necessary or reasonably useful.
So wear your helmet, but I feel denigrating those that don't because your "common sense" tells you its necessary is misguided and somewhat ignorant.
Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of biking to work yet, but if I did, I'd be using a backpack for what I hope are obvious reasons. Any good backpack these days designed for cycling has a clip on it that attaches to your helmet so you don't have to carry it around. I even did this years ago in college when I biked to class; it wasn't a burden at all.
>And you accept that wearing gloves is ok, but you don't wear a jacket- so you know you may fall, and possibly scrape along the ground a bit, but you don't wear a jacket that most motorcyclists consider to be basic standard gear.
Jackets are incredibly hot. Bicycles don't go fast enough to mitigate this. Some skin scrapes are preferable to getting heatstroke.
>but my years of riding have given me intuition (in other words, my developed common sense) that the head is highly unlikely to be injured
The problem is, if your head is injured, it's either game-over or you suffer mental problems for the rest of your life. Other bodily injuries you can usually heal from. A broken leg? It sucks, but it heals. Skin scrapes? Not a big deal usually (not at bicycling speeds). Worst case you get a skin graft but that's not normal for cycling. But a concussion can leave permanent damage; the brain doesn't heal the way the rest of your body does. To make a computer analogy, I feel like you're talking about the relative risks to various computer parts, and equating potential damage to your laptop's screen to its hard drive. The screen isn't important, nor is the rest of the laptop: you can replace them at any time. But the hard drive is unreplaceable (going back to the last backup, which unfortunately we don't have for brains yet): if anything happens to the hard drive at all, you lose all your data and all your work, and you can't replace that.
That is a hilarious and wonderful comparison. I'm gonna save that one for future discussion of helmets and safety.
I ride bikes a lot, I rode 7 miles this morning on those "slippery/ uneven roads". Most of my friends ride bikes and we all know someone who has been seriously injured or killed by a car. If you eliminate cars bikes are extremely safe (for riders with reasonable hand/ eye coordination). The only injury type that comes remotely close to cars is mountain bike crashes or crashes while racing road bikes and those injuries are far less common and far less lethal than cars.
So yeah... I focus on cars, because they are by far the single biggest danger to cyclists.
> David Roberts: The Dutch don’t wear bike helmets. How safe is it to ride a bike in the Netherlands?
> Chris Bruntlett: We — like you — live in a place where helmets have been mandated by law, because they’ve been accepted as a commonsense safety device, normal as a seatbelt. But the Dutch show that [for them], safety in infrastructure, safety in slowing cars, and safety in numbers are all far more important than safety in body armor.
> David Roberts: Yeah, the US approach seems to be to up-armor the cyclist so that cars don’t have to change.
Also keep in mind, jogging can cause traumatic injuries. But I agree, biking does pose more risk as you have less control than being on your feet.
Maybe if your country is flat as a pancake. If there's hills, then yes, people really can hit 20mph, even with casual bikes.
In NL, the average is ~20kph for muscle-powered bikes on bikes like [1]. Sports bikes like [2] are not usually used in commutes and considered as dangerous as scooters if used at speeds of 20mph. E-bikes legislation takes 25kph as the limit above which the cyclist is required to follow certain extra rules, and of course muscle-powered cyclist reaching that speed should perhaps also be legislated accordingly. The reason it isn't is difficulty of enforcement, but there are people advocating a maximum speed for bike infrastructure [3], at 25pkh.
[1] https://omidbikes.nl/wp-content/uploads/mat-zwart-7.jpg [2] https://s3-wielrennen-xjspucykgif.netdna-ssl.com/welke_wielr... [3] https://www.fietsersbond.nl/nieuws/een-maximum-snelheid-op-h...
Every study I've ever seen contradicts your statement here.
You are all over this thread making strong, sweeping claims about bike safety and your only supporting data point seems to be "KE = 1/2mv^2". But there are entire cities in Europe where biking with no helmet is the norm, lots of people do it every day, and serious accidents are all but unheard of - there are other comments on this post with citations to back that up. There is also evidence that getting more people out biking increases bike safety more than anything else [1], and requiring helmets for everyone at all times makes this very difficult to achieve.
Please stop passing off your gut feeling as fact, it is spreading misinformation and - though I know it seems counterintuitive - actually making biking less safe. To be clear, kinetic energy being proportional to the square of velocity is a fact, that fact's impact on real world bike safety is a much more complicated question.
Disclaimer for what it's worth - I've been biking to and from either work, school or social events about once a day for the past 11 years, and I almost always wear a helmet :)
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/02/24/the-mor...
Secondly, there are a lot more than two factors at play to make the "cyclists killed per billion of km of bicycle travel" number. Culturally bikes need to be accepted. I don't see how helmets preclude cultural adoption.
> I don't see how helmets preclude cultural adoption.
Case in point. It seems completely common sense to me that helmets are a massive barrier to widespread adoption! Leaving aside the issues it introduces with bikeshare logistics, having an additional thing to keep track of and carry around and periodically replace (helmets can go bad!), here's something that I suspect you may not have considered: women! Whether it seems reasonable to you and me or not (and I'll be honest, it doesn't seem reasonable to me), the 2 reasons every woman I've ever asked gives for why they wouldn't want to use a bicycle to get around more are
1) sitting on the seat is awkward/uncomfortable when wearing a skirt or dress
2) helmets would ruin their hair
Requiring helmet wear makes cycling a nonstarter for a large chunk of 50% of the population (how I wish I had a citation for this! as far as I've been able to find, nobody has done any kind of survey that attempts to figure out if this is as widespread as I've observed personally). This alone makes me opposed to it, never mind the exaggerated claims of helmet efficacy
Try watching a video of people in Copenhagen riding bikes. Women wear dresses and skirts there all the time while cycling. Same goes in Japan; women commonly wear dresses/skirts there and ride bikes.
And, yes, people are sometimes forced to take other steps that are primarily about their individual safety, such as wearing seat belts. I mostly disagree with those laws as well.
Helmets are obviously essential for reducing serious head injuries (although they're less effective than generally advertised[0]) and parents/individuals should strongly consider using them, but legislation should be focused on improving road safety through education, community outreach, and infrastructure design long before it starts to seriously restrict personal liberty and hampering adoption of better modes of transport. The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, etc, have all showed that you can have world class cycling cities without requiring helmet use.
>Seatbelts do not protect anyone other than the person wearing it but societies have deemed making them mandatory is a that good idea.
This is a dangerous misconception, unbelted rear passengers seriously increase the risk of fatal injuries for the driver and front passengers[1] and in general increase the overall amount of injuries, which should be obvious when you consider that unrestrained passengers essentially become ragdoll missiles in the event of a crash.
[0] https://sciencenordic.com/cars-and-traffic-cycling-denmark/b...
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/138037...
It's both. Safety doesn't necessarily require helmets, as Netherlands and Danmark demonstrate. I imagine barrier to entry by requiring helmets would be a huge blow to bicycle culture here.
Instead they will sit in a car and die from heart disease, obesity etc.
Electric bikes are motorcycles, and I don't want vehicles with the speed and acceleration characteristics of a motorcycle in my bike lane, if you please.
postscript: my very concerns for my safety seem to be getting voted down a lot considering that our friend the Dutchman here has given a rather nice reply recognizing the substantive nature of this conflict
This is not ideal, as the (fast) electric bike is new, also in NL, and people will misanticipate them (which I've experienced first hand). You're right, mixing speeds is a bad idea. This will improve with better infra (wider cycling paths, bike highways) and getting used to this new vehicle. On the other hand, the problem is similar to the scooter, which also doesn't fit the car or bike class, so perhaps with time a new type of lane must be invented. Some cities/political parties in NL are thinking of lowering the car speed limit from 50 to 30 (in urban area), which will facilitate mixing in scooters and electric bikes with car traffic.
Another important fact is liability: heavier vehicles are more liable (weight makes responsible). So in any accident between, say, car and electric bike, the car will be at fault by default, unless there is proof to the contrary. This leads to more cautious driving.
Weight and velocity are also important (potential energy which could cause harm) but acceleration is the right way to sort things into lanes, there can also be an energy constraint for the lane but acceleration is about being able to anticipate the behavior of something so that you can avoid the accident in the first place.
Electric bikes can accelerate fast and the user will also not care as much about stopping (and losing hard won inertia) this could invalidate some expectation and cause an accident.
Finding a good compromise (such as [1]) I think is a better idea. Lowering car speeds such that we can mix is a good one, as well as the introduction of speed limits on cycling paths [2], which would force certain bikes to slow down.
[1] https://gratistheorie.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/opgeblaz... [2] https://www.fietsersbond.nl/nieuws/een-maximum-snelheid-op-h...
As a cyclist, I don't believe this claim for a second.
When a car starts moving at the same time as me, it's faster than me from the start. Which makes sense, it has more horse power per unit mass.
Often I do start moving first, because I think I'm less likely to get right hooked if I do so. But that's a result of paying attention and having my for on the "accelerator" waiting to go. (Also maybe a tiny bit of lag for a car to get into gear, but that's not substantial).
I do agree that a good electric car may start faster than a cyclist, however.
I got a eBike (Bionix brand, it's been great!) when I was commuting across town and got sick of riding the bus (these days there's always somebody watching TV on their phone without headphones. It was just a matter of time until I lost it and slapped one out of someone's hand, and I really don't want to be that guy on the bus, y'know? So I bought an eBike.)
I'm a very defensive cyclist and one of the first rules I made up for myself is, "Do NOT use the acceleration boost to catch changing traffic signals." I saw that people (drivers, pedestrians, and other cyclists) around me mis-estimated my trajectory due to the artificial acceleration.
https://cybermotorcycle.com/gallery/peugeot-1903/Peugeot-190...
The fact that your bicycle has an electric motor and remains somewhat slim doesn't change this fact.
Calling an eBike a motorcycle in 2019 is over-exaggeration, IMO, FWIW.
But, again, I do agree with you that powered bikes are not the same as human-power-only bikes.
The latter count as bicycles and the former as mopeds which are very often not allowed in bycicle lanes and have other rules to comply with.
Details: https://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/netherlands-new...
Edit: See brnt's comment that explains it better
Sure, there will always be situations where it will be difficult, such as steep areas (electric bikes can do a lot here, as well as accepting a little sweating which is normal in NL) or heat that exceeds body temperatures which in turn makes expiration impossible (no easy solutions for this one). But that leaves most of the urban areas on this globe perfectly suitable for cycling, which would be in everybody's favor, and their own first and foremost.