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A comment on We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes. Parent comment

Re:We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes by CDSlice on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @02:14PM (#21337261)
> 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.

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.

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Re:We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes by NickBusey on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @07:08PM (#21340023)
I'm curious why you think a helmet wouldn't do much in a car crash, seeing as in any car race every driver is wearing a helmet.
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Re:We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes by CDSlice on Thursday October 24, 2019 @12:08AM (#21341562)
I was talking about the kind of helmets bicyclists wear. The only thing a bicycle helmet would save you from in a car wreck is hitting your head against the windshield/dash which is what we have airbags and seatbelts for.

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

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Re:We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes by NickBusey on Thursday October 24, 2019 @10:17AM (#21344885)
> In 2013, 50,000 people suffered fatal brain injuries; 19 percent of those were due to car crashes. Among persons aged 5 to 24, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of death from fatal TBI (Traumatic brain injury). It’s likely that a good proportion of the 9,500 people might have been saved had they been wearing a helmet in the car.

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.

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Re:We Need to Dream Bigger Than Bike Lanes by CDSlice on Thursday October 24, 2019 @03:37PM (#21348398)
Your first link has zero information to support that wearing a bicycle helmet would do any good, it only suggests it. Personally I doubt a bicycle helmet would do much good because they aren't designed to protect your head in such an energetic collusion. Your second link only says that motor vehicle wrecks are the cause of 20% of TBI related hospitalization. The word helmet doesn't appear in it at all.

So no, based off of your links I wouldn't say the data disagrees with me.

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