I feel like you’re treating cars as the reason people wear bike helmets, and as a commuter cyclist… No?
If cars did not exist, you should still wear a helmet. If I were in perfect visibility on a straight, guaranteed clear, brand-new concrete bike path that has nobody else on it except a first aid team trailing 200 feet behind me, I would still wear a helmet because I’m not a fucking idiot.
And whereas it’s obviously common to recommend wearing bright colors, I don’t think I’ve ever seen helmets be the main PPE someone targets specifically for a car crash.
I wouldn’t wear a helmet for a short relaxed trip to the shops on a nice even seperated path if it wasn’t the law. I suspect I am more likely to die from melanoma than brain injury from a fall and a broad brimmed hat would make more sense to me. Rest of the time they are better than nothing but not by much. The fines for not wearing them are insane.
Any good done by mandatory helmets is immediately undone the moment you funnel cyclist into door lanes. Flying into someone’s door at speed can give you serious brain injury with or without a bit of foam on your head. Helmets are great for sports cycling but the weakest protection for commuters. They won’t protect anyone from being crushed by a turning garbage truck.
Bike accidents are no joke. My dad fell when he was riding at age 13 and basically skinned the side of his face. He had a dent in the helmet where his head hit the ground.
I have had tons of bike accidents over my life, both bicycle and motorcycle, never had more than minor scrapes. I have seen other people sand their palms down or break wrists or just flop flat doing nothing to arrest their fall or put everything into a knee, hurting themselves in the most minor falls.
I think falling is a skill or instict that some people just never develop. For those people, yeah wear a hemet.
This doesn’t account for high-speed, direct impact accidents where its physically impossible to say, stop your face from whipping into the car infront of you or ground or w/e.
For what it’s worth, I always wear a helmet on my motorbike, rarely on bicycle, never escooter.
I think the point here is that we wear helmets for reasons that have little to do with cars, but traffic safety engineers treat helmets and high-viz as the be-all, end-all of rider protection. (Because they actually don’t give a shit about safety, rather just a plausible way to blame the victims so they don’t get sued.)
I don’t think I’ve ever seen helmets be the main PPE someone targets specifically for a car crash.
I used to drive with a bike hating friend and he liked the schlubs hugging the shoulder in blue jeans and no helmet. “See? That’s not a problem; he’s fine,” he’d say, “it’s the assholes with the spandex that think they own the road that I hate.”
I mean, wearing a helmet is still the smarter thing to do. I don’t, because I don’t go very fast anyway and wearing one feels quite uncomfortable, but it’s still always the safer choice.
That said, the actual benefit is vastly reduced if
you just go at relaxed speeds
car drivera are very aware of cyclists existing and as such drive more carefully
good bicycle infrastructure means there are few points of contact with larger vehicles anyway
Since helmets only matter in severe accidents, if your odds of one are very low in the first place, they don’t change too much. But you can of course always get unlucky. Just like you can get unlucky with a helmet and ram yourself shoulder first into a tree and break your spine.
It does reduce other injuries if you don’t have to protect your head going down even in low speed accidents. Last time I got hit, I was wearing a helmet and t-shirt, that let me roll onto my upper back as I slid so my arms didn’t get any roadrash. Without the helmet I would have probably fucked up my hands and legs, keeping my head and face from hitting.
Insane take tbh, I refuse to wear a helmet when biking. Why?
I want car drivers to act more carefully around me, and I have no need for bicycle helmets because the environment is calm and safe (lots of bicycle infrastructure here).
Having to wear helmets bc carbrains can’t be arsed to bugger off is next level victim blaming…
You do realize that falling off your bike without a helmet, no cars in sight whatsoever, can still give you a concussion and brain damage? That’s the reason you should wear one.
Helmets help in single bike collisions/falls, it’s true. You’ll see more people wearing helmets when the bike path are icy. “Wear a helmet” can be good individual advice depending on the context. But we all have hair triggers because of the use of helmet laws to end bike shares or blame victims – that driver of an SUV ran the cyclist off the road, but was he wearing a helmet?? Just look at the commenter above saying they’d wear a helmet even in a low risk situation, “because they’re not a fucking idiot.” That language furthers the perception that riding a bike is always a dangerous activity, and anyone not wearing a helmet had it coming…
I have been in several bike and scooter accidents, only 1 was caused by a car and in all but one my helmet saved me from a worse fate. Most mountain bikers wear helmets well away from cars.
My worst bike accident was caused by a dog, a herding breed who took offense to my going past him at 25 mph and ran into my front wheel. The most annoying thing was his wandering off and taking a nap after he brought me down with a torn knee ligament.
Completely rational to wear a helmet when there is a higher risk of falling, or just because you want to! But you’re not “a fucking idiot” if you don’t wear one when the risk is low. That kind of moralizing does more harm than good.
Shit, you’re right, actually. My doctor growing up telling me that a helmet protects my brain, spine, and face from lifelong, debilitating injury that he’s seen all too many times was probably a stupid idiot who thinks people fall off bikes sometimes even when they think they won’t. What a drip!
Falling off a bike at speed is a lot more dangerous than doing so while walking though. Even if you believe wearing a helmet while biking is overkill, I don’t think comparing it to walking really makes that point.
If you’re road cycling at speed, it would make sense to wear a helmet. But if you’re biking to work at a reasonable speed, it is not much different from walking. Which is why it is normal to dress for the destination in countries where people are less worried about being hit by a car. It is never wrong to wear a helmet.
Kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity. 3 mph is a normal walking speed while 12-15 mph is a reasonable cycling speed, and 30 mph is easy to achieve on a downhill. The energy difference is not “not much”.
You literally wrote “if you’re biking to work at a reasonable speed, it is not much different from walking.” The point is that you’re wrong about that, it is very different in terms of the energy involved, which generally determines how severe an accident is. Your argument that “you shouldn’t be forced to [wear a helmet]” is a different argument entirely.
I can’t remember the last time i fell off on my commute to work.
The only time I’ve hit my head while biking was on my way home from running an errand (so not exactly commuting, but still utility cycling). I was riding past a construction site and, being an engineer, was distracted looking at the structure when my wheels caught the edge of a metal plate covering a hole in the road. I keep my broken helmet as a sort of memento mori, because it definitely would’ve been bad if I hadn’t been wearing one.
On an individual basis, IMO it’s always safer to wear a helmet than not. On a societal basis, helmets for biking should not be required because it’s better to have more people biking than to choose to drive instead.
There’s a road on my regular ride that has a grate embedded in it at the wrong orientation so that a road bike’s tires would get caught in it. I saw it for the first time about ten feet in front of me going 30 mph (it’s at the bottom of a steep hill). That’s when I learned you can actually jump in a bike. I’ve been regularly complaining about this thing to the township for the 15 years since, to naturally no effect.
I once crashed into a missing section of sidewalk going downhill pretty fast… one of the many reasons i try not to bike on the sidewalk any more, or go that fast. Even if the street with cars is not much better. And before anyone asks, yes i was wearing a helmet.
I can’t remember the last time i fell off on my commute to work
That’s called a traumatic brain injury sweetie.
On a serious note, it really happened to a friend. He went from riding his electric scooter home on a Friday night to being in the ER with a concussion, collapsed lung and 8 broken ribs in a blink of an eye. We suspect a hit and run but no witnesses and no memories of it. He was wearing a helmet.
He might have just hit something in the road. I bicycled a lot when I lived in Florida and they used to have these turn lane dividers that were basically upside-down metal bowls that were bolted to the asphalt – no big deal for cars but enough to send a cyclist to the ground if he doesn’t see them, like I didn’t one night.
Right – the danger is from cars. Wearing ahelmet is a rarional response to the danger. Although scooters are a lot easier to fall off than bikes since speed/momentum does not keep them upright.
I can’t remember the last time i fell off on my commute to work.
I’m not worried about falling off. I’m worried about being murdered by the people in cars.
But I agree there are times when a helmet isn’t necessary. I don’t wear a helmet on bike paths, when streets are closed, etc. - basically whenever there are no cars.
I feel like you’re treating cars as the reason people wear bike helmets, and as a commuter cyclist… No?
If cars did not exist, you should still wear a helmet. If I were in perfect visibility on a straight, guaranteed clear, brand-new concrete bike path that has nobody else on it except a first aid team trailing 200 feet behind me, I would still wear a helmet because I’m not a fucking idiot.
And whereas it’s obviously common to recommend wearing bright colors, I don’t think I’ve ever seen helmets be the main PPE someone targets specifically for a car crash.
I love helmets!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9yL5usLFgY
I wouldn’t wear a helmet for a short relaxed trip to the shops on a nice even seperated path if it wasn’t the law. I suspect I am more likely to die from melanoma than brain injury from a fall and a broad brimmed hat would make more sense to me. Rest of the time they are better than nothing but not by much. The fines for not wearing them are insane.
Any good done by mandatory helmets is immediately undone the moment you funnel cyclist into door lanes. Flying into someone’s door at speed can give you serious brain injury with or without a bit of foam on your head. Helmets are great for sports cycling but the weakest protection for commuters. They won’t protect anyone from being crushed by a turning garbage truck.
Bike accidents are no joke. My dad fell when he was riding at age 13 and basically skinned the side of his face. He had a dent in the helmet where his head hit the ground.
Please wear a helmet. It’s crucially important.
I have had tons of bike accidents over my life, both bicycle and motorcycle, never had more than minor scrapes. I have seen other people sand their palms down or break wrists or just flop flat doing nothing to arrest their fall or put everything into a knee, hurting themselves in the most minor falls.
I think falling is a skill or instict that some people just never develop. For those people, yeah wear a hemet.
This doesn’t account for high-speed, direct impact accidents where its physically impossible to say, stop your face from whipping into the car infront of you or ground or w/e.
For what it’s worth, I always wear a helmet on my motorbike, rarely on bicycle, never escooter.
I think the point here is that we wear helmets for reasons that have little to do with cars, but traffic safety engineers treat helmets and high-viz as the be-all, end-all of rider protection. (Because they actually don’t give a shit about safety, rather just a plausible way to blame the victims so they don’t get sued.)
Risk: car collisions
Elimination: no cars, walkable cities
Substitution: trains, buses, alternative transportation
Engineering: highways, sidewalks, traffic lights, bicycle lanes, school zones, speed limits, DUI tests, etc
Administrative: driving licences, road safety campaigns, law enforcement, vehicle attention / lane departure / impending collision alerts
PPE: seatbelts, helmets, crumple zones, lowered vehicle centre of gravity
We went all in on the least effective measures, and most of them only benefit the driver of a car, not pedestrians or cyclists
I used to drive with a bike hating friend and he liked the schlubs hugging the shoulder in blue jeans and no helmet. “See? That’s not a problem; he’s fine,” he’d say, “it’s the assholes with the spandex that think they own the road that I hate.”
Owning the road? You mean like cars do?
“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression”
That is why they exist.
do you wear a helmet when you walk? if not why not, you can trip, fall smash your head.
do you wear a helmet when driving a car? lots of head injuries in car accidents
places that have very high rates of cycling don’t wear helmets.
I mean, wearing a helmet is still the smarter thing to do. I don’t, because I don’t go very fast anyway and wearing one feels quite uncomfortable, but it’s still always the safer choice.
That said, the actual benefit is vastly reduced if
Since helmets only matter in severe accidents, if your odds of one are very low in the first place, they don’t change too much. But you can of course always get unlucky. Just like you can get unlucky with a helmet and ram yourself shoulder first into a tree and break your spine.
It does reduce other injuries if you don’t have to protect your head going down even in low speed accidents. Last time I got hit, I was wearing a helmet and t-shirt, that let me roll onto my upper back as I slid so my arms didn’t get any roadrash. Without the helmet I would have probably fucked up my hands and legs, keeping my head and face from hitting.
You can fall awkwardly and hit your head on a curb at walking speed, there’s no reason not to wear one.
In a car, the belt prevents the body from sloshing around in the car.
With a belt, wearing a helmet would increase the inertia of the head in a sudden deceleration.
Also the dozens of airbags.
these same places motorcycle without helmets too.
it doesn’t make it a wise choice.
I can take pictures like this in heavily car trafficked areas as well. That still doesn’t mean they’re safe, or sane.
Insane take tbh, I refuse to wear a helmet when biking. Why?
I want car drivers to act more carefully around me, and I have no need for bicycle helmets because the environment is calm and safe (lots of bicycle infrastructure here).
Having to wear helmets bc carbrains can’t be arsed to bugger off is next level victim blaming…
You do realize that falling off your bike without a helmet, no cars in sight whatsoever, can still give you a concussion and brain damage? That’s the reason you should wear one.
Helmets help in single bike collisions/falls, it’s true. You’ll see more people wearing helmets when the bike path are icy. “Wear a helmet” can be good individual advice depending on the context. But we all have hair triggers because of the use of helmet laws to end bike shares or blame victims – that driver of an SUV ran the cyclist off the road, but was he wearing a helmet?? Just look at the commenter above saying they’d wear a helmet even in a low risk situation, “because they’re not a fucking idiot.” That language furthers the perception that riding a bike is always a dangerous activity, and anyone not wearing a helmet had it coming…
I have been in several bike and scooter accidents, only 1 was caused by a car and in all but one my helmet saved me from a worse fate. Most mountain bikers wear helmets well away from cars.
My worst bike accident was caused by a dog, a herding breed who took offense to my going past him at 25 mph and ran into my front wheel. The most annoying thing was his wandering off and taking a nap after he brought me down with a torn knee ligament.
Terrible reason.
Better reason.
Your head squishes like a watermelon when a car drives over it exactly the same way whether you are right or wrong.
Insane take. Heard this quote from a German new to the US: are all these adults wearing helmets because they’re afraid they’ll fall off?
I wear a helmet when I’m mountain biking because there there is a risk I’ll fall off.
I can’t remember the last time i fell off on my commute to work.
not everyone lives in a magical land without sleet and hail
Completely rational to wear a helmet when there is a higher risk of falling, or just because you want to! But you’re not “a fucking idiot” if you don’t wear one when the risk is low. That kind of moralizing does more harm than good.
Shit, you’re right, actually. My doctor growing up telling me that a helmet protects my brain, spine, and face from lifelong, debilitating injury that he’s seen all too many times was probably a stupid idiot who thinks people fall off bikes sometimes even when they think they won’t. What a drip!
Exactly. Wearing a helmet also protects you while walking, but it is not a cultural norm to do that.
Falling off a bike at speed is a lot more dangerous than doing so while walking though. Even if you believe wearing a helmet while biking is overkill, I don’t think comparing it to walking really makes that point.
If you’re road cycling at speed, it would make sense to wear a helmet. But if you’re biking to work at a reasonable speed, it is not much different from walking. Which is why it is normal to dress for the destination in countries where people are less worried about being hit by a car. It is never wrong to wear a helmet.
Kinetic energy increases with the square of velocity. 3 mph is a normal walking speed while 12-15 mph is a reasonable cycling speed, and 30 mph is easy to achieve on a downhill. The energy difference is not “not much”.
Not sure what the point is here. You can wear a helmet if you want. But you shouldn’t be forced to.
You literally wrote “if you’re biking to work at a reasonable speed, it is not much different from walking.” The point is that you’re wrong about that, it is very different in terms of the energy involved, which generally determines how severe an accident is. Your argument that “you shouldn’t be forced to [wear a helmet]” is a different argument entirely.
People generally don’t walk in traffic. There aren’t laws mandating that people walk in traffic. Etc.
If people do walk in traffic, then I would recommend a helmet at least.
The only time I’ve hit my head while biking was on my way home from running an errand (so not exactly commuting, but still utility cycling). I was riding past a construction site and, being an engineer, was distracted looking at the structure when my wheels caught the edge of a metal plate covering a hole in the road. I keep my broken helmet as a sort of memento mori, because it definitely would’ve been bad if I hadn’t been wearing one.
On an individual basis, IMO it’s always safer to wear a helmet than not. On a societal basis, helmets for biking should not be required because it’s better to have more people biking than to choose to drive instead.
There’s a road on my regular ride that has a grate embedded in it at the wrong orientation so that a road bike’s tires would get caught in it. I saw it for the first time about ten feet in front of me going 30 mph (it’s at the bottom of a steep hill). That’s when I learned you can actually jump in a bike. I’ve been regularly complaining about this thing to the township for the 15 years since, to naturally no effect.
I once crashed into a missing section of sidewalk going downhill pretty fast… one of the many reasons i try not to bike on the sidewalk any more, or go that fast. Even if the street with cars is not much better. And before anyone asks, yes i was wearing a helmet.
I completely agree. When people try to make the point that it is immoral not to wear a helmet, that’s what makes my blood boil.
Decent argument to be made that setting a good example for children is more important than absolute personal freedom.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. There are a lot of things that are not allowed for children and are allowed for adults, and this is one of them.
That’s called a traumatic brain injury sweetie.
On a serious note, it really happened to a friend. He went from riding his electric scooter home on a Friday night to being in the ER with a concussion, collapsed lung and 8 broken ribs in a blink of an eye. We suspect a hit and run but no witnesses and no memories of it. He was wearing a helmet.
He might have just hit something in the road. I bicycled a lot when I lived in Florida and they used to have these turn lane dividers that were basically upside-down metal bowls that were bolted to the asphalt – no big deal for cars but enough to send a cyclist to the ground if he doesn’t see them, like I didn’t one night.
Right – the danger is from cars. Wearing ahelmet is a rarional response to the danger. Although scooters are a lot easier to fall off than bikes since speed/momentum does not keep them upright.
Strange thing citing a German. As a rule of thumb at least 2/3 of adults in Germany wear helmets, and all kids under 12 .
I wear a helmet during my commute because after I’m hit by a car and launched from the hood, my head may hit the pavement and split open.
Right – the danger is from cars. Wearing a helmet is rational around cars.
Fuck cars
I’m not worried about falling off. I’m worried about being murdered by the people in cars.
But I agree there are times when a helmet isn’t necessary. I don’t wear a helmet on bike paths, when streets are closed, etc. - basically whenever there are no cars.
Right – in the US adults wear helmets because of the dangers of cars.