To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/sunday-review/to-encourage-biking-cities-forget-about-helmets.html?_r=1

by hartleybrody • 14 years ago

199 205 14 years ago

Absolutely... Just visit Amsterdam, Copenhagen, or Paris and see all the cyclists... What a joy. Instead of helmets the US cities should try to implement cycling lanes for a change.

pan69• 14 years ago

The difference is of course that in those European cities, cyclists are part of the expected traffic and are catered for with bike lanes etc.

Being originally from The Netherlands, I always used to ride my bike, literally everywhere. I've been living in Sydney/Australia for the past 7 years and the bike riding culture seems very similar to that of the US. Loads of sporty mountain bikes and everyone forced to wear helmets. It's not so much the gear that is the issue of course but the fact that e.g. a city like Sydney (and I guess the same thing counts for many cities in the US) doesn't cater to cyclists at all. No bike lanes (maybe a handful) and in general very dangerous. Not to mention the steep bloody hills in this place!

devilshaircut• 14 years ago

Agree on both points. I never wear a helmet myself.

jcfrei• 14 years ago

good points raised in there, instead of promoting the use of helmets city officials should establish more lanes for cyclists. and just on a side note, taking the bike to work everyday is arguably the best workout available.

rayiner2• 14 years ago

What's so wrong with helmets?

UnoriginalGuy• 14 years ago

I find this the most important question. They aren't expensive (£15) and if you're going to bike then you're going to get sweaty, rained-on, etc with or without a helmet.

So I guess if you're put off cycling by a simple helmet then I really cannot seeing you sticking with it through any kind of adverse weather either.

jlgreco4• 14 years ago

Bicycles can be left locked up where-ever you go, but helmets either need to be carried around once you arrive, or you need some place to put them.

cshesse3• 14 years ago

I think we can solve this with a bulleted list:

  * Scare people off from using bikes
  * Uncomfortable
  * Supply excuse to not make biking safer
  * Expensive
  * Don't actually make you any safer

rayiner2• 14 years ago

The first point just begs the question. The third one is questionable at best. The last two are just incorrect.

I think the "no helmet" thing is just a weird bit of biker culture that's going to eventually die out, much like smoker culture is dying out in the US.

leviathant• 14 years ago

My mother worked in a head trauma unit while I was young, and I particularly take umbrage with that last bullet point. While wearing a helmet won't do you much good when you ignore a stop sign and get plowed over by an SUV, neither will a seat belt save your life if you lose control going 110 down a tree-lined rural highway.

zobzu8• 14 years ago

That's not exactly a very good list. Here's what i think is a better one:

- doesn't look cool

- slightly less comfortable

- one more thing to think about and carry along when you go for a ride

On the plus side:

- does actually make you safer

- its cheap unless you need a super competition-brand-etc (then you've a different issue)

- its light

- when everybody wears it you don't have to feel like you're the only clown who fears for his life wearing one

zem• 14 years ago

* plays badly with city-supplied shared bicycles

hartleybrody• 14 years ago

Yah, the author claims that we Americans cling to our "helemet = safety" notion dogmatically, but then she takes it as fact that people won't ride bikes if the law says they have to wear a helemet. But I don't think wearing a helmet is really that bad that it's keeping people from riding.

Like the fact that biking is aerobic exercise and people hate that.

The policy implications are very interesting and I'm sure it might affect behavior at the macro level, but for me as a cyclist, I'm going to wear a helemet AND ride a bike, so it seems like I don't fit her model.

m0nty2• 14 years ago

I have a bike helmet but only wear it for some rides - i.e. the long-distance or fast ones. When I ride into town for shopping, I don't wear it. I hope it will always remain my personal choice.

Anyway, the arguments are:

a) Mandatory bike helmets mean you can't run a bike-share scheme because who wants to wear a much-used sweaty helmet? How can the people running the scheme sanitise them?

b) Mandatory bike helmets put people off riding. They are inconvenient to carry around with you if you cycle to get somewhere (work, meeting, lunch date, etc) rather than just for recreation. It's estimated that 30% of cyclists (in Melbourne, I think) stopped cycling when helmets became mandatory. This is hailed as a success by politicians in Australia because cycling fatalities also fell by 30%. Miracle!

c) They probably don't protect you that much - anything over 12mph or a collision with something other than the pavement, and they're not guaranteed to do anything to help you. (Specialized helmets are made to the older Snell standard, which is a bit safer; I have a Specialized.)

d) They give the impression that cycling is super-dangerous and you need all sorts of safety gear, which puts people off. In some areas, it is dangerous (I'm thinking parts of the US which seem actively cyclist-hostile) but the risks of inactivity (heart disease, diabetes, stroke, etc) outweigh the very slight risk of traumatic head injury, in many parts of Europe at least. So, get people on bikes regardless, you'll save lives as people become fitter from cycling.

e) More of a political point, but the main danger of riding a bike comes from reckless or distracted motorists. Helmets represent masking the symptoms rather than dealing with the real problem. They also shift the blame from dangerous drivers to cyclists: how many times do we see descriptions of car-on-bike collisions with the stock phrase "the cyclist was not wearing a helmet"? Victim blaming, especially in cases where the cyclist was crushed to death by a 30-ton vehicle (little bit of polystyrene won't fix that, sorry).

The main ways I protect myself when riding are visibility (always use bright lights, my back light can be seen even in bright sunlight) and safe, assertive riding (e.g. taking the lane when necessary, approaching a junction for example). So many cyclists fail badly at safe riding that I think mandatory training would be better than mandatory helmets. But really I don't support either. For me, cycling is a safe activity and a helmet is usually not needed.

astral303• 14 years ago

+1. Mandatory training or some of kind education or just plain warning/ticketing bikers for riding unsafely is a key point. Just as there are a ton of inattentive drivers, there are a ton of inattentive bicyclists that do not ride defensively and put themselves in unnecessary dangerous situations.

jarek3• 14 years ago

> a) Mandatory bike helmets mean you can't run a bike-share scheme because who wants to wear a much-used sweaty helmet? How can the people running the scheme sanitise them?

The idea being tossed around in Vancouver is to have a helmet rental station integrated with the bike station that will steam-sanitize the helmets. The bike share implementation date has already slipped a year from original plan of spring of 2012, so it'll be a couple more months until we can tell how well it'll work. What that'll do for cost of the program is also a question...

AmirS2• 14 years ago

+1 for "assertive riding" and "taking the lane when necessary"

Cyclists need to be assertive, ride a safe distance away from parked cars and the kerb (so you can't be doored or have pedestrians step out in front of you), and generally expect drivers NOT to see you, and take avoiding action just in case.

Sure, riding in the middle of the lane when necessary will annoy car drivers, but it will force them to see you and keep you safer.

pmcginn• 14 years ago

I commute to work by bike in Philadelphia, and not just in the good weather. In the last year I've missed three days--once the day after I cracked a rib going down in snow and twice when I woke up to a flat tire and didn't have time to swap it out and make it to work on time. (I've got better tires and am much better at replacing a tube, now.)

You know the old saying, cheap/good/fast, pick two? With bike helmets it's attractive, comfortable, or cheap: pick one. You can get a sweaty, dorky Bell for $30, or you can get a sweaty, cool Bern for $70, or you can get a comfortable, dorky Rudy Project for $200.

pmahoney• 14 years ago

You comment and m0nty's about Specialized brand helmets meeting a stricter standard prompted me to do a little helmet research. I was a bit skeptical of the slim Bern helmets. I think simple physics demands that to stop a moving head on impact slowly enough to avoid concussion, one must use a (dorky?) a "spaceship on your head" helmet. There's no getting around that to go from velocity v to 0 without accelerating more than some threshold time requires a certain amount of space.

Now, I don't know if the thresholds chosen by ANSI or Snell or whomever will make a real difference in a crash, but Consumer Reports rated Bern helmets poorly in "impact absorption".

http://bikeportland.org/2012/05/31/nutcase-bern-helmets-rece...

darklajid• 14 years ago

Nothing in general.

And nothing is wrong with the idea of safer flights by banning weapons.

The implementation is crap and (mostly) useless though, in both cases.

If bikes _need_ to wear helmets, that's just taping about other problems. If bikers cause problems on their own (crossing red lights, driving insane and ignoring the law) I'd suggest that they wear helmets or stop using that bike.. If bikers are regularly hit by idiot car drivers and 'wearing a helmet' seems to help, soemtimes, somewhat, maybe, then the problem is elsewhere and should result in

- harsher penalties for the car drivers (20 times the mass, 80+ times the horsepower). Let them bleed in court, if the bikers bleed literally

- better infrastructure (note that this is point 2 for me. There's no excuse for being an ass even if there's no dedicated bike lane)

So .. the question you totally ignored is 'Why helmets in general and why do people force them on others in the first place'. Why?

zik• 14 years ago

The statistics show that introducing and enforcing helmet laws reduces the number of people cycling by about half. That's bad for the health and fitness of your whole society.

stevewilhelm2• 14 years ago

Citation please.

oneandoneis22• 14 years ago

They increase your chances of having an accident.

Seriously: The more vulnerable you look, the wider a berth car drivers will give you. If you ride erratically down a road, swerving a bit as if drunk, cars will go yards out of their way to pass you.

If you ride confidently in a straight line, they woosh past with inches to spare. That's just human nature: The more likely something is to cause a problem, the further away from it you stay.

By the same token, drivers will give helmetless cyclists a wider berth than those with helmets - they rate higher as a potential hazard.

Citation: http://psychcentral.com/news/archives/2006-09/uob-wah091106....

jmspring2• 14 years ago

Until there is a distinct change in driver attitudes, riding without a helmet in most of the US is just nuts. Sure, there are places like Portland with dedicated bike lanes and an overall emphasis on pro-bike culture, but it is a rare spot.

In the bay area, there is a very large biking community -- road, mountain, around town, etc. The problem is, the infrastructure isn't there for bikes compared to Amsterdam. We have "bike lanes" that any vehicle can enter within, say, about 150' to make a turn onto another street. Vehicles don't look for bikes. The bike ways in Amsterdam, certain parts of Munich, and other towns are often separate from the roads. When not, people expect them and are courteous to them much more than here.

baddox2• 14 years ago

Most of the "anti-helmet" studies and arguments I've seen aren't particularly anti-helmet in principle, but rather just make the case that the benefits of wearing a helmet apply equally to pedestrians and automobile drivers/passengers. The argument isn't that helmets can prevent head injuries while riding a bike. The argument is that if there are laws or social stigma around bicycle helmets, then they should apply equally to pedestrians and automobile drivers/passengers.

cbr• 14 years ago

> the benefits of wearing a helmet apply equally to pedestrians and automobile drivers/passengers

Cycling is about six times more likely to kill you, per hour, than driving. So while helmets in cars would help some, the case for them on bikes is stronger.

papalalu2• 14 years ago

the fact is that a helmet is not enough to guarantee your safety - if cycling without one is "nuts", cycling with one is too.

ImprovedSilence• 14 years ago

This really hits it. A helmet isn't some all protective force field. If a truck is going to run you over, a helmet isn't going to save you.

I think helmets are associated with bikes, because before we used bikes to commute, which involves simply riding about town, we used bikes to rip through the woods inches away from trees and sharp rocks, or jumped them off of mounds of dirt, or flung road bikes down mountain roads at 50per. (at least those three seem to sum up my first 23 years of existence) I live in DC, got old, but still NEVER commute with a helmet, and feel perfectly safe all the time. In fact, tons more safe than when I try to get a training ride in. (for which I wear a helmet)

notatoad2• 14 years ago

A helmet might not guarantee safety, but it is an effective protection against a brain injury. If you fall off your bike and break your collarbone or leg or something, it's not really a big deal. Bones heal with virtually no permanent damage, brain injuries don't.

It isn't about removing all risk - some danger is inherent in pretty much everything you do. The point is to manage the risk, and take acceptable precautions where they are convenient.

rmc4• 14 years ago

Nothing guarantees safety. Everything has a risk. It's impossible to not die. So there's always a non-zero "chance of death/injury" number.

mikeryan• 14 years ago

This article is great but it does itself a pretty big disservice by pretty much ignoring a lot of why many of the European cities which have successful programs are successful. Namely they have made significant investment into infrastructure to make bicycling safer, many times prioritizing bike traffic over auto traffic.

I ride quite a bit, live in Berkeley which has numerous "Bicycle Boulevards [1]" and I'm pretty comfortable riding sans helmet. I happily rented a bike in Amsterdam and never even considered using a helmet. Riding my bike to work in SF (or to the articles point NYC)? You're damn straight I'm wearing a helmet.

[1] Bicycle Boulevards are streets (open to bikes and cars) that tend to run parallel to primary traffic arteries that tend to have fewer Stop Signs and every 3 or 4 blocks auto traffic isn't allowed through (usually big planters in the middle of the street) so it keeps the auto traffic down.

davidw• 14 years ago

Here in Italy, most places don't seem to have all that much in terms of programs or much to encourage cycling - or at least if they do, they're fairly recent.

What they do have are densely populated cities, making driving expensive and inconvenient, and cycling a better option in terms of the number of places you can reach in a given amount of time.

msrpotus• 14 years ago

Density might be even more important--even with bike lanes, people won't bike if the distances are too far.

btipling• 14 years ago

As a driver, those bicycle boulevards, like Vermont Ave, in Berkeley are confusing to me. I just don't know what is supposed to be different about those streets, they seem like regular streets except for the designation.

rms• 14 years ago

It takes a while to figure out the traffic flow in Berkeley, but basically most streets except for main arterial roads have some form of periodic traffic calming. So some of the bicycle boulevards have speed bumps, some have traffic circles, some go do not enter after 3 or 4 blocks. Basically just a marginal annoyance to try and get non-local drivers onto other roads.

MikeCapone• 14 years ago

You are absolutely right. Streetfilms.org is a great place to see short videos that show how the Europeans/Scandinavians do it. Here are a few examples:

http://www.streetfilms.org/cycling-copenhagen-through-north-...

http://www.streetfilms.org/copenhagens-car-free-streets-and-...

http://www.streetfilms.org/copenhagen-cargo-bikes/

They also have many films about infrastructure, like physically separated bike lanes;

http://www.streetfilms.org/physically-separated-bike-lanes/

You can also look up films about places like Amsterdam for more.

rickmb2• 14 years ago

Why do people insist on pretending all of Europe is full of bike lanes? In most inner cities there often isn't room for bike lanes, or the lane is just a line on the asphalt.

I bike to work every day in Amsterdam, not a single bike lane on my route, I have to share the road with cars, trams, buses, trucks and scooters. The only traffic that actually poses a regular challenge because of their erratic movements and tendency to step into the road without looking are American tourists on foot...

Bike lines are convenient, but no more than that, and just as much of a red herring as helmets when it comes to safety. Safety in urban traffic is a people problem.

FrojoS• 14 years ago

>Why do people insist on pretending all of Europe is full of bike lanes?

Because as a tourists only stick to the main roads which often have bike lanes. Anyway, in my experience the situation in Europe is much better than in the US.

My datapoints: Munich, Kopenhagen, Zurich Bay, Boston, Portland

_delirium• 14 years ago

I wouldn't say they're widespread in Europe, but I moved from the SF Bay Area to Copenhagen, and they're certainly a big factor here. The "bicycle highways", completely separated and wide lanes that form major arteries through the city, make it much easier to bike to work from most places, without danger of car interference, or of being "doored" by parked cars opening their doors.

Some other efforts: 1) the traffic lights on several major arteries have been synchronized to typical bike speeds, rather than car speeds, so in good circumstances you can ride their whole length without hitting a red light (they call this a "green wave"), and 2) of the three bridges over the central harbor, one is bicycle/pedestrian-only (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryggebroen), with another no-car bridge under construction.

Obviously other aspects also matter, such as a compact and flat city, but I think all these help considerably as well.

dmix• 14 years ago

The longer I ride my bike in the city, I fear cars much less because I've learned to avoid putting myself (and them) in dangerous situations.

What I do fear is other cyclists (on cruisers) and pedestrians.

The only two accidents I've had in the last two years was from getting hit by two different people on giant heavy cruisers/hybrid bicycles. They never seem to have control of those bikes and can't keep a straight line.

scoot• 14 years ago

> The only traffic that actually poses a regular challenge because of their erratic movements and tendency to step into the road without looking are American tourists on foot...

Was that really necessary? The racial stereotype detracts from your your argument, and frankly, one erratic pedestrian looks the same as another to a fast moving cyclist, much as one erratic cyclist looks the same as another to a driver.

tripzilch• 14 years ago

> I bike to work every day in Amsterdam, not a single bike lane on my route

Really? I don't visit Amsterdam that often, but the rest of NL really is full of bike lanes.

I agree with the GP post: in order to safely bike around without helmet, you need infrastructure that takes bikes into account. Also, traffic that expects bikes.

And maybe your particular work-route does not have bike lanes, but the road designs do take them into account, and any motorized vehicle expects to see bikes because they are ubiquitous.

For those who read Dutch, this wikipedia article talks about the bike infrastructure in the Netherlands as well as several other European countries: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fietsverkeer#Infrastructuur . Curiously, it doesn't mention Amsterdam being any exception to this, either (I'd swear seeing plenty of bike lanes there as well, but that could be projection as I expect to see them everywhere in Dutch cities).

scotty794• 14 years ago

I don't think it's limited to American tourists.

When I visited Amsterdam I had to take few days to adjust to the fact that as a pedestrian you have to be pretty much aware what's happening at nearly 360 deg around you when you try to cross any sort of curb.

In my home country it's usually sufficient to make sure nothing is coming from the left to not be in any immediate danger.

After those few days of adjustment I found Amsterdam to be amazing place.

There was no other place in the world where I felt that the city treats me like a real adult perfectly capable of taking care of my own safety.

tisme• 14 years ago

The biggest single factor that makes biking safe is a legislative one. If you adopt the model where hitting a bike with a car automatically puts the car in the wrong you can lose the helmet.

speleding• 14 years ago

I now live in Amsterdam but also used a bike when I lived in the US and the difference is night and day. Sure, the inner part of Amsterdam doesn't have as many bike lanes, mainly because it was designed 500 years ago, but there are always biking lanes around on roads with higher speeds.

Even so, I agree that the main difference is that every car takes bikers into account. In the US either people simply don't check their mirrors for bikes or even if they do you can't count on them to give you the right of way. And I've had to swerve into traffic several times when a parked car opened the door and nearly hit me, people are simply not trained to look in their mirror before opening their door.

rmc4• 14 years ago

Here here. I'm from Dublin, which this article points out as an example of a successful bike hire city (which is accurate, it's massively successful). However the idea that Dublin has fantastic cycle infrastructure and lots of bike lanes (esp. in the area covered by Dublin Bikes) is crazy talk.

ekianjo2• 14 years ago

In Japan there are no bike lanes whatsoever and people use bike everyday in dense cities to go from one place to another, because it's pratical and saves you time. Nobody wears helmets and you would look like a fool here if you were the only one to do so. On top of that, there is no need for bike lanes in Japan because cyclists are not supposed to go on the roads where the cars go. Instead, cyclists are supposed to stay on the sidewalk/pavement with the pedestrians. Of course this means you need to have sidewalk/pavements larger than usual but this does the trick: you are technically avoiding very dangerous collisions this way, since most collisions would happen between pedestrians and cyclists rather than between cars and cyclists.

I do not look the news for that kind of things but I have never heard of any cyclists getting killed in Japan at least in the recent past.

Helmets are stupid because the biggest problem is to avoid car and cyclists collision in the first place. Having something on your head will never save you if you get into a collision at 50km/h.

barrkel2• 14 years ago

Helmets (including motorbike helmets) are designed to protect you from a vertical fall of about 2 meters and hitting your head at that speed. If you have a collision at 50km/h, chances are you'll be hitting the ground from a height similar to that.

I don't know how many such collisions you've been in, but I've been in about 6 motorbike accidents of fairly light severity, including hitting a car at about 50km/h. I bounced off the front of that car and landed head-first on the road. But I had no injuries at all - in large part because I was wearing a helmet.

That said, I'm not in favour of making bicycle helmets mandatory, and I think cyclists should be allowed to use the pavement for safety, as long as they are courteous and don't go too fast (no more than 10km/h or so) when close to pedestrians.

malandrew3• 14 years ago

Don't forget to mention that dooring isn't really problem in European cities. Most European cities separate the bike lane from parked cards. For people in bike lanes, that's the main risk that would cause an accident where a helmet would help prevent injury.

sopooneo• 14 years ago

It's true. Around Boston, the bike lanes pretty much exactly designate the zone in which you are at risk for dooring.

andreimaxim• 14 years ago

I live in Bucharest, which pretty much is as bike unfriendly as you can get. There are some bike lanes, but all of them are on the sidewalks where you might see a car parked or you might have to avoid a tree or a bus station, so they are pretty much unusable in my opinion. On top of that, there is a large number of aggressive or simply ignorant bike riders, so you can occasionally get some strong words simply because you're riding your road bike on, you know, the road.

That being said, I never wear a bike in the city. There are a couple of reasons for that:

First, it hinders my sight. I'd rather be able to catch a glimpse of a car trying to overtake me than have my head protected when I hit that car. Second, most road bike helmets offer some sort of protection only when you hit the road with the top front of your head. They offer little protection when you fall sideways, which is probably the most common type of fall. Third, I'm not so sure that a helmet might do anything for me: I ride a bike, ski and even skate a bit and I've fell down a lot, but I've never hit my head once because my instinct was to protect my head with my hands.

Last, it's a matter of personal taste: I sweat a lot and I'd feel awkward if I had to wash my hair every time I ride my bike somewhere.

That being said, I always wear a helmet when I plan a medium or long ride. I usually ride faster than in the city and a helmet might make the difference. Also, I always wear a helmet if I'm riding my mountain bike in the forest because there are branches that seem high enough, but guess what, they aren't. I also wear a Road ID, just in case.

As a bottom line, I strongly believe that bike helmets don't offer safety. A little, yes, but hitting your head hard where it's protected by your helmet is just one of the injuries, especially when you ride next to the curb. I think it's a lot better to watch out and try to prevent any accidents.

brey• 14 years ago

relevant study from the UK: http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1231.html

"HEAT suggests that a law making helmets compulsory for cyclists may result in an overall increase in 253 premature deaths – 265 extra deaths from reduced cycling less 12 deaths saved among the reduced pool of cyclists receiving fatal head injuries."

"The overall cost of a law would be between £ 304 million and £ 415 million per year. In addition, there would be a one-off cost to the remaining cyclists of £ 180 million to equip them with helmets"

Tiktaalik• 14 years ago

Folks in the US need to start demanding bike lanes from their elected officials. They're super cheap to build and so it's more of an issue of simply having the political will to remove a lane of traffic from exclusive car use.

Such political bravery can pay off. Vancouver BC's Gregor Robertson (and his councillor slate) has been elected twice with strong mandates in large part because of his commitment to bike lanes.

jarek3• 14 years ago

Incidentally, Vancouver's bike share is well en route to a stillbirth thanks to BC's think-of-the-children (literally, http://web.archive.org/web/20100829214539/http://www.richmon...) helmet law. It was first supposed to launch in spring of 2012, there's still no concrete date as of today.

reinout4• 14 years ago

The Dutch think-of-the-children 1970's campaign resulted in the great cycling infrastructure we have now.... A far cry from such a here's-some-body-armour-if-you-want-to-commit-suicide law.

My kids are 8 and 10 and cycle 1km to school each day without me or my wife riding along. And that's a mix of regular streets, cycle paths and residential areas. I feel pretty thankful to the ones campaigning in the 70s!

tzs2• 14 years ago

There's actually some organized opposition to bike lanes in the US, from some of the more conspiracy theory oriented members of the Tea Party and the Libertarians. They think bike lanes are part of the UN's "Agenda 21", which they see as a nefarious plot to take away our sovereignty.

Bike lanes, for example, according to these people encourage people to bike more, which encourages higher density cities (as people want to be within bike range of work). Having us packed tighter into cities will make it easier for the UN troops to round is up and take away our guns and then our property.

These people tend to be politically active, and have turned up in enough numbers at some city councils where bike lanes were being considered to shout down those in favor or bike lanes, and scare the politicians into thinking bike lanes are actually controversial among the general electorate.

The Republican Party is encouraging this stuff. They made opposition to Agenda 21 an official part of their party platform. They didn't mention any particular things, like bike lanes, put simply mentioning Agenda 21 is going to encourage the conspiracy nuts.

Plenty of amusing but frightening on this in Goole, if you are curious. Here's a good start: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/06/inside-agend...

knowaveragejoe2• 14 years ago

Silliness. There is already widespread support for bike lanes and bike sharing in many US cities, these people are not going to affect anything.

drumdance• 14 years ago

Here in Colorado a couple years ago the Republican nominee for governor (who was a Tea Party insurgent) tried attacking the Democratic nominee for this. The Dem nominee was the then-mayor of Denver and had pushed for and gotten a bike share program in the city. Everyone realized the Republican was nuts and it started a downhill spiral in his campaign.

gosu2• 14 years ago

To be fair, what you've just proposed is also a conspiracy theory.

knowaveragejoe2• 14 years ago

Maybe outside of the denser urban areas it's cheap. Inside them though, I can't imagine how one could justify it being "cheap". Everything is built up already with cars in mind. You might say "Turn an existing car lane into a bike lane" - that is vastly more complicated than you might think. You're reworking traffic patterns, displacing parking spaces, and in the end just painting lines on the ground that no driver is obligated to respect. In some cities that can be an utter nightmare - I'm thinking mainly of DC here with the convoluted road network(which already has a few bike lanes and more on the way, as well as a widespread bike-sharing program). I want bike lanes or otherwise improved bike access too, but it is an immense proposition for a dense urban core that was developed around the automobile. In a lot of cases the issue is not that there is a lack of demand from the people or attention from public officials, it's that the planning and execution involved can be a nightmare.

zobzu8• 14 years ago

I dunno why people downvote what they "dont like to hear". Sounds pretty much accurate to me (some guy is going to tell me my opinion doesnt matter if its not baked by graphs tho).

In SF, there are quite a few bicycle lanes. That's cool. Half of them are ruined by parking. That's not cool. Half of my bike-riding coworkers have been "doored" so far.

Heck, it's still a lot better than no bike lane, but it's hard to get right since the space is already taken by car lanes and parking lanes.

In Paris, even thus, as per previous posts, scooters ride on it, some lanes are actually part of the sidewalk and are forbidden to pedestrians. In Germany I've seen that too (albeit theyre not as well designated IMO). Advantage: no one car park on it. No car can even cross them. Feels a lot safer.

Unfortunately in Paris that's not the norm, its only a few places where they were able to do that.

jt2190• 14 years ago

> Folks in the US need to start demanding bike lanes from their elected officials.

North American bike lanes, as they're currently implemented, in general, are easily criticized because they don't actually buy a safer ride for cyclists. They buy the illusion of a safer ride[1].

Some of the problems:

  * Bicycles going straight through an intersection are encouraged to overtake cars 
    that are turning right on their right side. The motor vehicle can turn into the 
    path of the overtaking cyclist.
  * Bicycles going straight through an intersection are encouraged to stay close to 
    the curb, where they can be hidden from the view of drivers turning left into 
    their path by cars that are traveling in the same direction and slightly 
    ahead of them. The left-turning car then turns behind the car travelling in 
    the same direction as the cyclist and into the cyclist.
  * Bicycle lanes widen the travel lane, encouraging drivers to travel 
    at higher speeds.

There are bike lanes that actually encourage safer riding habits, but they're far less common, so the overall statistics don't show decreased accident rates when bike lanes are added.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bike_lane#Crash_types.2C_junct...

baddox2• 14 years ago

My experiences growing up in the USA contradict the author's sentiment that helmet-wearing is taken as a given and that there's social stigma against going helmetless. As a kid, my parents had me wear a helmet, but once I was comfortable riding, the helmet was never an issue. The only people I knew that wore helmets were those who regularly commuted on their bikes (and thus rode on busier and faster roads). This was in my small hometown (12k people) in Missouri, but the experience continued in my larger college town (100k people). A lot of students biked to, from, and around campus, not to mention riding downtown for the nightlife. Again, helmets were the exception, not the rule.

zobzu8• 14 years ago

So i had one single bike accident in my life so far.

Happened to be in a urban area. Happened that a car cut the way and i hit it, and the ground with the head. I have a permanent scar (its not so bad) on the side of my face.

Without helmet it'd have something much worse (yeah i broke other body parts, the hit was rather violent - i can avoid a car going at regular speed, but if i'm going fast and the car is speeding, sometimes it's though luck). So you know what? As long as I'm not going down at 60mph in the forest I don't care if I've a helmet or not. Ground is soft, and I'm probably not gonna fall. The chance to hurt my head is low, and the skull is strong.

Now in a urban area, 60mph isn't unheard of. Specially from cars, even if you're at "only" 20mph on the bike. Thats exactly where a helmet is a good idea.

For sure I'm ok with people choosing to wear a helmet or not (as long as if a biker gets hurt by it's own fault, the car driver doesn't have to pay for it, which I fear ain't the case in the US). But I don't think that's a very good idea in a urban environment.

You'd need bike-only lanes that are fully respected, proper visibility, etc. That's not the case in Paris (velib) and that's not the case in the US. In both cities bikers also pass at red light, in both cities non-bicycles use the bicycle lane (in Paris scooters take it all day long to avoid traffic, at high speed). In some other EU countries, or some other French cities it's (much) better than in Paris, though, safety-wise.

Also in the EU (Minus Paris and probably a few other big cities), cars will not attempt to kill bikes if there's no bike lane, and bikes will generally respect the road signs. Makes a world of a difference.

mikeash7• 14 years ago

This would be much more compelling if you could bring some statistics into the argument rather than tell a personal story and then, basically, guess.

zobzu8• 14 years ago

Statistic of how many head injuries you get if your head is smashed against a car door or the ground at high speed?

I suggest you make the experiment, because, I can only guess it hurts every time, and uhm, that's not backed by any statistic.

I'm not allowed to reply because this has been down-voted, so i'll reply here:

the study you linked is a net result of people NOT riding bicycles because they don't want to ride if they have to wear a helmet. Thus they die "faster" from lack of exercising. That's twisted crap, IMO. It doesn't mean not wearing a helmet is safer. It means: NOT DOING EXERCISE IS UNHEALTHY. That's a very different thing. Note that everyone else "against helmets" in the HN threads linked to similar stats (!)

As I wrote, I'm all for people being allowed to wear one, or not wear one. But at the end of the day, it's safer to wear one in many environments such as SF/NYC/Paris (yes, Paris too It's not like Amsterdam, at all.).

But since you like stats, here are stats, that helmets protected 85% of helmet-wearing riders, as this study does not compare to "people who wouldn't ride because the think a helmet is ugly":

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM198905253202101?HIT...

papalalu2• 14 years ago

the test that your helmet has to pass is a 12.5mph impact.

zobzu8• 14 years ago

it's AFAIK 14mph, and motor bike helmets are tested at 17mph.

Note that in both cases you can still die from head injuries while wearing one. And in both cases accidents happen at a much higher speed than the tested speed (also they do resist much greater impacts)

jey• 14 years ago

It's apparently not very clear whether bike helmets increase or decrease biker safety: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/09/bike-helmet-doubts.htm...

zobzu8• 14 years ago

every of these articles manipulate the data to make you believe a simple fact "helmet or no helmet is the same".

Just use common sense instead (yeah I know it's so freaking hard). If you're going to ride on a safe road, bike path, etc, like many people do, helmet or no helmet makes an insignificant difference.

If you're going to ride in traffic, in SF, NYC or Paris, that is where you want to wear one. If you're going to go down hill in the forest at extremely high speeds (ie: you're doing competition), you're going to wear a helmet. Heck those guy don't need to be told, they know the risk if they don't.

That's all there is.

mikeash7• 14 years ago

Common sense is an awful way to evaluate risk. Common sense will tell you that it's safer to drive than to fly when traveling, for example.

Someone• 14 years ago

"Heck those guy don't need to be told, they know the risk if they don't."

If only: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet#Required_helmet_.... I think culture in the peloton has changed a bit, though.

ams6110• 14 years ago

As a kid in the 1970s, I rode my bike everywhere, never wore a helmet (nobody did), and here I am today. Of course helmets can help avoid head injury, not riding bikes probably helps even more. I mean where do you draw the line on the fear vs. the actual chance of something happening.

On the subject of community shared bicycles, our town tried that about 10 years ago, all the bicycles were stolen within the first month (or maybe it was the first week) and it basically died at that point.

SoftwareMaven• 14 years ago

Survivor bias, perhaps? All those kids that died in the 70's from no helmets, falling out of pickups and going through the windshield of cars[1] aren't really here to say "I didn't make it."

I think we in the US tend to make things more scary than they really are in our efforts to protect ourselves from everything. However, I think the worst argument we can make is "I survived, so it is OK." There are good arguments that can be made for not wearing helmets, like how valuable it is to just get off your butt.

1. I am one of those kids (well, not the dead part). I managed to make it between the dash board and the solid metal mirror of a Volkswagon beetle from the back seat when I was four years old. A slightly different set of conditions would have had my skull turned inside out.

alanfalcon• 14 years ago

As a kid in the 1990s, I rode my bike everywhere, always wore a helmet (kids I knew did), and here I am today. Of course, my helmet may have saved me from serious injury or death when I fell from my bike while on a hill and landed on my head, cracking my helmet in two. I walked my bike back home, hurting but basically okay, happy that I wasn't allowed on my bike without a helmet.

Anecdotes are just a sample size of one and essentially useless... unless the population you care about includes that one person.

rmc4• 14 years ago

Conservatives often like to point out how "things were OK back in $DECADE" without these silly modern health and safety rules.

However that's not true. Less people are dying due to health and safety rules. E.g. The London 2012 olypmic stadium was the first olypmpic stadium that had no fatalities during construction.

Pkeod• 14 years ago

Related TED talk "Why We Shouldn't Bike with a Helmet": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07o-TASvIxY

neves• 14 years ago

It is a TEDx talk.

willholloway• 14 years ago

Cycling is extremely appealing if you separate roads for cars from roads for bikes. Boulder is a city that gets this right. As a cyclist in Boulder, you can get almost anywhere in town with minimal riding on a normal street. The network of bike/pedestrian paths is so well integrated into the city.

I loved biking everywhere in Boulder. In Austin or New York I would rather walk and take public transit. NYC and the Connecticut shoreline are keeping me enthralled for now but I will move back to Boulder for the bike paths (and the general paradise vibe) at some point.

Nostalgia is taking hold now. Warm memories of a satisfied ride with a Flat Iron mountain backdrop. In my backpack was just a modest check, but it was a check for the sale of my first venture, and we were happy, and living in Boulder and the future was ours for the taking...

wilfra• 14 years ago

Davis and Isla Vista (where UCSB is) are two cities in California where bicycling is great. The infrastructure is certainly nice but the main thing that makes it great is that there are so many bicycles that they run the streets. Cars are second class citizens and just have to drive slow and wait a lot. Safety in numbers. It's very similar in Vietnam with motorbikes (electric scooters). They do whatever they want, because there are so many of them, and the cars just have to wait.

I see a pretty decent number of bikes riding around near where I live in Mountain View but I'm scared for them. They are always riding solo and surrounded by cars who may or may not even be aware they are there.

jmanamj• 14 years ago

As a still somewhat new Boulder resident, I agree with this. I lived here for a year as a freshman and only saw the city by bus. I came back recently owning a car, and saw more of the town, but it was a bit difficult to get around in all the traffic.

Then I got a bike, and the valley opened up to me. I practically had to relearn my way around using the extensive network of bike lanes and bike paths, but I feel a lot more freedom of movement. I was worried about safety at first, but now I am more comfortable riding than driving.

I know I'm spoiled by this city though. The ride from South Boulder to the shopping district can take you along a gorgeous paved path following a stream under a canopy of trees between suburb neighborhoods. I never feel a need for a helmet.

Downtown boulder has a bike sharing program, but I don't know how much use it gets since practically the whole town rides.

BrandonM• 14 years ago

Columbus, OH, is another city that is surprisingly bicycle friendly. Allow riding on the road feels less safe than riding on the roads in SF (there just aren't enough cyclists on the roads for most drivers to be looking for them), there are tons of separated paths that really minimize the amount of road riding that is necessary.

Aardwolf• 14 years ago

I've ridden bike thousands of times. And I've never worn, owned, or even touched a helmet. Like nobody else my age ever does in my country. It started to become a trend to let children wear a helmet here since the last 5 years or so though, and of course those coureurs with their flashy bicycle clothing have been doing it forever already...

carlob• 14 years ago

There is an association in France that is lobbying against helmets for bike commuters (and advocating them for competitive cyclist) and they have collected a pretty large amount of data on the issue:

http://www.fubicy.org/spip.php?article191

it turns out that head injuries are not very common when riding at slow speed. An helmet would actually be more useful for a pedestrian.

b3b0p• 14 years ago

I recently moved to Tulsa, OK. I bought a condo on Riverside Drive because the area, atmosphere, people, places, etc. all reminded me of being in Palo Alto to a degree.

Every day, since I got here, I have been biking to work. However, I would still get things like groceries and little trinkets with my car.

Go to last Friday/Saturday (sometime during the night or early morning). I went outside, to get in my car, to go visit my friends about 75 miles away in another city (Stillwater, OK).

My car was gone.

I immediately called the police and my insurance provider (I have full coverage). The insurance company gave me a rental and is processing my claim right now. I have not used the rental car yet. It's still at the rental company. They said to call whenever I'm ready to pick it up. I ended up biking to get my groceries and instead of drudging it like I thought. I enjoy it and look forward to 30-60 minutes I nonchalantly bike down Riverside Drive on the bike path to the store and back every day. I wonder what Winters will be like now? I'll replace the car if and when insurance finishes with my claim.

For the Midwest, the area of Tulsa that I live in it is extremely bike friendly. Relatively anyway.

Edit: Grammar, clarity.

dbreunig• 14 years ago

This article is asinine.

Not once does the "journalist" mention the absurd price of NYC's program (up to $77 for 4 hours) vs. the $2 she pays in Paris.

Further, let's not forget the safer bike lanes or areas in European cities. Getting hit while riding in NYC is not an 'if', it's a 'when.' The number of cycling deaths here are absurd. I'd hate to see the figures if we actively discouraged helmet use.

The NYT should be embarrassed they ran this piece.

jessriedel2• 14 years ago

That's a very deceptive description of the pricing. In particular, you can't take a 4 hour ride in Paris for $2 either. A quick glance at the pricing suggests the NY system is about 2-3 times more expensive (presumably because it isn't as heavily subsidized).

pingou• 14 years ago

You can take a 4 hour ride in Paris for 2$. One day ticket is 1,70 €, first 30 minutes are free, you have to pay if your trip is more than 30 minutes or you can just take another bike for free, that will reset the countdown. Not really handy but most trips are < 30 minutes. By the way the annual fee for unlimited 30 minutes rides is only 29 € Source : velib user here.

zweiterlinde• 14 years ago

In their defense, the Times did print a piece last week about an increase in traffic fatalities:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/27/nyregion/in-reversal-new-y...

Agreed, though, that cyling in NYC can be incredibly dangerous. Every serious cyclist treats an accident as a "when", as you mention. And in my own experience (6 mile Manhattan commute, mostly on the Hudson), I could be in 3-5 accidents per week if not for extreme paranoia. I would not give up my helmet, irrespective of the legal situation.

rheide• 14 years ago

The target audience may be slightly different. In London, the people I see wearing helmets while cycling tend to be that particular young male demographic, whereas people partaking in the bicycle sharing program tend to be commuters. As such, the speed at which both travel, and the roads that they take, tend to be completely different. If you're doing a high-speed bicycle-only commute into Central London then I'd say wear a helmet, but if you're doing a short-distance trip on a shared bike, there's really no need since you'll be travelling slower anyway.

maurits• 14 years ago

To Encourage Biking, Cities should do two things, and two things only:

- Bike lanes. Physically separated bike lanes. This is not rocket science. Trains have rails, airplanes have a nice bit of tarmac and bikes should have a space tailored to their specific needs as well. Typically in the Netherlands, bikes are banned from roads that are 50km/h and up. And they don't need to battle it out with fast traffic, for there are bike lanes. And the limited space in this country means that something truly has to give when adding them.

This how the dutch design an intersection. Note the absence of the ridiculous ASL boxes, and most important, no crossing of lanes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA

- Traffic laws that protect the weaker participant in traffic. Again, case in point, the Netherlands where in a (civil) dispute after a bike-car accident the burden of proof lies with the car. Not to mention the dreaded article 5 that broadly states that endangering traffic is a felony.

This helmet discussion imho is just a way to deviate from arguably more costly and difficult choices when it comes to embracing the bicycle. And while we are are at it. I am convinced that making helmets, 4 point harnesses and leathers mandatory in cars for all occupants would save lives as well.

What perhaps surprises me the most in the car-bike entanglement is the seemingly bad engineering. Cities like Londen, Geneva, all (claim) to cater for bikes, have rental programs, paint the odd lane, but their intersections tell a different story. In the information age, it just baffles me.

mmagin• 14 years ago

I assume this doesn't allow cars to make a right turn during a red light. That, and the long path for cyclists to make a left turn are probably what would make a lot of people in the US resist this design.

(I think it looks like a good idea, however.)

mc322• 14 years ago

We could try the box-style left turns that are deployed in Asia (s well as a few places in the US).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juNLGZrb5Ak

Spooky232• 14 years ago

Cities can do that, but states need to do three things as well: compulsory registration, licensing, and insurance for bicycles.

Why? Nobody knows how many bikes are really out there, and noboby does any enforcement of traffic laws wrt them. As I walk to work, I observe all manner of braindead behavior on the parts of cyclists. Also, cyclists don't behave consistently unless they are real enthusiasts -- many of them don't know the rules of the road. (becuase they don't know them!)

Registration or licensing would at least establish a minimum standard of training. Insurance would enforce compliance -- cyclists with bad records would become uninsurable. Insurance would also bring a powerful lobbying force to the state legislatures to improve road conditions for bikes.

gosu2• 14 years ago

And no one would ever ride a bike again.

tylermenezes• 14 years ago

Nice to see some data-driven policy making!

diego2• 14 years ago

This article is rampant with dishonest usage of statistics and anecdotes:

“Statistically, if we wear helmets for cycling, maybe we should wear helmets when we climb ladders or get into a bath, because there are lots more injuries during those activities.”

Ok, but how about the severity of the injuries? This is like saying that most car collisions in the US happen in parking lots. Also, there are lots more injuries per instance, or absolute numbers?

"The European Cyclists’ Federation says that bicyclists in its domain have the same risk of serious injury as pedestrians per mile traveled."

Of course, but bicyclists travel many more miles. That's the point of riding a bicycle. It would be more fair to compare against people who ride buses.

“Nobody wears helmets, and bicycling is regarded as a completely normal, safe activity. You never hear that ‘helmet saved my life’ thing.”

Of course not. If you don't wear a helmet and you have a fatal accident in which a helmet could have saved your life, you're dead. The dead don't speak.

EDIT: who downvoted my comment and why? I'm just stating obvious flaws in the article. Answer instead of downvoting, please.

Volpe• 14 years ago

So you've rallied against the articles points from a logical point of view.

But do you have any evidence that helmet use decreases (severity of) injury?

From the evidence I've seen, requiring helmets lowers cycle usage, which in turn lowers the number (total, not per capita) of injuries, which politicians see as a 'win'.

diego2• 14 years ago

Did you downvote me? You can google the studies yourself, there are lots of those supporting whatever conclusion you prefer.

I don't have an opinion on helmets, only on the logical fallacies used in the article.

ChrisClark• 14 years ago

Well, for one thing. My dad would be dead if it wasn't for his bike helmet. That's good enough for me to wear one. It's anecdotal, but it's very personal, so I'm probably not going to change my mind.

What's cool is the helmet company wanted his helmet back so they could study it.

kleiba• 14 years ago

A two-year-old bike-sharing program in Melbourne, Australia — where helmet use in mandatory — has only about 150 rides a day, despite the fact that Melbourne is flat, with broad roads and a temperate climate. On the other hand, helmet-lax Dublin — cold, cobbled and hilly — has more than 5,000 daily rides in its young bike-sharing scheme.

As for the Melbourne part of that sentence: the city is spread out vastly over 8,694 km² (acc. to Wikipedia). Some of my co-workers ride their bikes to work, but unless you happen to live in a close-by suburb, you cannot really get anywhere by bike. Besides, Melbourne really is a car city, and made to be one, with 8-lane highways cutting through its geography. There are a few bike lanes, but parking is permitted on them, so in practice they don't exist.

But from all that you cannot deduce that Melburnians are fat and lazy people at the risk of a heart disease. In fact, like most Australians, people here love sport. Hardly ever seen so many joggers ever before. And yet there's rumour that people South of the Yarra river, that divides the city from East to West, run while people North of it ride bikes.

I guess they don't participate in the bike sharing program because if you ride a bike on a regular basis, you own one.

enraged_camel• 14 years ago

As someone who commutes to work via bike 2-3 times a week, the thing I would appreciate the most would be if highways had walled-off bike lanes. The reason I say this is because surface streets having bike lanes is not enough. The thing with highways is that they are able to run diagonally to the surface streets, which often times reduces distances drastically. With bike lanes though, often times I feel like I'm zig-zagging to get from point A to point B, which feels terribly inefficient.

oofabz• 14 years ago

Helmets are important for inexperienced cyclists and mountain biking, because you have a high risk of falling. But riding around town is a low risk activity and a helmet is unnecessary. We need to learn to distinguish between these scenarios instead of lumping all cyclists into one group.

jusben1369• 14 years ago

I ride 100 miles a week or so for fitness. Always wear a helmut. I recently moved to a new town. It has a college nearby (US) and was immediately struck by how many 20 somethings weren't wearing helmuts. It irritated me at first. Then I realized something else. Just how many people were riding period. And how free and happy they look riding around with the wind in their hair.

I've really come around over two years and now don't wear one when I ride recreationally. I'm sure it's riskier than not but nearly all physical activity is riskier than sitting on a couch - in the short run.

bickfordb• 14 years ago

Traumatic brain injury is real, completely life debilitating and can happen at very slow speeds. Many parts of your brain are protected only by soft tissue. Brains do not grow back like a broken arm/leg. Imagine permanently losing 100 IQ points by not paying attention for the wrong five seconds. Cyclists are extremely vulnerable on streets shared by cars. Think slow moving ~<180lb two wheeled bean bags vs. 1500+lb high speed steel boxes. It's pretty irresponsible and absurd for the NYT to print articles like this. I suppose we shouldn't use seatbelts or car bumpers either based on mean effects? Helmet safety is totally cheap (basic, OK helmets are $20-30) and easy to use. Although I would certainly like to make everyone "healthy" and build a cycling utopia, the fitness argument this article makes is completely absurd. Obese, unhealthy people casually cycling for ten or fifteen minutes across a city are unlikely to receive any significantly health benefit (reach aerobic thresholds) and are the the most likely to experience falls and collisions since they are inexperienced.

revelation2• 14 years ago

I think theres plenty of health benefit in cycling under the aerobic threshold already. Surpassing it would mean they're going to have a pretty bad time for the next few minutes, and indeed be a strong incentive for many people to just go back to the car or public transport.

konstruktor• 14 years ago

Will you seriously argue that cycling to and from work 5x2x10 or 5x2x15 minutes has no health benefits? That's more added time moving than many sedentary people get at all. Reaching aerobic thresholds for over 20 minutes is only one mechanism of how moving helps your body. Should I forget about taking the stairs unless I work in a skyscraper? Should I ditch walking?

davidjohnstone2• 14 years ago

As a keen cyclist (I'm building http://www.cyclinganalytics.com/), I wish we didn't have mandatory helmet laws, but there are a lot of points on both sides of the argument worth pondering.

* Making helmets mandatory makes cycling look dangerous. What other things do you wear a helmet while doing? Between this, ruining peoples' hair, not looking as chic, and the inconvenience of it, helmets discourage people from cycling.

* Although it is possible to get seriously injured on a bicycle, the research that I've seen suggests that the health benefits of cycling outweigh the risk of injury considerably (even when not wearing helmets), so, from a public health point of view, it makes sense to encourage cycling, and even cycling without wearing a helmet.

* Therefore, it seems that helmets directly save lives (in crashes, although, for my own anecdotal evidence, they haven't helped me in any of the crashes I've had), but they cost lives indirectly by discouraging people from cycling in the first place. This makes it harder to sell.

* Laws are not about making things as safe as humanly possible. It would save more lives to have people in cars wearing helmets, but we don't do that (yes, I know more people travel by car). For that matter, it's legal to drive cars that would be considered death-traps by modern safety standards. Even if helmet laws did save lives, that doesn't automatically mean they should become laws.

* The drivers in different countries have different attitudes towards cyclists. In Australia (and probably America), we have a strong driving culture, and a very "us vs. them" view of the whole thing. Earlier this year, Shane Warne (one of the most famous Australian sportsmen of the last decade) had an altercation with a cyclist on a busy Melbourne road which led him to comment on Twitter about how cyclists should pay registration and show license plates. Views like that are very common amongst the general public, and often stem from the view that "bikes are okay for a gentle Sunday ride with the family to the park, but they shouldn't be used as serious transportation devices". Compare that with the attitude of the average driver in many European countries (from what I've heard), and you might be able to make a case that we aren't ready for scrapping mandatory helmet laws, because cycling really is more dangerous.

pkulak2• 14 years ago

In regards to your last point:

http://bikeportland.org/2012/09/05/bob-huckaby-moves-forward...

revelation2• 14 years ago

I have a hard time seeing how you made the leap from "car drivers lack the personal qualities to responsibly operate a very heavy, very large machine with 40kW+ of power" to "we need to keep mandatory helmet laws".

Knowing humans, it would be nigh impossible to model any significant part of them to be more responsible without invading on their personal freedom, so the only option is to reduce the occourence of catastrophy stemming from said irresponsibility. That means we need to physically seperate car drivers and cyclists.

nl2• 14 years ago

http://www.cyclinganalytics.com/ looks interesting.

FYI .tcx files exported from Garmin Connect seem to fail (.fit files are ok).

davidjohnstone2• 14 years ago

Thanks. I just fixed the TCX parsing issue.

kmrjohnson• 14 years ago

I am a physician, and was surprised by the NY Times article. Here is a review of older literature you might find helpful:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=10796827

stevewilhelm2• 14 years ago

In California, I would never ride a bike or ski without a helmet. The roads and slopes are now too crowded with people not paying attention to their surroundings.

Somehow, the skiing (and boarding) industry has made helmets a fashion statement. Almost everyone wears one.

The cycling industry just needs to make wearing a helmet cool.

brc• 14 years ago

So many people have turned this into a 'are helmets safe or not'.

That's really arguing the wrong point - of course helmets improve survivability of a bicycle accident.

The point here is, for bike-sharing programs, should helmet use become mandatory?

The answer should be : no.

Ultimately few people are going to climb on a bike and think it is safe riding without a helmet. They will know that they are doing a dangerous thing.

The idea with bike-share programs is to get people using shared bikes to move around a city instead of either public transport or private cars. If carrying your own helmet (or using a publicly shared-helmet) is a requirement, fewer people are going to use the bike-sharing.

This is a simple argument about the increased use of bike sharing programs against the increased number of people with head injuries from that bike sharing program. I don't know what those numbers are, but it would mean higher head injuries but also higher bicycle use. The number of head injuries can only be measured by the set of people who chose to ride the bike without a helmet, who had an accident and hit their head. Some people (regular users, for example) would choose to still use helmets when riding bike sharing, so it's not like removing the law will mean nobody wears a helmet anymore. At the margin there will be more injuries, but also more bike-miles ridden. It's up to people to make a decision which is more desirable.

It might sound like a tough decision, but really, this type of decision is everywhere. Speed limits are set with the balance of people who will be injured or killed in more serious accidents, balanced with the ability for more people to get to their destination more quickly.

malandrew3• 14 years ago

What would make sense is making helmets mandatory for road bikes, cyclocross bikes, mountain bikes and touring bikes. All other bikes aren't really designed for speed or unsafe maneuvers and therefore shouldn't require helmets.

hxc• 14 years ago

This all the way.

nfarring• 14 years ago

A friend of mine died a couple years ago from a bicycle accident with a car. He suffered a head injury and was not wearing a helmet. There is no logical argument that would ever make me support riding without a helmet, despite how much fun it is.

scotty794• 14 years ago

I think when assessing personal risks people often don't realize that they have to 1/1000 or higher risk of dying next year of whatever.

Yes. Making yourself a bit safer is good if it doesn't bother you much but you should realize that life is just slow decay in hazardous environment and you have to balance your risks with what you want to do during your life and with your convenience.

As for helmets. Drivers tend to pass closer to bikers that wear helmets (UK study) and unsurprisingly bikers that wear helmets have more accidents. Success stories that tell "helmet saved my life after being hit by a car" are often failure stories because of your helmet you and the guy that hit you felt confident enough to share same space.

I never wore a bike helmet although if I owned one I'd probably wear it as additional safeguard. Even if I did I would relay mostly on sharing space with pedestrians not cars wherever possible.

flexie• 14 years ago

One thing to remember is that Copenhagen had many bikers before it had many bike lanes. Bike lanes on the main traffic arteries of Copenhagen is pretty much a thing of the last 10-15 years or so. Before that bikers in central Copenhagen rode their bikes on the streets (with a few exceptions).

Now, many of the suburbs of Copenhagen were designed with biking in mind and have had extensive networks of bike lanes for the last 30-40 years. Of course, people moving from there and into Copenhagen took their biking habits with them.

Copenhagen has other incentives that makes biking the choice: Huge taxes on cars (first a 25 percent VAT, then 105 percent fee for the first roughly 14,000 dollars of the value of the car (incl. the VAT), then 180 percent on the exceeding value of the car), huge taxes on gasoline (the gasoline tax alone is around 3.5 dollars per gallon, then there is the 25 percent VAT, bringing the total price per gallon up around 8 dollars). Further, in many parts of Copenhagen the daily fee for parking exceeds 20 dollars.

Also, Copenhagen is relatively dense, compared to many American cities, and many families living in the suburbs have at least one parent working locally (typically in public sector jobs such as teaching, day care, elderly care, the local municipality etc.). Biking is only a realistic means of transportation if distances are small. It may work for New York City one day, but probably not for Houston or LA...

pmccool• 14 years ago

My experience of the bike-hire scheme in Brisbane (Australia) is that helmet laws are a problem, but not the problem. The legal requirement to wear a helmet is a bit tiresome, and the communal helmets they supply to get around it are a figleaf at best, but helmet law or no, riding a bicycle in Brisbane is harder than it has to be.

The problem, as others have pointed out, is road design and driver attitudes. Going any significant distance involves either riding (legally) on footpaths, or riding in traffic. There's a nice bicycle path along the river, plus some pictures of bikes in doorzones. That's about it for central Brisbane. It's not that hilly but it's definitely not flat. I don't mind riding in traffic, but I say that as a bike racer (albeit an old, fat bike racer) who used to be a courier. Driver attitudes, well, 95% of them are fine, maybe more. There's a small minority who are deranged and vicious and it's socially acceptable to behave that way in a car. It's all do-able, but it needs some unintuitive techniques (ride in the middle of the road in some situations, for example) and, ideally, a bit of fitness. I don't know as I'd recommend it to neophytes.

That helmet laws are the problem is an appealing conclusion, because it's a quick fix: repeal the helmet law. Changing infrastructure OTOH is hard and changing attitudes in harder still. I'd like it to be as simple as repealing a law, especially one where the benefits are so unclear. I just don't think it is.

In terms of the popularity of the bike hire scheme, I can only say that there are a couple of dozen hire bikes out the front of my workplace at the start of the day and it's down to a couple by day's end. I'm not aware of the official figures, but my highly subjective impression is that they're getting used more than when it started. A less convoluted signup process probably has something to do with it, plus the fact that it's a pleasant time of year to cycle.

conradfr• 14 years ago

I, for one, would like at least the possibility to get a helmet when short-renting a Velib in Paris, even if I would probably not wear it.

Oh and using headphones on bike should be forbidden (if it's already the case, people do not seem to know or care).

jdietrich2• 14 years ago

There is no evidence that segregated cycle facilities improve cyclist safety. The majority of serious bicycle accidents are right-of-way disputes, occurring at junctions. It is just as likely that segregated facilities could increase the number of accidents, by making the movements of cyclists less predictable to motorists when they merge onto general roads. It is known that sidewalk cyclists are significantly more vulnerable than cyclists who use the roadway, possibly because their movements are more difficult for motorists to predict.

The evidence for the efficacy of cycle helmets is extremely poor. There are a great many people with strong opinions on helmets, but we simply do not have the evidence and it is likely that they are a relatively unimportant factor. While we know that helmets moderately reduce head injuries, we do not have good evidence that they improve rider safety overall. We do have some evidence of risk compensation, with both drivers and riders taking more risks when helmets are used, based on the belief that the helmet provides safety. Head injuries are an important class of injury, particularly in the most severe incidents, but they represent only a minority of the serious injuries suffered by cyclists.

The best available evidence shows that one factor completely overwhelms all others - the number of cyclists on the road. Most Americans believe that the numbers of cyclists will increase when action is taken to improve safety, but in fact the inverse is true. An increase in the number of cyclists invariably leads to a decrease in the number of accidents per km. That is the key message and everything else is just noise. Meaningful improvements in cycle safety are wholly reliant on increasing the number of cyclists and normalising cycling. Motorists cannot be blamed for struggling to predict the movements of a type of vehicle which they encounter rarely and do not understand.

lloeki2• 14 years ago

When one ton of metal hits you naked at 50kph (the legal speed limit in traffic areas of cities here in France) the acceleration alone can tear or damage your aorta with impressive odds (IIRC about 50% chance). A helmet is an extremely marginal protection.

On a pure energy analysis, I'd rather have cyclists navigate with pedestrians than with cars. The latter result in a basically non-elastic collision transmitting most of the kinetic energy (1T@30~50kph) to the human body (75kg@5~20kph) while the former is much, much more even.

I don't know the state of streets in the U.S but his is especially true in old european cities, where streets are often narrow and there's simply not enough room for both cyclists and cars on the road, especially when cycling is thought of after the fact.

nl2• 14 years ago

Energy Analysis is pointless in this situation.

Mixing cyclists and pedestrians is extremely dangerous in locations where pedestrians aren't used to cyclists, because pedestrians have a tendency to change directions very quickly.

jdietrich2• 14 years ago

Existing pedestrian facilities are simply unsuitable for cyclists.

My regular 3km ride to the shops takes me about five minutes by bicycle. If I had to ride in the footway with pedestrians, I would be faced with two choices - either to recklessly continue at each junction and cross the road at speed, or to stop and start like a pedestrian. Doing the former would quickly prove fatal, the latter would increase my journey time fourfold.

Most footways are far too narrow, too tightly radiused and contain substantial amounts of furniture like lighting and mailboxes, which pose no danger to pedestrians but are a potentially fatal hazard to cyclists.

It also bears pointing out that European roads were built for cyclists, not motorcars. The invention of the safety bicycle prompted the widespread development of smoothly surfaced roads. Motorcar traffic represented a minority of journeys in most of Europe until long after the Second World War. Bicycles are perfectly well suited to the narrow streets of old towns, it is the motorcar that is out of place; Many enlightened local authorities are making the sensible decision to prohibit non-essential motor vehicles from town centres, improving conditions for both cyclists and pedestrians.

There is no infrastructure problem. There are many cities with substantial amounts of cycling infrastructure but low rates of cycling and poor safety; There are many cities with practically no infrastructure but huge numbers of cyclists and very good safety.

bunderbunder2• 14 years ago

> The majority of serious bicycle accidents are right-of-way disputes, occurring at junctions.

Makes sense, really. I recently started regularly driving a car again, and I've noticed that there's just no way motorists can be reasonably expected to anticipate something that's in the pedestrian right-of-way but moving at five times the speed of normal pedestrian traffic. In a denser area where a driver's view of the sidewalk might be obscured by parked cars, it's probably more-or-less impossible to adequately check for that kind of hazard.

Heck, pedestrians can't do it either. 6 or 7 years ago a woman was killed a couple blocks away from my house when a sidewalk cyclist hit her. There was a tall hedge at the corner impeding visibility, and they both rounded the corner at the same time - the pedestrian at a walking (i.e., perfectly safe for the sidewalk) speed, and the cyclist at bike (i.e., completely reckless for the sidewalk) speed.

By contrast, a cyclist who's in the vehicular right-of-way where they belong (and not erratically dipping into and out of the parking lane) is every bit as visible as motorized traffic. And, assuming they bother to use turn signals and at least pay lip service to traffic laws (which many don't in my city), just as predictable too.

samspot• 14 years ago

I am frequently forced off the sidewalk by cyclists while walking my dog, and we even have bike lanes!

pacala• 14 years ago

> The best available evidence shows that one factor completely overwhelms all others - the number of cyclists on the road. [...] Motorists cannot be blamed for struggling to predict the movements of a type of vehicle which they encounter rarely and do not understand.

The reason for increased safety may have less to do with better prediction and more to do with the fact that the motorized traffic speed slows to slowest cyclist speed as the number of cyclists increases. There is no way to go fast if there is a cyclist every 100ft in the same lane as the cars.

oneandoneis22• 14 years ago

Helmets aren't as cut-and-dried as even this article makes out: Studies have shown that wearing a helmet increases your chance of having an accident in the first place:

http://psychcentral.com/news/archives/2006-09/uob-wah091106....

So you may improve your chances of not getting injured, but you also increase your chances of an accident in the first place.

It's nice to think it's as simple as "X is safer than Y" but matters are rarely that cut & dried..

blaze33• 14 years ago

As a daily Vélib' user from day one, I'll add some insights a one-time user may have missed:

* It's often the fastest way to get to another point less than ~5km away.

* You quickly notice how most of the traffic regulation is only designed for cars.

* You have a much better visibility of the traffic (with a correctly adjusted saddle) than a car driver.

* Maneuverability and standing start acceleration (the first seconds) are also way above the average car, so if you're used to it, you'll easily make your way in the congested traffic.

* It's common practice to run red lights or stop signs (hence the first point). There's some debate about allowing the "turn right" but we're still waiting. Still, we're not crazy but you quickly notice it makes no sense at all to stop & start a 20kg bike every 100 meters at a pedestrian crossing with obviously no pedestrians waiting or at road junction with no incoming traffic.

* Most bike lanes are overrun by clueless pedestrians.

* European cities like Paris predate cars and are more dense with smaller streets which feel much safer than higway-like american streets.

Crossing the place de l'étoile ain't for every vélib user - http://youtu.be/lay8aZlsbB0 - but it's funny to do it.

headShrinker• 14 years ago

while, I totally agree with jdietrich's fact based approach to the discussion, I have ton's of personal experience in the area. Helmets were optional for me growing up, though I often deferred to wear one riding on city streets, racing mountain/XC, riding downhill in Vail and the Olympic Mountains, and riding biketrials extensively. Separately, but also connected had many years of interstate motorcycle riding experience.

I commute by bicycle to work in NYC daily. I feel safer riding here than any other city I have ridden in, because the traffic knows how to deal with bicyclists. (This backs jdietrich's claim that 'more cyclist on the road' == 'safer riding conditions for cyclists in traffic'.) Personally, bicycle dedicated lanes and separate bike lanes, increase my already overwhelming comfort riding in this city, because they eliminate a major variable that is out of my control, being hit from behind.

I have been in dozens of really bad crashes on trails, closed courses and even streets, and only hit my head once. It is my experience that while a helmet won't save you from a car going 50mph, you stand a better chance of surviving when your head makes a 'light tap' on the pavement below you. That one time I hit my head is when I realized the human skull moving at any speed is the equivalent of cantaloupe; soft and rip, waiting to be cracked open to reveal it's juicy insides. From that point forth, I unconditionally wear a helmet. There is no question bicyclist wearing helmets in particular types of collisions will fair better than their helmet-less counter part. Also I have done some really crazy stupid stuff on a bike, but I am not more inclined to do so with a helmet on versus off. In fact, I usually forget I have it on at all. I should add, no amount of safety gear will save you if you or someone else who makes contact with you does something really stupid.

http://www.helmets.org/stats.htm

Also, there is also no question motorcyclists fair better with a helmet.

TL;DR I don't ride more boldly with a helmet on. Helmets are a safer way to ride, and cities with lots of bicyclist are better at dealing with cyclist in traffic.

corporalagumbo2• 14 years ago

I have a strong opinion on this issue: I see mandatory helmet laws as an example of democratic discrimination. Helmet legislation is driven and either directly or tacitly supported/ignored by non-cyclist politicians and voters, with little if any polling of cyclist preferences. While mandatory helmet laws are widely disliked by cyclists, their minority position makes resistance difficult. And your average car-driving helmet-law-supporting/ignoring citizen is dismissive of the right to autonomy of cyclists. As a counterexample, there are many things that could be done to improve the safety of cars - helmets, four-point harnesses, backwards-facing seats, engine speed-limiters, alcohol-sensing engine locks, and of course (possible soon) a mandatory full switch to self-driving cars. However, any attempts to introduce such sensible measures will be shot down immediately by a ferocious counter-reaction. The basic logic is that car drivers will not accept intrusive safety measures simply because a) they do not feel or wish to be made to feel unsafe (regardless of statistics) and b) they do not wish to compromise their "feeling of driving." But car drivers are perfectly happy dictating to cyclists that they have no choice in accepting an intrusive safety measure which compromises their "feeling of riding" - anyone who has tried it knows that biking is not biking without the feeling of wind blowing through your hair. It sounds trivial but it makes a massive difference - the typical reaction of car drivers to this point is to snort and say "yeah right" - the hypocrisy is revealed if you make any suggestions about implementing the previous safety measures.

This democratic bullying seems to go hand in hand with a more nasty attitude of drivers to cyclists in general. In my town in New Zealand, if I ride without a helmet for even a short distance I can expect to be verbally abused by car-driving members of the public. In particular, young men will shout random abuse at me - that's not all that bad, the worst is older baby boomer generation men, who will actually slow down beside me and, bristling with anger, yell at me asking where my helmet is. These reactions confuse me. I do not roam around on my bike looking for drivers not wearing seatbelts and try and ride up to them and hammer their windows and yell abuse. Even if this was possible, I wouldn't have any interest in doing so. If you want to wear a seatbelt or not is up to you. You can do so with full knowledge of the risks of a police fine or injury in an accident if you wish. Similarly, why should drivers feel upset and compelled to accost me if I choose not to wear a helmet? I do so in the full knowledge of the risk of a police fine and an injury in an accident. That is my business, so why do they feel the need to confront me? And why do my personal choices seem to make them so angry?

The answer is simple. Our road culture is aggressive, impatient and me vs. them. I am sure the drivers in my town are by no means the worst in the world, but still, there is an atmosphere of confrontation that permeates driving here. People are in a hurry to get where they are going, and everyone else on the roads is an enemy. Unsurprisingly men are the worst offenders. And cyclists are the easiest targets: fragile, wobbly, slow, unable to protect themselves, uninsulated from abuse, unable to outmaneuever or escape an angry car-driver, above all out of place, they become a focal point, the easy targets, for all the aggression of an aggressive road culture. The helmet law is in my mind just a manifestation of this power-imbalance and a focus for the tension it generates. It does not surprise me that most helmet laws seem to have arisen as urbanisation and car use and speeds intensified, i.e. as the dominance of a break-neck pace car culture became cemented. Instead of trying to soften road culture and build cities which work for all different modes of transport, we have a helmet law and some glass and gravel-strewn cycleways wedged between parked cars and roaring traffic flows. How anyone would feel comfortable and happy cycling in this environment is anyone's guess, but what is for sure is that the helmet law at best accomplishes little to nothing and at worst is a dangerous red herring, distracting energy and attention from addressing much harder and more critical problems of culture and infrastructure.

I have nothing against helmets as safety devices and I think they should be worn. However I think making it a law, and making adult cyclists who wish to ride bare-headed the free subject of assault from members of the public (not to mention the police) accomplishes nothing more than aggravating a combative cyclists vs car-driver culture.

To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

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