November 21, 2014
by Bikeyface
Headcase
The other day I was relaxing at a cafe when I found myself eavesdropping.
Why did he feel the need to speak to the bicyclist and why did he assume the cyclist was somehow ignorant? Would this guy similarly attack other people doing things that he viewed as poor judgement? Or is it just bicyclists?
I’m sick of the helmet hype. It’s time to hype up infrastructure until “cycle track” is in everyone’s vocabulary. I dream of the day this guy will ask the city what’s up with the street design that makes cyclists feel like they need to wear helmets.
I’ve been getting a feeling this past year or two that in Britain at any rate, cycle helmets have been “found out” at last: that those interested in cycling now realise that their contribution to the safety of cyclists is at best marginal, and that the correct answer is not to try an make collisions safer, but to do as the Dutch and Danes have done over the past four decades and create infrastructure that prevents collisions from happening in the first place.
Unfortunately, for Britain’s large cyclist-hating population led by the Daliy Mail newspaper, cycling safety is all about helmets, which have the double virtue of (i) placing responsiblity for their safety entirely on the shoulders of cyclists themselves (drivers can go on driving just as dangerously as they did before) while (ii) making riding a bicycle more bothersome and complicated, so that hopefully there’ll be fewer people doing it and getting in the way of motor cars. The Mail is famously the newspaper which simultaneously mocks cyclists for wearing foolish-looking plastic hats, and then scolds them for not wearing foolish-looking plastic hats.
Anyway, at least the scales now appear to have fallen from the eyes of cycling campaigners, who are at one in viewing helmets as pretty well the bottom of the list as regards measures to make riding a bicycle a safer and more pleasant activity. You can only speculate that if they’d never existed, then without them to confuse the issue we might have got where we are now a good two decades earlier. In my view cycle helmets and the now-discredited Vehicular Cycling cult have been the two great disasters to befall British cycling in my lifetime.
For committed helmet-wearers, however, I offer this recent invention from Australia, where the things are legally compulsory. The ultimate cycle helmet? I thought at first that it was meant as a joke, but on inspection it turns out to be completely serious.
Bikeyface, can you use your design skills to improve it? Perhaps by including a Mr. Coffee machine?
Sorry, link didn’t work. So here it is:
http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/sydney-designer-creates-licence-plate-cycle-helmet/017119
Enjoy!
Unfortunately, bike helmets are not designed for the forces involved in a car-bike crash (although they do help sometimes). Something like 83% of bicycle crashes do not involve motor vehicles. Those are the crashes in which a helmet is most likely to save us.
Something like 83% of bicycle crashes do not involve motor vehicles. Those are the crashes in which a helmet is most likely to save us.
Intriguing. So please explain, if you will, why in the Netherlands, where (i) almost no-one wears a helmet and (ii) owning to segregated cycle tracks everywhere that it matters, collisions between cyclists and motor vehicles are extremely rare, cycling head injuries are also very uncommon. If your argument is valid, then you would expect Dutch cyclists to be having lots of the low-speed head-whacks which helmets are actually built to withstand. But somehow there aren’t any: or so few per year that your chances of sustaining one are about on a par with the likelihood of your being struck by lightning or bitten by a snake.
It might, of course, have something to do with the fact that Dutch bicycles are uncommonly difficult to injure yourself while riding: too slow, too stable and the centre of gravity too far back for you to be able to go over the handlebars: you just fall off sideways and land on your hip, elbow and shoulder in that order.
Likewise in their first two years of operation London’s hire-cycles, the “Boris Bikes”, which almost nobody rides wearing a helmet, notched up 143 injuries requiring medical attention in over six million journeys, all but twelve of them classed as minor, and only one of them a head injury, described as “trivial”.
Let’s face it: it’s a cultural preference: like overweight middle-aged Austrian men wearing leather shorts and green jackets with no collar. Picturesque, but not really applicable to other societies.
I support free choice. Check your medical insurance. If you aren’t wearing a helmet, your insurance may not pay for your medical care. Or as I used to tell my motorcycle classes,’ If you have a $ 10 head, wear a $10 helmet. Just put me in your will.
I’ve never heard of such a thing for any US insurance policy, so a reference to support your claim would be a lovely thing.
Perhaps your experience is relevant to motorcycle use — the risk-per-trip of death there is far higher than for a bicycle, and the exercise benefits are far lower (for a bicycle, the exercise benefits are an order of magnitude larger than crash risks — considering all risks of an insurance payout, they’d rather you ride a bicycle without a helmet than not ride a bicycle at all).
It’s curious that nobody ever talks about the fact that hundreds of times more people die of head injuries in car crashes than on a bicycle – and the relatively lower velocity secondary impact against the interior of a car is just the sort of impact against which a helmet would do the most good. So the question that needs to be asked is “car drivers/passengers, where’s YOUR helmet?”
A bit tangential to the discussion at hand, but I will say, having had a roommate who was a smoker, the last scenario depicted does happen in real life. All kinds of people would come up to her, be they friends, acquaintances or strangers, to ask if she knew how bad smoking was. But did she actually know? But cancer?
So I come from a mt biking background. Everybody wears helmets. Different situation, rocks, trees, technical challenges etc. Off road I have split a helmet, cracked one and dented another. All worked well, got up and walked away. Commuting I fell off on a wet corner, landed on my back and back of head, got up and walked away. Helmet dented and did the job of protecting my head. Makes sense for me to wear one commuting. After 5 years and 12,000 miles , shit happens. Like accidents, dogs, kids, wet leaves and pavement, crazy squirrels and i pod zombies etc. Is your life worth so little as not to protect from an accident? What do the survivors tell your loved one or children? More practical, where do your put your helmet light? Or rain cover? Would I chide someone for not wearing one, no. In conversation, maybe relate some of my experiences.
Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E_w6L1hStc
For people who think slipping on ice with your bike and banging your head is a sure thing, take a look at this video of Dutch cyclists, thirty-one of them, none of whom are wearing helmets, slipping and falling on the ice. They instinctively lift their heads to keep their heads from hitting the ground. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqo4hwnJt6Y
No helmet, good luck with that. YRMV.
I bring my folder to work in the trunk of my car and unfold at lunch to explore the fair city. Today as I was joyfully exiting the parking garage, my two-wheeled existence really miffed a lady pulling into the garage in her SUV. The appearance of a middle aged woman in a skirt riding a bike out of the garage simply surprised her, nothing was amiss. I could see her stop short, do a double take and start flailing her arms behind her tinted glass windows. I heard her yelp in surprise and start babbling something, but I was already gone into my happy place.
When I returned from my ride, I was summoned to the security desk where I was informed that someone saw me riding my bike in the garage and they were very concerned. About what, I asked. It’s dangerous, she said. Jealous is what that was. Yesterday I found a castle on my ride…..I’d be jealous of me, too.
People riding against traffic bothers me more than riding without a helmet.
I think there is also a difference between riding an upright bike at moderate speed on a path or back street, and screaming down a mountain head first on a road bike. Some situations call for helmets more than others.
I’m a driver as well as a Triker & I see things that really should be on your radar. First of all is that drivers typically are not 100% focused on their driving. I find it ironic that drivers can continuously berate cyclists for their riding habits & then jump behind the wheel & as a matter of course break the posted speed limit, ignore stopping, signalling or turning rules etc. every single day!
For TJ please, from someone that is visually impaired many drivers will not see you after dark no matter how bright the street lights. You are playing with fire not making yourself as visible as possible at night. Get yourself some flashing lights.
Why does every non-cyclist think he’s an expert on cycling safety, etiquette and rules of the road?
Unfortunately, my stats and references on safety died with my old tower PC, but I remember a few notes: 60% of fatal brain injuries occur in car crashes. Shouldn’t we be preaching to the drivers? Something like 9,000 people a year are gunned down in the US. Do the helmet nannies wear kevlar vests when going out? And you had better forget swimming, boating, climbing a ladder, taking prescription drugs, all of which kill more people annually than the 600 or so who die riding their bikes. If you ride in a troop, race around in pace lines, drink and ride, then by all means wear a helmet. But remember, no one is clearing a route for you so expect trouble: animals, kids on trikes, pedestrians, branches, beer cans, broken glass, car parts, you name it, it is going to show up. Our local bike community lost a dear friend to a bike on bike accident, which landed him on his helmeted head. My point is keep your wits about you and your ego in check and you will probably be fine.
…………and yet Amsterdam & Copenhagen without any Helmet Laws & with the majority NOT wearing helmets seem to function quite well. Could it possibly be the attitude of the drivers?
Could it possibly be that the infrastructure is safer?
Glen, I think you are absolutely right. Things have gotten better in my city, first, when more people started to ride and drivers began to realise they were just going to have to deal with it, second, when bike lanes began to appear with even more people riding, and finally with the development of multiuse trails, paid for by bonds that have gotten overwhelming voter support and more people riding, walking, running, skating, etc. Cycling here is not without its problems but we have been moving consistently in the right direction. Wilmington NC, by the way.
Really glad to hear that many places in North America are starting to recognize the benefits of accommodating better transportation corridors. I know several areas where the presence of many cyclists seem to also have the effect of calming vehicle traffic flow. Maybe the drivers are being more cautious or maybe they are picking up on the more relaxed vibe. Whatever the reason, it’s a win-win for everyone.
Eh. Cycletracks, just another piece of asphalt for the city to not clear of snow or otherwise maintain, another place for police and other government service cars to park, another place for UPS & FedEx and other deliveries to be made from, an extension of the sidewalk and another place for wheel chairs to transit.
And cycle track do not obviate the need for a helmet. I sustained my concussion while wearing a helmet as I went over my handlebar because of a hole, from one of the public service companies digging and doing a half-assed job of repatching, and landing on the top of my head. No fracture of my skull. The dangers that a helmet protects against are anything that will cause your head to make contact with the hard surface. And if the city puts in cycletracks and then treats them as a shiny thing, then it will continue to happen.
Yesterday I put on a helmet for the first time in a long time… and was totally taken aback how flimsy this brand-name, top-of-line piece of safety equipment really was… I considered brief to strap a metal salad bowl to my head!
THANK YOU! Thank you thank you thank you thank you.
My least favorite way this happens is when a spandex-clad MAMIL (yep, I’m going there) yells at me to get a helmet as he rides by (it’s pretty much always from a male, and always older, and always ALWAYS white). I don’t take the suggestion kindly, and yell that back in not so nice words.
Erinne, you just reminded me, or actually the thread reminded me, many years ago some bozo whom I did not know, came riding by me while on a tour and told me to get clipless pedals so I could be more “efficient” and go faster. I have used clipless and flats for decades and think that sometimes it’s just an ego thing. This guy was certainly an annoying thing and I told him so.
Very funny sight yesterday. A cyclist in full togs, helmet of course, riding in front of me. Ran 3 stop signs then crossed 4 lane road against a red light, weaving through traffic. Maybe he thought that bit of plastic is like Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility. He could act like an idiot, breaking all traffic laws, and be protected by his magic brain bucket!
Meanwhile, I’m riding responsibly and am asked by pedestrian “where’s your helmet?”
I think helmets are fine if you’re doing something DANGEROUS – speeding, racing through red lights without stopping/slowing, weaving through traffic, riding down a mountain trail, doing stunts, chatting with your buddy biking next to you/not paying attention, etc.
But riding your upright bike 10-12 mph in a safe manner is not dangerous, AT ALL, and people really need to back off. I used to be annoyed. Now I just ask them (usually car drivers) where THEIR helmet is.
Now I just ask them (usually car drivers) where THEIR helmet is.
It’s never happened to me – but perhaps that’s only because I lived in England where people aren’t so preachy, and now live in France where hardly any non-sporting cyclist bothers wearing a helmet.
However, if it had ever happened then my response to my interlocutor (if male) would have been something on the lines of “Why aren’t you wearing a sportsman’s protective cup? Because if you go around speaking to people in that tone of voice you’re likely to be in far more urgent need of it than I ever would be of a helmet.”
Another possible line, if you’re tall and blond enough, is to assume a Dutch accent and say loftily that where you come from people don’t bother with such fooleries, a lifelong high-calcium diet of cheese and salt herrings having given them unusually sturdy skulls.
I usually wear a helmet. I know a few people who have cracked helmets instead of their heads, and on top of that the visor is a great place for a mirror, which is even more essential. I don’t harangue anyone about helmets, I just tell them why I use one, if they ask.
If I’m on a long stretch of state trail, the helmet will ride on my bags while I wear a cap or something. That’s also when I do most of my music listening while riding, cause there’s little traffic and I can HEAR something.
I second everyone else that covets maximum cycling infrastructure. It will be a much nicer world when we can travel by bike as far and wide as we want.