This morning streetsblog briefly featured a comment I made about helmets. I’ve kind of avoided talking about helmet use because when I do I feel like an atheist at a Jehovah’s Witness convention. People feel very strongly about wearing a helmet, and like a religious zealot, they will try to scare you into putting one on. Instead of saying “You are going to hell,” a helmet zealot will tell you “You are going to get killed.” Oddly, I find that many of the people insisting I wear a helmet don’t even bike in NYC, so I wonder how much they actually know about the conditions for cyclists here.
The debate is not as one sided as the helmet police would have you believe, as there is evidence both for and against helmets. First of all, its not clear if helmets save lives, as a high speed colision will likely be fatal whether or not your head is encased in styrofoam. A British study found that vehicles drive closer to cyclists wearing helmets, which increases your chance of being struck. Finally, places with mandatory helmet laws generally experience a decrease in cyclists and an overall negative impact on public health.
There is a risk involved for almost every activity in daily life. You can choke on a chicken wing, slip in the shower, or get run over when walking through a crosswalk. Far more people receive head injuries when riding in motor vehicles, yet there is not an outcry for helmet use in cars.
In one of my first posts, “Bike commuting is not a sport,” I included the following disclaimer:
*Helmets are required by law for cyclists 13 and under. I would also say they are important for cyclists new to biking and/or biking in New York. My family, friends, and co-workers definitely do not approve of me biking without a helmet, and I am not trying to encourage other people to ride without one. But this country is about personal choice, and I quite simply do not like to wear them. I am not a high-speed racing cyclist, a bmx mountain biker, or a trick cyclist. I bike at low speeds, with caution, and am comfortable with the risk involved.
That pretty much sums it up. Feel free to wear your helmets, but don’t chastise me for riding with my hair in the wind. There are probably more than 1 billion people in the world regularly cycling and it is only here in North America that a helmet is considered essential. The way to make cycling safer is not by putting a helmet on every head, but by putting more cyclists on the streets. Promoting helmet use and placing the emphasis on safety is not the way to market cycling. If biking is seen as a “sport” that is dangerous and requires special gear then people won’t see what a convenient and delightful mode of transporation it can be.
Note: Let me stress that this is my own personal policy and opinion. The DOT, most advocacy organizations, and many sane and intelligent people have a different opinion. Encouraging people to wear helmets is not a bad thing, as long as it does not decrease the number of people that actually ride. If you can figure a way out to both increase cycling and helmet use, I’m all for it.
Filed under: Who bikes NY? |
I Bike NY 
Right on, brother!
Does anyone have a sense of what Snell tests for versus what a typical accident might be like?
When I first began riding seriously (in the early 1980s), helmets might have been available, but not widely, and they didn’t seem necessary. At some point, however, I must have been convinced of their use, as I remember buying one, although I don’t remember wearing it much, except while racing.
I usually wear a helmet these days, mostly because I have the nagging sense that it might help in the contest between my head and a rock. But I read that there’s very little evidence to back that up.
Hi – good post. Here in the UK we’re advised to wear helmets but most of the people handing out that advice have not considered the studies at http://www.cyclehelmets.org
The jury is still out on helmet effectiveness/ineffectiveness and our government is looking at the pros and cons and will shortly publish its own report — worth watching for.
In the meantime, the advice I give to new cyclists is: wear a helmet if it makes you feel safe and you wouldn’t be cycling without one. I’m loth to go as far as ibikeny because I reckon that sooner or later there will be a court action over someone being advised to wear a helmet then suffering rotational injuries (http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1182.html