Guess what, bike helmets work:
The risks of severe head injury were more than five times higher in cyclists not wearing a helmet compared to helmeted ones, and more than three times higher in motorcyclists not wearing a helmet at the time of injury.
Severe head injuries were defined as any with significant brain haemorrhage, complex skull fracture or brain swelling.
Some 70% of such patients end up on a ventilator in intensive care units; many patients with severe head injuries are left with permanent brain damage.
There’s a theory floating around that helmets cause rotational injury to the brain when the helmeted head hits the pavement and twists. The study referenced at the link could find no evidence of that.
This is a peeve of mine because I see young people riding bikes without helmets all the time.
cathyx
I grew up with someone who fell off her bike when she was about 10, got a blood clot to her brain and got permanent paralysis on her right side. And my sister still let her kids ride a bike without a helmet.
Punchy
And this research seems to be the impetus for Missouri to roll back their motorcycle helmet laws and make them optional….no, wait. A N-clang in the Whitey’s House is the impetus. Freedom to suffer catastrophic brain injuries!
Schlemizel
BUT FREEDUMB!!
We had a helmet law here until the goopers took the majority and got it repealed as an unfair intrusion into motorcyclists freedumb.
They made a lot of stupid, unsupported, claims about helmets & science was not going to sway them. Of course they still expect the state rehab money to flow in should they survive
c u n d gulag
It’s bad enough on bicycles…
But there are morons out there who demand to ride helmetless on motorcycles, their hair blowing in the breeze.
Which is all well and good – until there’s an accident, and their head’s explode like a watermelon shot with a gun.
Ask EMT’s which accident they hate to go to the most, and many of them will tell you it’s motorcycle accidents – and that’s when people ARE wearing helmets!
Cassidy
In emergency medicine, we call these people organ donors.
Eric U.
There is a small but vocal element of the cycling community that is anti-helmet. Works for them, I guess, but not for most of us.
I rammed my head into a fairly sharp object at relatively low speed, no more than 5mph. Broke the helmet in half and bruised my shoulder. If nothing else, it saved me from a nasty headache, but I suspect it would have been worse than that.
brantl
I think they should allow motorcyclists to ride motorcycles without helmets, if they either make all of the roads out of closed-cell foam, or void their insurance coverage when their is a head injury.
wvng
Anyone who cares about anyone in the world should think about leaving them to deal with “on a ventilator in intensive care units; many patients with severe head injuries are left with permanent brain damage.” That happened to a cyclist friend of mine back in the 70s. They had to cut out 1/4 of his brain from the damage. He “lived” when they shut off the ventilator, but not much of a life, with his poor wife and family having to care of this shell of who he had been.
WereBear
I have never, ever, understood the whining about wearing helmets and seatbelts. Except in that I believe its roots lie in acknowledging that an accident could happen, and Denial Practitioners hate that.
The Other Bob
My family of four always ride helmets on bikes, no matter how casual the ride. I have crashed mt. biking way too many times not to do so. My kids now think it is second nature.
debit
I was out on a long bike ride last Sunday and got a flat a few miles west of Wayzata. As I was pulling the wheel off, a group of six motorcyclists went by. A second later I heard a loud bang, then a crash. One of the guys was rolling down the road and his motorcycle was careening off into the ditch. I called 911 and waited with them until the paramedics came, and remarked to no one in particular, “It’s a good thing he head a helmet.” Because otherwise his brains would have been all over the road.
ETA: I always wear my helmet when I bike, even if it’s just the 2 miles to the store. You just never know.
Debbie(aussie)
It is illegal to ride a bike without a helmet n Aus.
greennotGreen
Several years ago I was a pretty serious bicyclist. It still drives me up the wall when I see young people around my university riding without helmets. Heck, they’re riding just like they did when they were 10 – ignoring traffic lights and pedestrians, on and off and on sidewalks, cruising breezily past signs that say “Walk your bike.” It’s a wonder more don’t get killed or injured.
KCinDC
To be fair, the helmet skeptics’ claim is usually that bicyclists are more likely to have accidents if they wear helmets, both because they take more risks and because drivers don’t give them as wide a berth. This study only looked at bicyclists who wound up at the hospital, so it doesn’t say anything about that.
Also, if you were able to do a similar studied of injuries among helmeted and helmetless drivers or walkers, I don’t doubt it would show that helmets were protective in those situations too, but I don’t think we should mandate driving or walking helmets.
greennotGreen
@WereBear: When I first saw your comment, I was wondering what dentists had against helmets.
Debbie(aussie)
FYWP won’t let me edit to add: but of course a soc!list , nanny state with healthcare for all.
greennotGreen
@KCinDC: Are the skeptics’ claims based on studies that are controlled for mileage? Because I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that riders who wear helmets ride many more miles than those who don’t.
maurinsky
I know two people who bumped their heads in the past couple of years. One in a car accident, one in her house. They both got concussions, and both of them are still recovering. The gentleman who was in the car accident has had a complete personality change, and he cannot be around large groups of people without getting agitated. The woman who bumped her head on the table still has dizzy spells and has had to cut back on her work hours. I’m thinking I might wear a helmet as regular practice while I’m walking around when I get a little older!
Jack Canuck
My favourite is when you see people riding with their helmet hanging from the handlebars. Can’t even claim they forgot it or whatever. They’ve got it with them – just can’t be arsed to actually put it on their head. Bloody idiots. Especially riding around in Melbourne, must have a death wish.
gnomedad
@Schlemizel:
The most ironic right-wing meme is that libruls portray themselves as victims.
Schlemizel
Anybody remember when Gary Busse was a strong defender of anti-helmet efforts?
Then he had an accident – the anti-helmet people tried to sneak into his hospital room & have him sign a statement that he was still for FREEDUMB.
But take a look at the poor guy now. Once he was an actor with a promising career. Today is brain injury has left him a shambling, semi-incoherent, stumble-bum. There is your freedumb for you, imagine being that guy but without the money or the fame that allows you to make even more money.
Walker
Not just bicycles. My brother died (25 years ago) from a brain hemorage after skateboarding down a steep hill.
JoyfulA
@Schlemizel: We had a motorcycle helmet law in PA until Ed Rendell signed a repeal.
El Cid
On the plus side, opposition to motorcycle helmet laws really has helped with organ donations:
Freedom’s just another word for shortening the heart-recipient list.
Dan
Interesting comments here. The righteous tone reminds me of the mind-set of the deficit cutters who “just know” that reducing federal spending is right. And I note such a great deal of confidence in the validity of the referenced study without any knowledge of the details of the study. Also too, anecdote is not the singular of data.
There are many issues in health and safety that are counterintuitive. Bike helmet use and the reduction of serious head injury may be one of them. On the other hand, the issue may turn out to be as straight-forward as it appears. Right now, the bottom line is that we just don’t know. But no good scientist would come to a decision about the broad issue of helmet use and serious head injury based on the cited study. We’re talking about an effect based on a sample size of 15 that barely reached statistical significance.
Schlemizel
@gnomedad:
I think a big difference between most conservatives and most liberals is that liberals can see themselves as being a victim of something bad, a crash, a hurricane, an industrial accident, a terrorist bombing and want to take steps to prevent it or to limit the damage. Liberals know we all might need a hand someday.
Conservatives can never see those things happening to them & anyway if they did the good conservative would never need anyones help to overcome it.
But that prevention and planning is, to the cons, a sign that you are a victim. Meanwhile the cons are constantly whining about being the victim
eric
Dear GOPer:
Obama wears a helmet when he rides a bike. You should too.
Truly yours,
A liberal friend
Wag
Don’t conflate bicyclists with motorcyclists. I’m a serious road cyclist and I don’t know a single road or mountain biker who rides seriously without their helmet. Low speed rides through the park on a cruiser are a different matter, and I commonly see people without helmets. Higher speeds or with traffic, rarely.
Same thing on the ski hill. The majority of skiers and ridersin Colorado, no matter their ability, are wearing helmets.
Motorcyclists who resist wearing helmets are becoming outliers.
Schlemizel
@KCinDC:
To be fair the skeptics claim something that has not been proven and would be very difficult to test. But they believe it anyway because it fits what there gut tells them instead of what many silly well researched, peer-reviewed studies show.
Truthiness, its as important to the anti-helmet crowd as it is to the goopers
also too: when serious head trauma becomes a real problem for walkers I expect to see studies of how helmets would impact the rates of head trauma from walking accidents. But the % of walkers who suffer blunt force brain injury is nothing like that of cyclists.
Shortstop
@El Cid: I’m actually amazed that so many people dumb enough to skip helmets would be good enough to consent to be organ donors. I realize there is no actual correlation between those categories other than my contempt for the first one.
Cassidy
@Dan:
And we’re done. If you seriously want to argue that helmets don’t save lives, please say so now so that I can proceed to ignore you.
dmsilev
@eric: (a) Heh. (b) Back in the 2008 campaign, Obama was photographed on a bike ride with his daughters and they were all wearing helmets. He got a nontrivial amount of flak for looking dorky, which should tell you something about the political media.
magurakurin
A helmet saved my life. On a cross-country bicycle trip about 100 miles west of Ottawa in a place called Deep River me and my friend were hit by a tractor trailer on the Trans-Canada highway. The truck pulled my front wheel into its wheels and pulled me along side for about 300 yards or so. I burned the skin off of my shoulder blade and my head bounced the pavement more than once. I suffered some cuts, bruises and a compressed vertebrae, but my head and brain were fine. Nothing, nada, no worries. For how light they are, I really don’t get why people don’t wear them. But I can’t get my wife to wear one. What can you do?
geg6
@JoyfulA:
Yup. Boy that pissed me off. I have no respect for anyone who rides a scooter without a helmet. They deserve whatever they get.
My cousin and her husband were big touring bikers for years, with the big Hogs and cross country trips and everything. Both had years of riding and were fanatics about safety. One day they were out for a ride and, while entering an interstate, were hit (they think deliberately because they had yielded and there were only cars in the passing lanes when they made their move) by a car at high speed. Both had massive injuries and are now full of metal pins and rods in all their extremities. But they lived and avoided massive brain damage because they had good helmets on. Neither rides any more, but they are very active in the movement to reinstate helmet laws.
Schlemizel
@Dan:
No, Dan, its not that we just know that helmets save lives like the deficit hawks know cutting spending is the right way to go. There are actual scientific studies, performed and repeated, with peer-review and all that scientific mumbo-jumbo that produces actual real world facts. The anti-helmet people, like the austerity dragons do not have that
that is a big fucking difference
eric
I wish there was an inflatable helmet that had a firm superstructure but could fold until inflated by blowing into it. More for when my daughter rides her scooter with me so that there is some protection but since she is not doing tricks i dont need her normal bike helmet. would make things a little easier
gratuitous
Bicyclists: Wear your helmet. Every time. Please.
Pretty please.
I commute by bike daily, and even at the relatively low speeds a fat old man can generate, I still took a spill back in 2010 that might have been catastrophic without a helmet.
Wear your helmet. Every time.
Please.
bin Lurkin'
I’m of two minds about this subject. The best way to keep people from using a bike for commuting is to mandate helmet use. The most bicycle-centric western nation is Holland and helmet use is almost non existent there. It’s common to see mom pedaling the kids in a bakfiets or cargo bike and none of them wearing helmets at all. Holland also has something considerably closer to universal health coverage than does the USA.
People are willing to wear a helmet for recreational activities and far less so for commuting/shopping and so on.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find that mandatory helmets in cars would save more lives and brain damage than mandatory helmets on bicycles in the USA and yet making a suggestion for mandatory car helmets would be thought utterly daft.
I do wear a helmet myself when I’m going for a serious ride, for casual riding I don’t.
Higgs Boson's Mate
no helmet? Fine, as long as they refuse any government benefits if they’re injured or incapacitated because they weren’t wearing a helmet. Now that’s freedom.
Punchy
Not in Kansas. And, I suspect, most other deeply red states. For whatever reason, in Red Country the use of helmets are akin to Nazism, ergo, Real Murkinz eschew them.
mistermix
@bin Lurkin’: The bike trail/lane situation in Holland is much better than the US. As I understand it, there are a lot of physically separate paths for bikes there. So the car vs bike scenario is less likely to happen.
I commuted by bike (good weather only) for about 6 years, and even though I had a carefully mapped out path to work that used trails, utility right-of-ways and other non-road paths, I ended up on the street with cars for a good part of the trip. I can’t tell you how many close calls I had with cars. You better believe I wore a helmet.
maurinsky
There are definitely motorists who go out of their way to mess with bicyclists. I had a neighbor who was hit while he was riding his bike, the car swerved into him.
Dan
I @Schlemizel: I’ve been reading BJ for a number of years now and I find it generally stimulating, but I have never had the urge to comment before now because I didn’t feel like I had enough understanding of the issues to say anything worthwhile.
Although I am by no means an expert on bicycle safety or head injury, doing science (specifically neuroscience and behavioral biology) pays my rent, so I have a pretty good idea of how science works. I have read a fair amount (primary and secondary literature) on the issues surrounding bicycle helmet use and have lived in places where the frequency of helmet use varies quite a bit (Eugene, OR – Toronto – Munich). So I have been following this issue, because I find the variation in attitudes and practices to be fascinating – also of potential importance in how we organize our communities.
So, no, I am not a helmet hater. Just one who wants to know how it really works. And yes, you can say that it’s clear, that if someone smacks their head into a hard surface, there will be a serious injury. But if you read widely in the scientific literature on this subject, you’ll see that it’s a little more more complicated than that.
cmorenc
Regarding helmets, there’s been a SEA change with regard to skiers wearing helmets. Only five or so years ago, at best maybe 20% of skiers you saw at major ski areas (such as Alta or Park City, Utah) were wearing helmets, whereas now it’s turned completely around, and all BUT 20-25% are wearing helmets (I kept an informal count of skiers below me while riding some chairlifts). So far, it’s all voluntary: there’s no mandatory “helmet” law yet in most states with big-time ski areas. It helps that skiing is a winter sport and ski helmets turn out to be both at least as warm, and even more comfortable, than traditional ski hats, especially since all but the lowest-end helmets come with some sort of adjustable ventilation for warmer days. It also helps that even the most expert skiers periodically take sudden, often tumbling falls, and so as brash and aggressive and daring as some skiers are, there simply isn’t the hubris about the potential for taking hard accidental face plants as there is with too many motorcyle riders. Every skier has been there, done that, many times.
montanareddog
@bin Lurkin’: me too, in two minds. I wear a helmet for commuting to work (because I am often sharing the road with faster traffic) but I never do so when nipping round to the shops. But mandating helmet use discourages casual bike use, and thus lessens the chance of reaching the critical mass of cyclists on the highways that would make them safer. And discouraging casual bike use will have another counter-effect of decreasing healthy exercise. So, it is a complex question of policy and I really think that education on the use of helmets is the way to go for cyclists
On the other hand, it is a no-brainer that motorcyclists must be legally-forced to wear helmets
Evinfuilt
Yet another anecdote…My tea partying parents moved to South Cali and were forced, FORCED to wear helmets on their 4 wheel ATV. Oh the whining they gave. Hearing about the rollover accident that nearly killed my father and the only reason either of them are alive, is the helmet law that they were forced to obey.
They still haven’t told me if they’re still against helmet laws, but if they wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for it.
greennotGreen
@magurakurin: But I can’t get my wife to wear one [helmet]. What can you do?
Take out a really generous accidental death policy on her?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Punchy:
I’m here in Misery where they’re trying to roll back the helmet laws because, of course, the legislature is controlled by wingnuts. Our moderate Republican governor, Jay Nixon (D), repealed the last attempt to do this and there’s no indication he’s changed his mind.
There are no outliers in Iowa either, another FREEDUMB! state.
Actually, motorcyclists who wear helmets and those who don’t is generally (repeat generally) broken down by what kind of bike they ride. Most crotch rocket bikers wear helmets although I see the occasional idiot without one (usually looks to be around 20). The 2-wheeled Accord bikers, aka The Gold Wing crowd, tend to wear helmets.
Who doesn’t? The cracker Harley crowd who are also poster morans for the Whats The Matter With Kansas voter.
MaryJane
@Walker:
I’m sorry about your brother. How awful for you and your parents.
I assume he was a teenager or young adult. It’s my experience that teenage boys hate helmets even if they understand the safety risks.
Lori
No es de la bici – hablas de una motocycleta.
For bicycles, I’d argue that infrastructure design choices like bike lanes, parking, and speed limits are the factors which determine if cyclists live or die. But you’re talking motorcycle helmets, not bicycles.
mistermix
@Dan: So, scientist, link us to a couple of studies that show that helmets don’t work. I’m sure someone as committed to the disinterested pursuit of truth as yourself would have a few to cite. I’ve cited one. You’ve cited zero, but you are acting like your zero is much greater than my one.
Face
I’m not sure how more complicated this can get.
Bare head + asphalt = major cuts, possible fracture, likely ER visit.
Helmet + asphalt = cracked helmet, possible headache, possible road rash on face, ER visit unlikely.
Is there really more to the story?
Joel
Recent studies have shown that wearing an Italian bicycle hat makes you look 100% more like a douchebag.
Lori
Check out awesome and safe Amsterdam bicycling, with hardly a bike helmet to be seen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOkqTDdtlc4
Cassidy
@Dan: Sure, I’ll bite; I’m bored.
What are you disputing? That helmets save lives? That the MOI does or does not cause head trauma and brain damage? What’s so complicated to you? Spell it out in specific, non-
deliberately-vague terms so that we can have this “objective” discussion you seemingly want to have.Lori
For all those who think everyone should wear bicycle helmets always, this video about mandatory wearing of life vests on the beach is for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ujs6DJAMGp0
gnomedad
@Lori:
So clever. Can I have your kidneys?
Rafer Janders
New York is about to roll out the Citi Bike program, which will make bicycles available around the city to pick up for short-term rentals. (You can, for example, walk by a bike rack on 42nd Street, unlock a bike, and ride it down to SoHo, where you can then lock it back up at a Citi Bike rack). However, since the program is designed specifically to encourage people to pick up and ride bikes on a whim, most people will ride without helmets, since most people do not walk around in their daily life with a bicycle helmet on their arm.
Which leads to a question: it’s obviously a good idea to get more people out of cars and taxis and onto bikes instead. But to do that, we have to accept that a lot of these riders will ride without helmets.
Cassidy
@Lori: Actually, I don’t believe everyone should wear helmets. I think children under 18 should have to until they are old enough to choose for themselves. I think parents should face criminal charges of negligence if they don’t make their kids wear helmets. After that, it’s a self selecting feature. If you’re too dumb to wear a helmet, I don’t want you voting, breeding, or operating heavy machinery. Secondly, it keeps people like me employed and, lastly, too many well-deserving people in this country need healthy organs that are wasted on some dipshit who thinks riding a two wheeled vehicle in traffic with much heavier cars is a good idea. So please, by all means celebrate freedom; there is a kid somewhere just waiting for a perfectly good heart to become available.
Rafer Janders
@bin Lurkin’:
True, but the Dutch, let us remember, are a nation of thrill-crazy sensation seekers.
mcmullje
Speaking of injuries – this is off topic and I posted this yesterday but someone suggested I repost because I’m hoping that someone will know the legalities of this situation:
I am mostly a daily lurker but am plunging in here because I have a question that I hope someone in the Balloon Juice world might be able to answer.
Two months ago my 43 year old son had an episode – they think a spinal stroke that has left him paralyzed from the waist down. He just got home from the hospital/rehab after 70 days and was ready to dive back into his job. Now the rehab has a community liaision who has been talking to his boss, HR, etc. They were all on board with whatever he needed, were excited to have him back, etc. etc. He goes back (in the wheelchair which was SO difficult for him) only to have NO ONE there for him to talk to. He got an email saying that he has been demoted because his position doesn’t exist now. He was Sr. Financial Director – they changed the title to Financial Director and hired someone else who started less than a week before he was due back.
He doesn’t qualify for FMLA (he was out only 10 weeks after they used all his sick/vacation time)but he had only worked there 11 months – FMLA is 12 months.
Can this possibly be legal????? He was an athlete who is now paralyzed and they did this to him. I don’t have words.
Forum Transmitted Disease
I was a daily commute rider across San Francisco for six years. A helmet has saved my life – and I mean that literally – three times.
They work and they ought to be mandatory, no exceptions.
mellowjohn
took a bad spill on my bike about ten years ago. woke up in hospital with collarbone busted in two places and a bike helmet with five big cracks in the styrofoam.
been pretty evangelical about bike helmets ever since.
magurakurin
@greennotGreen:
that’s what she says whenever I go surfing alone. And I do mean alone. Sometimes not a single soul out on uninhabited island about a kilometer offshore.
Rafer Janders
@Face:
Yes: bike share programs that American cities are starting to intoduce, after seeing how effective they’ve been in Europe. You can’t have a bike share program with mandatory helmet use because the program is designed to encourage spur of the moment bike use, and most people don’t walk around with helmets.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@mcmullje: You don’t need to be asking this question here, you (to be precise, your son) needs a lawyer ASAP.
Punchy
@Rafer Janders: They have this in Spain. Barcelona to be specific. Any bike can be taken from the rack with the proper ID and returned when you reach your desty. Communistic cycling. Absolutely genius.
Ruckus
I’ve been saying this for years:
The only reason not to wear a helmet is because you have nothing to put in it.
I’ll make it simpler:
If you are too stupid to wear a helmet, you get what you deserve. Unfortunately the rest of us usually have to pay for that stupidity, increased health care costs, the pain of seeing kids that may not know better being poorly parented by people who should, etc.
And yes a helmet has saved my life as well.
Kent
Lives would be saved if we mandated that kids in cars wear helmets also. There are plenty of car crashes where young lives would have been saved by the wearing of helmets.
The argument (which is supported by much data) is that helmet laws discourage cycling in urban areas which leads to other health problems due to obesity and the like. When I was a kid in the 70s we’d bike pretty much everywhere. Especially to school. And no one wore helmets. Today’s kids are far more obese and it is the rare school in this country where one finds more than a small handful of bikes parked out front.
Ultimately the problem is much larger and has to do with how we have developed much of the urban and suburban space in this country for exclusive auto use. The Europeans are far ahead of us in that respect. But around the country we are slowly reclaiming urban and suburban space for mixed use (bike, pedestrian and cars) rather than exclusive auto use.
I’m a relatively serious recreational cyclist. I often ride 30-40 miles after work and more on weekends. I always wear a helmet when out road riding. But for casual riding around town, on bike paths, on college campuses and the like I wouldn’t feel the need to wear a helmet.
Motorcycles? Now that is a completely different story. I used to ride motorcycles quite a bit and have laid the bike down several times. Most dramatically I once raced around a sharp corner in Guatemala and crashed into a cow on the road. Was glad for the helmet. I would never ride a motorcycle around here at highway speeds without a helmet and proper clothing. Yet I see kids all the time here in TX riding crotch rockets in shorts, flip flops, tank tops, and no helmet.
Rafer Janders
@Punchy:
It’s also in London, Berlin, Copenhagen, Paris, etc. It is genius, but one thing those programs all have in common is that they don’t mandate helmet use. You can have mandatory helmet laws or you can have a bike share program, but you can’t have both.
Tom_B
Astoundingly, most states do NOT require motorcyclists to wear helmets.
Paul in KY
I had a beloved cousin who died in a bike wreck at age 18. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. He went about 30 or so feet up in air (according to witnesses) & came down right on his head on the pavement.
They took him off the machines 2 days later.
Please wear a helmet when you ride.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Kent: I’m curious as to why you think they’re any different. I’ve crashed on the bike at walking speed (couldn’t get out of the pedals), I’ve crashed at 45 mph, and the slow speed crash left me far more injured.
Luck of the draw? Sure.
That’s why you wear a helmet.
ETA: I’m totally OK with people not wearing helmets, just so long as we can be assured that:
A. not one dime of taxpayer money is used on their care.
B. organ donation under such circumstances is mandatory.
Yeah, I’m serious.
Rafer Janders
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
The laws of physics.
Cassidy
@Rafer Janders: That only matters for a certain duration. Once you reach a certain speed (achievable on bikes) it makes no difference which kind of two wheel vehicle you’re on. Same goes for higher speeds; at a certain point it doesn’t matter if you’re wearing a helmet.
gbear
@Dan: Dan, you might want to read El Cid’s comment directly above your first comment. When helmet use became optional, the number of donated organs due to vehicle accidents increased by 30%. If you’re going to keep talking about how studies are inconclusive, provide some links to support your arguments.
I ride a 300cc scooter and never ride without a helmet. Helmets are optional in MN and WI but it seems like scooter culture in the Twin Cities favors the use of helmets. The ones who don’t tend to be the one who ride wearing shorts and flip-flops. If they ever go over, they’re going to lose lots of skin.
Helmut Monotreme
@eric:
I hope I’m not just repeating someone else’s post, but “airbag helmets” do exist:
http://www.hovding.com/en/how
It looks like a scarf, until you take a tumble, and then the helmet inflates. It’s a good idea and I hope the price comes down.
joes527
@magurakurin: That’s the tricky bit about being a scold. I can tut tut over helmets with the best of them. But that doesn’t mean I’ll take your advise about not hiking alone, so maybe I should just keep my holier-than-thou to myself.
gttim
I and a road cyclist and Ironman. I cycle road and mountain bike. I was raised riding trails. I love being on a bike. I have a bike room in my condo. I always wear a helmet. I have wrecked and broken bones. I have been hit by cars. The only time I have ever hit my helmet/head was riding BMX with my step-son, where I split a helmet in half. Still, I do not ride without a helmet.
I caught a buddy of mine riding without a helmet one day on a flat road we do intervals on. Rather than harass him, I just asked him to visualize his ex-wife explaining to his two daughters why daddy was now a drooling moron. I have not seen him without a helmet since.
It drives me nuts when I see people like Dan argue that helmets may not save live. They respond with garbage like if you get run over by a car, a helmet may not save your life! You know what a helmet does? It protects you if you hit your head. That is all it does. It will not protect you from trucks, cars, idiots, pregnancy, flying monkeys or assorted other issues. It will protect your head if you slam it against something hard, however. It is very good at that. That is all it is supposed to protect you from. And that is why everybody should always wear one.
low-tech cyclist
I can’t remember the last time I rode a bike without a helmet. A few decades back, I expect. And when my son gets on his bike or scooter or anything like that, the helmet goes on first. Period. That’s just the way we roll in our family, and we do a lot of rolling.
Origuy
I had a bicycle accident when I was 16, before helmets were in common use. Caught my wheel in a railroad track that hit the road at an angle. Went down, knocked out, and lying on the track. If someone hadn’t stopped and pulled me off, a train or a car might have pulled me off. With a helmet, I probably would have stayed conscious and been able to get myself out of harm’s way. Woke up in the hospital with a concussion and 13 stitches in my upper lip.
ThresherK
Now that I’m an adult, I feel underdressed without my bicycle helmet.
I didn’t use one when I was a kid (they didn’t exist, really), but I’m going faster now. And I’m spending a lot more time on asphalt and nearer more moving cars.
As someone who spent a few years on motorcycles before getting my “cager” license, I’ll believe “free to ride” motorcyclists when they get charged their own separate insurance rates for their freedom.
Omnes Omnibus
I have never ridden, and will never ride, a motorcycle without a helmet. And since I got a bicycle again last summer I have ridden approximately one block without my helmet – half a block before I realized I had forgotten it and half a block to go back and get it.
Rafer Janders
@Cassidy:
Exactly. Once you reach a certain speed, which speed Kent indicated he was not likely to reach while casually riding around town. The speed is achievable on bikes, but most casual bicyclists won’t actually achieve it when erranding around town.
liberal
Look, I agree with the conclusion, but the fact is that this discussion is incomplete without a discussion of absolute risk.
If your chance of serious injury without a helmet on a bicycle (lifetime, say) is 1/100,000, then it’s not clear it should matter.
Now, of course, I’m sure the absolute risk is far, far higher. But that gets to my point about the discussion being incomplete.
Omnes Omnibus
@Rafer Janders: I do have to admit that if I were just riding casually to the store to pick up bread, etc., I might leave the helmet behind. I have yet to do so, but I can’t state to a certainty that I won’t. Road or trail riding, helmet on. Motorcycle, helmet on. Errands, probably a helmet.
JKR
I ride fast and have crashed at least 6 times that I can quickly remember. All of them were sudden and resulted in injury. My helmets were broken in most of the crashes. You don’t get to plan your fall and magically avoid hitting your head. If you rely on experience to give you wisdom, you may have a disadvantage surviving on a bike without a helmet. I assert that when you hit whatever it is you a going to hit, the big heavy thing on top of the short narrow floppy neck is going to hit something or other. Ymmv but you may not have many miles to choose from.
Randy P
My sister had an incident that cracked her helmet open. Without the helmet it would have been her head and she would be dead. That is the beginning and end of the story as far as I’m concerned.
Origuy
Talking about the speed of the bicycle is fine, but it’s not the only factor. How about the speed of the car that hits you? If you get hit by a Lexus going thirty, it’s not going to matter if you were doing five miles an hour or fifteen.
Helmut Monotreme
Head injuries among the general population are rare-ish. Most people don’t worry about head injuries while walking, driving or sitting in their living room. Shark attacks are also rare. Until you start talking to surfers and SCUBA divers, then it seems like everyone has a shark encounter story or knows a guy who got bit or has a board with a bite out of it. Sadly lots of bikers don’t realize that when they get on that bike or motorcycle they have jumped from the group that doesn’t have to worry about head injuries to the one where it’s a giant health hazard.
cleek
i bounced my head off the windshield of some old woman’s Delta 88 when she turned into traffic without noticing me. my bike folded in half underneath and i went up the hood.
my head didn’t hit hard, but it was hard enough to dent the helmet and shred a bit of it. i’m sure glad i had the helmet. i’m even more glad that i went onto the hood than underneath, like my bike did.
a couple of years later, i was riding near the University of Rochester and came upon an accident at an intersection… the stream of foamy pink blood running down the side of the road? the one i had to bunny-hop lest i ride through it? the woman formerly on the bike wasn’t wearing a helmet when the truck hit her.
i used to hear a lot about people worrying that foam bicycle helmets would grab the pavement and twist your neck off. that might have been true, too. but now, most bike helmets are covered in a hard plastic shell that will slide on pavement instead of grabbing. for exactly that reason.
Petorado
In the pre-helmet days of the early 80’s, a training buddy crossed wheels, crashed, and bonked his head. Watching him deal with post-concussive cognitive problems scared the hell out of all of us. Since helmets have become ubiquitous, I’ve seen a lot of riders showing off broken helmets and being able to laugh it off.
Having been the contact person at a hospital who would respond to media inquiries about deaths at the local ski hill, I’m glad helmets now predominate on the slopes, especially for the kids.
liberal
@Helmut Monotreme:
OK, sure, you have to condition the absolute risk on the fact that you’re a biker. But what’s the absolute risk?
Steve M.
But Al Gore is still fat, and Solyndra is still worse than Hitler.
PeakVT
@eric: Obama should cut a couple of PSAs and run them in swing districts until November of 2014.
Paul in KY
@gttim: Excellent post.
gbear
@liberal: How much risk is acceptable to you when the result could be living your life as a vegetable? This really doesn’t seem like a hard decision.
Cassidy
@Rafer Janders: That wasn’t my point at all. I was addressing the difference between motorcycle and bikes and mandatory helmets for both vs. only motorcycles. If you’re going to mandate helmets for motorcycles and speed is a contributing factor to the MOI, then logically, helmets should be mandatory for bikes as well.
As for this, it doesn’t take much to cause head trauma and brain damage. The space where low end motorcycle and high end bike speed overlap is not related to the amoutn of speed necessary to cause head trauma and or brain damage. I would guess that riding at low speeds without a helmet is more dangerous than higher speeds with one. At the higher speeds you’re still wearing a safety device rated for high speed/ high impact, whereas at lower speeds and no helmet you have nothing and concrete, aspahalt, etc. doesn’t change it’s hardness based on how fast you’re going.
catclub
@montanareddog: Glad I read down to your before posting. You cover most of the points I would be making. It seems that perhaps the stigma of helmets may be decreasing, so that being forced to wear the helmet does not result in less riding and less overall health benefits. The Holland case is also interesting – almost no helmets, lots and lots of riders.
“But mandating helmet use discourages casual bike use, and thus lessens the chance of reaching the critical mass of cyclists on the highways that would make them safer. And discouraging casual bike use will have another counter-effect of decreasing healthy exercise. So, it is a complex question of policy and I really think that education on the use of helmets is the way to go for cyclists”
“On the other hand, it is a no-brainer that motorcyclists must be legally-forced to wear helmets ”
Pun intended?
I will also note that although everyone here seems to know someone who had some bad head injury bike riding (cars almost always involved, funny that), the actual statistics
on bike fatalities seem pretty good to me. They are: You can expect to travel about 3 million miles on a bike before you expect to be killed on it. That works out to 24 hours
per day, 20 miles an hour, for 17 years on a bike.
That includes the high fatality modes that you may not test,
for instance, people who have lost their drivers license, ride home from the bar on a bike. Not sure about _their_ helmet wearing habits. Night time riding has very high fatality rate.
The distinction between bicycles and motorcycles is that virtually no bicyclists can kill themselves without the assistance of a car. Not so for motorcycles.
I also saw an invisible bike helmet ( an airbag collar)
in a video – neat!
? Martin
I have two coworkers that were in serious bike accidents recently, numerous broken bones and concussion each. Neither is a serious cyclist, but 20 MPH is not hard to reach by anyone on a hill. Each was wearing a helmet. I suspect each would likely have died without their helmet.
Cassidy
@Origuy: Actually, that isn’t as related as you’d suggest. The MOI of a car impact is going to mostly affect the limbs and trunk (height of the car vs. height of the rider). Essentially, while the head trauma will be present and exacerbated without a helmet, an impact from a car at 30mph is going to directly damage other systems that are more immediately life threatening.
Mnemosyne
I’m in the bike helmet camp. I guess I just don’t have the necessary sense of invincibility to assume that I’ll be one of the lucky ones who never, ever hits a pothole or a patch of oil and goes down.
@KCinDC:
You may be surprised to hear that cars have seat belts and airbags that protect drivers and passengers in lieu of helmets. Until someone manages to develop an airbag for bicyclists and motorcyclists, they will need to take direct action to prevent head injuries.
Ben Cisco
SC doesn’t have mandatory helmet laws.
Discuss.
bin Lurkin'
@Rafer Janders:
Indeed, that video someone posted of the bikes in Amsterdam was truly terrifying.
Randy P
@Origuy: This. Virtually all the biking I do is in urban traffic in downtown Philly. I consider Philly a prettty bike friendly city, not because of a huge number of bike lanes but a large number of bikers and cars which share the road pretty well.
I would never consider riding those roads without a helmet, red lights, stop and go traffic and all.
And in the suburbs I REALLY wouldn’t. Not because the speeds are so much higher but because so many suburban drivers are assholes. Especially the ones in SUVs talking on their phones.
Cassidy
@liberal: What are you getting at? Should the “absolute risk” of head injury necessitate mandatory helmet laws for bicyclists vs. the inconvenience of having to wear a helmet? I’m not sure I’m getting you.
Put another way, how many gunned down 1st graders do we need before the “absolute risk” threshold is met to ban assault rifles?
Comrade Mary
@Origuy: I had a similar accident: crossed wet train tracks at an angle (they were angled, actually, and I was travelling at less than 20 km/hr through the road in a straight line), slipped hard and fast sideways, and scratched up the helmet while giving my head a good bang. Without the helmet, I probably would have had a bad headache and some cuts and bruises at least, and possibly a mild concussion.
I wear a helmet almost 100% of the time, even if I’m going to the grocery store with is maybe a 2.5 km round trip. I know how fast even a fall at a slow speed can happen.
The few times I don’t ride a helmet is for my ceremonial spring rides to the garden centre across the street, when I return with a few plants on the back rack. This is a 1 Km round trip that takes place on sidewalk*, cross walks, and parking lots. I go slowly, carefully and courteously (because I am breaking the law) and figure that I’m facing about the same risk as a pedestrian taking the same route. It’s just a little bare-headed celebration of spring, that’s all.
Mnemosyne
@bin Lurkin’:
They also have bike lanes that are separated from car traffic and a lot of bicycle-centered infrastructure that means that the road hazards that most American bicyclists deal with (cars, kids on skateboards, potholes, oil, etc.) don’t exist. There’s also the fact that bike traffic means you’re never riding more than 5 or 8 miles an hour, again unlike the US where 10 or 15 miles an hour is the norm.
But people do still get killed and injured riding helmetless, even in Holland. I’ll have you talk to one of our VPs at work, who’s happy to tell the story of her aunt who rode off to pick some things up at the bakery one morning and never came home.
ThresherK
@El Cid: I thought that only happened in the crime novel where a research doctor had some biker buddies–talk about “moving in different circles”–and funded an anti-helmet campaign so his lab would have more traumatic brain injury / vegetative state specimens to study.
catclub
@Face: “Is there really more to the story?”
opportunity cost. How many helmets are worn and never hit the pavement? Those are (in principle) wasted.
How many kids decide not to ride AT ALL, in order to avoid wearing a helmet? They may not end up as head injury victims,
but they also may have other health problems due to a sedentary lifestyle.
I also think that the independence that riding a bike used to give kids, is being lost. Never mind the health benefits.
yes, there is more to the story.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, if someone developed a helmet that you could fold up and put in your purse, that would be teh awesome. But unfortunately a lot of product development in the US is still aimed at men who want to ride mountain bikes or road bikes, so dainty ladies like myself (cough) will have to keep ordering the bike accessories we want from overseas.
Roger Moore
@Rafer Janders:
Unless you develop and effective helmet sharing program to go with it.
RosiesDad
In 2008, I was riding in a pace line and the rider in front of me slowed abruptly. I tapped my brakes just as her rear wheel contacted my front and, in an instant, my front wheel locked and I went over the bars. At probably 20-22 mph. Broke collarbone, a couple of ribs and the middle finger on my left hand.
Also broke 4 pillars of the Bell Alchera helmet I was wearing. I ended up with a concussion, which was scary enough, but I know that without the helmet, my wife would have been widowed and my kids fatherless.
I ride 2000+ miles a year (not bad for a slightly overweight 50+ year old) and I don’t get on my bike to ride around the block without a helmet. Ever.
Comrade Mary
Damn. Why did that post?
Anyway: yes, riding on the sidewalk is illegal and can be both rude to pedestrians and more dangerous for the cyclist. I ride on Toronto roads, not sidewalks, for both short errands and long commutes. I have figured out how to ride safely past highway on and off ramps at rush hour, although this was never something I did daily (the numbers can catch up with you eventually.)
When I ride, these three things are paramount:
1) Safety
2) Courtesy
3) Legality
While safety is important, I don’t always set myself up to be as safe as possible if it means ongoing lack of courtesy to pedestrians and drivers, as well as other cyclists. But when I want to get to the garden centre, I stay on the sidewalk (slowly, carefully, giving full right of way to pedestrians) once I get to the main road because it’s less than 100 yards and is safer than making a left turn at an uncontrolled intersection on a hilly, curvy road with a speed limit of 50 km/hour that the angry, aggressive local drivers habitually exceed by at least 10 km/hour.
My local bike cops make the same decision, too. But neither the cops nor I HABITUALLY stay on the sidewalks because choosing to commute that way is not just illegal and rude but it’s more dangerous than the road.
gbear
I used to not ride with a helmet until someone threw their car door open as I was trying to ride in between traffic and parked cars (she later bitched at me for throwing her door out of alignment). I must have popped straight into the air and when I came down I landed flat on my back. I was barely even scuffed on my back and didn’t hit my head, but I was hauled off to the hospital for 30 stitches near my right armpit.
The ER nurse made me promise to buy a helmet before they’d let me leave the hospital. That was in 1987. I did buy one and have never ridden without one since, on my bicycle or my scooter.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
There’s a fuckload more to that story, for sure. When I was in first and second grade, I used to walk to school by myself, picking my slightly older cousins up along the way. These days, my parents would probably be arrested for negligence for letting me do it.
If you’re genuinely concerned about it, get involved with Safe Routes to School. A lot of schools have been built on the opposite side of busy streets, near freeway exits, etc., which gives kids no safe way to walk or bike there.
gbear
My guess would be ZERO. Do you really think that kids are going to miss out on the fun that all their friends are having because of a hatred or fear of helmets? Only if they’re getting it from their stupid parents.
Matt McIrvin
The “counterintuitive” argument I’ve heard from advocates is that, by making bike-riding marginally less convenient and contributing to a perception of it as a special athletic activity instead of basic transport, the widespread use of helmets has driven people to drive everywhere instead of riding a bike at all.
So (the argument goes) while helmets save lives from head injury, the perception that you need to wear a helmet kills vastly larger numbers of people through heart disease, car accidents, pollution, global warming and wars for oil.
It’s hard to see how you could do a controlled experiment to test for this, of course; it’s pure speculation.
Randy P
@catclub: How many smoke alarms never get used to warn of an actual fire? Wasted cost. How many lightning rods never get hit by lightning? Wasted cost. How many fuses and circuit breakers have never blown due to an overload? Wasted cost.
I’m going to assume your post was a spoof.
Cassidy
@Mnemosyne: Independence doesn’t mean shit once you’re brain has been scrambled.
lojasmo
The rule with the boy is if you are using anything that allows you to go faster than you can run, you wear a helmet.
Bike, skateboard, rollerblades, skis, snowboard, motorcycle, etc.
Except the car.
Joel
@RosiesDad: same exact thing happened to me. Broken hand and my helmet snapped clean in half. Could have been a lot worse. Cyclocomputer was reading 29.5 mph before I went down.
As for the Holland analogy, helmet less and casual works for congested cities with low riding speeds. Even super bike friendly cities like Portland and Seattle have you riding dangerously fast if you want to go anywhere.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
If you were standing upright, and just fell backwards and didn’t try to protect your head – like sticking your hands out – it would cause a serious head injury. And you will be going a lot slower than any speed you would reach on a bike.
Omnes Omnibus
@lojasmo:
This makes sense to me.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@catclub: I’ve been here since 2007. This may be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen posted here, and I’ve seen some whoppers.
Roger Moore
@liberal:
Pretty damn high. I don’t have any numbers to quantify exactly how high, but I don’t know a single serious bicyclist who hasn’t wound up in the emergency room at least once. Most of those are for stitches, road rash, or broken collar bones, but there are certainly a fair number of cracked or mangled helmet stories to go with them. I would guess that for a serious bicyclist, the question is when their helmet will save them from injury, not if.
Amanda in the South Bay
@catclub:
If wearing a helmet is so onerous that it impedes you from riding a bike, you’ve got some serious issues going on.
Cassidy
@Roger Moore: I’m guessing that it’s the same as riding a motorcycle: It’s not if you lay the bike down, but when.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Matt McIrvin: Fixed that for you, and you’re welcome.
NorthLeft12
To the many commenters who want to deny people medical coverage for injuries suffered when not wearing a helmet while riding…..really?
That is a huge can of worms that I am sure the insurance companies would love to take advantage of. Do anything risky or careless or stupid? Too bad for you!
I think the impact of the injuries in the short term and long term are punishment enough. And don’t worry, there will be financial burdens no matter how much coverage or benefits are available, so that should satisfy your lust for punishment of these morons.
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
My reply to that is, how many people stopped driving cars when mandatory seat belt laws were passed?
Personally, I would be okay with adults over 18 not being legally required to wear bicycle helmets as long as they are mandatory organ donors. Win-win.
burnspbesq
@Dan:
Even if that were true, and I don’t believe it is, it’s still an awesomely stupid risk to take.
I especially love the helmetless parents with helmeted kids in a kid seat mounted over the back wheel. What kind of stupidity is necessary to do that?
greennotGreen
@gbear: I agree.
Competitive bicyclists wear helmets which, to my mind, makes wearing helmets the more adult way to ride. If kids want to feel more adult, looks like they would emulate the professionals. (‘Course, I can’t say that works for skateboarders, but I think that may be a lack of proper helmet-wearing role models.)
Matt McIrvin
@greennotGreen: Yeah, for a kid, wearing the helmet is probably part of the fun. When I was a kid and had never heard of a bicycle helmet, I remember seeing pictures of bicycle racers and wondering where I could get one of those cool helmets.
gbear
@NorthLeft12:Seems to me that most of the comments regarding medical coverage have wished that riders who choose not to wear helmets should pay an insurance surcharge for the voluntary risk they’re taking. I don’t see anyone calling for denial of emergency services.
bin Lurkin'
@Joel:
Americans are in better shape than the Dutch? After doing a little people watching at my local Walmart I find that really hard to believe.
On a bicycle your speed is directly dependent on your physical fitness, if Americans are riding that much faster than the Dutch then they must be in considerably better shape.
Silver
@? Martin: It’s not your speed that (mainly) matters. The vertical drop from head height to the ground is the same if you’re going 0, 10, 20, or even 30 mph.
It’s easier to make a mistake going faster, of course.
Roger Moore
@catclub:
Two points:
1) That includes a fair number of bicyclists who are wearing helmets, so it’s reasonable to expect that the rate would be at least a bit higher than that for riders without.
2) Fatal accidents are only the tip of the iceberg. There are presumably a lot of accidents that involve non-fatal head injuries for every one that results in a fatality, and helmets help against those, too.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Silver: It’s not the fall that gets you, but the sudden stop at the end.
gbear
@greennotGreen: From what I’ve seen of skateboard videos on YouTube, mandatory groin protection should be required. Those videos are painful to watch.
Laertes
I suspect that the angry contempt with which people dismiss the question of absolute risk would vanish in an instant if some troll were here insisting that everyone riding in a car should be required to use a helmet and a six-point harness.
RosiesDad
@Roger Moore:
One of my regular riding buddies said that she read that among serious recreational cyclists, you are statistically likely to have a crash every 7,500-10,000 miles. Seems about right.
She crashed a year before I did, requiring medivac helicopter transport to the U Penn trauma center. Her husband crashed a year after I did, shattering his elbow. In all our cases, our helmets were life-saving.
It should be noted that we all also ride with bright, blinking lights fore and aft and I ride with a rear view mirror on my sunglasses. On cannot be defensive enough, especially when riding on public roads. (But bike paths too, where on the weekends, there is more than the fair share of stupid and careless.)
BGinCHI
Late to this thread, but as a serious cyclist who has gone down hard on the pavement several times, trust me, you want to wear a helmet all the time. No matter how far you’re riding or where.
Sometimes the worst falls are at slow speeds.
gbear
@Laertes:
Well here you are, troll, and now we can forget all about abolute risk and redirect all of our angry contempt at you!
JoyfulA
@geg6: I’ve unfortunately had to spend months visiting a brain trauma unit (for a patient who had a bleeding stroke) in a rehab facility, and from that experience I know Pennsylvania is spending piles of money on helmetless motorcycle riders who had no health insurance or whose expenses exceeded their caps ($1 million goes fast in such cases).
No, I wouldn’t want to throw them out on the sidewalk and deny any care to a profoundly disabled helmetless motorcyclist, but overturning that law must cost the state millions a year.
Mnemosyne
@bin Lurkin’:
Or, ya know, Seattle and Portland have hills, while Amsterdam has none. Even a fat person can go 20 miles an hour downhill.
JoyfulA
@Mnemosyne: And then there are electric (battery-powered) bicycles!
Laertes
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Good heavens. Do you not remember being young? Do you not know any young people? The answer is obviously “at least a few.” It might not be any significant number, but the religion here that the number is obviously exactly zero is some kind of crazy groupthink.
@burnspbesq:
It’s stupid to value your child’s safety more than your own? “I’m an adult and I’m going to make my own risk assessment and accept the consequences, but this child whose safety is my responsibility is going to wear a goddamn helmet until he’s old enough to make an informed decision as an adult” is stupid? Groupthink.
ninja3000
Personally, I don’t even ride down my driveway without my motorcycle helmet securely on my head, and I simply don’t understand why anybody would ride helmetless. I’m always reminded of the classic Bell Helmets ad that read “If you have a $10 head, wear a $10 helmet.”
And I must add, I ride a sportbike and most of the fellow sportbikers I see in my neck of the woods wear full-face helmets and appropriate gear. Conversely, most of the Harley riders I see wear next-to-worthless Nazi-style half-helmets (I am convinced that it is a cultural thing).
Another Halocene Human
There was a kid, under 15, no helmet, HEADPHONES, bopping away, runs a stop sign, crashes head first into a BUS, breaks the door, breaks his head, trauma unit saved his life but he has permanent brain damage.
It’s very, very easy to go over the handlebars in a bike. Your head will hit whatever it is first. Wear a helmet, ppl!
Mnemosyne
@Laertes:
So a bicyclist riding with no helmet is the safety equivalent of a driver who is wearing a seatbelt and has airbags in the car, so the only possible way to make them equivalent is to put even more safety features in cars?
Seriously, guys, this is the weirdest argument ever. Have you not driven or been a passenger in a car since 1980, so you have no idea that shoulder belts and airbags are standard equipment? Even my 15-year-old car has both driver-side and passenger airbags, FFS.
Fair Economist
Casual is no excuse. One of my son’s friends skateboarded across the street to a convenience store. On the way back he slipped, hit his head on the curb, and spent a week in the neurological ward, and not just a precautionary stay. He was pretty out of it while he was there – very tired and loopy. We live in a world of concrete edges, metal bars, and one ton death machines flying by at 45 mph. Even a mild fall can cause brain damage.
Disturbingly, my son continues to be the only kid in the neighbor who wears a helmet to bike or skateboard, and that’s only because we make him.
Another Halocene Human
@Schlemizel: They made a lot of stupid, unsupported, claims about helmets & science was not going to sway them. Of course they still expect the state rehab money to flow in should they survive
In FloridUH, the motorcyclists don’t have to wear helmets if they get $10K of insurance, which is all well and good if they DIE, but nowhere near what you need if the motorcyclist LIVES, in whatever form that might be.
Roger Moore
@Cassidy:
The figure of merit I’ve heard is an average of one ER visit per 10,000 miles. Again, most of those are for stitches, road rash, and broken collar bones (apparently a classic bicycling injury), but helmet contact with the pavement is fairly common, too. Riding without a helmet is just stupid.
FWIW, I strongly suspect that the anti-helmet stuff is the same kind of small c conservative bullshit that fed resistance to seatbelt laws. People don’t want to use them because they aren’t used to wearing them and don’t want to change. They simply aren’t that big a deal once you adapt. You find a way of carrying your helmet, you get used to the feel of wearing it, and it becomes a natural part of riding.
Bloix
#135- You’re making a logical argument (“X must be so”) that is based on a misapprehension of facts.
A Dutch city has thousands and thousands of bikes, all moving along at a moderate pace, and there are lots of bike paths that exclude both cars and pedestrians. All sorts of people ride – the elderly, children, parents carrying toddlers, people in suits and dresses, people doing their shopping. Biking isn’t exercise. It’s transportation.
In US cities, the number of cyclists is much smaller and generally there’s no place to ride except the street. In order to maintain a safe pace in traffic, riders have to push relatively high speeds – and often only people who can do so feel safe enough to ride at all.
For information on bikes in Holland, see
http://www.theurbancountry.com/2012/03/10-observations-about-bicycling-in.html
And if you google images for bicycle amsterdam you’ll see how very different cycling is in Holland.
Jack the Second
What the hey is with everyone talking about wearing helmets in cars?
Skull fractures in cars are typically caused by smacking your head into the windshield. Consequently, we have laws forcing everyone to wear seat belts. Remember that whole thing with Nader? Not to mention, we have packed cars full of air bags, side airbags, curtain airbags, basically anywhere we can stick an airbag, we do.
Mnemosyne
@Laertes:
Helmetless parent crashes the bike and hits their head. How “safe” is it for the child to be laying on the ground strapped onto the bike while the parent lays there unconscious? How many two-year-olds can call 911?
Cassidy
@Laertes: Well that’s an incredibly stupid comparison to try and make. Cars are designed to redirect impact away from the passengers, or you could say that is absorbs the impact much like a helmet does for a bike rider.
This is just one example, but in your idiotic comparison, steps have been taken to mitigate the instance of death and trauma to the person in the car. Since bikes are inherently without physical protection, the best way to mitigate the instance of death and trauma is to wear a helmet. I know, I know, one could argue being a safe rider is the best way, but that’s a pile of horseshit predicated on the ability of people around you paying attention and not passivley trying to kill you by talking or texting on their phones.
Another Halocene Human
@KCinDC: I’ve fallen on foot and fallen on a bike. On foot I fall on my hands. On a bike, I fall on my head. Glad I had that helmet.
The real reason nobody wants a helmet is discomfort, helmet hair, some loss of visibility (though less of that with modern helmets), and the fear of looking like a weenie, even if you aren’t wearing lycra.
The rest is sophistry.
There’s a school of traffic engineering that holds that amber/yellow (the name has changed over the years, but you know what I mean) just make us soft and prone to disrespecting the red… but that doesn’t mean they’re right.
RosiesDad
@JoyfulA: My wife, a family doc, says that the motorcycle helmet law actually saves the Commonwealth money because many motorcyclists who might have ended up in coma or needing long term care just end up at the morgue. Not sure if that came up in a memo from the Board of Health or if it was just something she heard from an ER doc at a meeting at the hospital.
Laertes
The question about cars isn’t “are there other safety features.” There are. The question is “are you safer with seatbelt+airbags or with helmet+six-point harness+airbags?”
I know a cyclist who took a nasty fall and whose helmet did him a lot of good. I also know a guy who was killed in a car crash that he’d likely have survived if he’d been wearing a helmet and a six-point harness.
So: What’s the difference? You’re obviously at least a little bit safer with the helmet and harness. Where are the angry demands that we’re all idiots for going without?
Villago Delenda Est
@El Cid:
Yeah, but when the heart is transplanted into undead such as Dick Cheney, we all lose.
Mnemosyne
@Another Halocene Human:
Obviously everyone needs to get my awesome Nutcase helmet. The only complaint I have about it is that the visor is optional equipment, so I can accidentally pull it off when adjusting the helmet.
Randy P
@Laertes: Ever ride a plane? Ever hear the part of the safety lecture where they tell parents to do their own mask first? Do you think that’s because they don’t care about the kids?
Mnemosyne
@Laertes:
But your argument is that bicyclists should not wear any safety equipment, ie a helmet. So why is the question about what additional safety equipment should be in cars?
Central Planning
@mcmullje:
I’m sorry about you’re situation, but this is the only advice on the internet you should follow: get a lawyer.
Laertes
@Laertes:
And I’ll blow past what’s sure to be a lot of angry dismissal (troll = yesterday’s ally who doesn’t see things quite your way today) and point toward an answer:
The answer is going to look something like “A typical driver can expect to ride at least X miles in a car before she has an incident in which the helmet and harness will make a significant difference, and that X is such a large number that lots of people are going to judge the expense and inconvenience to be an unacceptable trade-off. The number for cyclists is instead Y, which is much smaller.”
Probably? Anyway, the people asking about absolute risk are asking what Y is. It’s not trolling. It’s a reasonable question, and it only looks like trolling because it’s swimming against the tide. This crowd is ugly when it gets in pile-on mode.
Mnemosyne
@Laertes:
Okay, I didn’t read it well the first time, and your argument is even more nonsensical:
So because you know someone whose life was saved by wearing a helmet, that proves that cyclists should not wear helmets until cars are made even safer?
Logic’s not really your strong point, is it?
Cassidy
This is an interesting, and slightly related, thing that showe dup in my inbox this monring.
gbear
@Mnemosyne: Because you’re groupthinking, that’s why.
Mnemosyne
@Laertes:
The answer is, “Cars already have many safety features that prevent injury and death, but bicycles have none.”
Please answer the question: why is a car with airbags and shoulder belts less safe than riding your bicycle without a helmet?
Cassidy
@Laertes: Actually, beyond being stupid, it is trolling as you’re immediately dismissing the inherent safety features of cars vs. none for bikes. So, once you can be honest and not try to create false equivalency between the two, I will happily engage you in an objective discussion on the merits of helmet use.
Laertes
@Randy P:
No. That’s because you’d be really surprised at how quickly hypoxia can render you insensible.
Doesn’t seem relevant, though. This seems like kind of a side-issue anyway, but if we’re going to explore it, we should probably back up and explain exactly why it is that the parent who rides alone helmetless is stupider than the parent who rides helmetless with his helmeted child.
Fair Economist
@catclub:
Actually that’s a very high rate. If you biked 10 miles a day for your adult life (50 years) you’d have about a 6% chance of death by bike. That would make it roughly tied with stroke and pnemonia as the 3rd most likely way for you to die. Since the bike deaths are much more likely to happen when you’re young, it would probably be the leading cause of loss of lifespan. Once in 3 million miles is plenty dangerous.
Laertes
@Mnemosyne:
Good heavens. It’s obviously not. Where on Earth did you get the idea that it was?
Now, your turn. Please answer the question: If wearing a helmet in a car will make you safer than not wearing a helmet in a car, why shouldn’t all right-thinking people wear them, and why shouldn’t we angrily pile on anyone who suggests otherwise?
Roger Moore
@gbear:
FTFY.
Mnemosyne
@Laertes:
Good, so we agree — adults should wear bicycle helmets.
Again, I’m still not getting why this question is relevant. Cars already have shoulder belts and airbags. Bicycles don’t. So why is having bicyclists wear helmets equivalent to putting six-point safety harnesses in cars rather than being equivalent to the existing safety equipment that’s already in cars?
Larv
@gbear:
So you wear a helmet at all times, then? After all, you could fall down a flight of stairs and suffer a brain injury. If the absolute risk doesn’t matter, you should be wearing a helmet 24-7. Of course it does, so you don’t.
Cassidy
@Mnemosyne: Because it’s easy topic to be contrary about, accuse others of “groupthink”, create fasle equivalency and non-existant arguments out of thin air, all while patting onself on the back about how much of an “independent thinker” he/she is.
Another Halocene Human
@bin Lurkin’: The best way to keep people from using a bike for commuting is to mandate helmet use. The most bicycle-centric western nation is Holland and helmet use is almost non existent there. It’s common to see mom pedaling the kids in a bakfiets or cargo bike and none of them wearing helmets at all.
This is a ridiculous statement. Holland has completely different traffic laws, as do other cities and countries with higher bicycle use. They have no-car areas and the Netherlands in particular has areas where cars must yield to bikes rather than bikes having to pull over, and speed limits close to 20mph, like a US cul-de-sac.
Why don’t you mosey over to Streetblogs network and get a tiny taste of what traffic engineers, urban planners, and bike activists have been up to the for the last 20 years. People don’t ride because you can ride w/out helmet. You can do that in Florida right now, fool. They ride w/out helmet because they feel so comfortable and safe in the road. (Which, yes, can be silly b/c you can still have a nasty bike accident without any cars around.)
At UF there was a German student who was run down by a car on what should have been a quiet street. She never wore a helmet and got lucky. She told the paper from now on in the US she would always wear a helmet, even though they didn’t wear in Germany. (And at any rate, I saw plenty of helmets in Germany.)
Laertes
@Mnemosyne: @Mnemosyne:
Sure, if your argument is that you should always wear a helmet when you’re doing anything riskier than riding in a modern passenger car while wearing your seatbelt. Is it? If so, we’re going to have some fun. For a start, we’re going to explore why it is that the level of risk you experience in a modern passenger car has been chosen as the highest possible level of risk that it’s permissible to accept without a helmet.
I suspect you do get why it’s relevant, which is why you’re refusing to answer it. An honest answer would go something like this:
“Cars are pretty safe, and while a helmet would most likely make you even safer, it’s a pretty large expense and hassle to mitigate a really tiny risk. But, shoot, now that I think about it, that applies pretty well to bicycle helmets too, and it’s now led me to wonder just how much safer a helmet makes me, and I suppose it’s possible to reach the conclusion that, for certain riders in certain environments, it’s not entirely crazy to go without a helmet.”
johnny aquitard
@Dan: Ah. In other words, a concern troll.
Another Halocene Human
@montanareddog: Critical mass is a myth. I’ve been riding a bike for a long time. The only critical mass that matters is a critical mass among activists and city planners to change the roadway to accommodate bicycles. Once that happens, bicycles as a portion of road users explodes.
catclub
@Roger Moore: ” I strongly suspect that the anti-helmet stuff is the same kind of small c conservative bullshit that fed resistance to seatbelt laws.”
The difference is that there are few health benefits to riding in a car. I suspect that Discouraging bike riding is a net loss to health.
I wear a helmet virtually every time I ride. I am irritated that so few other people ride bikes. I think one reason is helmet laws discouraging kids from riding at all.
Cassidy
@Laertes:
We get it. You don’t wear a helmet. That’s fine. I reserve the right to label you various names of lower intelligence for it. Just make sure you’re an organ donor.
Randy P
@Laertes: You’re chasing strawmen. Nobody but you is suggesting that zero injuries is the goal. The short answer is “diminishing returns”. Head injuries are a big deal with a huge personal and societal cost. Helmet law are low hanging fruit, the opposite of your car strawman.
Seatbelts are the equivalent low-hanging fruit for cars. Head injury and death caused by being flung through the windshield were big drivers of those laws.
The other troll is using a similar strawman with his 3 million miles and fatalities. We’re talking about head trauma and brain damage, not just death.
phil
@bin Lurkin’: Seattle & Portland have many hills, which slow you down going up, but allow you to go very fast going down. They also weed out the unfit from riding.
Holland is very, very flat. The video showed almost everybody rode the same upright style of bike, that is not known for speed. It showed few cars with the bikes and the general speed of the bikes was not that great.
Laertes
@Cassidy:
Oh, sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. Depends on the situation. But what I don’t do is ride along the bike trail seething with resentment at every other rider who isn’t wearing a helmet (which, where I ride, is about 3/4 of them.) “Look at that asshole, just trying to get his head bashed in so he can suck up some of my tax dollars.” Christ, if I had that kind of angry, resentful wingnut inside my head, I’d WANT a head injury.
joes527
@Fair Economist: Average 10 miles/day on a bike over 50 years?
Get serious.
Sure there are plenty of folks who do this, and they should be wearing helmets. (or doing something about their stroke or pneumonia risk, which would be just as useful)
But the chance of death by bicycle for the casual rider is vanishingly small (even w/o a helmet)
Anecdotes be damned.
catclub
@Laertes: At some point we will get to Risk Homeostasis.
The safest day for driving in Sweden was the day they switched sides of the road for driving.
The safety device that would save the most lives: A large Pointed spike in the middle of the steering wheel, pointed at the chest of the driver, in every vehicle.
Another Halocene Human
@mcmullje: It’s not FMLA but ADA that applies here. Call a labor lawyer YESTERDAY.
Cassidy
@catclub:
I compeltely disagree. For one, kids are in after school care longer due to commutes and those wonderful flexible hours our galtian overlords use. Kids don’t have time to ride bikes; by the time they’re picked up, it’s time for dinner and getting ready for school. Two, kids are in more activities (for those that can afford them). Instead of biking to their friends house, they’re being carted around to whatever activities their parents have deemed important. lastly, parents aren’t letting their kids outside as much. I relunctantly let mine outside to play, unsupervised, but it’s fucking dangerous between predators, assholes with dogs, assholes in cars, and this is in suburbia. I don’t imagine the kids in the inner city are encouraged to go out and play wher if they’re kidnapped, no one give shit because they aren’t the right color or gang violence/ interaction, etc.
catclub
@joes527: This would be great.
His example assumed that everyone in the US did that, in order for bike riding to become a third leading cause of death. Note that right now, about 900 people per year die while bicycling.
Laertes
@Randy P:
Whoa. I wasn’t even getting into helmet law. I was just addressing the question of why it’s so obviously stupid to ride without a helmet that it’s trolling to even ask how big the risk is.
If you want to lead a pile-on about helmet laws, you’ll need to find a different victim. I’m already dealing with my daily ration of angry contempt.
Mnemosyne
@Laertes:
Again, you’re asking the wrong question. We already know that riding in a car is risky, which is why we require manufacturers to install safety belts and airbags.
Your argument seems to be that riding a bicycle is risk-free, so no safety equipment should be required.
An adult bicycle helmet that meets all of the current federal standards will cost you less than $20 at Wal-Mart. If $20 is a “pretty large expense,” you probably can’t afford a bicycle, either.
If we’re going to talk expenses, then let’s talk expenses. As I showed above, a bicycle helmet will cost you $20. A head injury on your bicycle will cost you thousands of dollars. So isn’t it penny-wise and pound-foolish to save $20 on a helmet when not doing so could cost you $20,000 or more in hospital expenses?
Another Halocene Human
@Kent: Wow, I only made it two paragraphs in, but every single factual statement in that post was untrue. That’s like, an achievement, or something. In trolling, but still.
Cassidy
@Laertes: All that straw is gonna catch fire. Keep attacking those non-existant arguments that haven’t been made. Clearly you need it.
Another Halocene Human
@ThresherK: As someone who spent a few years on motorcycles before getting my “cager” license, I’ll believe “free to ride” motorcyclists when they get charged their own separate insurance rates for their freedom.
Word. As it is now, they expect everyone else to subsidize their risky hobby.
Who do they think they are, bankers?
Laertes
@catclub:
That’s a good way to do the analysis, though. When you’re looking at the risks of an activity, what’s relevant is the risk to the population that does it. Running the numbers as though everyone did is a good way to put the risks in perspective.
I mean, far more people die in automobile accidents in a year than die climbing Mt. Everest.
catclub
@Cassidy: “I compeltely disagree.”
Um, if you disagreed, you would have argued that helmet laws encourage bicycling. Instead you trotted out all your fears about the big bad world.
Randy P
@Laertes: excellent job focusing on one word so you could ignore my entire point(s).
Carry on, I’ve reached my limit.
Mnemosyne
@joes527:
Most people aren’t talking about the risk of death. We’re talking about the risk of traumatic brain injury, which a lot of people would consider to be worse than death.
If you want to ignore the direct experience of many people posting here, that’s your option, but don’t expect sympathy when you get a concussion and try to say, “Who knew you could get a head injury by dropping your head onto pavement at 10 miles an hour?”
Laertes
@Mnemosyne:
I’m going to stop you right there and remind you that any time you’re talking about what someone’s argument seems to be rather than what it is, you’re most likely pulling a fast one and you need to back up and think about whether you’ve really given your opponent the careful and charitable reading that they deserve.
catclub
@Laertes: got me. I rescind that comment. I do not rescind my remarks that there are substantial health benefits to cycling that were being ignored.
Cassidy
@catclub: Uh no…your premise, the one I quoted, is that bike riding has declined because our children, collectively, don’t wish to wear helmets for whatever reason. Despite the absurdity of it, I gave you three reasons that are much more likely and more in line with modern society.
Or the Barney version: Kids aren’t not biking because they think helmets are a fashion faux pas. They’re not biking because they’re not at home or not playing outside unsupervised.
joes527
@Mnemosyne:
Do you play the lottery? Because passing up the chance to win a brazilian dollars for a $1 ticket seems pretty penny-wise and pound-foolish too.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
The asshole is trying to make a point about relative vs. absolute risk. There are many things we could do to make cars safer but don’t do because the costs outweigh the benefits.* He wants people to provide evidence of the absolute risk of accidents in bicycles to prove that helmets are a cost effective safety measure.
In the hopes of killing the argument, lets do some back of the envelope calculations about the cost effectiveness of bicycle helmets. A helmet costs about $50. They’re supposed to be replaced regularly, so we’ll assume that an average rider gets no more than 5000 miles before needing to buy a replacement, giving a cost of about $0.01/mile. The actuarial value of a human life according to the USDOT is $6 million, so the break-even point for the value of bicycle helmets is about one life saved per 600 million miles traveled. Somebody above quoted one fatal accident per 3 million miles, so bicycle helmets should be cost effective if they save a life in 1 out of 200 currently fatal accidents. That’s assuming no impact of helmets on accident rate (questionable) and no value in non-fatal accidents (clearly wrong).
*FWIW, it’s not at all clear to me that six point belts and helmets fall into this category for ordinary road driving. They are helpful for race cars, but those are a considerably more constrained driving environment than the street. It’s possible that the restricted mobility and visibility would increase risk more by making accidents more frequent than they would reduce it by adding protection.
Mnemosyne
@Laertes:
Okay, let’s backtrack.
Your argument is that riding a bicycle without a helmet is equally as safe as riding in or driving a car that has airbags and shoulder belts. Correct?
Cassidy
I was not aware that our freedom loving bike people had so much in common with gun nuts and anti-vaxers. Just make sure you’re organ donors.
Another Halocene Human
@Rafer Janders: Exactly. Once you reach a certain speed, which speed Kent indicated he was not likely to reach while casually riding around town. The speed is achievable on bikes, but most casual bicyclists won’t actually achieve it when erranding around town.
Give me a break. I had one of my worst accidents going less than 10mph, probably closer to 5mph. I made a bad decision, went down, broke a tooth, but luckily had the helmet to save my hard head (it still hurt like hell). I have a coworker who broke his collar bone at low speed on a limited access bike trail. His handle bars caught someone else’s and they went down, again, each of them was traveling pretty slowly approaching an intersection, not racing.
In a high speed crash you can get thrown clear and if you’re lucky land off the road in something softer, like those freak car accidents back in the day where the baby flew through the glass into the grass (not that this was ever the typical outcome of a car crash, but it happened, and seat-belt haters took this 1/50 or whatever freak occurrence and proof that belts were unsafe). In a low speed crash the bike and the pavement strike you at close and awkward angles, there’s no time for your body to arrange itself to cushion the fall, and things break.
Remember, it’s not SPEED that harms, but IMPULSE. (Speed, of course, can contribute to impulse, but I want to firmly dispel the notion that low speed means no injuries, especially on a bicycle. No.)
Mnemosyne
@joes527:
So the chance of getting into a bike accident is a million to one or more, just like winning the lottery?
Wow, I must be one of the lucky ones, because last year a damn teenager came zooming out of an alley on his mountain bike and ran into me on my bike and knocked us both over, which you’re telling me is about as likely as me winning the lottery. I’d better go buy a lottery ticket, then, since I’m one of the tiny percentage of people who get into bike accidents.
Another Halocene Human
@liberal: Oh, I’m sure it’s really low if you don’t ride, and most Americans don’t.
Now, if you’re going to make the decision to ride daily, like I did in my 20s … well, let’s just say I didn’t beat the odds any more than the other serious bicyclists on this thread did.
joes527
@Mnemosyne:
So, what are the numbers there?
Ah. I see. Who needs numbers when we have an emooootional argument.
BTW. I wear a helmet when I ride.
Another Halocene Human
@Origuy: Yes it will, as the relative velocity of the objects or vehicles involved in the crash is very important. That’s why it’s safer to ride in the direction of traffic, no matter how nerve racking it can be.
Joel
@bin Lurkin’: Uh, what?
Riding fifteen miles an hour on a derailleur bike is pretty attainable for even moderately fit riders. I don’t think you need me to tell you that things in the United States are much farther apart than they are in the Netherlands, or Denmark, or wherever else you’d like to pick. I also shouldn’t need to remind you that urban roads tend to be wider in the United States and have higher speed limits. If you want to take a left on an multi-lane city road, you need to be riding close the speed of traffic, which can be 20-25MPH. In other words, fast.
I don’t know what the hell your statement about physical fitness is supposed to imply.
Cassidy
Some people just love having that sunshine hit their face, the wind in their hair…
….the gravel in their scalp, the curb punching their teeth through their cheek, the cracking of the skull on impact, the intracranial hematoma…
Mnemosyne
@joes527:
This is a fascinating juxtaposition, I have to admit. Doesn’t that mean that you think the helmet is useless, but you’ve given in to emotional arguments about it? Why do you wear a helmet if you don’t think it will protect you if you get into an accident?
Joel
@Laertes: Well, I suppose that in your case we can make an exception. Feel free to go helmetless!
Cassidy
@Mnemosyne: You’re trying to get reason from an idiot who skipped the earlier part of the thread where numbers and studies were discussed just to try and prove a point about how objective he is. I wouldn’t expect honesty from the mendacious.
Another Halocene Human
@liberal: The absolute risk is PER VEHICLE MILE TRAVELED which is why the most casual bicyclists are the most likely not to wear. The risk is so high that the probability of having a serious accident where a helmet is important approaches one after only a few years of racking up daily miles.
There is real controversy about the utility of helmets specifically for children. They typically ride on sidewalks and are more likely to be killed by cars backing up than any other factor. (My source here are child advocates, not anti-helmet nuts.) However, setting the habit early for when they become preteens and move into the street seems to be sufficient motivation to me. And luckily, cars in the future will have rear sensors.
Randy P
@joes527: Numbers. 900 deaths per year in the US and 500,000 ER visits of which about 1/3 involve head injuries. Helmets reduce the risk of head and brain injury by about 68% whether or not a motor vehicle was involved.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10796827
Mnemosyne
BTW, the article that mistermix linked to includes a link to a study of 13,000 injured cyclists in France that — surprise! — came to the same conclusion: cyclists who wore helmets had fewer serious brain injuries than those who did not wear helmets.
Freakin’ French, what do they know about bicycling, amirite?
Larv
@Cassidy:
People attack strawmen every day on this and every other blog. They only get called on it when somebody disagrees with them. This thread is full of straw, yet you only call out Laertes, and not the numerous people whom you agree with who are also guilty of it. Including yourself (#208).
And for gods sake people, trolling actually means something. Not everybody who disagrees with the OP or the majority opinion is a troll.
Randy P
@joes527: also see the numbers in the study that started this discussion. The one mistermix cited.
Cassidy
@Larv: Your concerns are noted.
Larv
As is your lack of a substantive response.
Another Halocene Human
@catclub: How many dollars are spent on insurance the insured never collects? Wasted, right? How many kids stay inside because both parents work and they’re afraid of pedophiles and child murderers? Or because the Robert Moses brigade in town built a 4 lane speedway between the front door and the nearest park? Oh, but there’s a crosswalk! Sure they allow turning movements during the ped light and they don’t give enough seconds to actually cross and research shows more peds get hit at crosswalks than midblock crossings … it’s those damn lazy kids and parents’ faults, plus imaginary bicycle helmet laws!!
joes527
@Mnemosyne: I never said that I think helmets are useless. They wouldn’t be useless in cars, escalators, or even just walking down the street. But we as a society are able to acknowledge that their usefulness in those settings does not generally justify them. But they _would_ save some lives/brains if everyone wore a helmet in the shower, so if we are going by anecdote, we should all be wearing helmets right now. (The light fixture might be about to fall on your head. It _has_ happened. Is $20 for a helmet to much to pay when compared to the hospital bill for that light fixture cracking your skull?)
I wear a helmet to model for my kids. And yeah, that _is_ all about emotion.
Central Planning
@bin Lurkin’:
You might believe differently if you shop at Whole Foods or one of those organic-type stores.
Another Halocene Human
@Matt McIrvin: It’s all based on hot air to either advocate AGAINST making necessary road infrastructure changes (ie, what Europe was doing right and the US doing wrong) or because of despair that such changes would be impossible in the US planning environment. The first selfish, the second simply no longer true. There’s been a sea change in transportation planning and engineering since the late 1990s in the US.
Mnemosyne
@joes527:
And implicit in this argument is that going 10 miles or more on a bicycle on a city street is no more dangerous than riding an escalator.
We’ve presented you with the head injury statistics for bicycles. Can you please present us with the head injury statistics for escalators so we can compare the two?
So, again, your stance is that getting into a bicycle accident is equally as likely as having a light fixture fall on my head. Please present us with the falling-light-fixture statistics so we can compare them with the existing bicycle accident statistics that multiple people have already presented.
But since, according to you, your kid is more likely to slip and fall in the shower than to get into an accident on their bike, aren’t you damaging your children by telling them that riding a bike is potentially risky?
Another Halocene Human
@bin Lurkin’: You should go back to lurking if all you have to offer are straw man arguments and misdirection.
Cassidy
@Larv: You didn’t have anything worth replying substantively to.
Another Halocene Human
@Laertes: The contempt arises because it is a misdirection. You argue as if the absolute risk is low and we’re guilty of that typical human folly of freaking out over the unlikely. In fact, the risk is extraordinarily high, P converges to 1 after a certain # of miles. The relatively lower mortality rate explains why anyone rides at all. Btw, the mortality risk is not great, thanks to our ridiculous car-centric, heavier = safer built environment.
ulee
Just before hitting this site I read the local newspaper here in Maine. Motorcyclist dumped his bike and now he’s dead. The article stated he was an experienced rider who owned several motorcycles. Now he doesn’t own any because he’s dead. And no, he wasn’t wearing a helmet.
KeithW
a) We’ve seen badly constructed studies on this subject before. Rivara/Thompson/Rivara famously found that helmets prevented a substantial number of leg injuries (due to badly chosen controls)
b) If your helmet broke in your accident, then it failed catastrophically. If it’s going to protect your head, it needs to absorb energy by crushing, not fail by shearing.
c) I hope all you sanctimonious “I always wear a helmet, you can never be too safe” fuckers wear a motorcycle helmet in your car and a bike helmet when you climb stairs.
Mnemosyne
@Another Halocene Human:
That’s part of what drives me nuts about these arguments: people look at the statistics from the Netherlands, where people ride at slow speeds on bike lanes that are physically separated from car traffic, and then insist that US cyclists riding on city streets next to parked cars with buses and SUVs next to them are equally as safe.
Obviously, I think everyone who rides a bike would love it if the US had bike infrastructure anywhere close to Amsterdam’s. But denying that riding a bicycle in the US with our current crappy (though slowly improving) infrastructure is more dangerous than riding one somewhere with good bike infrastructure is insane.
Another Halocene Human
@Mnemosyne: Portland, OR, isn’t terribly hilly, but what it does have are pretty high urban road speeds despite all the Portlandizing. It also has a bunch of trolleys in the road and sometimes riders are dumb and ignore all the “go here so as not to fall here” road markings. Oh, and the trolleys do NOT have cowcatchers. You will die, do not pass GO. (Btw, I love trolleys. But Portland streets are kind of out there.)
Portland can be scary even for a pedestrian. It seems every few blocks there is a highway or something and the main thoroughfares have four lanes and cars and trucks zipping through.
Those that dare to bike in that environment have to go faster just for self-preservation.
Laertes
@Mnemosyne:
No, not at all. So I’m glad for the opportunity to clear this up.
My argument is that the risks of riding a bike without a helmet are, for some riders in some circumstances, pretty small. But when someone upthread asked “how small?” what he got was an angry chorus of it doesn’t matter how small, any safety improvement is worth the cost and inconvenience of wearing a helmet.
But it’s not, and it’s obviously not. It’s trivial to think up scenarios in which we’d be safer with a helmet on but we don’t wear a helmet, and cars spring most readily to mind.
So I think the question of “just how much safer” IS relevant, and I’m asking.
Take me, for instance. I ride maybe 30 miles a week, and that’s all on more-or-less flat bike trails at speeds of maybe 10-15 miles per hour. I don’t wear a helmet, and neither do most riders that I see. I judge that the risks of riding without a helmet, while real, are pretty tiny, and that my cycling is far from the most dangerous of my leisure pursuits anyway.
But maybe I’m wrong about my risk assessments? If someone can show me that, in fact, I’m running something like a one-in-six chance of a serious head injury if I keep doing what I’m doing for the next twenty years, that’d get me to wear a helmet, while if the numbers are more like one-in-a-hundred than I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing.
So, no, I don’t think riding a bike is safer than riding in a car. The car thing is just to illustrate the point that there are risks that we don’t mitigate because the cost and (more critically, really) inconvenience just aren’t worth it.
Another Halocene Human
@RosiesDad: I honestly believe that is getting to be less and less true. Also, a single airlift to the trauma unit is going to cost the state more than $10k alone. People are surviving more and more major blood loss events. After that point they will often need lifetime care or accommodation.
Yeah, back in the 70s, I would hazard to say the math worked out nicely with that one.
Larv
@Another Halocene Human:
As I said to Cassidy, you shouldn’t complain about straw-manning if you’re going to engage in it yourself (#229).
Cassidy
@Larv: Ooh goodie, we have another self-desgnated ombudsman! Yay! Someone break out the chilled apple juice.
catclub
@Mnemosyne: Falls account for over 8 million hospital emergency room visits, representing the leading cause of visits (21.3%). Slips and falls account for over 1 million visits, or 12% of total falls.
In 2009, there were 418,700
emergency deepartment (ED) visits
and 27,900 inpatient hospital stays
for bicycle-related injuries; on
average, over 1,100 ED visits and
76 hospitalizations every day.
So yes, it looks from those statistics that slip and fall IS more dangerous than bicycling.
1. Laertes never even said that slip and fall was more dangerous. He said that, IF you slip and fall, your head would be better off if you had been wearing a helmet.
2. The population at risk of slip and fall, versus the population at risk of bicycle related injury, is different.
3. The severity of those ER visit injuries is not made clear.
E
I am an attorney who often represents cyclists injured in collisions with motorists. I wear my helmet always when riding.
However, there actually *is* evidence that mandatory helmet laws (1) dramatically reduce the number of cyclists on the road, (2) the mere sight of a cyclist wearing a helmet conveys to the average person that cycling is a dangerous activity, and (3) the number one correlation with reduced bicycle collisions is more other cyclists on the road. Drivers behave very differently when they are used to seeing cyclists.
So it’s kind of a tragedy of the commons situation. Any given cyclist is safer, maybe a whole lot safer, on any given bike ride if he or she wears a helmet. But cycling as a whole over time becomes more safe by not wearing the helmet.
Another Halocene Human
@Mnemosyne: Whoa, thanks, that looks awesome and I’ve paid just as much for a helmet with more annoying features/fit.
I think helmets that never f***ing fit right are the big scandal with bikes.
catclub
@Laertes: In many states, it may actually be illegal to wear a helmet in a car. (Because that implies illegal racing.) Funny world.
joes527
@Randy P: Well, since there are 6000 deaths/year due to household falls, I’m thinking that you are safer on your bicycle (helmet or not) than at home.
AC in DC
Bicycle accidents are not inevitable, nor is there any guarantee that you will conk your head if you do wipe out. I know people who have been in a bike wreck without a helmet and were perfectly fine. Anecdotes go both ways.
It’s been a while since I’ve worn a bike helmet, and the “5 times” data point in the original post has me reconsidering my behavior. (I ride pretty well with the slow traffic in the neighborhood, ride defensively and courteously, and make myself visible low light. If I ever went mountain- or road- biking I’d definitely wear a helmet.)
I’ll tell you what DOESN’T convince me: moralizing, emotionally manipulative bullshit. It’s like pro-gun folks talking about how your daughters will all be raped if you’re not armed. Or how about the argument that anyone not driving an SUV is endangering their family?
I’m a climber, backpacker, (casual) cyclist, kayaker, skier. I’ve learned that risk management means more than just what kind of safety gear you have — a lot of it is what goes on in your own head. How many people ride faster than they should because they’re trying to live up to the snazzy kit they’re riding in? Or ski down a difficult trail in poor conditions because of peer pressure?
Central Planning
@Laertes:
The part you seem to be ignoring (whether willfully or not) is that while the accident might be some time in the next 20 years, it could also be the next time you ride your bike. Or, it might be never.
Statistics was not my thing in college, but I think that the risk of injury increases the longer you go without an injury.
Laertes
@catclub:
And I imagine that if we were to run the numbers, we’d find that drivers wearing helmets have far more collisions per mile and and far more serious injuries per mile than drivers without helmets. These questions can be tricky.
@Another Halocene Human:
Trivially correct. But the people who are asking what that number is are trolls.
joes527
@Mnemosyne:
You are looking for reason when I have already told you that it is an emotional response? Are you familiar with emotion?
Laertes
@Central Planning:
Is that the same mechanism by which the roulette wheel is more likely to come up black after a long streak of red?
Another Halocene Human
@Laertes: Every bicyclist on this thread just about has talked about how they judge their relative risks, but you persist as if we’re stupid and made claims we never made.
Also, go ahead and thank yourself you never had a low-speed one-vehicle injury like I did or a low-speed two vehicle bike trail injury like my coworker did. Can’t really tell you what the risk is biking solely on trails but I know it also seems to be pretty damn high. Of course, we don’t ride your trail. We don’t know how wide, smooth, and lightly used it is, how dumb your fellow users are, what conditions you ride under, etc. But then again, nobody is speaking to that.
YOU are making blanket assertions. YOU felt the need to speak up even though nobody was attacking you. Just because YOU feel like it is a valid risk to take doesn’t mean that I or anyone else on this thread would make the same judgment in those conditions. Or maybe we would. We don’t know that.
YOU have already asserted that you ride under conditions that lower your risk, so why is this absolute risk figure you’re looking for that would include a LOT of mt biking and mixed traffic riding so important? You would just continue to ignore it because your conditions are different.
catclub
@Another Halocene Human: I suspect that the real danger to riding against traffic is
appearing in places where one is not expected. In particular, when a car is turning right onto a road, they look to left, but not to the right, which is where the against-traffic bike rider would be.
The other danger is collisions with bikes riding the correct way. ;)
Larv
@Laertes:
This sums up my position as well. I don’t dispute that helmets are relatively safer than the alternative, I simply don’t think the absolute risk is sufficient to mandate helmeted riding in all circumstances. I’d never go for a mountain bike ride without my helmet, but I don’t usually wear one for my ~1 mile ride to the farmers market. I don’t think that makes me an idiot, and if you disagree I’d like to see the absolute risk numbers that support that conclusion.
liberal
@gbear:
Putting it that way makes you sound like a f*cking idiot.
If you’re saying, don’t do X if there’s any risk of brain death, you’ll never do anything.
Biking w/o a helmet? Risk is nonzero.
Biking w/ a helmet Risk is nonzero.
Driving a car? Risk is nonzero.
Eating food? Risk is nonzero (choking).
You can’t evaluate the risks and costs/benefits of risk amelioration if you have no estimate of the absolute risk. Period.
joes527
@Mnemosyne: It is interesting that anecdotes about bike accidents are “the direct experience of many people posting here,” but anecdotes about other types of accidents are met with: “but what are the numbers?”
Laertes
@Another Halocene Human:
Why is the number that’s directly relevant to me important? Well, it’s it’s important to me. And I thought someone here might know it.
What I’ve (mostly) gotten instead is the same thing I always get when I zig as everyone else zags–A reminder that any community values a certain amount of mutual agreement, and that any community can turn ugly when an irritant appears. I get very much the same timbre of response on wingnut boards.
“Go ahead and ride without a helmet, but you’d better be an organ donor” sounds very much to me like “go ahead and burn a flag, but you’d better be carrying ID so we can notify your next of kin.” It’s an emotional response, and a demand that the legal system be used to, if not enforce your preferences, at least signal that yours is the privileged opinion.
Mnemosyne
@Laertes:
Except that you didn’t make that argument, because you immediately went to demanding that drivers be forced to wear six-point harnesses in all circumstances:
So, right from the get-go, you were saying that riding a bicycle without a helmet is safer than driving a car with seatbelts and airbags, with absolutely no caveats. Sorry, but that’s straight-up trolling.
Your risk on any individual ride is probably fairly low but, as other people have linked to, your absolute risk goes up with every mile you ride. Your main danger may be a squirrel that runs in front of your bike and forces you to wipe out rather than a car opening its door as you ride past, but that’s not going to automatically protect you from a head injury.
If you are absolutely, positively, 100 percent sure that there’s absolutely no way you could ever run into a road hazard on the trail, or have an inexperienced cyclist run into you, or get your pant leg caught in your bike chain, or skid out in a puddle then, sure, ride without a helmet. But, as I said above, don’t expect much sympathy if one of the above accidents happens to you and you end up with a concussion that you could have prevented with a $20 bike helmet.
Even the Netherlands has about 200 bicycle deaths every year, and they have the best traffic safety record in the entire world. So for me the question becomes, Am I willing to become a statistic, or am I willing to spend $20 to avoid it?
Randy P
@Dan: Yes we do know. The study I cited was based on 500,000 ER visits. It’s not the only study.
liberal
@Cassidy:
I’m saying that any evalution of the costs and benefits of risk reduction must involve an estimate of absolute risk, not just relative risks.
I’m guessing the absolute risk isn’t low, but the notion that we don’t have to ask what it is is just ignorant.
catclub
@E: Well put.
Fair Economist
@joes527:
No, just work out the math. If you got around by bike, 10 miles per day would not be high at all, and that would probably make it the *worst* threat to your lifespan. That is very dangerous. And even for a casual rider the risk would is totally unacceptable. Even 1 mile per day would put your chance of dying about the same as that of homicide.
Mnemosyne
@joes527:
We also posted the numbers, which you are ignoring. I guess there was some hope that you would pay attention to anecdotes since you ignored the numbers, but I don’t think there’s anything that can really get through to you at this point.
liberal
@Mnemosyne:
God, I hate that shit.
Randy P
@joes527: In order to compare apples to apples, please translate that into an accident rate per, say, million people. And the same with bicycle stats.
Larv
@Cassidy:
Kindly fuck off. So in criticizing you and AHH, I’m somehow appointing myself ombudsman, while you criticizing me is…what, exactly?
Another Halocene Human
@Laertes: AAAAAAAAAND you’d be wrong. The biggest factor in seatbelt usage (which is, still, the #1 way to reduce risk of death in a car after all these years) is a primary seatbelt law.
Now, if you think I advocate for primary seatbelt laws vs secondary, you’d be wrong. But the facts are the facts.
You’re also much more likely to get involved in a fatal accident within 1 mile of your home, the same area where many drivers choose not to wear because how are they going to get kilt in their own neighborhood.
Keep flailing. It’s kind of entertaining.
Joel
@E: I think as a lawyer who represents cyclists injured in car accidents, you would recognize that cycling is a dangerous activity. I speak as someone who is sympathetic to cycling and was a long-term (emphasis on the was) cyclist who has logged well over 10K miles in his lifetime. I also know at least six people who have gotten into serious accidents often due to circumstances of their own. One of these people is now deceased as a result.
Fair Economist
@joes527:
Well, if everybody rode their bike 1/2 an hour a day at 20 mph there (at current helmet rates) there would be about 365,500 deaths/year at one death per 3,000,000 miles. That’s an interesting definition of “safer”.
different-church-lady
This should not be construed as an anti-helmet argument, but as far as I can tell there’s some cyclists out there who’s odds of survival are slender with or without a helmet.
I was a resistor for years, and then I finally grew up. But in the end, my long practiced habits of riding defensively, assuming drivers don’t see me, and refusing to take all the “rights” to the road some cyclists foolishly advocate protect me much more than the helmet does. Because, in the end, when a bicycle and and automobile occupy the same space at the same time, the car is going to “win”, no matter what the laws say.
So, yeah, wear your helmet. But don’t forget to use the thing it’s protecting too.
liberal
@Central Planning:
Nope (unless you have something complicated in mind, e.g. no injury leads to more risk-taking).
It’s like saying that you’ve tossed 5 heads in a row; the chance of a tails is now higher. Wrong.
Another Halocene Human
@Cassidy: Nice. Although it’s interesting that they still run red lights. My community won’t have it.
Some places use an Opticom system to make the indication all red and then the ambulance proceeds cautiously through the empty intersection. I like that system, especially because it discourages illegal ambulance tailing (to get ahead of other traffic) but I don’t think it’s really caught on in a lot of places.
Mnemosyne
@E:
Honestly, your points (1) and (2) are pretty bogus. I saw the study from England that claimed that drivers drove closer to cyclists wearing helmets, and it turned out that all of the “data” was generated by one (1) guy who wrote only about his personal experiences. He apparently didn’t take into account the possibility that, say, he rode differently with a helmet on. Also, a lot of the data comes from Australia, which has a very controversial mandatory cyclist helmet law, so most of the studies have an angle, shall we say.
There’s definitely something to (3), though — it’s been studied and is an actual effect that has been shown through using road cameras and the like. Still, living in the county that has the highest fatal hit-and-run rate in the country means that I am going to keep wearing a helmet.
Cassidy
Yeah, done with the imbeciles in this thread. The absolute stubborn stupidity, deliberate misdirection, and dishonesty of those who want to justify not wearing a helmet and, the important part, feel entitled to no criticism for it is astounding. You people are fucking dumb.
As things stand, it is your choice to not wear a helemt. Go for it. I don’t want to make you. And when you finally do smack your gourd on the ground, please have had the foresight to 1) be an organ donor so that others, hopefully smarter and more appreciatve of life, can make use of them or 2)have sacked away a shitload of money so that whoever is tasked with taking care of your brain damaged, selfish ass can at least do so in a modicum of comfort to make up for the years of their lives they about to throw down the toilet wiping your ass, cleaning your drool, and making sure they can take care of the toddler you have become and sentenced them with.
And don’t breed. Seriously. If you can’t acknowledge risk and danger for yourself, you shouldn’t be caring for children. Scoop’em out, snip’em, whatever it takes.
catclub
@Fair Economist: “would probably make it the *worst* threat to your lifespan”
Except a sedentary lifestyle, which is still the number one threat ( that and your grandparents’ genes).
Joel
@joes527: That overlooks the obvious fact that the risk group for falls is much larger than the risk group for bicycle accidents.
Joel
@Joel: should read “circumstances not of their own control”
Cassidy
@Another Halocene Human: I noticed that to. I think most EMS services no longer blow through red lights. Hell, they rarely go “lights and sirens” anymore just to keep people from becoming toused to hearing it. My guess is it’s an old school EMS guy and part of a well worn phrase or speech.
Another Halocene Human
@Larv: After all, you could fall down a flight of stairs and suffer a brain injury.
A young, able-bodied person puts their arms out when falling down stairs to prevent more injury, which is why the risk of head injury is lower than on a bike. However, sometimes they are stuck by jagged angles. So there is a whole market in bumpers for stairs (especially for households with children), and stair railings are built with smooth edges. And many kinds of domestic stairs are ILLEGAL TO BUILD in the United States. And elderly and disabled people buy very expensive stair elevators or they move into single-level dwellings when they become unable to navigate stairs safely. Also, stairs that were legal to build decades ago now are considered to have unsafe stair pitch.
Things you would know if you knew anything about building codes and weren’t just spitballing like a moran who knows that he’s losing this argument.
E
@Joel:
Well . . . . dangerous compared to what? Compared to driving? That data is mischievously difficult to interpret, but however you do it, it does not show that cycling is actually that dangerous compared to driving. Many think it shows cycling to be safer. But of course, there are so many different kinds of cycling and so many different kinds of people doing the cycling, as this thread shows.
If you only look at the subset of people who are my clients, you would indeed conclude cycling is dangerous. On the other hand, people only become my clients by getting run into by a motorist. So when you suggest I should have some unique perspective into cycling’s danger, I think I don’t.
One thing I have concluded from my set of clients, including the dead ones, is that if you are going to get really hurt or killed on your bike, it’s going to be because you got hit from behind. So folks, wear those blinky-lights, ride in a straight line, and stay off the roads during hours when people are most likely to have been drinking.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
IIRC, statistically it’s not the length of time, it’s the number of miles logged. People who drive or ride more miles are more likely to have an accident. That’s partly because accidents are not entirely in the hands of the people doing the driving or riding — a completely safe driver could still get t-boned by someone who runs a red light because they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.
From the website I linked to above:
To apply it to bicycling, someone who rides 100 miles a month is more likely to get into an accident than someone who rides 20 miles a month simply because they’re more “exposed” to situations that could lead to an accident.
ulee
There is a makeshift memeorial near my parents house that I always notice when I visit them. The woman was killed when she drove off the road and was killed. She was thrown from the vehicle and was not wearing a seatbelt. She had two young children who are left without their mother. It makes me angry at her. Why didn’t she wear her seatbelt. Is it that difficult? I have s split lip from playing with my Jack Russell. She jumped up and got me good. Should I have been wearing a football helmet? No, we need to live our lives. But wearing a seatbelt or a helmet is pretty obvious when on the road. To read the daily paper is like reading the Killing Fields.
Laertes
@Another Halocene Human:
Wait. Are you sure you’re linking to the comment you think you’re linking to? This seems to be totally non sequitur.
Larv
@Fair Economist:
An average of 1 mile a day seems about right (actually a bit on the high side) for the sort of helmetless riding I do, and that doesn’t strike me as a very high degree of risk. I’m not terribly worried about homicide, either. Or should I carry a gun in addition to my helmet in case somebody tries to murder me while I’m riding? Maybe a helmetgun? After all, better safe than sorry.
Another Halocene Human
@catclub: I wear a helmet virtually every time I ride. I am irritated that so few other people ride bikes. I think one reason is helmet laws discouraging kids from riding at all.
Well, I have an anecdote that speaks against your intuition. My town has an elementary school that has a huge number of kids biking to school.
They did this with: Safe Routes to School, bike safety training, funding for bike safety equipment, increased bike infrastructure along the route, an army of crossing guards and child marshals, and locked bike parking at the school. The parents continue to advocate for more changes to road infrastructure and more safe crossings. All of the kids wear helmets.
I suspect parents want real safety for their children, not the illusion of safety caused by ignoring real risks.
Cassidy
@E:
Translated: CH-CHING$$$ Billable hours baby!
I’m kidding.
E
@Mnemosyne:
Not sure I get your drift. (1) was that mandatory helmet laws reduce cycling — you call it bogus but Australia as you note proved that (okay, proved it for Australia . . .), (2) was that seeing a person in a helmet makes the average person conclude cycling is a dangerous activity, which you call bogus based on a study you cite from England that I know nothing about. (3) you seem to acknowledge. What am I missing?
Laertes
@Cassidy:
The anger and bitterness on display in that comment is probably a bigger threat to your happiness and well-being than riding your bike without a helmet would be.
Seriously. Take a deep breath, re-read that, and think about whether that’s the person you want to be.
Larv
@Central Planning:
Actually, this sounds like a classic example of the gambler’s fallacy.
Another Halocene Human
@Cassidy: Too right. Overworked “urban” parents keep their children in the house after school and during the summer under pain of death. (This is why poor kids would actually benefit big time from year round school or free day-long summer camps. Some kids lose months of learning from the summer vege with TeeVee the Corporate Chaperone.)
There was an incident in Jacksonville, Florida a few years ago where a little girl was killed sitting inside the living room of a house by a stray bullet from the road*. The parents in that community reacted like the parents in Newtowne. For a lot of Black parents, “in the house” equals “safe and sound” the way upper middle class white parents assume their children are safe in school. So the incident really shook people.
*now that I’ve typed this, it’s possible that it was a driveby shooting into the house, which had been misidentified… anyway, how it happened isn’t quite that important, just that the bullets came from outside the house and the child had never been an intended target
catclub
@Fair Economist: “Well, if everybody rode their bike 1/2 an hour a day at 20 mph there (at current helmet rates) there would be about 365,500 deaths/year at one death per 3,000,000 miles. That’s an interesting definition of “safer”.”
Interesting! Let’s do the same thing for cars.
The relevant number I remember is 1 death per 68 million miles, or about 1/22 as often as for bicycles.
1/22 * 365,000 = 16590, while the actual number for car deaths is about 35000 per year.
So presently, every person in America is driving/traveling about 5 miles per day by motor vehicle.
I suspect if you replaced all vehicle miles traveled, and replaced it with only bicycle miles (and doubled it)
this would be a very different country.
I also suspect that 1 fatality per 3M bicycle miles statistic might change if there were no motor vehicles running.
Furthermore, I think a loss of 365,000 people year in bike fatalities would be overwhelmed by the added lifespans due to better health.
Another Halocene Human
@Mnemosyne: Not when your hairstyle costs $30 a week.
///
Comrade Mary
@E:
Huh? All the stats I’ve seen indicates that being struck from behind is actually a very rare way to get hit. Getting doored, hit at an intersection (via a right cross, bad left turn, or by you or a car running the lights) all seem to do a great job of killing people. Intersections are dangerous, EVEN MORE dangerous if you blithely cross your green light via sidewalk without looking for traffic.
(Oh man, do I have to remind people that trying to sneak by cars on the right at an intersection is really, really dangerous? A Toronto cyclist was almost certainly killed that way by a cube van turning right last year. Even when there are bike lanes, I feel annoyed/exposed by the cars doing whatever they like to the left of me. I pass right-turning cars (carefully, after a shoulder check) on the left, and usually set myself in the middle of the curb lane when approaching a line of cars at a red light.)
That’s generally good advice, for sure.
Another Halocene Human
@catclub: Maybe they don’t encourage OR discourage bicycling, or if they do, it’s a third order effect you’d be straining to detect out of the noise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis
Larv
@Another Halocene Human:
You just posted a full paragraph of irrelevant crap about building codes for stairs, and you’re criticizing me for spitballing? Hold on, I have a kettle here that I think you’d get along with famously.
Seriously, can you please explain how you think any of that is relevant? I was replying to gbear’s contention that any degree of risk of TBI was unacceptable, not arguing that stairs are safety hazards.
Laertes
@Mnemosyne:
Still wrong, I’m afraid. Right from the get-go I was saying that your argument for wearing helmets on bikes also functions perfectly well as an argument for wearing helmets in cars.
So you need a better argument for wearing helmets on bikes. “It’s safer” won’t do, because it’s also safer to wear a helmet in a car. The real question is “how much safer” and for reasons passing understanding you refuse to see the validity of that question.
Another Halocene Human
@Laertes: you’re most likely pulling a fast one and you need to back up and think about whether you’ve really given your opponent the careful and charitable reading that they deserve.
After you.
Cassidy
@Laertes: You misread. there is no anger and bitterness. Please by all means, don’t wear your helmet. All I ask is that when the inevitable does happen, please make it easy on those who are charged with taking care of you because you feel the need to be contrarian and show how independent you are. And don’t have kids.
@Another Halocene Human: It sucks. I live in Jacksonvuille, btw. I put my kids, all 4 of them, in the YMCA summer camp last year so they’d stay active throughout the summer. I couldn’t leave them at home, obviously, and I didn’t want to anyway. It cost me a small fortune. It’s going to cost me just as much for two this year. The oldest two are old enough to stay home, but to do what? It’s aggravating. Fortunately, I use after school care that incorporates activities so I’m not criss-crossing town, but I pay for that convenience. This shits getting out of control. I’m fortunate in that my wife and I make decent money, but wtf are most people supposed to do?
Another Halocene Human
@Mnemosyne: But but but Dan said upthread that there were no studies with statistically significant samples so, sadly, we could never know!
Another Halocene Human
@Larv: Not all trolls set out to be one.
Mnemosyne
@E:
They did a lot of studies in Australia after the mandatory laws were passed … in 1991. Most of the people quoting statistics from Australia are still using those 20-year-old statistics. So I would at least like to see some statistics from 2010 forward before I buy that mandatory helmet laws permanently lower bicycle use.
The British study I was referring to was the one by Dr. Ian Walker, who used his own experiences (and solely his own experiences) to “prove” that wearing a bicycle helmet makes drivers more careless. I’ve never seen anyone replicate the study with more than one participant, but it gets quoted a lot on the anti-helmet side, so I was assuming that was the study you were referring to. If it was a different study, let me know.
Another Halocene Human
@Mnemosyne: Shower falls:
http://www.cdc.gov/features/fallrisks/
The flailing just gets sillier and sillier. Yup, nobody ever mitigates serious risks in their environment except for those dorky commuter bicyclists and weenie velo racers and nutso mtn biking enthusiasts and professional cyclists. The rest of us are just jammin’ fingers into light sockets because, hey, why not? YOLO.
Mnemosyne
@Comrade Mary:
I’m guessing that getting hit from behind is the kind of accident that’s most likely to generate a lawyer visit because it’s the most likely one to be caused by driver misconduct. Getting right-hooked or hit by a door is usually considered an “ordinary” accident that gets handled by the driver’s insurance company.
Fair Economist
@catclub:
Sedentary lifestyle (ie cardiac and diabetes deaths) would cause more deaths, but in terms of years of life lost bicycling might actually beat it (that math is not easy enough to do off the top of my head).
To be fair, most bicycle deaths are from auto accidents, so if *everybody* bicycled then the mortality rate would be considerably lower. Still high enough to be a major public health problem, tho.
Comrade Mary
Aha! Stats on type of collisions (and a pretty good guide to riding safely). Being hit from behind while riding in a straight line makes up less than 5% of collisions. Six of the top ten involve intersections. Riding around parked cars unsafely, riding the wrong way, and getting the door prize make up the rest of the list.
For additional GRAR, please note the separate section of the site where the writer explains why he thinks helmets aren’t that important compared to safe cycling practices.
I’m with him up to this point (although I’m not sure that “most” people are choosing helmet-only: that seems to be a bit of a straw man). I think the evidence he subsequently assembles against the efficacy of helmets is mixed, at best. (He also cites that one-person study from Bath about drivers veering closer to riders with helmets.)
Mnemosyne
@Laertes:
Why? I’m completely serious. Cars already have multiple safety features designed to prevent head injuries. Bicycles do not. So why is the only possible equivalent to a bike helmet making people wear helmets inside cars? Why is riding a bicycle without a helmet exactly like riding in a car with a seatbelt and airbags?
Another Halocene Human
@Laertes: My argument is that the risks of riding a bike without a helmet are, for some riders in some circumstances, pretty small. But when someone upthread asked “how small?” what he got was an angry chorus of it doesn’t matter how small, any safety improvement is worth the cost and inconvenience of wearing a helmet.
Bzzt, wrong. “Someone” asked about the absolute risk in general, then brought up the special snowflake circumstances later on. Multiple sources have given you statistics on that absolute risk, which you are steadfastly ignoring.
If you want to be this dishonest, take it to your own blog where you can retroactively edit your own entries and delete comments you don’t like.
Cassidy
@Mnemosyne: Because SHUT UP! That’s why.
Another Halocene Human
@Larv: Hardly. Laertes is restating the comments of other posters in his own fashion, rather than quoting them directly and soberly answering their points. That’s a classic strawman technique.
My comment about advocacy is an observation only, not a response to an argument or an argument, so it is not a strawman argument because it is not an argument.
I also don’t see anyone providing evidence that my observation is off the mark.
Another Halocene Human
@E: However, there actually *is* evidence that mandatory helmet laws (1) dramatically reduce the number of cyclists on the road,
Prove it. More people in the US are riding now than 15 years ago and more are riding helmets, so this can’t be a first order effect.
(2) the mere sight of a cyclist wearing a helmet conveys to the average person that cycling is a dangerous activity, and
As related above thread, cycling IS a dangerous activity. I think people can see that without the “signal”. If the “signal” were so important you would not see dramatic differences between male and female cycling rates in the USA.
(3) the number one correlation with reduced bicycle collisions is more other cyclists on the road.
Aaaaaaaand correlation is not causation. Large #s of bikes on the road are CORRELATED with changes to road infrastructure like physically separated bike lanes, road diets, etc. In fact, there is a time-linked relationship, ie MORE bikes AFTER the road is CHANGED which might imply CAUSALITY.
Drivers behave very differently when they are used to seeing cyclists.
Drivers behave very differently on a three lane with median-protected crosswalks, grade separated bike lanes, and buses making frequent stops in line with traffic than they do on 5-lane 45mph urban speedways with bikes in the gutter.
Mnemosyne
@Comrade Mary:
I remember reading that website when I first got my bike and started commuting to work, and I completely agree with him that a helmet is no substitute for riding safely and good bike infrastructure. It would be like, well, putting six-point safety harnesses in cars but not making people get licenses or putting in stoplights at busy intersections.
But I think his point would have been even stronger if he hadn’t felt compelled to try and run down bike helmets at the same time.
E
@Comrade Mary:
That’s why I said “if you are going to get really hurt or killed.” I do not dispute what you say. I only have observed that most of my *serious* injury clients and thus far 100 percent of wrongful death clients have been hit-from-behind collisions. Consider all caveats about anecdotal, small-set conclusions to have been made!
Another Halocene Human
If what E said were correct, drivers in my small down would not keep running over cyclists on the state-maintained 4+ lane high speed no bike lane roads and yet manage not to hit all the bikes flooding our city-maintained downtown complete streets. If you live here you can’t really avoid the downtown area entirely, so you see bikes all the time, yeah, even the drivers that never see a bike until the bicyclist is on their hood.
catclub
@Mnemosyne: Because it implies the comparison of two cases:
1. You are in the car, and have an accident which may give you head injury, but are not wearing a helmet ( still with the seatbelts and airbags).
2. You are in the car, and have an accident which may give you head injury, but ARE wearing a helmet ( still with the seatbelts and airbags).
His argument is that between those two cases, wearing a helmet will reduce your chances ( by an amount no matter how small, but greater than zero) of head injury.
Or reduce the severity of said head injury.
This is a paraphrase of ‘you should wear a bicycle helmet because it will reduce your risk of head injury’.
No, you should wear a bike helmet IF it reduces your risk of head injury ENOUGH to make it worth the trouble, and likewise for wearing a helmet in car with seatbelts and airbags.
It is likely that the time and trouble to wear a helmet in a car is less than the time and trouble to wear a helmet on a bike. But the benefit on the bike is likely to be far greater. That does not make the benefit
on a bike infinite, nor the benefit in a car zero.
Now the argument I have been making is that there are health and other intangible benefits to bicycling, such that, if you are going to ride anyway, you ( or in this case I) should wear a helmet. But if the helmet is a dealbreaker, ditch the helmet and ride the bike.
Others are effectively saying, if the helmet is a dealbreaker, do not ride the bike, It is too dangerous.
I disagree.
Another Halocene Human
@catclub: No, because it hampers visibility, meaning you’re more likely to run over someone or cause a collision with another vehicle.
The airbags are there to protect your head.
Mnemosyne
@Another Halocene Human:
Actually, he’s right about #3 — there are good studies that show the effect exists and drivers are more careful around bicycles when they’re used to sharing the road with bicycles.
But what it reduces is car-vs.-bicycle accidents (which, to be fair, are the most likely to be fatal). It doesn’t reduce overall accidents from other causes, which are more the reason I wear my helmet. If I get hit by a car going 40 MPH, no helmet on earth is going to save me, but a helmet will absolutely help me if I hit a pothole and flip over the handlebars.
gbear
@Larv:” I was replying to gbear’s contention that any degree of risk of TBI was unacceptable, not arguing that stairs are safety hazards.”
I wasn’t saying that any risk was unacceptable. I was asking how much risk we are were willing to take against the possibility of an accident that would result in brain damage. Of course I don’t wear a helmet to walk stairways, but I do check to see if someone is swinging open the door when I get to a landing, and I always use the handrail (more because of a bum knee than because it’s mandated).
When I’m riding a bike or my scooter, I feel that the risks associated with not wearing the helmet are unacceptable. I don’t have enough control over the environment to make riding without a helmet feel like a prudent choice. For me, wearing a helmet when I ride is simply a no-brainer. Your mileage (or brain) may vary.
Another Halocene Human
@Laertes: It’s not trivial when you hit it in less than a decade, well below a human lifespan.
But go ahead and cherry pick quotes if it makes you feel like a man.
E
@Mnemosyne:
I wasn’t clear back there, sorry. What I should have said is that I never made the argument at all that drivers are more careless around helmet users. In fact, that argument seems as weird and suspect to me as it does to you. I think maybe you misread my first post to say that, but I am pretty sure it didn’t.
Laertes
@Mnemosyne:
Because your argument for riding a helmet on a bike is that it’s safer, and that it doesn’t matter how much safer. The mere fact that it’s safer is reason enough.
Another Halocene Human
@catclub: Well, exactly.
Another Halocene Human
@Laertes: Sure, you took it personally. I don’t think it was meant that way by everyone who said it. Especially since real data was given on organ donation only a few comments in.
I don’t know about bicyclists, but motorcyclists and organ donation is no joke at all. And with the exception of some under-18 laws, the vast majority of helmet laws and helmet law advocacy is directed at motorbike users, not bicyclists.
I’m not sure who’s trying to take away your right to bike without a helmet, but it’s not me. But I’m not going to sit here and counterfactually argue that bike riding on US roads is perfectly safe or that riding a helmet isn’t worth it.
Another Halocene Human
@Laertes: Perhaps you should come back to this thread when you’re not angry and look at all the statistics that have been thrown out here. Somebody upthread said that helmets reduce relative risk of fatality by 68%.
That would be pretty damn good in a pharmaceutical trial.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
It’s a bogus comparison. You are comparing a situation that already has safety equipment in place — seatbelts and airbags — and one that has no safety equipment in place. You are saying that adding safety equipment to existing equipment is exactly the same as adding equipment where there is no equipment.
Even the “helmet in the shower” comparison makes more sense since you’re talking about two equivalent situations.
Your risk of injury is ALREADY reduced by riding in a car with seatbelts and airbags. In what way is your risk of injury similarly reduced by not wearing a bike helmet?
catclub
@Comrade Mary: This. The most important safety device is what is inside the head.
E
@Another Halocene Human:
Oh come on. (1) has been shown and anyway any time you put a restriction like that on an activity it is likely to go down. (2) Stating as you do that “Cycling IS a dangerous activity” leaves out the “compared to . . . ” and it just is not so clear, as I repeatedly said. Me riding my bike on the greenway to my girlfriend’s house, as I often do (helmeted, fyi), is bound to be safer than me driving through countless intersections. And no I can’t “prove” it is safer.
As for correlation not being causation, yes, duh, it’s why I made the point clear, I’m just stating something that has been observed in the scant literature on the subject. It’s not that hard to grasp the HYPOTHESIS that mandatory helmet use lowers overall ridership and increased overall ridership decreases overall injury rates among cyclists. Be aware I wear a helmet on every ride, vocally urge my friends to, and am acutely aware as a personal injury attorney how important this is in a given collision.
But my mind is open and sensitive to the power of the competing view.
Another Halocene Human
@different-church-lady: Yeah, so in my neck of the woods you see two groups that wear helmets a lot: bike racing enthusiasts and kids. You might start to infer stuff from that. The bike racing enthusiasts often drive aggressively and violate traffic regulations in their enthusiasm, while the kids, not being drivers themselves, are the classic naive user. They have no idea what a car can and can’t (or can but is unlikely to) see, and thus ride as if everyone shares their view of the road.
You might then infer that helmet usage per se has some relationship to riding risk when it most likely does not, or if it does, it’s so tiny that we haven’t been able to measure it yet.
Another Halocene Human
@Mnemosyne: But in #3, which my theory of the road would predict also, says nothing about why this is–which is a very important question!
Comrade Mary
@E: I saw how you phrased that, and referred to intersections as Best Death Traps EVAH! (paraphrase) later on, but yeah, I agree that you were talking about fatal accidents and I may not have made the comparison clear.
But I think there’s more than your small set of data going on: as mentioned above by another commenter, I think most people (juries) would consider hit-from-behind to be a more open and shut case for driver error, and cyclists involved in those kinds of accidents would be more likely to pursue a lawsuit. A right hook accident (scroll down to #6 and #7), or the Red Light of Death, where a car turns into a bike that was on its right, may often be the fault of the driver, but could also happen because a cyclist went into a blind spot when trying to go through an intersection beside a car that signaled its intentions to turn right.
catclub
@Mnemosyne: “You are comparing a situation that already has safety equipment ”
and I just posted on that. The most important safety device is the one inside the head. The helmet is an additional device. Brakes are also a safety device.
“Your risk of injury is ALREADY reduced by riding in a car with seatbelts and airbags. In what way is your risk of injury similarly reduced by not wearing a bike helmet?”
No one said similarly. The original posting said that ANY reduction in risk is worth doing.
No one has claimed that not wearing a helmet is MORE safe.
They are claiming that if a helmet makes you MORE safe on a bike, then it also makes you MORE safe in a car, or shower.
I am not claiming that it would be sensible to wear a helmet in the shower, and to NOT wear a helmet on a bike.
But you keep turning in into that argument.
Another Halocene Human
@E: Oh come on. (1) has been shown and anyway any time you put a restriction like that on an activity it is likely to go down.
“I don’t have to prove my assertions and anyway, it’s intuitively correct.”
(2) Stating as you do that “Cycling IS a dangerous activity” leaves out the “compared to . . . ”
other modes of transportation, of course!
Me riding my bike on the greenway to my girlfriend’s house, as I often do (helmeted, fyi), is bound to be safer than me driving through countless intersections. And no I can’t “prove” it is safer.
You can’t prove it because it isn’t true. Riding an enclosed modern US car on US roads IS safer than biking in a blunt force trauma kind of way. Sure, sitting is bad for your health, and getting flabby might be bad for your love life, but that’s not the question on the table, is it?
As for correlation not being causation, yes, duh, it’s why I made the point clear, I’m just stating something that has been observed in the scant literature on the subject. It’s not that hard to grasp the HYPOTHESIS that mandatory helmet use lowers overall ridership and increased overall ridership decreases overall injury rates among cyclists.
Yes, but you are still using rhetoric to defend a view without any factual support.
My HYPOTHESIS is that the built environment has a much more dramatic effect on bicycle usage than any law targeted at road users. I think my hypothesis fits the observed data much better and makes nice predictions by which we test its robustness.
Your theory would predict that increasing helmet usage would result in lower bike miles traveled but this is trivially untrue in our country. You have yet to provide any explanation for the first order effect that is mucking with your now clearly second or third order effect.
Mnemosyne
@Laertes:
That doesn’t make your argument that we need to add extra safety equipment to cars to make them equivalent to riding a bicycle with a helmet any less bogus. Where are your statistics to show that riding without a helmet is equally as safe as riding in/driving a car with seatbelts and airbags? You’re the one defending the “no helmet” side, so it’s not my job to find the statistics to prop up your argument.
You risk of severe head injury is five (5) times greater if you are not wearing a helmet than if you are wearing a helmet. There’s your answer. I’m sorry you don’t like it and that you want to hear that there is no difference, but facts are facts.
Another Halocene Human
@Comrade Mary: I think it likely that right hooks get blamed on the cyclist on scene NO MATTER the road laws in that area because right hooks with two motor vehicles are basically always blamed on the victim. For example, if you are in a car and get “cut off” (a right hook), good luck trying to get out of a ticket for “failure to yield” or “failure to maintain following distance”. In my experience as a commercial driver, car drivers often assume that big vehicles are traveling more slowly, even when they’re not, and right hook us all the time, and we often–usually–get blamed. It doesn’t matter if the driver at fault totally disregarded every traffic control device, was driving like a maniac, and no human being could hit the brakes that fast.
(This is why I have a reputation as a slowpoke on city streets. Seriously.)
So I would be really, really shocked if bicyclists were not typically blamed by LE for their right hook incidents.
Knowing the kind of stuff that is not prosecuted or blamed on the bicyclist that goes over the bike activist network, and that even bicyclists consider right hooks to be a gray area that should be preventable by a defensive cyclist, I’m sure it happens a LOT.
liberal
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t disagree. I assume you understand that that’s not covered by the post I was responding to, though.
Central Planning
@Laertes:
No. The probability of the ball landing on black is the same. The probability that a ball lands on black if you had 49 past reds does not change.
However, the probability of getting at least one black in 50 spins is quite high. Exactly one black in 50 spins is probably quite low.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
The original post said that cyclists without helmets are five (5) times more likely to have a serious head injury than ones who did wear helmets.
So is your argument that a fivefold difference is not statistically significant enough to say that people should wear helmets, because it’s such a minuscule reduction in risk? If so, what reduction in risk would you say is worth it? If cyclists wearing helmets were 10 times more likely to not get a brain injury rather than “only” 5 times more likely, would that be worth it?
You’re having a bit of a logic problem today, I think. If wearing a helmet on a bicycle is the same as wearing one in the car or in the shower, then what you’re making is an argument that wearing a bicycle helmet is equally as foolish as wearing one in the car or in the shower, so therefore helmets should not be worn.
Another Halocene Human
@catclub: The original poster was being honest and assumed that a bunch of honest actors would understand that a significant reduction in relative risk in an activity with high absolute risk where the cost of adoption is low would be a slam-dunk.
More and more people think so as more and more people are wearing helmets.
I’ve found your comments quite thoughtful on this thread so far, so I’m perplexed that you are bringing up the already debunked straw man that Americans are at higher risk of shower falls than Americans who bike’s risk of death on the bike. The math has been done for everyone to see on this very thread. It’s not even remotely true.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
I know it wasn’t — I assumed they had their terminology mixed up and were confusing the statistical likelihood of having an accident with the statistical correlation of miles traveled with the accident rate.
liberal
@Mnemosyne:
Again, for the umpteenth time, you can’t make any rational cost/benefit calculations knowing only the relative risk and not the absolute risks.
Now, my best guess as to the absolute risk is that it’s certainly high enough to always wear a helmet. But a guess isn’t an argument.
liberal
@Mnemosyne:
Agreed (I think). To me a reasonable model would be that chance of an accident is roughly proportional to number of miles biked. (Probably worse than that, though, since the more you bike, the more likely you are to be doing things like biking at night.)
ISTM the person I was responding to was instead talking about the chance of an accident given no accident up to now (“conditioned on…”), which isn’t the same thing.
E
@Another Halocene Human:
I really don’t get you. I get what you are attempting to say, I just don’t get why. I agree — not being an idiot, of course I agree — that increased bike infrastructure increases ridership. I can’t prove it though. Similarly, you can’t prove your flat assertion that driving my car to my girlfriend’s house — across a five-lane highway and through multiple big intersections — is safer for me than me, a very experienced cyclist, riding along a car-free greenway to her house, which I do often.
What a pointless argument to be having.
HOWEVER, I will concede your original points, and agree that maybe implementing a helmet law would not decrease as I say, but increase ridership, and maybe you are right that when people see everyone in helmets they do not form or strengthen their conclusions that cycling is dangerous, and maybe safety for cyclists goes down, not up, when there are more cyclists on the road. Who knows? Maybe you are right and the hypothesis I’ve been describing is bunk. God knows you are correct that I can’t prove any of it.
I never got into this thread to argue for not wearing a helmet. On the contrary, as I have said repeatedly, I hold the opposite view.
catclub
@Another Halocene Human: I thought I brought up fall in showers because, although the numbers are MUCH higher than bicycle deaths
(According to the CDC In 2005, more than 15,800 people over the age of 65 died as a result of a fall. Up from 7,700 a decade earlier.) versus about 600-900 bicycle deaths for the entire nation, the population at risk of a fall is far different than the population at risk for a bicycle injury. Given those two numbers (gigantic 15800 versus minuscule 600-900) the real relevant math is knowing the number of people at risk, and for how long, etc.
I was trying to be ironic – joke on me.
I also know, that helmets in the shower might not be cost effective, even if they reduced head injuries by more (in total number) than they could be reduced on bicycles.
Jack the Second
Is riding a bicycle really the only way to get exercise? You’re setting up a false dichotomy by pretending the choice is “no helmets; people cycling; people getting exercise” and “helmets; people not cycling; people not getting exercise”.
There are lots of aerobic activities which don’t involve occasionally throwing yourself face first at the ground at 20 mph.
AC in DC
That study was based on ambulance responses. Not all cycling accidents require an ambulance. Not all bicyclists will have an accident. I acknowledge risk exists, but believe it to be somewhat overstated. It doesn’t hurt my feelings if you have a different take and make different choices.
The studies and numbers are hard to pin down. BS comparisons to driving and stairs and slipping in the shower aren’t helpful.
Laertes
@Mnemosyne:
Is it the voices in your head who are saying that riding a bike without a helmet is as safe as riding in a car with seatbelts and airbags? Because nobody in this thread is. Every time you’ve tried to quote me saying this you’ve instead clowned it up and shown me to be saying nothing of the sort.
Five (5) times greater than what? If you learned that wearing a helmet in the shower reduced your risk of TBI in a slip-and-fall by 80%, would you wear it?
Here comes the sentence that is magically invisible to your eyes:
Or would you maybe skip it, on the grounds that reducing an already-very-small risk doesn’t significantly change your risk burden?
catclub
@Jack the Second: “Is riding a bicycle really the only way to get exercise?”
Yes, SATSQ. Now pick a side!
Mnemosyne
@Laertes:
What’s the point of bringing up car helmets if you’re not making a comparison between driving/riding in a car and riding a bicycle?
You say you’re not comparing riding in/driving a car with riding a bicycle when you bring up car helmets vs. bike helmets. If that’s the case, then what are you comparing? Answer in small words.
Five times greater than your risk of a head injury if you wear a bike helmet and get into an accident.
Okay, now you’ve completely switched arguments. You are no longer arguing about the efficacy of bike helmets and have changed arguments to asking how frequent bike accidents are.
You do realize that you changed your argument midstream, right, and that this is not the same argument as the one at the beginning of your comment?
Mnemosyne
@Laertes:
Also, I’ll go ahead and reiterate what’s already been said in the thread multiple times, but that you seem to have ignored:
500,000 people are taken to the emergency room every year after a bicycle accident. About 700 people die.
So there’s part of your question — there are at least 500,000 bicycle accidents every year that are serious enough to require emergency treatment at the hospital.
It’s hard to get a good estimate of how many bicyclists there are, but this report (PDF) says about 16 million bicycles were sold in 2001. So let’s say for the sake of argument that there are 16 million bicyclists in the US and, of those, 500K went to the emergency room after an accident.
Someone who’s better at math than I am will have to do the actual statistics, but 500K seriously injured out of 16 million seems like a high enough proportion to decide to wear a $20 helmet. YMMV of course but, again, don’t expect the rest of us to admire what a rebel you are for not wearing a helmet.
catclub
@Mnemosyne: “500,000 people are taken to the emergency room every year after a bicycle accident. About 700 people die.”
of course, there is also this:Nearly 2.6 million drivers and passengers were treated in emergency departments after being in a motor vehicle crash. Nearly 33,000 people in the United States died in a motor vehicle crash.
(Should I see how many cars were bought last year to estimate how many vehicle passengers there are? It might make car riding seem dangerous.)
and this:Falls account for over 8 million hospital emergency room visits, representing the leading cause of visits (21.3%). Slips and falls account for over 1 million visits, or 12% of total falls.
Now which of these three should one attempt to reduce?
Perhaps the one where the improvement is most cost effective? Or are two of these activities so safe that even suggesting a safety improvement for those activities is absurd on its face?
Somebody does indeed have a problem with logic today.
Larv
@Mnemosyne:
Are you really unfamiliar with a reductio argument?
Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s been his argument all along. I don’t think I’ve seen anybody at all in this thread argue that helmets aren’t effective at preventing TBI. What we want to know is what’s the baseline we’re comparing them to.
You just can’t have a meaningful discussion about risk without talking about both relative and absolute risk. If my lifetime chance of suffering a TBI on a bike is 1 in a million with a helmet, then it’s 5 in a million without one. That’s still a very, very low risk. And yes, I just pulled that # out of my ass. My (and Laertes and others) point is that you need to have at least some idea of what that # is before you can decide whether the risk is tolerable or not, and whether measure to abate that risk are reasonable.
I really think that you would find this fairly uncontroversial in a different context. Say a NRA type cited a study that found you were 5 times more likely to survive a home invasion if you have an gun in the house. Would you find that a compelling argument against gun control without some discussion of just what the actual risk of a home invasion is? What about if you were 5 times more likely to survive a home invasion if you had steel bars on all your windows. Would you go out and buy them, or would you ask whether that’s not still a pretty small risk?
dance around in your bones
Having not read the 351 comments so far on this thread, I’d just like to say that back in the day, my husband had to lay his motorcycle down when a motorist turned right in front of him (she was distracted by the flashing lights of a police car that had pulled someone over) and when the police got to him lying in the road, he said “Hey, my head never hit the pavement, huh?” And the cops said “Man, your head was bouncing all over the road – you are lucky you had a helmet on or you would be in deep shit”. Plus the leather jacket helped.
What didn’t help was the 6-pack he had just bought that was in his backpack and shattered all over the road when he did. They thought he was drunk, but subsequent tests proved them wrong. Really, he was just riding home.
Still cost us an $800 ambulance ride (2 miles) and hospital bill uncountable.
Lesson learned – wear your helmets!!
eta: An old childhood friend of my husband was having someone tow him with a rope behind a car (on his motorcycle) and crashed. He’s been a vegetable ever since. It’s fucking tragic.
dance around in your bones
@bin Lurkin’:
This comment intrigued me, because I spent quite a bit of time in Holland and had my first child there. I rode a bike pregnant until the day I gave birth and frequently with a friend’s child on the handlebars and the saddlebags filled with groceries (daily shopping in A’dam). I don’t remember anyone ever wearing a helmet (this was back in the 70’s) but the bike police were always out in full force to make sure you had a bike light and etc, or they would take your bike and make you walk home.
I don’t know if the flatness of Holland has anything to do with it – it was hard to work up much speed on the flat roads – just sedate and productive bicycling (i.e., you were using your bike as a tool to get from here to there and back again, not as a form of exercise or freewheelin’).
Back in the day.
gbear
@dance around in your bones: @dance around in your bones: Thanks for your comments. Your experiences are a valuable addition to this (finally) dying thread.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
Yes, you should because otherwise your numbers are meaningless. If 2.6 million drivers were taken to the emergency room but there are 100 million cars on the road, that’s a much smaller ratio than if there are only 50 million cars on the road.
That’s why I brought up the absolute number of bicyclists so we can try to compare it with the number of accidents — without knowing approximately how many people are riding bikes, there’s no way to know whether that 500,000 number is a really big percentage of bicyclists or a really small percentage.
So, yes, please find out how many cars are currently on the road and report back, or else your “data” needs to be thrown out as the meaningless gibberish that it currently is.
Which, again, is why I approximated the number of bicycles on the road in connection with the number of accidents. Please stop pretending I left that information out just because you don’t like it.
JustRuss
Very late to this very crowded party, but:
1. Can we get more cycling content here? Seems to be rather popular.
2. In the interest of science, I’ve flipped over the handlebars and landed on my noggin two times, the first sans helmet, the second helmeted. I highly recommend using a helmet for that sort of activity. Still, I don’t think they should be mandatory for adults. I wear mine about 90 percent of the time.
dance around in your bones
@gbear: Hey, you’re welcome! Always happy to share ‘back in the day’ reminiscences.
I rode a bike in SoCal for a while back and forth to work, and the experience was VERY different from A’dam. Dedicated bike lanes and a culture of bike riding as totally normal made all the difference. When I rode home (at night) from my job, I had to ride between two stone walls with NO extra room for bikes (in SoCal). I felt like I was taking my life in my hands every single night. That sucked.
I loved riding a bike in A’dam, though.
pseudonymous in nc
I’ve spent a lot of time in Amsterdam: if lived there, I’d be fine riding every day without a helmet. David Hembrow has a good blog talking about the idea of “subjective safety” there and the things that make cyclists most safe, which comes down to respect and clear division of traffic and strict liability in crashes, which encourages smart driving in the limited situations where cyclists and cars share the road.
There’s also a study which suggests drivers give bikes less room when the rider is wearing a helmet, perhaps because of a subconscious sense that you’re less likely to kill them and thus have greater liberty to be an asshole.
In the US, I barely cycle, because I live somewhere with lots of shitty drivers and people in F-350s who treat cyclists as living insults to their manhood.
What’s needed (and yeah, this is the end of a long thread that I missed) is steps to build a cycling culture that’s less dominated by lycra and expensive bikes and more about transportation. What I often see is people talking about helmet laws as an alternative to that — and as a way to continue to marginalise cycling. I’m fine with mandating helmet use as part of a broader strategy, but not as a way to avoid talking about shitty or non-existent cycle lanes and drivers who shouldn’t be on the road.
pseudonymous in nc
@Joel:
And you’ll find that a lot of Dutch people have multiple bikes: the city bike for the commute (heavy, 3-speed, drum brake, dynamo) and the road bike for weekends. And the cyclocross bike and the mountain bike and so on. For long weekend trips, they’ll often wear helmets.
Larv
@Mnemosyne:
@Mnemosyne:
You realize that this assumption makes no sense, right? You’re assuming that every cyclist in the US bought a new bike that same year, which is ridiculous. The real number of cyclists is surely much larger.