Image: simonvc
Okay, there are no more excuses to be like the guy in the photo. Wear your helmet! I have worn my helmet ever since I was a kid, and even though I made it 10 years without crashing or getting hit, it only took one afternoon’s ride to leave me sprawled out on the pavement, bleeding, cursing, and with a serious concussion. Good thing I was still wearing my helmet though, or I would have died.
If you think this is an isolated incident, check out this post from Treehugger. A recent study in Canada has shown that helmet laws (and therefore increased use of helmets) among children reduces bicycle related fatalities by 50%. Over the same period, the adult death rate due to bicycle crashes rose 5%. There is no similar law requiring that adults wear helmets.
And really, why should this surpise anyone? Lots of people have lame excuses like “helmets make me ride less safely” or “helmets aren’t going to save me anyway,” but let’s be serious, that’s just stupid. I have no problem with people risking their own life over keeping their hair nice and poofy, but we need to stop pretending that helmets don’t save lives every day.
Happy riding!
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I don’t know why anyone would ride w/o one… it’s your freaking BRAIN. 🙂
oh brother…scare tactics is a show on Sci-fi. Stop trying to scare people.
For Children the helmets REDUCED fatalities. For adults, the Statistics say otherwise. In adults fatalities where INCREASED. Why? I don’t know. Do people who wear helmets just starting, or scared drivers? Who knows? You would need to do more studies and there’s too many variables. It would cost too much.
No offense, but I think people should be a little scared. If you want to ride a bike you shouldn’t take you life so lightly, :). I’m not saying you shouldn’t ride because it’s evil, but if I succumbed to peer pressure as a kid I’d be dead right now and you can’t really argue that point.
Aquilonian, there was no helmet law for the adults examined in the study. Only the kids _had_ to wear helmets – adults were free to keep their skulls unprotected. That’s how most Canadian municipalities with helmet laws do it – only minors are required to wear helmets, adults are permitted to be as foolish as they wish.
Calgary also has the same law, and I still wear a helmet, although I know many who do not. The explanation I hear most often is pretty weird: People claim they would rather die of a brain injury than be paralysed by a neck injury. If this weren’t a false dilemma, I guess it would make sense. It is a false dilemma, though, as many brain injuries don’t kill, they just damage.
I’ve seen brain-injury re-hab patients. When I bike, I wear my helmet.
1 – Helmets are to defend yourself from car (drivers’) insurers.
2 – They might help in reducing head injury, as they were designed for high speed falls in road racing and MTBing, however they won’t stop your legs being crushed off by a moron in a cement mixer.
3 – You’re more likely to die from NOT exercising than a head injury on a bicycle, where you would be exercising.
4 – Drivers drive closer to cyclists wearing helmets.
5 – More drivers have head injuries than cyclists (in total, not per kilometre) so why, um, don’t all drivers wear helmets?
6 – Helmets are another piece of ‘specialist gear’ required to partake in a ‘high risk activity’ which cycling isn’t. DIY is far more dangerous, as is chewing gum.
7 – Cambridge UK – 15% trips by bicycle, 40% wear helmets. Copenhagen triple the trips, ~2% helmet wearing, a fraction of the injuries of Cambridge. Why?
Well here is the big deal why. Societies who put all the emphasis on car-is-king culture, design everything on the highway around the car. As a result the layout, mentality and policing forces most cyclists into conflict. Instead of tackling this problem and upsetting voting motorists, just make it the fault of the cyclist as they aren’t wearing protective gear. There are less voting cyclists than drivers after all.
Or you could go down the route the Netherlands have, with road layouts, society and policing allowing cyclists to share the highway – as should be the case – with equal rights, infrastructure funding, and support from the law.
Funny thing is, with over 60% of trips by bike, almost 100% school children and students cycling, obesity is very low in the Netherlands, so is childhood depression, teenage pregnancies, youth crime……and those countries with high car-is-king cultures? Bottom of the league for these issues.
A link? Seems blindingly obvious to me, but then, I’m not a politician having his back rubbed by highway construction firms, oil companies, the car industry, auto spares and servicing industries….etc
matt #1, that may absolve the insurer of paying -as much-, but not of all, because if they say you wouldn’t have gotten injured, that’s pretty much saying, you wouldn’t have gotten hit… meaning the driver must have hit you on purpose for not wearing a helmet.
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