Never let your government get away with claiming that #bikeHelmets are "the first rule of bike safety".
Rule number one is infrastructure, and the 2nd is air+brakes+chain mechanical soundness of the bike, upright geometry of the bike, traffic awareness, ride with fingers on your brake levers and having practiced emergency stops, twenty is plenty... Helmets are for stunts or a footnote to "don't fall on your head" rule that applies to walking moreso than biking.
Helmets optional makes sense for jogging and bicycling below 10 MPH where the risks are equivalent. I wish I could remember where I read that number. I wouldn't have remembered it except from a reasonably rigorous source.
Above 20 MPH is another story. I've taken two spills at speed and was glad I was helmeted in both cases. With each fall I learned another safety rule. For example, don't pretend you have aero bars on when you don't.
@enobacon It's worth noting that public health and individual health are not necessarily the same thing. I was making this point during the Mask Wars in 2020. The folks getting all persnickety about wearing the best masks were trying to improve individual health, which is fine. But the best outcome for public health is to get to most possible people to wear any mask at all, and persnicketiness hinders this.
Of course that all became irrelevant when nearly everyone decided COVID was 'just a flu'
@jef In the helmet case, individuals will personally get the best individual health outcomes if their govt exercises good public health policy and builds safe bike infrastructure and stops talking about helmets. Whoever was going to crack their head open on the infrastructure if they didn't get told to wear a helmet probably already died of ten other things.
@enobacon this one is really complex. The statistics bear out that you save more lives by encouraging physical activity (less heart attacks, etc) than by enforcing helment laws which discourage cycling. This is one I argued strongly against, looked at the stats, and found out I was so very wrong.
@enobacon also whilst helmets may help alleviate, most injuries ain't head-first crashes but being driven over by assholes, getting doored by neglective persons or falling over something...
A helmet doesn't protect against lacerations on the extremities thaf ain't the head!
@enobacon I guess it’s a sign of the times that we now have substantial numbers of people questioning vaccines and wearing a bike helmet. Next up is hand washing I suppose.
Infrastructure, by all means, but when I pancaked a bike on a section of paved bike trail on some not-so-dry leaves at 25+ mph, I shattered my right collarbone, but my helmet saved me from at least a concussion. Complaining about “the gubmint” suggesting helmets are useful is just asinine to me.
@slyborg mentioning helmet science in the same sentence as vaccines would seem to indicate that you don't understand one or both of these in terms of public health
@enobacon@slyborg or maybe you're just prejudiced and trying to justify your bad habit as something logical. Sorry, but as a reasonable person, I'll go with the ER doctor telling me to wear the damned thing.
@creepy_owlet@slyborg I'm not sure how a reasonable person read what I wrote, about well-studied results of government policy, as saying you personally shouldn't wear one. Knock yourself out.
@enobacon Totally agree, except for the last bit. You can and you will fall, even in good overall conditions and without doing stunts, and when you do the single spot with the higher ratio of probability to hit / damage is your head.
So don't be fooled by your government AND wear your helmet.
@enobacon being an emergency doctor I saw and treated too many people riding a bicycle without helmet suffering cranial hemorrhages to approve your statement.
I enjoy riding my bike and it has to be in a good shape- no question about that. I ride more than 400 miles a month and I never, never ride without a helmet and I am not a stuntman. I'm a commuter. I like my brain and I want it to be safe.
Just wear a helmet, it really makes sense.
@kriky not in cars though? What doesn't make sense, is governments using anecdotes and biased samples like yours to absolve themselves of the responsibility for infrastructure. That kind of helmet encouragement and/or mandate also fails to protect people from sedentary diseases or the respiratory impacts of traffic emissions.
@enobacon where I live, there is no helmet mandate for cyclists. But there is a seatbelt mandate for car drivers. The kinetics in case of an accident is very different.
You're free to ride your bicycle without a helmet. It's just a stupid decision, that's my point. You're right, that there is plenty to do for the safety of cyclists but denying the fact, that helmets safe lives won't make your point more credible.
@kriky it's not a well-proven fact that helmets prevent more harm than they cause, even in terms of my personal decision to wear one, and ER studies or anecdotes don't change that. They do severely muddy the debate about public health policy though.
@kriky I've already been through enough of that article years ago, and it's not "science denial" for me to point out that it is very much not a scientific study of the health effects of helmet-oriented messaging vs placing stuff in the street to discourage speeding cars.
@enobacon your point was "it's not a well-proven fact that helmets prevent more harm than they cause" and that's wrong (or science denial).
Why do you insist on doing just one thing? Vision zero does include a lot of small or large interventions to enhance the safety of cyclists. So, let's decelerate cars AND wear a helmet.
@IngenieurStefan It doesn't help that there are more bad studies than good ones, and of course there's always someone who broke a helmet with their head and wants you to know that. The helmet laws are insidious though, particularly the kids one like Oregon so it's only required until you're old enough to drive. 🙄
@enobacon As a Dutch civil engineer I’m familiar with a high standard of cycling infrastructure. We shouldn’t take it for granted and it is very important to get people to bike. The last year’s fatalities and injuries are on the up because of the fast electric bike it seems. Helmets are not a solution. But it would help reduce negative effects.
@IngenieurStefan yeah if infrastructure is designed for 8mph but suddenly everyone is doing 28, that's not quite what we're facing in the US though, where about half of the modal shift, during a land-use transition from parking lots to housing+shops/jobs, will have to come from 5-10 mile car trips. The 5mph sidewalk bikeways are totally unfit for the speeds & volumes required, the "last mile" is 4 miles of hills, and transit isn't meeting us with charging + secure storage, or 5min frequency.
@IngenieurStefan but I ride more carefully without a helmet (and studies have shown this is a thing.) Would rather not have helmet-wielding 28mph e-bikers on the 5mph 8ft-wide* sidewalk with me. (* but half overgrown with thorny blackberry vines)
@enobacon It’s a beautiful and diverse nation you live in. Just not in infrastructure. Hopefully the recent additional budgets can help. The problem however seems to rooted deeper.
@enobacon I've taken about equal numbers of falls while biking and walking, and every time my childhood judo training kicked in and kept my head off the ground. There's an abbreviated version of the training that is just falls, no throws, and it really ought to be mandatory for schoolkids.
@vitaminsludge mandatory car helmet rule would make a huge improvement to bike safety (on account of all of the people who would quit or at least make an effort to avoid driving)
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