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Come to Amsterdam to see first hand proof of this study. Virtually no one wears helmets... because you don't have to. Infrastructure is designed to be bikers fi

Come to Amsterdam to see first hand proof of this study. Virtually no one wears helmets... because you don't have to. Infrastructure is designed to be bikers first. Drivers are constantly aware of bikes and also receive training to avoid the most common accidents (hitting a biker when opening the door - see the Dutch Reach). The biggest threat to a biker in this city is another (often less experienced) biker, pedestrians not looking around or trying to cross tram tracks parallel. However, it did take almost 40 years to get here though, changes starting in the 1970s - I do hope many cities will follow a similar route.

paulcole 9y ago
>Virtually no one wears helmets... because you don't have to. Helmets are pretty misunderstood. They don't offer much in the way of protection in a serious accident. The real value is in preventing serious head injuries in an otherwise minor fall/accident. People in Amsterdam may not wear helmets but it's because they choose not to, not because helmets aren't needed.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  This is what the anti-cycling agenda wants you to think. In reality, helmets are not worth the trouble. They potentially could make a difference in a very small percent of bike accidents and they slightly discourage biking, leading to worse overall safety and health. It's just absurd to say they are "needed".
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    > In reality, helmets are not worth the trouble. Who are you to say that? Most of my cycling is to and from work, on my own bike. Wearing a helmet costs me nothing in the way of inconvenience. I simply leave the helmet on the bike when I park it at home and at work (both secure locations). Who are you to issue some blatant proclamation that "in reality" this isn't worth the nonexistent trouble?
    - SCHiM 9y ago
      I live in the Netherlands, bike everywhere I go (almost). 99.9999% of the people on the street don't wear helmets, not when commuting, not when on a recreational drive. The most serious bicycle accident I ever saw did involve someone's head, but not a way where any helmet would have helped (his steering tube broke and sliced off half his face). I've fallen a few times, at high speeds too (rounding a corner that hasn't been de-iced ended with my hip getting closely aquatinted to the asphalt), reflexes seem to have taken care of protecting my head. I think they might offer some protecting in high speed accidents where even your body does not have time to turn your head away from the ground, but I think in those cases the chances of breaking your neck are just as high.
      - CydeWeys 9y ago
        I think I'll take the word of experts over one person's anecdotes. The experts say that wearing a helmet helps prevent injuries. This is also not theoretical to me. I hit a big pothole last year at speed, wrecked, and broke my ankle. I was wearing a helmet and the helmet struck the pavement. My head was completely uninjured. It may not have been uninjured had I not been wearing the helmet. Saying "reflexes protect you" is seriously underestimating how much ragdolling is going on in the split seconds while you're going over the handlebars before smashing into the road or some object.
        SCHiM 9y ago
        Well I certainly did not study how much your helmets protects you... But, given the fact that, like I said, virtually everybody here cycles, I'm aware of the fact that nobody in my family ever hit their head in a way that caused any permanent damage. None of my friends ever have, none of my teachers, coworkers or anybody else I know (maybe they died before they met me?). The type of cycling I'm talking about is very close to the speed that our reflexes are evolved to deal with, I know exactly how it feels to fall of a bike and I'm not underestimating anything I'm sure. But going back to the original point: So does a helmet help prevent injuries? Yes I'm quite sure they do. Is it worth the bother to lug your helmet with you everywhere? Nope, not for me, and not for anybody else I know, including my 90 year old grandmother. We might as well wear full body armor on the sidewalks, I also think they'd prevent injury in certain cases, but most of the time it'd just be inconvenient and hot.
  - paulcole 9y ago
    >This is what the anti-cycling agenda wants you to think. LOL well it worked. I've never driven a car and bike everywhere. Also cracked my helmet (not my skull) in a slow speed fall when I landed on my butt and fell backwards banging my helmeted head on the pavement.
    - quadrangle 9y ago
      I don't know where to put this in an already dense thread but: Helmets are good for those willing to ride with them. For those who will only ride without a helmet, far better for them to bicycle without helmets than to not bicycle. THAT is the point. To the extent that helmet-wearing reduces total bicycling, we are worse off if we push helmets. To the extent that you're talking about someone who would bike either way, wearing a helmet is a good extra safety measure. But bicycling without a helmet (especially, as the article emphasizes, in a culture of widespread biking) is far safer than driving a car.
      - halostatue 9y ago
        This is a good point: better get people on bikes at all, then convince them that using protective gear is better than not using protective gear. Lots of people roller-blade. When they start, they don’t usually start with all the pads and guards…but most experienced bladers have them. Even in cycling, lots of people don’t wear cycling gloves (I can’t entirely blame them; I have a funny hand tan…), but in the event of an accident, they can save your palms from being shredded.
      - akvadrako 9y ago
        Well put.
  - dahart 9y ago
    > In reality, helmets are not worth the trouble. Where are you getting this information? Statistics from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Fatality Facts: Bicycles - 2014 "Helmet use has been estimated to reduce the odds of head injury by 50 percent, and the odds of head, face, or neck injury by 33 percent." "During the past few years, no more than 17 percent of fatally injured bicyclists were wearing helmets." Statistics from New York City "Almost three-quarters of fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury. Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet." http://bhsi.org/stats.htm http://bhsi.org/stats.htm
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- askvictor 9y ago
  Helmets also discourage cycling by sending the message (however faint) that cycling is a dangerous activity. Which reduces the number of cyclists, which, by this study, makes cycling a more dangerous activity.
- dahart 9y ago
  > Helmets are pretty misunderstood. They don't offer much in the way of protection in a serious accident Have you got a source for that claim? http://bhsi.org/stats.htm#effectiveness http://bhsi.org/stats.htm#effectiveness "Helmets provide a 66 to 88% reduction in the risk of head, brain and severe brain injury for all ages of bicyclists. Helmets provide equal levels of protection for crashes involving motor vehicles (69%) and crashes from all other causes (68%). Injuries to the upper and mid facial areas are reduced 65%. Authors' conclusions Helmets reduce bicycle-related head and facial injuries for bicyclists of all ages involved in all types of crashes, including those involving motor vehicles. Our response to comments from critics are presented in the Feedback section. Plain Language Summary Wearing a helmet dramatically reduces the risk of head and facial injuries for bicyclists involved in a crash, even if it involves a motor vehicle."
  - exceptione 9y ago
    You are referring to the US situation. As a dutchie, I wouldn't even want to bike with a helmet in the US. Of course, helmets work to an extent when the conditions are extremely hostile. They have (limited) value. True. The solution isn't to leave the unsafe conditions untouched and protect just a part of the body by means of a helmet, rather it is making the driving conditions for bikers safe. As it turns out, those safe conditions render the helmet as unnecesary. As pointed out, helmets could be a net loss in safety in a safe biker environment. Biker helmets are a sign of bad road safety.
    - rsfern 9y ago
      I agree with you that having all cyclists wear helmets wouldn't strictly increase overall safety (maybe people will switch to driving...), but I think you're discounting the utility of helmets even where collisions with motorized vehicles isn't the primary risk. Here are stats from the Netherlands [0]. Looks like there are about 9000 serious crashes each year that don't involve motor vehicles, with about 2500 cases annually of head/brain injury. That's actually a much higher rate than for crashes involving cars in the Netherlands, presumably because of the infrastructure and culture.... [0]: https://www.swov.nl/en/facts-figures/factsheet/bicycle-helmets https://www.swov.nl/en/facts-figures/factsheet/bicycle-helme...
- throwaway287391 9y ago
  Helmets also make drivers drive closer to you [1]. Given that, I'm genuinely unsure whether helmets actually decrease the expected risk of injury. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-helmets-attract-cars-to-cyclists/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-...
  - dahart 9y ago
    You read the paragraph in that article you linked that ends with "When you do have that crash, you better have it on."? All you have to do to know for sure whether helmets result in more or less net risk of injury is look at the statistics for the people who've been killed wearing helmets vs not wearing helmets. http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/pedestrians-and-bicyclists/fatalityfacts/bicycles/2015 http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/pedestrians-and-bicyclists... Walker's research didn't show an increase in accidents or injuries, it showed drivers who are 3 feet away getting a little over 3 inches closer. I'm not personally more afraid of cars getting a little closer according to one guy than I am of the direct and overwhelming evidence supported by multiple studies of reduced risk of death when wearing a helmet. "The cars were giving him, on average, a very wide passing clearance already," he explains, noting that most vehicles typically stayed well over three feet from the bikes, rendering the 3.35-inch discrepancy to be insignificant." Also, my personal anecdata of getting buzzed by cars in the US is that it's happening less often as bike awareness goes up. In direct support of the article at the top, I suppose. I feel like cars are giving me more room now than they used to. Walker's study was 10 years ago, maybe we've already made up for the 3.4 inches already. So if you ride, for the sake of you and your family and friends, I hope you find confidence and pride in wearing your brain bucket.
    - throwaway287391 9y ago
      > You read the paragraph in that article you linked that ends with "When you do have that crash, you better have it on."? Yes, but if helmets raise your risk of having a crash to begin with (due to cars driving closer to you or otherwise), it's unclear whether it's better to wear one or not. (Higher risk of less destructive crashes vs. lower risk of more destructive crashes.) > All you have to do to know for sure whether helmets result in more or less net risk of injury is look at the statistics for the people who've been killed wearing helmets vs not wearing helmets. I disagree -- that's correlation, not causation. Perhaps people who wear helmets are just more careful in general. (That seems pretty likely to me.)

paulcole 9y ago

>Virtually no one wears helmets... because you don't have to. Helmets are pretty misunderstood. They don't offer much in the way of protection in a serious accident. The real value is in preventing serious head injuries in an otherwise minor fall/accident. People in Amsterdam may not wear helmets but it's because they choose not to, not because helmets aren't needed.

akvadrako 9y ago
This is what the anti-cycling agenda wants you to think. In reality, helmets are not worth the trouble. They potentially could make a difference in a very small percent of bike accidents and they slightly discourage biking, leading to worse overall safety and health. It's just absurd to say they are "needed".
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  > In reality, helmets are not worth the trouble. Who are you to say that? Most of my cycling is to and from work, on my own bike. Wearing a helmet costs me nothing in the way of inconvenience. I simply leave the helmet on the bike when I park it at home and at work (both secure locations). Who are you to issue some blatant proclamation that "in reality" this isn't worth the nonexistent trouble?
  - SCHiM 9y ago
    I live in the Netherlands, bike everywhere I go (almost). 99.9999% of the people on the street don't wear helmets, not when commuting, not when on a recreational drive. The most serious bicycle accident I ever saw did involve someone's head, but not a way where any helmet would have helped (his steering tube broke and sliced off half his face). I've fallen a few times, at high speeds too (rounding a corner that hasn't been de-iced ended with my hip getting closely aquatinted to the asphalt), reflexes seem to have taken care of protecting my head. I think they might offer some protecting in high speed accidents where even your body does not have time to turn your head away from the ground, but I think in those cases the chances of breaking your neck are just as high.
    - CydeWeys 9y ago
      I think I'll take the word of experts over one person's anecdotes. The experts say that wearing a helmet helps prevent injuries. This is also not theoretical to me. I hit a big pothole last year at speed, wrecked, and broke my ankle. I was wearing a helmet and the helmet struck the pavement. My head was completely uninjured. It may not have been uninjured had I not been wearing the helmet. Saying "reflexes protect you" is seriously underestimating how much ragdolling is going on in the split seconds while you're going over the handlebars before smashing into the road or some object.
      - SCHiM 9y ago
        Well I certainly did not study how much your helmets protects you... But, given the fact that, like I said, virtually everybody here cycles, I'm aware of the fact that nobody in my family ever hit their head in a way that caused any permanent damage. None of my friends ever have, none of my teachers, coworkers or anybody else I know (maybe they died before they met me?). The type of cycling I'm talking about is very close to the speed that our reflexes are evolved to deal with, I know exactly how it feels to fall of a bike and I'm not underestimating anything I'm sure. But going back to the original point: So does a helmet help prevent injuries? Yes I'm quite sure they do. Is it worth the bother to lug your helmet with you everywhere? Nope, not for me, and not for anybody else I know, including my 90 year old grandmother. We might as well wear full body armor on the sidewalks, I also think they'd prevent injury in certain cases, but most of the time it'd just be inconvenient and hot.
- paulcole 9y ago
  >This is what the anti-cycling agenda wants you to think. LOL well it worked. I've never driven a car and bike everywhere. Also cracked my helmet (not my skull) in a slow speed fall when I landed on my butt and fell backwards banging my helmeted head on the pavement.
  - quadrangle 9y ago
    I don't know where to put this in an already dense thread but: Helmets are good for those willing to ride with them. For those who will only ride without a helmet, far better for them to bicycle without helmets than to not bicycle. THAT is the point. To the extent that helmet-wearing reduces total bicycling, we are worse off if we push helmets. To the extent that you're talking about someone who would bike either way, wearing a helmet is a good extra safety measure. But bicycling without a helmet (especially, as the article emphasizes, in a culture of widespread biking) is far safer than driving a car.
    - halostatue 9y ago
      This is a good point: better get people on bikes at all, then convince them that using protective gear is better than not using protective gear. Lots of people roller-blade. When they start, they don’t usually start with all the pads and guards…but most experienced bladers have them. Even in cycling, lots of people don’t wear cycling gloves (I can’t entirely blame them; I have a funny hand tan…), but in the event of an accident, they can save your palms from being shredded.
    - akvadrako 9y ago
      Well put.
- dahart 9y ago
  > In reality, helmets are not worth the trouble. Where are you getting this information? Statistics from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Fatality Facts: Bicycles - 2014 "Helmet use has been estimated to reduce the odds of head injury by 50 percent, and the odds of head, face, or neck injury by 33 percent." "During the past few years, no more than 17 percent of fatally injured bicyclists were wearing helmets." Statistics from New York City "Almost three-quarters of fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury. Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet." http://bhsi.org/stats.htm http://bhsi.org/stats.htm
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
askvictor 9y ago
Helmets also discourage cycling by sending the message (however faint) that cycling is a dangerous activity. Which reduces the number of cyclists, which, by this study, makes cycling a more dangerous activity.
dahart 9y ago
> Helmets are pretty misunderstood. They don't offer much in the way of protection in a serious accident Have you got a source for that claim? http://bhsi.org/stats.htm#effectiveness http://bhsi.org/stats.htm#effectiveness "Helmets provide a 66 to 88% reduction in the risk of head, brain and severe brain injury for all ages of bicyclists. Helmets provide equal levels of protection for crashes involving motor vehicles (69%) and crashes from all other causes (68%). Injuries to the upper and mid facial areas are reduced 65%. Authors' conclusions Helmets reduce bicycle-related head and facial injuries for bicyclists of all ages involved in all types of crashes, including those involving motor vehicles. Our response to comments from critics are presented in the Feedback section. Plain Language Summary Wearing a helmet dramatically reduces the risk of head and facial injuries for bicyclists involved in a crash, even if it involves a motor vehicle."
- exceptione 9y ago
  You are referring to the US situation. As a dutchie, I wouldn't even want to bike with a helmet in the US. Of course, helmets work to an extent when the conditions are extremely hostile. They have (limited) value. True. The solution isn't to leave the unsafe conditions untouched and protect just a part of the body by means of a helmet, rather it is making the driving conditions for bikers safe. As it turns out, those safe conditions render the helmet as unnecesary. As pointed out, helmets could be a net loss in safety in a safe biker environment. Biker helmets are a sign of bad road safety.
  - rsfern 9y ago
    I agree with you that having all cyclists wear helmets wouldn't strictly increase overall safety (maybe people will switch to driving...), but I think you're discounting the utility of helmets even where collisions with motorized vehicles isn't the primary risk. Here are stats from the Netherlands [0]. Looks like there are about 9000 serious crashes each year that don't involve motor vehicles, with about 2500 cases annually of head/brain injury. That's actually a much higher rate than for crashes involving cars in the Netherlands, presumably because of the infrastructure and culture.... [0]: https://www.swov.nl/en/facts-figures/factsheet/bicycle-helmets https://www.swov.nl/en/facts-figures/factsheet/bicycle-helme...
throwaway287391 9y ago
Helmets also make drivers drive closer to you [1]. Given that, I'm genuinely unsure whether helmets actually decrease the expected risk of injury. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-helmets-attract-cars-to-cyclists/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-...
- dahart 9y ago
  You read the paragraph in that article you linked that ends with "When you do have that crash, you better have it on."? All you have to do to know for sure whether helmets result in more or less net risk of injury is look at the statistics for the people who've been killed wearing helmets vs not wearing helmets. http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/pedestrians-and-bicyclists/fatalityfacts/bicycles/2015 http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/pedestrians-and-bicyclists... Walker's research didn't show an increase in accidents or injuries, it showed drivers who are 3 feet away getting a little over 3 inches closer. I'm not personally more afraid of cars getting a little closer according to one guy than I am of the direct and overwhelming evidence supported by multiple studies of reduced risk of death when wearing a helmet. "The cars were giving him, on average, a very wide passing clearance already," he explains, noting that most vehicles typically stayed well over three feet from the bikes, rendering the 3.35-inch discrepancy to be insignificant." Also, my personal anecdata of getting buzzed by cars in the US is that it's happening less often as bike awareness goes up. In direct support of the article at the top, I suppose. I feel like cars are giving me more room now than they used to. Walker's study was 10 years ago, maybe we've already made up for the 3.4 inches already. So if you ride, for the sake of you and your family and friends, I hope you find confidence and pride in wearing your brain bucket.
  - throwaway287391 9y ago
    > You read the paragraph in that article you linked that ends with "When you do have that crash, you better have it on."? Yes, but if helmets raise your risk of having a crash to begin with (due to cars driving closer to you or otherwise), it's unclear whether it's better to wear one or not. (Higher risk of less destructive crashes vs. lower risk of more destructive crashes.) > All you have to do to know for sure whether helmets result in more or less net risk of injury is look at the statistics for the people who've been killed wearing helmets vs not wearing helmets. I disagree -- that's correlation, not causation. Perhaps people who wear helmets are just more careful in general. (That seems pretty likely to me.)