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Since the introduction of all-age mandatory bicycle helmet laws in Australia back on the early 90s, cycle participation rates in relation to population has been

• 49bc 8y ago
  Is it really required bike helmets to blame here? I find that hard to believe. Is there any research on that topic?
  • nerdponx 8y ago
    It's required in New York as well, but I can't imagine that is seriously deterring people from riding bikes.
    • gpm 8y ago
      I live in Toronto and bike to my university on a daily basis. If helmets were mandatory here I wouldn't, and if I wasn't I probably wouldn't even own a bike. I also bike recreationally to nice parks and stuff - stuff I wouldn't be doing since I wouldn't have purchased a good bike in the first place. I've tried to explain why below, but the real point is just "from personal experience I can't image it isn't detering people from riding bikes". The main reason a helmet is such a problem is just convenience. A bike, like a car, I can just lock up wherever I go. The helmet I would have to carry around with me all day. That makes whole day just slightly more inconvenient, and it's honestly just not worth it to me. The second is that wearing a helmet makes me feel substantially less safe. There are two direct reasons that I can articulate for this, but I'm not sure they fully explain the effect. There are also statistics that support me, showing that wearing a helmet is correlated with a increase in collisions. The first reason is wearing a helmet substantialy impedes my hearing. This is probably a bit foreign to people who are use to driving, but hearing is incredibly useful for knowing when a car/truck/bus/etc is coming up behind me. A helmet increases wind noises to the point where the signal is much less useful, I'm not confident I will always hear a car in time to react with one on, and I'm worse at pinpointing the location. Incidentally I find the lack of sound when driving fairly disturbing and scary, since I'm so used to being able to use it. The second is that the extra weight on my head seems to make looking around take more psychological effort, so I end up doing it best, so I end up having less awarness of cars around me. This is a rather surprising (to me) effect, but I'm certain it's real. Of course it's not the end of the world because I do still make substantial effort to look around, it's just epsilon less often which makes me epsilon less safe.
      • akhilcacharya 8y ago
        What’s wrong with just putting the helmet with the bike when you lock it up?
        • jaggederest 8y ago
          You will shortly no longer have a helmet. Locking it to the frame is difficult in direct proportion to how effective locking it up would be.
          • maxbrunsfeld 8y ago
            I’ve locked a helmet up with my bike all my life, in several different cities; It’s a complete non issue to me. What is the concern; that someone will use a blade to cut the helmet strap so that they can steal your broken helmet? It’s effortless to leave your helmet attached to your bike. Edit - I’m not saying I support laws enforcing helmets for adults; I just don’t think that helmet theft is a big concern.
            • pmoriarty 8y ago
              This really depends on which city you're in and where in the city you leave your bike+helmet. I've had the ultra-cheap lights on my bike stolen. I've seen plenty of other bikes stripped of everything except the frame itself. This is why I always take my helmet (and my lights) with me, lock my bike and the front wheel with a good lock, and chain lock my seat down for good measure. Haven't had anything stolen since -- even in some sketchy areas.
              • zimpenfish 8y ago
                > This really depends on which city you're in and where in the city you leave your bike+helmet. London, famous for rampant bike theft, and I've never had a locked up helmet stolen. Lights, I take with me; I'm not mad.
            • gowld 8y ago
    • arvinsim 8y ago
      Don't underestimate people's preference for convenience The popularity of the iPhone and the willingness of people to give their data to data collecting entities that provide convenient services is a testament to that.
    • watwut 8y ago
      This sort of assumes that people put biking as highest priority in their daily activities which is rarely the case. People who slightly prefer biking are less likely to do so when it is slightly more inconvenient. Part of effect is that helmet campaigns paint cycling as much more dangerous as it really is. So, more risk averse people are putt off bikes entirely and less likely to use them. It makes people associate bike with picture of accident instead of pleasure. Part of effect is that kids cant use bikes on playground "normally" how they would without helmet - they cant chase, hop on bike, go 10 meters and hop down. Part of effect is that you cant use bike as transport device when you need your hair to look reasonably good afterwards. Part of effect is that helmet is one more thing you have to carry with you and it might make difference between "yeah kiddo take it" and "nah, it stays home".
      • TeMPOraL 8y ago
        100% this. As a teenager I never even bothered to get a helmet because I would have to ask parents to spend money on it, and it would be inconvenient to carry around all the time. It interfered with the flexibility and fun of a bike. If I were forced to use it (and God forbid, elbow and knee protectors), it'd probably cut my bike usage in half, because what was just a matter of hopping on and riding away would become a whole dress-up game. Related, I've seen this concept called "trivial inconveniences", and I like this essay on the topic: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/reitXJgJXFzKpdKyd/beware-trivial-inconveniences https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/reitXJgJXFzKpdKyd/beware-tri....
      • alistairSH 8y ago
        Agreed completely. I'm a cyclist. I race mountain bikes, used to race on pavement, and still avidly train several days/week on local roads and bike paths. I wear a helmet when I'm training or traveling a long distance at speed. On roads with cars, higher speeds = higher risk for major accident. I don't wear a helmet when I'm cruising to the pub for a drink. Yeah, I can still fall. But, I'm on the mountain bike (relatively easy to hop off, compared to a road race bike), at slower speeds, and generally not on roads with cars. I do wonder if part of the problem is the type of bikes popular in some counties. The US has a large number of road race bikes relative to townie/dutch-style bikes. The townie/dutch bike is slower, lower to the ground, has a step through, and more upright seated position (better visibility). All should lead to fewer major accidents.
    • skookumchuck 8y ago
      Many people don't want their hairdo messed up.
      • Qwertie 8y ago
        No doubt this is a huge reason but it's sad people would put their hairstyle over their health.
        • skookumchuck 8y ago
          People (including you) put things over their health every day. A sad life would be one utterly regimented and optimized for health.
  • sgillen 8y ago
    I am not sure why you are being downvotes, I agreed with your sentiment at first. Although when I really think about it I can see how it would deter many people who can easily replace their biking with walking. I really feel like there must be other factors at play here though...
  • random4369 8y ago
    Yes it is. In fact a pretty thorough study was carried out in Denmark which showed that forcing bicycle helmets has such a big impact on the number of people cycling, that it overall increases the healthcare spending in the country. They did the math, and overall the nation is healthier with lots of people cycling and some getting injured, than forced helmets and no one cycling. http://road.cc/content/news/5046-danish-call-helmet-law-thrown-out http://road.cc/content/news/5046-danish-call-helmet-law-thro... Forced helmets are a great example of lawmaking being driven by ignorance and opinion rather than facts and stats.
    • LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
      Reminds me of the safety laws for lumber here in germany. The kevlar clothing that you are supossed to wear is super heavy and hot, making you so fatigued that it actually increases the total risk at work. Its like system designers who are afraid to get theire hands "dirty" and base there whole product on interview-questions and available documentation. Also- remember its most important that he/she who designed the rules has no trace of responsibility left. The problem is, these kind of failure-designers have on paper tryied to make the world better and can shift all blame towards the victims of theire bad solutions. He/She did not wear the trousers of doom and had a chainsaw accident- insurence claim denied. No wonder policy designers are among the most hated people in the world- but that sort of rightous widespread anger leads to them having even less reality contact and even more reality diverging safety-dance-rules. So always try to be friendly, no matter how insane, out of this world and damaging the rules coming from bureaucratic centralia are.
      • im3w1l 8y ago
        I think that's unfair (talking about the helmets). The policy makes a lot of untuitive sense and it's only with the benefit of hindsight we can say that disadvantages were too big. And this law may not even be universal, it's a product of the society we are in. In a different place or time the result may be different.
        • LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
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• ddorian43 8y ago
  Please don't take "most bicycled country in universe" as "comparison". Pick something in the middle, like another equal country with no helmets
  • dmitri1981 8y ago
    UK has no helmets and I very rarely see kids cycling to school, especially by themselves. Cycling in London is a very recent development and the infrastructure only recently started to appear. Even then it is designed around cycle superhighways for commuters rather than local journeys which can involve crossing many busy roads.
    • padthai 8y ago
      It depends where you live in the UK. In Cambridge (just next to London) is extremely common.
• mmjaa 8y ago
  You simply cannot compare the scale of the Netherlands' use of bicycles with Australia. The nations are so far apart - literally - on the scales of distances involved, that its just not sensible. The Dutch are used to living within 20 minutes of everything - Australians have vastly greater distances to scale. A Dutch city was made for humans, a few hundred years ago - most Australian cities were made for automobiles, within the last 100 years.
  • TomK32 8y ago
    Luckily there's an Australian band with a song about that sort of problem: https://3pod.bandcamp.com/track/triangle-of-happiness https://3pod.bandcamp.com/track/triangle-of-happiness Personally I don't understand why you'd want to drive more than 10 minutes by car to work, it's such a waste of your lifetime.
    • TausAmmer 8y ago
      I love it, I love even driving 5 minutes with a car! I am such a "in a car animal". Car is amazing!
      • TomK32 8y ago
        I have a friend, two actually, considering to move into a van. But then, I have a sailboat that I'd very much prefer as a home (the wife sadly has a different opinion)
    • dorchadas 8y ago
      To be fair, I want to do it (~30 min commute) because it allows me to live in a halfway decent place with stuff to do and still work in a laid back environment in BFE
      • Franciscouzo 8y ago
        You just proved GP's point, you don't want the commute, you want to live in the suburbs.
• ACow_Adonis 8y ago
  A far simpler observation is that Australian cities and populations have grown, and with them suburban sprawl, roads and commute time. Families are pushed further and further out in order to afford homes, where there are few cycling facilities (or many other facilities worth cycling to), and cycling on the road here is a borderline suicide pact. As you allude, pedestrian safety has likely improved as pedestrians simply disappear from the increased number of roads, and in those few inner city areas where there is pedestrian density, this has pushed back both against cars and bicycles. In my neighborhood and city for example, speed limits are dropping and cars are being excluded from some streets. Driver safety has likely improved due to concerted efforts, car improvements and everyone increasingly being stuck in gridlock. Furthermore, if this theory is correct, it may also explain increase cycling fatality rates, as those remaining cyclists are presumably cycling further and sharing roads with traffic. Indeed, the best place to look to try to figure this out in Australian terms is probably Canberra. It's the only vaguely populated Australian city with relatively small commutes and a complex network of actual bicycle paths. But as far as I know, Canberra has had relatively steady bicycle use, and relatively high rates amongst children. You would also need to explain why your hypothesised cause results in a steady continued decline, as opposed to a sudden once-off effect or rate shift as often happens with many such policy implementations, whereas my explanation does fit such data (assuming that the data is as you say). In short, I just don't think the evidence for your hypothesis that it's the helmet laws as opposed to continued geographic/demographic shift holds up under scrutiny.
• stronglikedan 8y ago
  I'd have cracked my skull open from a low speed fall if I weren't wearing a helmet. As it was, my head hit the ground so hard that my glasses flattened out. IMHO, all of those people in the Netherlands are making poor choices by not wearing helmets.
  • krageon 8y ago
    How do you manage to fall face first from a bicycle?
    • stronglikedan 8y ago
      I had the hybrid tires where they were smooth on the bottom for street, but knobby on the sides for traction when they partially sunk into soft ground such as trails. I was riding on the street, and there was a concave concrete drainage strip between the street and a driveway. When I hit the incline of the strip at about 8-10 mph, the knobs had no traction and the bike slid out from under me sideways, so I started falling on my side. I reached out with my hands to stop my fall, but realized those were my money makers and pulled them back to my side (I had mentally practiced this maneuver for years). I hit the ground shoulder first, but since I was moving forward as well as sideways, my body rolled and my head smacked the ground hard (this was all very vivid thanks to time dilation). I ended up breaking my right shoulder, and despite my best efforts, my left hand got caught in the brake lever, and I broke my pointer knuckle as well. It was two weeks before I could go back to work, since I couldn't use either hand for a while (right in sling and left in splint). I may have never made it back to work without the helmet.