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I hear you, and acknowledge the strong opinions around Helen’ helmets while bicycling. I usually wear a helmet (I’m in the USA), and for slow trips on known rou

I hear you, and acknowledge the strong opinions around Helen’ helmets while bicycling. I usually wear a helmet (I’m in the USA), and for slow trips on known routes sometimes I skip it. If I lived in the Netherlands (or anywhere with a robust bike-commute culture) I might never wear a helmet, because I’m not so fast anymore and I’d be doing known routes at moderate speed. I lean towards wearing helmets, and support wearing them in cars (I don’t do that yet because of social stigma, though maybe I’ll work up the gumption now that I think about it).

drran 5y ago
Helmets, and other protective equipment, works, so it may help you to survive many kinds of incidents: road incident, train wreck, fall from sky, etc. There is no doubt. However, cycling to work is the safest mean of transportation per km traveled. Nobody will force me to do downhill on a bike without full gear on, because I can fall, puncture my artery, and then bleed out in 2 minutes. One of my earliest memories is: I'm laying on the ground on my back and watching as my bike flying over me, like in slo-mo. However, I see no sense to wear a helmet when doing one of the safest routine on this planet. I had two road accidents (I hit another cyclist, I hit a safety pole with handlebar when a car in front of me suddenly closed the path for me) and a dozen near-misses while biking in about 40 years. I had much more near-misses in the city (dozens) when walking.