5 ms·

So carry it or tie it to your bike. There are folding helmets and pretty light helmets. I crashed recently. It made a difference to my skull. I had a motorcycl

So carry it or tie it to your bike. There are folding helmets and pretty light helmets. I crashed recently. It made a difference to my skull. I had a motorcycle for well over a decade. We have helmet laws here and I carried that heavier helmet or placed it on my bike. It was fine. Part of the cost of having a bike.

bambax 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33865031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33865031
Fricken 4y ago
I've had hundreds of crashes on a bike and hundreds of others crashes and wipeouts doing other activities. A helmet has never once come in handy. So I've come to believe that knowing how to wipe out, as a reflexive skill, is far more critical to safety than strapping some styrofoam to your head. Unfortunately you can't glance at a cyclist and decide affirmatively that they're an idiot for riding without wipeout skills.
- malfist 4y ago
  It only takes one crash where the helmet was needed for you to never need one again...if you didn't wear one. We went through this same nonsense with motorcycles. Stop acting like it's the end of the world to put a piece of foam and plastic on your head for a little bit.
  - quicklime 4y ago
    I’m surprised at all the comments comparing this to motorcycle helmets. To me, the big difference with a bicycle and a motorcycle is that I can run as fast or faster than I ride by bicycle around my local neighbourhood. If someone asked me to wear a helmet while running, I would find that ridiculous. Same thing when riding my (non-road) bike.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      How often do you sprint over uneven terrain? Or do you just ride your bike very slowly? Bike speeds > 20km/h are normal and easily achievable for the untrained on flat ground. Downhill, you'll quickly go past 30km/h. This isn't something that you're doing while running for longer periods of time while you're still half-asleep. Helmets annoy me too, but "the fastest runners can peak at speeds higher than what I reach every other day on my bike and they don't wear helmets" is a weird argument.
      - quicklime 4y ago
        I ride my bike slowly around my local neighbourhood, often on shared paths with pedestrians. This is usually under 20 km/h, probably under 15, or even less when it’s busy. For rides where I go faster, I will take my road bike and wear a helmet. For rides where I go slower, I would prefer not to wear a helmet, but mandatory helmet laws don’t make that distinction.
    - alwa 4y ago
      I agree- it does feel like “biking” encompasses an awfully wide range of riskiness. As you alluded, even between bike trips, I weigh the risks differently when I think about a casual spin down a protected lane or a recreational trail as compared to an aggressive commute inches apart from vehicle traffic. My local bike share program has started blurring things even more for me lately as they introduce progressively zippier e-bikes. Any more, it’s trivial for me to move with traffic on these huge heavy clunkers of bikes, while to my impulses it still feels like the low-effort casual kind of ride I’d instinctively rate as not warranting a helmet. Still, I’m glad to be judging for myself how to mitigate the specific risks of a specific ride.
- frob 4y ago
  You're very lucky. The worst wipeout I ever had was on the side of a small town street. I was accelerating, the chain popped of my gears, and I basically flipped the bike over and ground to a stop on my helmet. My reactions and training absolutely helped me; I knew how to roll into it and how to not break my wrists. But without that helmet, I would have ground a hole into my skull. You don't need that helmet until you do.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- mdorazio 4y ago
  This is survivorship fallacy. You don’t hear from the thousands of people who weren’t so lucky because they’re dead.
  - Fricken 4y ago
    I hear from 1000s of internet people who are totally triggered by my occasional lack of a helmet. My ability to avoid hitting my head using reflexive skill cultivated over many years of practice never gets the credit it deserves. It has come in handy on so many occasions. Let me assure you, if you've decided cycling safety is a binary contingent on whether or not you're wearing a helmet, you're doing it wrong. It's no better than superstition. There are so many other variables.
- eCa 4y ago
  Safety in depth: * Avoiding the crash in the first place * Knowing how to fall if you crash * Helmet, and potentially other protection, when unable to execute crashing properly. (Edit: Changed ’security’ to ’safety’)
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  My wipeout: I heard a chink behind me, and thought I had dropped my keys, so I looked over my shoulder. I lost control, and my face hit the road. Not my head, my chin. I got three stiches in my chin. I lost two teeth; one was driven through my lip, and I had 13 stiches in that lip (there are three layers in a lip: outer skin, muscle, inner skin). I needed two root-canals. I fractured my mandible, which is now joined to the maxilla on only one side. I was concussed, and wound up sleeping about 15 hours a day for the next 3 months. I couldn't chew for ages. A motorbike helmet might have helped; but not a bicycle helmet.
- vehemenz 4y ago
  This is as naive as drivers refusing to wear seatbelts. In serious crashes, you cannot control your body in the first place. Of course, the helmet is only 10% of cycling safety. But it's for that important 10% when your head crashes into the ground. Suggesting that it would never come in handy is naive. Since you seem to believe in the power of personal anecdote, I am an experienced cyclist and have crashed directly on to my head before. It was just once, but it prevented a serious head injury.
  - Fricken 4y ago
    If I had been in hundreds of car crashes without ever needing a seatbelt then they would be roughly equivalent, I suppose.
marssaxman 4y ago
It's one thing to decide that a helmet is a good idea and choose to wear one. It's another thing to make a law forcing everyone to agree with you, or else. The paradoxical result shown in this article, which has been seen repeatedly, is that forcing people to wear helmets does more harm, by discouraging people from riding bicycles, than the benefit it creates by pushing some small number of the bicyclists who remain to take safety precautions they would otherwise have neglected.
- invalidname 4y ago
  This is a libertarian talking point. I strongly disagree but I doubt I can change your mind here (or vice versa). The reasons for requiring this for the "greater good" are: * Younger people are easily influenced and without such a law wouldn't use a helmet, seatbelt, etc. * Costs of healthcare after a bad crash can be serious. Yes, my country like pretty much everyone outside the US, has single payer. We would foot the bill, regardless. * It's proven that regulation and legislation can help. Regulation for seat-belts, airbags, crash testing, etc. has saved many lives. IMO this is what government is about, saving people. Sometimes from their stupidity and ignorance.
  - marssaxman 4y ago
    It's not a libertarian talking point; it is a summary of the research presented in the article that we are nominally discussing. It may be proven that regulation can help, in general, but it has also been proven that this specific type of regulation does more harm than good.
    - invalidname 4y ago
      It shows correlation not causation and not "research". There's no such proof. The key sentence in the article is: " Financial struggle for popular bike sharing systems"... That's where the money is and that's who made up that nonsense. Lots of people die because of those terrible motorized bikes and scooters. They're trying to get cyclists to fight their regulatory requirements by making up fake science.
yboris 4y ago
"Carry it or tie it to your bike" ... wouldn't it be possibly stolen if you left it on your bike that you chained up on the street? And carrying it doesn't sound comfortable at all -- where do you put it? The amount of discomfort (psychological fear of theft or physical nuisance of carrying it) is very likely going to discourage its use. But then you're liable for a fine for not having a helmet, so you choose to not ride the bike. Just don't require helmets for bike riders over some age.
- invalidname 4y ago
  I tie it to my bag. I've seen ones that fold to a size of a banana. If someone breaks the chain then they take my bike, the helmet is the least of my concerns. The idea that use would be discouraged because of that is ridiculous when you consider the alternative: cars or public transport. Both are terrible options. Parking, traffic, etc. I'm 47 and had a crash recently. How does my age have to do anything if someone suddenly jumps in my lane or a car runs into me? If anything my healthcare bill will be higher.
  - esteth 4y ago
    I think they're arguing that children should be made to wear helmets because won't somebody think of the children. The same argument applies to children of course - where do you put your helmet after you've cycled to school? Attach it to the bike loosely and someone will steal it, it's too big to carry in your rucksack all day, and you don't want to have to go back and forth to your locker potentially on the other side of school if you have one at all.
    - invalidname 4y ago
      There are foldable helmets, even smaller than this one: https://www.amazon.com/Bicycle-Foldable-Closca-Electric-Patented/dp/B01ENTUWG0/ https://www.amazon.com/Bicycle-Foldable-Closca-Electric-Pate... Also if it's locked to the bike you would break the lock and steal the bike. The helmet is the cheaper part. Helmets are often designed so locks can go through them.
  - 4y ago
scott_w 4y ago
> So carry it or tie it to your bike. Or do what happened in Australia and just don't bother riding a bike and drive your car instead. I sound flippant but I'm just reflecting _what actually happened_, which is where conversations need to be grounded.
seadan83 4y ago
In cities with bike shares, a significant number of short distance bike trips are on the bike share (like, 50% plus range). Requiring a bike helmet eliminates those people that are walking around and decide to use a bike share to go 2 miles. Tying a helmet to a bike can result in theft and weathering (rain). The article goes to describe that it is the secondary effects that are important. Ie, it's better to have 100 cyclists on a road with 50% helmet usage, than it is to have 3 with 100% usage. I've seen campaigns and memorial stickers asking drivers to watch for motorcycles. So it is not dissimilar for pedal bikes, except the safety effect for driver awareness is even more important for non-motorized bikes. Which is essentially the non-intuitice conclusion of the article.
mcv 4y ago
> It was fine. Part of the cost of having a bike. Yes, but that additional cost does discourage people to use a bike. And many countries want to encourage rather than discourage bike use, for several reasons: * bikes don't endanger other road users the way cars do * bikes pollute less * bikes take up less space * bikes put less strain on the road * bikers get more exercise and are therefore healthier All of these are important positive effects, so a lot of countries would prefer to stimulate bike use rather than discourage it. They don't have the same reason to encourage car or motorbike use, so having the extra cost there is fine. The alternative for a car is likely to be better for society, so it's fine to discourage their use. The alternative for a bike is likely to be worse.

bambax 4y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33865031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33865031

Fricken 4y ago

I've had hundreds of crashes on a bike and hundreds of others crashes and wipeouts doing other activities. A helmet has never once come in handy. So I've come to believe that knowing how to wipe out, as a reflexive skill, is far more critical to safety than strapping some styrofoam to your head. Unfortunately you can't glance at a cyclist and decide affirmatively that they're an idiot for riding without wipeout skills.

malfist 4y ago
It only takes one crash where the helmet was needed for you to never need one again...if you didn't wear one. We went through this same nonsense with motorcycles. Stop acting like it's the end of the world to put a piece of foam and plastic on your head for a little bit.
- quicklime 4y ago
  I’m surprised at all the comments comparing this to motorcycle helmets. To me, the big difference with a bicycle and a motorcycle is that I can run as fast or faster than I ride by bicycle around my local neighbourhood. If someone asked me to wear a helmet while running, I would find that ridiculous. Same thing when riding my (non-road) bike.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    How often do you sprint over uneven terrain? Or do you just ride your bike very slowly? Bike speeds > 20km/h are normal and easily achievable for the untrained on flat ground. Downhill, you'll quickly go past 30km/h. This isn't something that you're doing while running for longer periods of time while you're still half-asleep. Helmets annoy me too, but "the fastest runners can peak at speeds higher than what I reach every other day on my bike and they don't wear helmets" is a weird argument.
    - quicklime 4y ago
      I ride my bike slowly around my local neighbourhood, often on shared paths with pedestrians. This is usually under 20 km/h, probably under 15, or even less when it’s busy. For rides where I go faster, I will take my road bike and wear a helmet. For rides where I go slower, I would prefer not to wear a helmet, but mandatory helmet laws don’t make that distinction.
  - alwa 4y ago
    I agree- it does feel like “biking” encompasses an awfully wide range of riskiness. As you alluded, even between bike trips, I weigh the risks differently when I think about a casual spin down a protected lane or a recreational trail as compared to an aggressive commute inches apart from vehicle traffic. My local bike share program has started blurring things even more for me lately as they introduce progressively zippier e-bikes. Any more, it’s trivial for me to move with traffic on these huge heavy clunkers of bikes, while to my impulses it still feels like the low-effort casual kind of ride I’d instinctively rate as not warranting a helmet. Still, I’m glad to be judging for myself how to mitigate the specific risks of a specific ride.
frob 4y ago
You're very lucky. The worst wipeout I ever had was on the side of a small town street. I was accelerating, the chain popped of my gears, and I basically flipped the bike over and ground to a stop on my helmet. My reactions and training absolutely helped me; I knew how to roll into it and how to not break my wrists. But without that helmet, I would have ground a hole into my skull. You don't need that helmet until you do.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
mdorazio 4y ago
This is survivorship fallacy. You don’t hear from the thousands of people who weren’t so lucky because they’re dead.
- Fricken 4y ago
  I hear from 1000s of internet people who are totally triggered by my occasional lack of a helmet. My ability to avoid hitting my head using reflexive skill cultivated over many years of practice never gets the credit it deserves. It has come in handy on so many occasions. Let me assure you, if you've decided cycling safety is a binary contingent on whether or not you're wearing a helmet, you're doing it wrong. It's no better than superstition. There are so many other variables.
eCa 4y ago
Safety in depth: * Avoiding the crash in the first place * Knowing how to fall if you crash * Helmet, and potentially other protection, when unable to execute crashing properly. (Edit: Changed ’security’ to ’safety’)
denton-scratch 4y ago
My wipeout: I heard a chink behind me, and thought I had dropped my keys, so I looked over my shoulder. I lost control, and my face hit the road. Not my head, my chin. I got three stiches in my chin. I lost two teeth; one was driven through my lip, and I had 13 stiches in that lip (there are three layers in a lip: outer skin, muscle, inner skin). I needed two root-canals. I fractured my mandible, which is now joined to the maxilla on only one side. I was concussed, and wound up sleeping about 15 hours a day for the next 3 months. I couldn't chew for ages. A motorbike helmet might have helped; but not a bicycle helmet.
vehemenz 4y ago
This is as naive as drivers refusing to wear seatbelts. In serious crashes, you cannot control your body in the first place. Of course, the helmet is only 10% of cycling safety. But it's for that important 10% when your head crashes into the ground. Suggesting that it would never come in handy is naive. Since you seem to believe in the power of personal anecdote, I am an experienced cyclist and have crashed directly on to my head before. It was just once, but it prevented a serious head injury.
- Fricken 4y ago
  If I had been in hundreds of car crashes without ever needing a seatbelt then they would be roughly equivalent, I suppose.

marssaxman 4y ago

It's one thing to decide that a helmet is a good idea and choose to wear one. It's another thing to make a law forcing everyone to agree with you, or else. The paradoxical result shown in this article, which has been seen repeatedly, is that forcing people to wear helmets does more harm, by discouraging people from riding bicycles, than the benefit it creates by pushing some small number of the bicyclists who remain to take safety precautions they would otherwise have neglected.

invalidname 4y ago
This is a libertarian talking point. I strongly disagree but I doubt I can change your mind here (or vice versa). The reasons for requiring this for the "greater good" are: * Younger people are easily influenced and without such a law wouldn't use a helmet, seatbelt, etc. * Costs of healthcare after a bad crash can be serious. Yes, my country like pretty much everyone outside the US, has single payer. We would foot the bill, regardless. * It's proven that regulation and legislation can help. Regulation for seat-belts, airbags, crash testing, etc. has saved many lives. IMO this is what government is about, saving people. Sometimes from their stupidity and ignorance.
- marssaxman 4y ago
  It's not a libertarian talking point; it is a summary of the research presented in the article that we are nominally discussing. It may be proven that regulation can help, in general, but it has also been proven that this specific type of regulation does more harm than good.
  - invalidname 4y ago
    It shows correlation not causation and not "research". There's no such proof. The key sentence in the article is: " Financial struggle for popular bike sharing systems"... That's where the money is and that's who made up that nonsense. Lots of people die because of those terrible motorized bikes and scooters. They're trying to get cyclists to fight their regulatory requirements by making up fake science.

yboris 4y ago

"Carry it or tie it to your bike" ... wouldn't it be possibly stolen if you left it on your bike that you chained up on the street? And carrying it doesn't sound comfortable at all -- where do you put it? The amount of discomfort (psychological fear of theft or physical nuisance of carrying it) is very likely going to discourage its use. But then you're liable for a fine for not having a helmet, so you choose to not ride the bike. Just don't require helmets for bike riders over some age.

invalidname 4y ago
I tie it to my bag. I've seen ones that fold to a size of a banana. If someone breaks the chain then they take my bike, the helmet is the least of my concerns. The idea that use would be discouraged because of that is ridiculous when you consider the alternative: cars or public transport. Both are terrible options. Parking, traffic, etc. I'm 47 and had a crash recently. How does my age have to do anything if someone suddenly jumps in my lane or a car runs into me? If anything my healthcare bill will be higher.
- esteth 4y ago
  I think they're arguing that children should be made to wear helmets because won't somebody think of the children. The same argument applies to children of course - where do you put your helmet after you've cycled to school? Attach it to the bike loosely and someone will steal it, it's too big to carry in your rucksack all day, and you don't want to have to go back and forth to your locker potentially on the other side of school if you have one at all.
  - invalidname 4y ago
    There are foldable helmets, even smaller than this one: https://www.amazon.com/Bicycle-Foldable-Closca-Electric-Patented/dp/B01ENTUWG0/ https://www.amazon.com/Bicycle-Foldable-Closca-Electric-Pate... Also if it's locked to the bike you would break the lock and steal the bike. The helmet is the cheaper part. Helmets are often designed so locks can go through them.
- 4y ago

scott_w 4y ago

> So carry it or tie it to your bike. Or do what happened in Australia and just don't bother riding a bike and drive your car instead. I sound flippant but I'm just reflecting _what actually happened_, which is where conversations need to be grounded.

seadan83 4y ago

In cities with bike shares, a significant number of short distance bike trips are on the bike share (like, 50% plus range). Requiring a bike helmet eliminates those people that are walking around and decide to use a bike share to go 2 miles. Tying a helmet to a bike can result in theft and weathering (rain). The article goes to describe that it is the secondary effects that are important. Ie, it's better to have 100 cyclists on a road with 50% helmet usage, than it is to have 3 with 100% usage. I've seen campaigns and memorial stickers asking drivers to watch for motorcycles. So it is not dissimilar for pedal bikes, except the safety effect for driver awareness is even more important for non-motorized bikes. Which is essentially the non-intuitice conclusion of the article.

mcv 4y ago

> It was fine. Part of the cost of having a bike. Yes, but that additional cost does discourage people to use a bike. And many countries want to encourage rather than discourage bike use, for several reasons: * bikes don't endanger other road users the way cars do * bikes pollute less * bikes take up less space * bikes put less strain on the road * bikers get more exercise and are therefore healthier All of these are important positive effects, so a lot of countries would prefer to stimulate bike use rather than discourage it. They don't have the same reason to encourage car or motorbike use, so having the extra cost there is fine. The alternative for a car is likely to be better for society, so it's fine to discourage their use. The alternative for a bike is likely to be worse.