From streetsblog:
In the United States, official bicycle safety messaging heavily emphasizes helmet use. In a way, it’s worked: American rates of helmet usage are high. But by almost any quantifiable safety metric, the helmet fixation has failed. People bike at low rates in the U.S. compared to international peers, and suffer higher injury and fatality rates per mile of cycling.
It’s not a coincidence that bicycling remains dangerous in our helmet-obsessed safety culture, according to University of Heidelberg professor Gregg Culver. Emphasizing helmets as a singular solution to bike safety — rather than designing streets for safer car speeds or better bike infrastructure — upholds a political structure that favors “unfettered automobility,” Culver argues in an article published this month in the journal Applied Mobilities. …
Why such emphasis on helmets? Culver says it’s a reflection of the dominant car culture. “The helmet fixation redirects attention away from the overarching problem of vehicular violence, assisting in its denial.”
“It redistributes blame,” he writes. “By constantly reinforcing the need for cyclists to feel responsible for their own safety (akin to the manner in which jaywalking was invented in the early 20th century), this helmet fixation serves to redistribute blame back onto the victim of vehicular violence.”
I’ve invested far too much in my brain not to wear one, especially traveling in an urban place amongst people – who’s actions can affect my trajectory – and who also do not share my rationale. Case law has many instances of bare-head riders in self-caused tumbles (the most common accident) causing degrees of traumatic brain injury, rendering them ineligible to be spokespeople for the no-helmet lobby.
Look at alpine activity; no law requires helmets but most people wear them by choice. There’s no law that forces people to use shoes (except in some private establishments), yet people wear them, and not just for fashion.
Then we can safely assume you always wear one when you’re in a motor vehicle. The risk of serious head injury is almost the same as when cycling. While you’re at it, why not when you climb a ladder, walk down stair or have a shower?
Wearing one while riding a bike sends a message that cycling is unusually dangerous. There is no evidence to back this up.
Let’s see, I’m forced to wear a seat belt in a car and manufacturers are forced to include air bags in all new cars, I think (adding to their cost).
I remember, as a kid in the 1970s we’d romp around in the back of the station wagon as my parents drove us and our friends around town and on the highways.
In Hawaii, you can stioll jump in the back of a pick-up truck for a ride – and no one bats an eye.
We have these things called hills in Vancouver. Go east from Fraser Street down the 10th Avenue bikeway on a bright day when the road is dappled with deep shade and you can’t see the dips and lumps in the roadway. Descend Mount Adanac from Victoria Drive and watch for the dogs in the park at Salsbury. I’m happy for people not to wear helmets as long as they have private medical insurance to fix themselves. This isn’t flat Copenhagen.
Yet head injuries are much more prevalent among people walking and driving. Do you wear a helmet all the time? If not, then why not? Do you have private medical insurance for walking or driving? Why is it that BC is one of the few jurisdictions in Canada and in the world that has a helmet law? No one is saying that one shouldn’t wear a helmet while cycling. Just that this shouldn’t be the top or only focus for safe cycling.
The main reason is a long history of NDP government with a “big government is best” attitude.
Bike helmets ought to be optional. Many would chose to wear one, some woudl nt, depending where you go.
It was a Social Credit back-bencher who pushed the law through. Doesn’t suit your ideology, does it?
Note the word “social” ..
Maybe you weren’t here back then Thomas. There was no “social” in the Social Credit platform. They were a “free market” government that needed a brand name that sounded nice. Conservative parties always want to sound like they’re not the ruthless people they are.
Try again.
I see .. so I learned s.th.
Why did the “social” credit party introduce bike helmet laws ? What was the mood at the time ?
I think they thought they were doing a good thing. But they were so terribly misinformed and lacking in logic it is disturbing they could be representing us.
A grieving mother of a young boy convinced her MLA to push for the law. The kid was run over by a flatbed truck. He didn’t stand a chance with or without a helmet.
Simultaneously, a single study came out of Seattle making all sorts of grandiose claims about the efficacy of helmets and the entire government bought it.* The mathematic gymnastics used to justify the law were simply incredible. Beyond this single study they quoted Canadian helmet and fatality data that showed you were four times more likely to die when wearing a helmet. But they interpreted that to mean people simply weren’t wearing enough helmets. (I have the Hansard debate in case you’d like to see the numbers.)
Social Credit essentially morphed (more or less) into the Liberal government. It’s pretty obvious how they have always felt about cars. There were car dealership owners among them as well as being heavily invested in all things fossil fuel. There are those who claim that they felt threatened by the then recent rise in cycling.popularity and wanted to stick a wrench in their spokes. Whether you believe that or not it had the same effect. By some measures it took cycling ten years to recover and one could argue we are perpetually ten years behind where we could be.
*That study has since been discredited by the US DoT.
Thanks. I read the Prof. Kay Teschke reports that essentially show that helmet reduce ridership and thus, overall, cost society more, as society loses health benefits ..
Links here on ” bike helmet laws don’t seem to improve rider safety .. better woudl be more bike lanes ..” https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2015/11/the-latest-evidence-that-helmet-laws-dont-help-bike-safety/415101/
or here http://www.cbc.ca/radio/the180/boarding-schools-for-first-nations-students-gender-neutral-washrooms-and-getting-rid-of-food-banks-1.2962111/do-helmets-actually-protect-cyclists-1.2963305
or more here at pricetags https://pricetags.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/bicycle-helmet-laws-are-ineffective/
Thanks for sharing. Over.
Here was the mood of the time, (or more accurately con-job of the time.) A very effective fraud that is still raking in the dough for Bell even today.
https://crag.asn.au/misguided-doctors-or-marketing-agents/
We have these things called data & statistics in debates. If you would like to provide head injury statistics suffered in cycling accidents for Fraser Street down the 10th Avenue bikeway or Mount Adanac from Victoria Drive or Vancouver head injuries suffered in cycling accidents v. Copenhagen, please do. Otherwise you are not adding much of use to the conversation. Such information does, in fact, exist.
MV crashes account for 36% of serious head injuries in Canada. Bikes account for 0.5%. This is roughly the ratio of mode share for each, so why not wear a helmet in a car? Why isn’t it, in fact, mandatory? Even if the risk is similar you’d save 75 times more heads.
Simple undefined “falls” account for 45%. One can imagine just how vulnerable we can be at all times. Disturbingly “assaults” account for almost 9%. Why isn’t that getting 18 times the attention as bike helmets?
45%, 36%, 9%…. 0.5%
The justifications for bike helmet laws is absurd and is based purely on emotion – nothing to do with actual risk. Even just helmet promotion is highly questionable because of the message it sends. Most people think cycling is dangerous but the facts don’t back that up. It comes from somewhere though. You can’t get much more official than a law that says you must wear a helmet to “prove” the point. And the inane banter that constantly harps about the risk of, oh… my… god… “shadows!” doesn’t help at all.
And it ain’t hills either. The Netherlands is pretty darned flat. Yet they had a terrible record of cycling injuries and fatalities growing through the 50s, 60s and 70s, then turning the corner thay are now the safest country to cycle. From 1978 to 2006 cycling fatality rates fell 78%! They did not get rid of their hills! They do not wear helmets!
Make that an 81% reduction in fatalities.
Let’s forbid biking altogeher and 100% of all bike fatalities could be avoided !
Which of course is the real motive behind helmet laws. Discouragement of alternatives to making Detroit money.
To mimic Mr Kluckner’s supercilious tone. We have things on bicycles called brakes. If someone chooses not to use them while descending at high speed and commits cycle suicide – ‘tant pis’. Darwinism at work.
There are wicked hills here: Ridgeway heading east past Ontario at Q E Park is pretty intense. So is Central Valley heading west off Clark. There are lots of others. Hello. Use your brakes.
Check out the DVD ‘Carts of Darkness’ depicting thrill seekers careening down North Van hills in shopping carts. No brakes.
Would recommend smokers be forced to wear helmets while smoking. That’ll make them pause. Huge health benefits will accrue.
People have been going down steep hills at high speeds on bikes for 150 years without having many problems, but now we’re being told they’re dangerous going flat slowly.
I went years at a time bike racing 40+ times per year and training an average of 10-20 hours a week without a crash … going down rather larger hills at rather higher speeds than one tends to discover in Vancouver … ‘scary’ slow speeds on a cruiser bike aren’t exactly high on the risk spectrum, and little more Vancouver’s ‘hills’ (save for Cypress, Seymour, or if you start getting dirty with it on trails).
Riding to Whistler, sure, I’ll wear a helmet, seawall, notsomuch.
What a weird comment, Thomas. While the fatality rates in the Netherlands were plummeting cycling was skyrocketing.