[superice]

There is ~250 cycling related traffic deaths per year in the Netherlands. Some 60 of those are e-bike related.

Normalized per capita that is well above the EU average, but you shouldn't forget that we cycle a lot in the Netherlands, which means that per cycled kilometer, cycling in the Netherlands is still ridiculously safe even without helmets. It has been argued that forcing people to wear a helmet in law will reduce trips taken by bicycle and increase air pollution due to an increased number of trips taken by car (25% of ALL trips in NL are taken by bicycle, versus about 16% in Denmark, to give some comparison). And this is not even counting the psychological effect it has on car drivers and their behavior around people wearing helmets. Besides: cycling injuries and deaths are skewed heavily towards the elderly population (65+), if you're a 20-something person, statistically speaking you're more than fine not wearing a helmet in the Netherlands.

Let's not jump to conclusions here about helmets and think this stuff through before shouting 'You should wear a helmet'. It's not quite that black and white. Forcing everybody to wear helmets might very well cause more death and injury than not to. We have taken other precautions to ensure cyclist safety, such as designing our roads to protect them, and those measures make a lot more sense. You shouldn't forget that a helmet only helps a little if you are already in a bad situation (e.g. an accident), so it's much better to prevent that situation from occuring in the first place. The Youtube-channel Not Just Bikes has great explanations about how we approach those problems over here.

[ycombinete]

I think our point of view is very different. Coming from a country where almost no-one cycles as a mode of transport, I view it entirely individualistically. I understand that the imperative 'should', has a far wider (even political) connotation in the context of the Netherlands.

To be clear, I wouldn’t suggest forcing people to wear helmets, by law. My thinking is simple: it is safer to wear a helmet when cycling. Therefore one _should_ wear a helmet when cycling. It’s about as easy to wear a bike helmet as it it to wear a surgical mask.

On the subject of helmets, I don’t think deaths per year is the right statistic. I’d be more interested in head injuries per year. Not all serious head injuries cause death, and not all deaths are caused by head injuries.

I do understand your point. That in a safe cycling space like The Netherlands, the risk is low enough that The safety provided by a helmet is very rarely used.

There’s a good chance that I will be living in the Netherlands in a year or so. I wonder if I’ll wear a helmet or not? (probably not). I’ve cycled a lot in my life, both on and off-road. As a child I never wore a helmet, cycling around the neighbourhood; but as an adult I always have.

[superice]

Fair point, you’re entirely right in that in other countries wearing a helmet can be much more important and indeed much more of that burden is placed on the individual.

I looked into head injury statistics, but it seems like this isn’t publicly available. Multiple sources (cyclist safety advocate groups!) claim these to be low numbers though.

The problem with wearing a helmet is not that is inconvenient to wear it though. It is a storage problem at your destination. Dutch high schools often only offer small locker spaces, I doubt full size biking helmets would fit. Considering >90% of middle and high schoolers are coming to school by bicycle, that would involve carrying around a helmet all day. Ofcourse it’s not an unfixable problem for schools, but this goes for every little trip: going to a bar? Leave your helmet at your table I guess? Going to the bookstore downtown? Walk around the store awkwardly with your helmet in your hands I guess? The friction for these trips would be a lot higher with a helmet, and these are the type of trips people tend to use their bicycles for. I live about 2km from the city center of a 150 000k city. Parking is 3 euros an hour, and it takes pretty much the exact same time to get to the city center by bike as by car. I’ll take the bike any day for all trips that don’t involve my carrying a bunch of stuff back, and this is a common sentiment. We’ve got free supervised underground bicycle parking lots. It’s a no-brainer :)

If you do end up moving I’d love to hear about your experience a few months in. Maybe we’re all indoctrinated into believing cycling here is super safe when it actually isn’t, but so far my experiences cycling in other countries have been terrifying (I really wish I had a helmet using the bike-sharing system in Belfast). An outsider perspective would be very interesting.

[kqr]

Head injuries are more common in cars than bicycles. Before someone tells me I "must" wear a helmet when cycling, I want to see them strap on a helmet when entering a car.

[spacedcowboy]

I’ve been hit by a car three times when cycling (only when cycling on an e-bike, car-drivers seem to have difficulty assessing the different speeds involved). The last time, and the time that persuaded me to give up the e-bike resulted in [this](https://0x0000ff.uk/imgs/hit-by-car.png).

That top impact is my head, smashing the windscreen. The lower impact is my arm (broken in two places). The side of the car was my knee, breaking the my thigh in the process.

I was cycling along, in my cycle lane, with the right of way on a main road. A woman turning left across my path into a side road either didn’t look or didn’t see me. I had time for “Oh Shi” before the impact and the pain.

I was wearing a cycle helmet, actually one issued by my work, which is what saved my life that day. The ER nurse said a young woman had also been admitted because of a car accident that evening, but she’d only been wearing a climbing helmet. She died.

My body was broken, but I didn’t even get a bruise on my head. I remain a fan of cycle helmets.

[superice]

I understand your situation, but please also understand that per cycled kilometer, the Netherlands is a lot safer than any other country. There exists no country with as big of a modal share with bicycles, and our accident rates involving bicycles are still super low. I'd love to get my hands on statistics on accidents per million kilometers or so, but it doesn't seem to be tracked anywhere for bicycles.

Point being is mostly that although a helmet helps if you get hit by a car, that itself is already a very rare occurrence in the Netherlands due to the way our infrastructure and roads are laid out. In addition to that, the average speed for our cyclists is lower, because 'sporty' cycling and commuting cycling are two very distinct kinds of activities over here. This means that your average city commuter cyclist will usually cycle at a leisurely pace between 15 and 20 km/h, not the >25km/h your average sporty bike will do.

I'm not saying not wearing a helmet would be the best choice your situation, in almost any biking situation around the globe that is the obviously correct choice. The Netherlands (and perhaps Denmark) are the exceptions to this because we have taken so many other precautions to make cycling a safe experience. This video lays that out perfectly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAxRYrpbnuA

It's relatively easy to make the argument that added pollution of people taking the car due to hassle with helmets will cause more deaths and injury than leaving the helmets at home, or at the very least it'll be in the same ballpark. The estimations are that forcing people to wear a helmet will save about 5-20 lives a year on the Dutch roads. That'd be impressive, but the reduction in people opting for bicycles would yield a much bigger negative for the health of the people. Feel free to read through a Google Translated version of this webpage: https://www.fietsersbond.nl/nieuws/wat-vindt-de-fietsersbond...

[kqr]

That sounds like an awful experience. From the picture, it looks like the crumple zones on the car yielded very kindly to your momentum as well, which is incredibly fortunate. I'm glad you got out of it alive, if with some serious scratches and dings.

I'm convinced anyone who would be wearing a helmet when driving a car, and narrowly escaping death in a similar way (e.g. a racing driver who is kept alive by their helmet?) would argue much the same way in favour of helmets when driving cars. It's just more rare because we don't wear helmets when driving cars.

What do you think of that line of reasoning?

[ycombinete]

My uninformed guess would be that many head injuries in cars would not be helped by wearing a helmet. G-force related injuries, like whiplash, and being hit by the airbag.

It’s a hard line to draw. I remember reading a comment on HN a while ago. In it the commenter said that whenever he left the house he wore earplugs, and protective glasses. Earplugs because he got a bit of tinnitus once, and the glasses, because once he almost walked into a tree branch and almost lost an eye. He’d probably say that we should wear a helmet no matter where we are or what we’re doing.

[Natsu]

That's what airbags are for in a car.