[bedatadriven]

There are costs and benefits to requiring helmets.

Requiring a helmet has apparently been shown to depress the use of bikes for every day activities. Going grocery shopping with a bike is less convenient if you have to juggle a helmet along with a liter of milk.

Less biking means roughly more pollution, more obesity, bigger roads, more car accide ts.

On the other side of this equation is the death and injury that helmets prevent. This is non-zero, but apparently in the Netherlands we have judged this marginal benefit of helmets to be less than the advantages of more cycling.

The calculation might be different in countries with inferior cycling infrastructure.

[antihero]

I never used to wear a helmet, and I don’t think anyone should be forced to, but countless anecdotes about people being in comas and becoming permanently brain damaged due to no-fault accidents, combined with peer pressure from everyone I know, and finding one I don’t actively despise the look of, means that now I do. If I’m going grocery shopping I simply don’t take it off in the shop. I’ve incorporated it into my own punk self-image - can’t fuck with the system if I’m in an easily avoidable coma!

Don’t really care for requiring one at all really, our bonces inside out are our own business and if people want to take that risk it’s on them.

[sleepybrett]

If my city were more like amsterdam I'd be happy to forgo the helmet, but in hilly seattle between the chances of getting clipped by a suv or taking a tumble on a steep grade.. I'll stick with the helmet. I don't find it too much of an inconvenience. I just clip it to my bag after I lock up.

[mmcnl]

Fyi, Amsterdam is one of the worst places as a cyclist in The Netherlands. It's very crowded and narrow with very few separated bicycle lanes. The average bicycle infrastructure in the Dutch suburbs are way better.

[sleepybrett]

no experience with the suburbs, but seattle bike infrastructure is so bad that i will take the worst the netherlands have to offer over it.

[Silverback_VII]

>I’ve incorporated it into my own punk self-image

maximum conformity punk?

Helmets signal the choice for security over freedom which is simply not sexy. Moreover it signals your own inability to ride a bike and to recognise/avoid dangers rapidly. Just compare images of cyclists with and without helmet.

Helmets are for children only.

[naltun]

Do you actually believe everything you just said? I can't tell if /s or not.

[shard]

Is that what being punk means nowadays? Being sexy, and avoiding helmets / seat belts / health insurance / vaccinations because it's security over freedom?

[Silverback_VII]

follow no rules except maybe your own.

The reduction of freedom has a cost as well. Not in the very visible form of shattered skulls but more hidden in the form of lives not lived and pills of various colors.

[antihero]

Can’t rebel if you’re dead