[_Adam]

The article tries extensively to dance around the fact that all else being equal, if your head is hitting the ground you're better off wearing a helmet. In the worst cases, you aren't worse off. Acceleration is what kills, and because you can't change the starting speed nor the end speed (0 m/s), all you can change is time.

That doesn't mean they have to be enforced legally, of course. So rather than attacking the merits of helmets, the argument made in the article would be more compelling if it focused on the unalienable right of humans to get severely injured doing stupid stuff for fun or profit.

[threetonesun]

Ask any mountain biker and they'll give you this conclusion from experience, almost all of us have had some low-speed awkward crash where a helmet was the difference between getting up and walking away or laying in the woods with an open head wound.

If I'm riding on the road do I expect a helmet to help if I'm run over or hit at high speed? Not really. But if someone clips me and I hit the pavement I'd rather something than nothing.

[kashunstva]

Road cyclist here. Once I went down on a training ride careening off into the unpaved shoulder. After dusting myself off my friend I was with looked aghast. A pyramidal sharp rock was wedged between the ribs of the helmet. Lacking a helmet a skull fx would have been a real possibility. Lots of ways to ways to die road cycling but if I can eliminate one; I’m there.

[im_down_w_otp]

I am definitely alive today due directly to my wearing a helmet skateboarding, mountain biking, and skiing.

Skateboard helmet saved me from taking a piece of rebar to the temple. Mountain bike helmet saved me from taking a jagged rock to the back of my head. Ski helmet saved me from taking the corner of a park rail to my forehead.

There's there more than one kind of crash and more than one kind of serious/fatal head injury.

[propter_hoc]

The kind of extreme sports you list having participated in have absolutely nothing in common with low speed urban bicycle commuting.

It certainly makes sense to wear a helmet while doing mountain biking, BMX tricks or road racing.

[jamal-kumar]

People opening doors onto bike lanes without checking, impaired drivers, trucks with blind spots, all of these things are definitely stuff I'd rather have a helmet upon encountering the worst side of than not while riding on a modern road on a vehicle which doesn't have a huge case around it already.

I think if you're maybe in one of those exceptionally bike-friendly places like Amsterdam that these hazards may be mitigated enough, but at least in the Americas people are actively hostile towards bike riders on the road and I think it's just a matter of civil infrastructure planning more than anything in terms of that sentiment.

[im_down_w_otp]

I've been "doored" four times. On the same stretch of road. In front of the same hotel. Fortunately, in every case I managed to hang into their door well enough as I was endo'ing to keep my head from hitting the pavement, and I also thankfully wasn't swiped by traffic in the lane next to me either.

Had I gone fully over the door head first, I suspect a helmet would have been a welcome companion for both the impact and the road rash. In all those above cases I was wearing one precisely because of that suspicion.

[WkndTriathlete]

> I think if you're maybe in one of those exceptionally bike-friendly places like Amsterdam that these hazards may be mitigated enough

As a lifelong cyclist, I can assure you there is no way to mitigate hazards enough on a bike, even in as cyclist-friendly place as Amsterdam, to justify not wearing a helmet. Even something as simple as an awkward fall can result in a head bouncing off the pavement.

[Kim_Bruning]

That's pretty cool that you are a lifelong cyclist! Amsterdammers tend to be lifelong cyclists too, they start very young [1]. However, they don't tend to wear helmets.[2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVhYcJH_m5o 100s of Kids & Parents Bicycle to one Amsterdam School

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8h_DalTjV0 Amsterdam Bicycle Rush Hour.

[pdx6]

I'm still around from wearing a helmet biking in San Francisco. I got my wheel stuck in the old street car tracks on Castro and Market while going 15 mph and went over the handles. My helmet cracked when my head hit the pavement, I was skinned up and shaken, but no serious injuries.

I think there are plenty of low speed urban bicycle accidents a helmet is good for based on this.

[2muchcoffeeman]

Are you just ignoring the speed of the vehicles that hit you?

[jamal-kumar]

Honestly I'm completely amazed I'm not a brain damage case from my own years of boarding without one. Like, after getting hit by cars a couple of times, hitting speed wobbles going too fast bombing a hill, and falling into a crevice on a mountain... I've been through a lot of insane stuff but near-misses with almost dying on a skateboard or snowboard have definitely put the fear of death in me. Now that I'm older I don't think I would mess around without one.

I've known a few people who have become brain damage cases riding around without a helmet and life isn't great for them. One of them followed me when I went camping at one point and lost his only pants in the forest on the first night kind of level.

[aksss]

Not to jinx myself but I’ve been in more mountain bike wrecks than I can count - stitches to the face and elsewhere, scars a plenty, and have never once hit the brainy portion of my head (small target, I know ;). I think it’s mostly owing to technique.

That said, a childhood friend of mine who became a sponsored snowboarder suffered a severe head injury while shooting an ad, and is still mentally and physically disabled from it (wheelchair bound to this day).

All to say, I’m well aware of the risks and have a list of anecdotes to support any direction you want to take them, but none of it has made me a fan of helmet laws for adults.

[twiss]

All else is not equal, though. The focus on individual responsibility for biking safety in fact reduces biking safety. It's important to recognize that at a societal level, it's more useful to focus on improving infrastructure than on increasing rates of helmet wearing.

Of course, individual bikers can also still wear a helmet, but they should also demand proper biking infrastructure.

[NovemberWhiskey]

>The focus on individual responsibility for biking safety in fact reduces biking safety

You mean, I think, that it fails to improve it in the way you would like. Or are you actually asserting that making people wear helmets actually reduces safety?

[twiss]

> Or are you actually asserting that making people wear helmets actually reduces safety?

Yes, if it's done instead of improving biking infrastructure, as it often is.

[NovemberWhiskey]

Well, you don't seem to be asserting it. You seem to be saying that it's a resource misallocation. Assume we have improved biking infrastructure. People would still fall off bikes and hit their heads, and the people that did that would be safer if they wore helmets, wouldn't they?

Honestly, this whole "don't ask me to exercise personal responsibility until you've changed the world for me" thing seems a little petulant.

[twiss]

> People would still fall off bikes and hit their heads, and the people that did that would be safer if they wore helmets, wouldn't they?

A bit, but I'm claiming it will help way less than improving the infrastructure, and there's a long way to go in improving the infrastructure before focusing on wearing helmets makes sense (at a societal level! individuals can still focus on that, of course).

Even in the Netherlands, which has comparatively speaking amazing biking infrastructure, the majority of biking deaths are due to a collision with a car, not people falling down [1]. That to me says that even there, focusing on further improving the infrastructure still makes more sense than focusing on helmet wearing.

However, looking at the data [1], I did find one (almost) exception: for people over 70, biking deaths without a collision approached those with a collision (though the latter were still a majority). So I'll concede that for people over 70, telling them to wear a helmet when biking might make sense.

[1]: https://www.cbs.nl/-/media/_excel/2022/37/maatwerktabel-fiet... (xlsx file)

---

Edited to address the edit:

> Honestly, this whole "don't ask me to exercise personal responsibility until you've changed the world for me" thing seems a little petulant.

I'm asking society to focus their efforts on the measures that have the best ROI for improving safety. My claim is that focusing on improving infrastructure has a better ROI than focusing on asking bikers to wear helmets.

That is not to say that individual bikers shouldn't wear helmets. I'm also not arguing about whether or not they should take individual responsibility or not. I'm only claiming that at a societal level, focusing on individual responsibility reduces biking safety. I believe that is backed up by data quoted in the article.

[zardo]

Is the idea that we should we repeal helmet laws with the intent that it will lead to more people getting hurt, then try to harness that wave of misery to get bicycle infrastructure?

[twiss]

No, of course not, we should start by focusing on improving the biking infrastructure. Waiting for more people to get hurt shouldn't be necessary to justify that; a lot of people are already getting hurt.

[rattray]

How are these pitted against each other??

It's totally possible that a helmet saves your life/head with no cars involved. Happened to me a couple months ago.

Helmets should be required and infrastructure should be great.

[apgwoz]

I don't think anyone is saying "don't wear a helmet." What's being stated is that you can't stop at "wear a helmet," and doing so does more harm than good by creating a false sense of safety. A helmet will protect you from _some things_, no doubt. It won't protect you from a car whose driver just dumped his soda in his lap, and swerves when looking down to see the damage.

The article cites the Netherlands, where bicycling is extremely popular, but helmets are not. The "safety" comes from the infrastructure which reduces hazards that make bicycling unsafe. Visibility, and isolation from 3000+ lb metal objects are the two most important things.

There's a fun catch-22 here. You need more riders to create safety (groups of cyclists are visible. large groups of cyclists can advocate for bike lanes, etc), but without safety you can't attract new riders.

[twiss]

They're pitted against each other because when biking accidents happen, the biker is often blamed, especially if they weren't wearing a helmet. This is partially done to avoid having to improve the biking infrastructure. But, as the article claims, improving biking infrastructure would improve biking safety more than chastising bikers who don't wear helmets.

[tofuahdude]

I'd be surprised if "demand" is the right demeanor to use when optimizing for public/social outcomes. In my experience, it's much easier to convince people of your position with a more calm, measured perspective than "demanding" anything.

[midoridensha]

Yes, a calm, measured perspective is how humans eliminated slavery, for instance.

/s

[ryukafalz]

Stop de Kindermoord was phenomenally successful.

[jamal-kumar]

That sounds so grim, all we had in the 90s to convince us in the americas was a watermelon getting smashed on pavement

[taeric]

As a few sibling posts have said, the point is that all else is clearly not equal. For whatever reason, there are places with more bike ridership and fewer deaths. This /despite/ not having helmet mandates. Indeed, the data seems to indicate that helmet mandates go so far as to make all bikers less safe.

The argument you are making is appealing, to be sure. I'd even go so far as to say I agree with it. Strictly, it is a non-sequitur to the point that is being made.

[TedDoesntTalk]

> data seems to indicate that helmet mandates go so far as to make all bikers less safe

The only mention I saw of this in the article is a study where the cyclist wearing a helmet had a shorter average distance between bike and car than when not wearing a helmet.

Do you have another source, or are we going to base legislation on one study by one individual in one city?

[taeric]

In my phone now, so not digging hard. Last time this came up there were quite a few studies linked.

I'll note that the one you referenced is not really that interesting. Trying to get individual behavior out of it may work, but it is the population wide metrics that were telling.

And this is absolutely no different than cars. Your gut is probably that we require seatbelts. But school buses are a glaring omission from that is. Public transit, in general. Even works on boating. When taking a ferry, just a boat, we do not require active vest usage.

Would they make you safer? Probably yes in both cases. Is it the needle mover in population wide metrics? Getting people out of an individual's vehicle and into a community one is seen as more important for safety. Similar logic seems to apply to bikes. Get people out of cars and onto bikes. Whatever increase in danger you may see in lax helmet laws could be offset by them not being in a car.

[apgwoz]

The impression that I got was helmet laws make people feel like biking is default unsafe, which leads to less bikers, which leads to less visibility and less isolation of bikers (no demand, no tax dollars spent on infrastructure).

If you want safe biking, you need visibility and isolation. The visibility here is helped by, say, biker wearing blinking lights and reflectors. But also, just having constant presence of bikers on the road such that drivers get used to sharing it. The isolation is space between bikes and 3000+ pound hunks of accelerating metal, e.g. dedicated bike lines / bike barriers.

[taeric]

This is somewhat comparing the wrong metrics. The more people you have not driving a car and instead on a bike, the safer everyone is. Exactly like the more people you have out of a car and on a bus.

The bus is an easy comparison, as even on a bus, you would be safer with a seatbelt. But the added danger of not having a seatbelt is more than offset by the reduction in cars.

[twiss]

The article links to https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/06/02/why-helmets-arent-the..., which positively correlates helmet wearing with fatality rate. Of course, correlation is not causation, and you could logically argue that most of the causation is the other way around, i.e. an unsafe biking environment induces wearing helmets - but at the very least wearing helmets doesn't seem to solve the issue.

The part where the other direction of the causation probably crops up is that, when a society focuses on wearing helmets for biking safety, biking safety will be lower than in societies that focus on biking infrastructure.

[lucisferre]

All else being equal if I fall down my stairs I'm better off wearing a helmet and probably football pads too. Despite this truth I don't think many people walk around their house like this.

[paulryanrogers]

Do multi-ton vehicles pass within inches of your body while walking around your house?

[pessimizer]

They don't. But that's just a dance around the undeniable fact that wearing a helmet when you go up and down the stairs is safer than not wearing a helmet.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-injuries-stairs-id...

[lmm]

No, and they shouldn't be allowed to do that in public spaces either.

[Kim_Bruning]

It is generally inadvisable to get within inches of a high speed multi-ton vehicle in the first place.

If something goes wrong with that, a mere helmet can only help so much, as you might expect.

I think we can agree that multi-ton vehicles are not permitted to enter houses. Because of the dearth of such vehicles, the inhabitants feel (relatively) safe, and go about their day helmet-less.

A similar approach has been used in eg. the Netherlands for bicycles. Where needed (& as much as possible, & more and more often) , bicycles are given their own paths, preferably in such a way that no motor vehicles can enter. Since the danger is thus much reduced, bicyclists on those routes also typically go about their day helmet-less.

At least, this is one way to intuit why people in the Netherlands don't normally wear helmets (as often at least: they still do when racing or mountain biking or etc where there is increased risk. Just not for the normal 9-5 commute, which is considered ~safe)

[latchkey]

Riding a bike is inherently unsafe. What you're referring to is the proximity between bikes and vehicles, which is even more unsafe.

The roads in the Netherlands are nicely separated from the cars in most cases and also well paved. That doesn't prevent you from riding off the side of the road into a ditch and hitting your head though.

Having had a freak accident on a bike (on a safe road) and cracked a helmet, I'm sure glad that I had it on. I always ride with a helmet.

[Kim_Bruning]

I think it depends on the type of bike and how you ride it. As far as I'm aware most dutch people consider riding a "normal"[1] dutch bike to be inherently safe.

If you're riding a fast racing bike or a mountain bike, you're probably engaged in slightly more risky activity, and people do wear helmets on those bikes.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aESqrP3hfi8

[latchkey]

Quick turn, front wheel slips out, head on the ground.

Bike rides off the side of the road, fall over, hit head on a rock.

Run head on into a pole.

Certainly, the style of bike helps and those are safer bikes... they don't prevent head trauma though. A helmet does.

This is also similar with skiing. I learned to ski when I was a kid and never wore a helmet. People wear helmets now. Even on bunny slopes. Kids wear them too. You're on snow, it is soft. Helmets are still a good idea.

It is the accidents you're not expecting that tend to hurt you the most.

[interestica]

Sidewalks then?

[pessimizer]

> the article would be more compelling if it focused on the unalienable right of humans to get severely injured doing stupid stuff for fun or profit.

That's definitely not a right, so it would be less convincing than just sticking to statistics (or as you refer to them, dances.)

[dtornabene]

yeah, I don't read slate much anymore but this is the most #slatepitch "article" I've waded into in a very long time. "Bike helmets actually __harm__ you" is like textbook definition contrarian clickbait.

[treeman79]

Got hired into a company to replace a guy that didn’t wear a helmet.

He came in to visit about a year later. He could sort of talk and walk a little by that point.

Few years earlier my office Kate declared on Friday he was going to buy a motorcycle. Came in Monday with a broken leg.

To each their own. But I’ll stick to a car with a high safety rating.

[cassepipe]

Public transportation is rather safe if you live in a city where it exists. Then you don't have to contribute to the car society and all its ills

[karamanolev]

Ah, cars. Heralded as the future for humanity, the awesome big steel cans they are.