[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)

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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.