On Wed, 2011-03-16 at 08:10 -0800, Jan Heine wrote: > > to get people on bicycles, you don't want to force them to wear a helmet > > and imply that they are doing something more dangerous than driving. > > The same arguments were made when Preston Tucker wanted to include > seatbelts in his cars. His board thought it implied that Tucker cars > were unsafe. (Instead, it was Volvo who introduced seatbelts. I guess > they weren't afraid that their cars might be considered unsafe.) > > Today, most of us use seatbelts, because we are aware of the risks of > driving. Seatbelts don't keep people from driving. It seems to make > little sense to pretend that riding bikes is risk-free. Do we really > want to foster a teenage-like feeling of invincibility in cyclists? > (Like my neighbor 20 years ago, who took up cycling in middle age. > She loved it, riding against the flow of traffic, helmet-free on an > old bike with no real brakes.) > > The bigger issue that nobody addresses is simple: A seatbelt or a > helmet is your last line of defense. Accident avoidance through > competent driving/riding is a much more important component of your > safety. With cars, our focus on technology over driver education has > had the U.S. slip from the safest country for drivers to one of the > least safe. (However, that statistic in the NY Times was per driver, > not per miles, and Americans drive more... so one might want to > correct for that.) > > At Bicycle Quarterly, we are considering looking at the statistics > and figuring out whether helmets make riding safer, whether risk > compensation really is a factor, etc. I believe there is a need for > real data, rather than opinion, on the subject. It's not that hard to > figure this out, especially when you compare different countries and > populations. But of course, like most quasi-religious topics, it > would be a hotly debated issue. What do you guys think?
Personally, I am absolutely sick of Helmet Wars. I think the entire issue is ridiculous, stupid even, and I can't stand to hear the arguments endlessly repeated. And I usually don't take part in such discussions. However... Statistical arguments are absolutely meaningless when something freakish happens -- for example, when the Kamikaze Squirrel decided to run through my front wheel yesterday. There I was, riding down the road at around 13 mph, perfect pavement, no traffic within a mile of me in either direction, a friend riding about a car length behind me, when I see a blur of motion in my peripheral vision down and to the right, and simultaneously hear a shout behind me and a loud PING from my front wheel. Good job I had a 36 spoke wheel! The woman behind me said the squirrel bounced off my wheel, got up and ran across the road behind me and in front of her. In this case, nothing happened. If I'd have had a low spoke count wheel, though, there's a possibility the squirrel could have gotten half-way through the wheel, and gotten sucked up and locked the front wheel, causing a header. My wearing a helmet did not cause that squirrel to decide to run through my front wheel. Had I not had a helmet on, it wouldn't have kept the squirrel from running into my wheel. I didn't ride less safely because I was wearing a helmet; had I not been wearing one, I would have done nothing different. The only question is this: had there been a crash, would I have been better off with a helmet or without one? To me, the answer is obvious, and unless someone can show me how my head would be better protected without an energy absorbing device on top of the balaclava and cycling cap than with one, I think these arguments are plainly idiotic. As to the question of whether cycling is more, or less, dangerous than driving a car -- I've been driving for over 50 years. I've been cycling for that long as well. In that time, I've had a few car accidents; the exact number depends on whether you count scrapes against a concrete pillar in the parking garage or the spin-out in the snow that left me and the car unhurt in a snow bank, but for sure one car was definitely wrecked -- 50 mph spinout on ice into a bridge girder -- and three others required bodywork. For all of that, I got one injury: a torn hangnail, when I crashed into the bridge girder. In that same time, I've had a few bicycle accidents: - Rode into some sand at the bottom of a 3 mile long hill at around 20 mph, no helmet, got knocked senseless for a couple of minutes. - Hit a paved over, invisible pothole and got a broken collar bone. - Hit a root on a canal towpath, went off the towpath into the canal and broke my shoulder. - Had a front tire blow causing the bike to roll and auger into the ground, got some road rash. - Got my wheel caught in a crack between two lanes of concrete paving that trapped the front wheel; torn clothing, road rash and a severely scraped up helmet. Otherwise, it would have been a severely scraped up scalp at best. - Came over a rise and found a tree top in the road, couldn't stop, ran over a branch and crashed. Torn clothing, dented foam in the helmet. Better a dented helmet than a dented head, I think. - Crashed on black ice commuting twice, no blood but pretty sore for a few weeks. - Jogger cut right in front of me (I yelled, he went left, I rode to the right and as I was passing he decided to cut to the right shoulder) and I ran him over. Bent fork and a rib that was sore for 2 months. It seems pretty clear to me, base on my experience I've been physically injured a lot more riding bicycles than driving a car. In most of the crashes, the helmet wasn't a factor one way or the other; but in several of them, it clearly made a difference between some sort of head or facial trauma and none at all. Was it worth the money paid for helmets over the years? Obviously, and only an idiot would say otherwise in my humble opinion, no disrespect meant to present company, but really! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
