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To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

nytimes.com

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Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#51

Post by astral303 »

m0nty wrote: post #32
rayiner wrote: post #6

What's so wrong with helmets?

I have a bike helmet but only wear it for some rides - i.e. the long-distance or fast ones. When I ride into town for shopping, I don't wear it. I hope it will always remain my personal choice. Anyway, the arguments are: a) Mandatory bike helmets mean you can't run a bike-share scheme because who wants to wear a much-used sweaty helmet? How can the people running the scheme sanitise them? b) Mandatory bike helmets pu…

+1. Mandatory training or some of kind education or just plain warning/ticketing bikers for riding unsafely is a key point. Just as there are a ton of inattentive drivers, there are a ton of inattentive bicyclists that do not ride defensively and put themselves in unnecessary dangerous situations.

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#52

Post by jmspring »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #42
papalalu wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the fact is that a helmet is not enough to guarantee your safety - if cycling without one is "nuts", cycling with one is too.

This really hits it. A helmet isn't some all protective force field. If a truck is going to run you over, a helmet isn't going to save you. I think helmets are associated with bikes, because before we used bikes to commute, which involves simply riding about town, we used bikes to rip through the woods inches away from trees and sharp rocks, or jumped them off of mounds of dirt, or flung road bikes down mountain road…

Generally, I've seen three types of injuries with regard to cycling -- the classic being the collar bone breaking, next up some road rash (ie, you know how to lay your bike down or slide out due to a rear flat tire at speed), and head trauma. The first two, the helmet is useless to help. The third? Usually pretty darn helpful.

Around here in Santa Cruz, a town known for biking -- many local builders, a couple of clubs, and a very forceful pro-bike lobby -- we still don't have the infrastructure that places like Portland or Amsterdam have. In fact, the roads are pretty much crap in most places. So you have to be careful. One recent solo accident involved a young adult who was biking at night on a dark road (dumb) but also not wearing a helmet. He crashed. Currently he is in critical condition. Pretty sure a helmet (and a light) would have helped him out.

The story -- http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/localnews/ci_21655013/santa...

Personally, I've had some spills while mountain biking where a helmet has come in pretty darn handy.

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#53

Post by b3b0p »

I recently moved to Tulsa, OK. I bought a condo on Riverside Drive because the area, atmosphere, people, places, etc. all reminded me of being in Palo Alto to a degree.

Every day, since I got here, I have been biking to work. However, I would still get things like groceries and little trinkets with my car.

Go to last Friday/Saturday (sometime during the night or early morning). I went outside, to get in my car, to go visit my friends about 75 miles away in another city (Stillwater, OK).

My car was gone.

I immediately called the police and my insurance provider (I have full coverage). The insurance company gave me a rental and is processing my claim right now. I have not used the rental car yet. It's still at the rental company. They said to call whenever I'm ready to pick it up. I ended up biking to get my groceries and instead of drudging it like I thought. I enjoy it and look forward to 30-60 minutes I nonchalantly bike down Riverside Drive on the bike path to the store and back every day. I wonder what Winters will be like now? I'll replace the car if and when insurance finishes with my claim.

For the Midwest, the area of Tulsa that I live in it is extremely bike friendly. Relatively anyway.

Edit: Grammar, clarity.

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#54

Post by jarek »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #11

Folks in the US need to start demanding bike lanes from their elected officials. They're super cheap to build and so it's more of an issue of simply having the political will to remove a lane of traffic from exclusive car use. Such political bravery can pay off. Vancouver BC's Gregor Robertson (and his councillor slate) has been elected twice with strong mandates in large part because of his commitment to bike lanes.

Incidentally, Vancouver's bike share is well en route to a stillbirth thanks to BC's think-of-the-children (literally, http://web.archive.org/web/20100829214539/http://www.richmon...) helmet law. It was first supposed to launch in spring of 2012, there's still no concrete date as of today.

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#55

Post by tzs »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #11

Folks in the US need to start demanding bike lanes from their elected officials. They're super cheap to build and so it's more of an issue of simply having the political will to remove a lane of traffic from exclusive car use. Such political bravery can pay off. Vancouver BC's Gregor Robertson (and his councillor slate) has been elected twice with strong mandates in large part because of his commitment to bike lanes.

There's actually some organized opposition to bike lanes in the US, from some of the more conspiracy theory oriented members of the Tea Party and the Libertarians. They think bike lanes are part of the UN's "Agenda 21", which they see as a nefarious plot to take away our sovereignty.

Bike lanes, for example, according to these people encourage people to bike more, which encourages higher density cities (as people want to be within bike range of work). Having us packed tighter into cities will make it easier for the UN troops to round is up and take away our guns and then our property.

These people tend to be politically active, and have turned up in enough numbers at some city councils where bike lanes were being considered to shout down those in favor or bike lanes, and scare the politicians into thinking bike lanes are actually controversial among the general electorate.

The Republican Party is encouraging this stuff. They made opposition to Agenda 21 an official part of their party platform. They didn't mention any particular things, like bike lanes, put simply mentioning Agenda 21 is going to encourage the conspiracy nuts.

Plenty of amusing but frightening on this in Goole, if you are curious. Here's a good start: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/06/inside-agend...

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#56

Post by knowaveragejoe »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #11

Folks in the US need to start demanding bike lanes from their elected officials. They're super cheap to build and so it's more of an issue of simply having the political will to remove a lane of traffic from exclusive car use. Such political bravery can pay off. Vancouver BC's Gregor Robertson (and his councillor slate) has been elected twice with strong mandates in large part because of his commitment to bike lanes.

Maybe outside of the denser urban areas it's cheap. Inside them though, I can't imagine how one could justify it being "cheap". Everything is built up already with cars in mind. You might say "Turn an existing car lane into a bike lane" - that is vastly more complicated than you might think. You're reworking traffic patterns, displacing parking spaces, and in the end just painting lines on the ground that no driver is obligated to respect. In some cities that can be an utter nightmare - I'm thinking mainly of DC here with the convoluted road network(which already has a few bike lanes and more on the way, as well as a widespread bike-sharing program). I want bike lanes or otherwise improved bike access too, but it is an immense proposition for a dense urban core that was developed around the automobile. In a lot of cases the issue is not that there is a lack of demand from the people or attention from public officials, it's that the planning and execution involved can be a nightmare.

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#57

Post by MikeCapone »

mikeryan wrote: post #8

This article is great but it does itself a pretty big disservice by pretty much ignoring a lot of why many of the European cities which have successful programs are successful. Namely they have made significant investment into infrastructure to make bicycling safer, many times prioritizing bike traffic over auto traffic. I ride quite a bit, live in Berkeley which has numerous "Bicycle Boulevards [1]" and I'm pretty c…

You are absolutely right. Streetfilms.org is a great place to see short videos that show how the Europeans/Scandinavians do it. Here are a few examples:

http://www.streetfilms.org/cycling-copenhagen-through-north-...

http://www.streetfilms.org/copenhagens-car-free-streets-and-...

http://www.streetfilms.org/copenhagen-cargo-bikes/

They also have many films about infrastructure, like physically separated bike lanes;

http://www.streetfilms.org/physically-separated-bike-lanes/

You can also look up films about places like Amsterdam for more.

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#58

Post by dbreunig »

This article is asinine.

Not once does the "journalist" mention the absurd price of NYC's program (up to $77 for 4 hours) vs. the $2 she pays in Paris.

Further, let's not forget the safer bike lanes or areas in European cities. Getting hit while riding in NYC is not an 'if', it's a 'when.' The number of cycling deaths here are absurd. I'd hate to see the figures if we actively discouraged helmet use.

The NYT should be embarrassed they ran this piece.

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#59

Post by knowaveragejoe »

tzs wrote: post #55
Tiktaalik wrote: post #11

Folks in the US need to start demanding bike lanes from their elected officials. They're super cheap to build and so it's more of an issue of simply having the political will to remove a lane of traffic from exclusive car use. Such political bravery can pay off. Vancouver BC's Gregor Robertson (and his councillor slate) has been elected twice with strong mandates in large part because of his commitment to bike lanes.

There's actually some organized opposition to bike lanes in the US, from some of the more conspiracy theory oriented members of the Tea Party and the Libertarians. They think bike lanes are part of the UN's "Agenda 21", which they see as a nefarious plot to take away our sovereignty. Bike lanes, for example, according to these people encourage people to bike more, which encourages higher density cities (as people wan…

Silliness. There is already widespread support for bike lanes and bike sharing in many US cities, these people are not going to affect anything.

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#60

Post by mikeash »

zobzu wrote: post #30
mikeash wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be much more compelling if you could bring some statistics into the argument rather than tell a personal story and then, basically, guess.

Statistic of how many head injuries you get if your head is smashed against a car door or the ground at high speed? I suggest you make the experiment, because, I can only guess it hurts every time, and uhm, that's not backed by any statistic. -- I'm not allowed to reply because this has been down-voted, so i'll reply here: the study you linked is a net result of people NOT riding bicycles because they don't want to r…

I'm incredibly disappointed with the quality of conversation in this thread. I expected a nice conversation about risks versus benefits. Instead, I see a bunch of people arguing with anecdotes and insults, and turning on anyone who makes even the slightest attempt to look at the situation rationally.
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