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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

#141

Post by petercooper »

ekianjo wrote: post #123
barrkel wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helmets (including motorbike helmets) are designed to protect you from a vertical fall of about 2 meters and hitting your head at that speed. If you have a collision at 50km/h, chances are you'll be hitting the ground from a height similar to that. I don't know how many such collisions you've been in, but I've been in about 6 motorbike accidents of fairly light severity, including hitting a car at about 50km/h. I bou…

I mean, I am not against helmets if it makes you or anyone else feel safer when biking or cycling, but making it mandatory is stupid. It is up to everyone to take their own responsibility and assume the consequences of their actions. I am appalled that in a country like the US which WAS known to value individual responsibility it has become mandatory to wear helmets when cycling.

It is up to everyone to take their own responsibility and assume the consequences of their actions. [..] I am appalled that in a country like the US which WAS known to value individual responsibility it has become mandatory to wear helmets when cycling.

Though it's hardly a new development. Seat belts have been mandatory for decades. People complain about safety restrictions like these at first but seat belt laws have been around long enough to reduce the complaints to a mere mumble. So may it happen with helmet laws.

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#142

Post by konstruktor »

bickfordb wrote: post #101

Traumatic brain injury is real, completely life debilitating and can happen at very slow speeds. Many parts of your brain are protected only by soft tissue. Brains do not grow back like a broken arm/leg. Imagine permanently losing 100 IQ points by not paying attention for the wrong five seconds. Cyclists are extremely vulnerable on streets shared by cars. Think slow moving ~<180lb two wheeled bean bags vs. 1500+lb hi…

Will you seriously argue that cycling to and from work 5x2x10 or 5x2x15 minutes has no health benefits? That's more added time moving than many sedentary people get at all. Reaching aerobic thresholds for over 20 minutes is only one mechanism of how moving helps your body. Should I forget about taking the stairs unless I work in a skyscraper? Should I ditch walking?

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#143

Post by scotty79 »

I think when assessing personal risks people often don't realize that they have to 1/1000 or higher risk of dying next year of whatever.

Yes. Making yourself a bit safer is good if it doesn't bother you much but you should realize that life is just slow decay in hazardous environment and you have to balance your risks with what you want to do during your life and with your convenience.

As for helmets. Drivers tend to pass closer to bikers that wear helmets (UK study) and unsurprisingly bikers that wear helmets have more accidents. Success stories that tell "helmet saved my life after being hit by a car" are often failure stories because of your helmet you and the guy that hit you felt confident enough to share same space.

I never wore a bike helmet although if I owned one I'd probably wear it as additional safeguard. Even if I did I would relay mostly on sharing space with pedestrians not cars wherever possible.

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#144

Post by scotty79 »

petercooper wrote: post #141
ekianjo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I am not against helmets if it makes you or anyone else feel safer when biking or cycling, but making it mandatory is stupid. It is up to everyone to take their own responsibility and assume the consequences of their actions. I am appalled that in a country like the US which WAS known to value individual responsibility it has become mandatory to wear helmets when cycling.

It is up to everyone to take their own responsibility and assume the consequences of their actions. [..] I am appalled that in a country like the US which WAS known to value individual responsibility it has become mandatory to wear helmets when cycling. Though it's hardly a new development. Seat belts have been mandatory for decades. People complain about safety restrictions like these at first but seat belt laws hav…

I don't really get what people have against seat-belts. Apart from "Nobody is going to tell me what I must do in MY car!" and some people thinking that being tossed out of your car is actually preferable scenario in most accidents.

I think there's too little data about road accidents publicly available. I think all documentation from police investigations of road accidents should be anonymized and made public after some time.

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#145

Post by flexie »

One thing to remember is that Copenhagen had many bikers before it had many bike lanes. Bike lanes on the main traffic arteries of Copenhagen is pretty much a thing of the last 10-15 years or so. Before that bikers in central Copenhagen rode their bikes on the streets (with a few exceptions).

Now, many of the suburbs of Copenhagen were designed with biking in mind and have had extensive networks of bike lanes for the last 30-40 years. Of course, people moving from there and into Copenhagen took their biking habits with them.

Copenhagen has other incentives that makes biking the choice: Huge taxes on cars (first a 25 percent VAT, then 105 percent fee for the first roughly 14,000 dollars of the value of the car (incl. the VAT), then 180 percent on the exceeding value of the car), huge taxes on gasoline (the gasoline tax alone is around 3.5 dollars per gallon, then there is the 25 percent VAT, bringing the total price per gallon up around 8 dollars). Further, in many parts of Copenhagen the daily fee for parking exceeds 20 dollars.

Also, Copenhagen is relatively dense, compared to many American cities, and many families living in the suburbs have at least one parent working locally (typically in public sector jobs such as teaching, day care, elderly care, the local municipality etc.). Biking is only a realistic means of transportation if distances are small. It may work for New York City one day, but probably not for Houston or LA...

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#146

Post by tisme »

rickmb wrote: post #64
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…

Why do people insist on pretending all of Europe is full of bike lanes? In most inner cities there often isn't room for bike lanes, or the lane is just a line on the asphalt. I bike to work every day in Amsterdam, not a single bike lane on my route, I have to share the road with cars, trams, buses, trucks and scooters. The only traffic that actually poses a regular challenge because of their erratic movements and ten…

The biggest single factor that makes biking safe is a legislative one. If you adopt the model where hitting a bike with a car automatically puts the car in the wrong you can lose the helmet.

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#148

Post by BrandonM »

willholloway wrote: post #39

Cycling is extremely appealing if you separate roads for cars from roads for bikes. Boulder is a city that gets this right. As a cyclist in Boulder, you can get almost anywhere in town with minimal riding on a normal street. The network of bike/pedestrian paths is so well integrated into the city. I loved biking everywhere in Boulder. In Austin or New York I would rather walk and take public transit. NYC and the Conn…

Columbus, OH, is another city that is surprisingly bicycle friendly. Allow riding on the road feels less safe than riding on the roads in SF (there just aren't enough cyclists on the roads for most drivers to be looking for them), there are tons of separated paths that really minimize the amount of road riding that is necessary.

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#149

Post by rickmb »

scoot wrote: post #76
rickmb wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people insist on pretending all of Europe is full of bike lanes? In most inner cities there often isn't room for bike lanes, or the lane is just a line on the asphalt. I bike to work every day in Amsterdam, not a single bike lane on my route, I have to share the road with cars, trams, buses, trucks and scooters. The only traffic that actually poses a regular challenge because of their erratic movements and ten…

> The only traffic that actually poses a regular challenge because of their erratic movements and tendency to step into the road without looking are American tourists on foot... Was that really necessary? The racial stereotype detracts from your your argument, and frankly, one erratic pedestrian looks the same as another to a fast moving cyclist, much as one erratic cyclist looks the same as another to a driver.

It's not a stereotype, it's a very real an observation. I'm not a particularly "fast moving" cyclist (stereotype much?), I ride at a leisurely pace (Amsterdam, remember?), so I have plenty of time to observe what happens around me.

The accents are unmistakable as they apologize or otherwise verbally react whenever I have to brake hard and/or swerve to avoid them.

Re: To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

#150

Post by snowwrestler »

jlgreco wrote: post #50
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this the most important question. They aren't expensive (£15) and if you're going to bike then you're going to get sweaty, rained-on, etc with or without a helmet. So I guess if you're put off cycling by a simple helmet then I really cannot seeing you sticking with it through any kind of adverse weather either.

Bicycles can be left locked up where-ever you go, but helmets either need to be carried around once you arrive, or you need some place to put them.

It's very easy to lock a helmet up with your bike--just put the lock bar or chain through the "ear triangle" on the female clip side.

Sure, someone could still steal it by cutting that strap, but what is the point of a helmet that can't be clipped on? And if bike helmets are so unpopular, why would anyone steal one to begin with?

Finally, if your bike helmet is stolen, then you are simply biking home without a helmet--which is the condition you'd be in anyway if you didn't bring a helmet in the first place.

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