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Comment by throwaway5752 | Hacker News Reader

It's easy: laws or not, wear a helmet if you value your life (or brain). Every cyclist I know has a story of unexpectedly ditching. Even some of them at a dead stop, embarrassingly. I personally have cracked a helmet and walked away.

You are higher up, have less stability, and as good as you are you don't control many types of collisions (negligent/distracted drivers). It only takes a very minor fall and some bad luck to end up with brain swelling, cracked skull, or a corpse.

Here is a helment advocacy group's take with links to relevant statistics, opposing views: http://www.bhsi.org/shouldi.htm

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I live in the Netherlands, never ever did I see anyone with a helmet up until recently (all of a sudden people put them on their kids). I learned to ride a bike at 4, never with a helmet. I have never seen anyone with head injury. Perhaps it is because we don't go that fast, a typical bike looks like this: [0], no gears, relaxed posture. For Mountain biking I do wear a helmet, as does my 3yr old son, but not for normal biking.

"It only takes a very minor fall and some bad luck to end up with brain swelling, cracked skull, or a corpse." I really don't believe that, you are just spreading fud, I have seen people fall but you must be pretty slow to react or go really pretty fast if you can't just put your arms in front of your head or step of a falling bike.

It's easy, never force people to wear a helmet, allow them to arrive at work with hair intact and without hassle, if you value a healthy population that enjoys bicycling (yes yes our views on that are probably the same).

[0] https://www.google.nl/search?q=typical+dutch+bike&source=lnm...

You've grown up in what is probably the best place in the world to ride a bike, which makes your experience enviable but not typical. Here in the car-dominated USA it's a lot more dangerous to ride a bike because we're "sharing" the streets with fast cars that are sometimes inattentive or even aggressive. Plus, the maintenance of the streets themselves sometimes conspire against you, it's easy to lose control on a pothole or slick crosswalk marking. I have had a couple of falls where my head whacked the pavement, and was very glad I was wearing a helmet.

Edit: This video says you're 30 times more likely to be involved in an accident in the US than in the Netherlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2THe_10dYs

I categorically deny that I am spreading FUD. You are very unlikely to die in a bike accident. However, if you do, you are vastly more likely to not be wearing a helmet. Even if you have negative anecdata (absence of observed collisions/falls) that doesn't mean it doesn't happen: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2013/11/fewer_road_dea...

As far as minor falls leading to death... hopefully an EMT/medical professional can jump in or someone else can offer statistics. I wish I had time to find links/data to show you how sadly and tragically incorrect that is (cycling or not).

I will repeat: I favor bike lanes and do not strongly favor helmet laws (even though I strongly favor their use).

edit: also, if anyone can find a way to quantify how many injuries helmets have prevented, it would be awesome. Everything I found involved autopsies/hospital reports/police reports... nothing where someone crashed and the helmet prevented further injury. Also hard to tell non-fatal effects from reported data (where a fall would have been a concussion otherwise, but was not because of a helment)

Never seen someone come away with a concussion from a bike accident then?

> Every cyclist I know has a story of unexpectedly ditching.

IIRC, the majority of injuries from cycling accidents are to the hands, arms and shoulders.

> I personally have cracked a helmet and walked away.

Which of course means nothing regarding whether you would have injured your brain. Our hair, scalps and skulls are remarkably good at protecting our brains.

> as good as you are you don't control many types of collisions (negligent/distracted drivers)

True enough, and of course a strike from a two-ton vehicle travelling 20 mph faster than one will impart far more force on one's body than a strike of a 180-pound body travelling at 18 mph will impart on the road.

Helmets are nothing more than magical safety hats; they're placebos; they're a triumph of marketing and emotion over reason and sense. If you wear a bicycle helmet, then logically you should wear a driving helmet, a walking helmet and a sleeping helmet.

You are free to make the helmet decisions you see best for yourself and loved ones.

For everyone else, I think it's worth contemplating the statistics I linked to from NYC:

  * Almost three-quarters of fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
  * Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.

> You are free to make the helmet decisions you see best for yourself and loved ones.

Not when that is made illegal.

> Almost three-quarters of fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.

That's unsurprising, particularly if 'head injury' includes a broken neck; people rarely die from broken wrists these days.

> Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.

What percentage of bicyclists don't wear helmets? What percentage of bicyclists in accidents don't wear helmets? That's important.

And of course, what percentage of cyclists who died without helmets would have lived with them? That's the only number that counts, and every bit of research indicates that helmets only make a small improvement in survivability of certain crashes, while also increasing the rate of neck injuries and the rate of accidents in general.

Yeah a helmet is sort of a hail-Mary. We say "I'm hurtling down the road at 20mph on a contraption make of pipes and sharp things, wearing shorts and a t-shirt. But I've strapped a block of Styrofoam to my head, so I'm Safe!"

Its clearly not enough. But what is? Its kind of like, you cycle, you sign up for the risk.

It's a harsh realization for some that not all risk can be abolished.

Life is risk and it is impossible to enjoy much of it if you're not prepared to take any risks.

What weirds me out is that it is always other people who wish to put limits on what kinds of risks one can take, after all, nobody stops them from wearing a helmet if they so desire and that should be all there is to it, but no, you too have to wear a helmet.

I'm actually going to wear a helmet. Because, its all I've got.

"Which of course means nothing regarding whether you would have injured your brain. Our hair, scalps and skulls are remarkably good at protecting our brains."

Even so, I would rather have a cracked helmet than a cracked skull.

It's amazing to see the splurging of anecdotes again about this topic.

For anyone that has an interest in an informed opinion from someone that knows a small bit more about risk, please take a look at this Spiegelhalter paper: http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f3817.full?ijkey=I5vHBog6...

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