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Comment by nraynaud | Hacker News Reader

There is no danger to others in biking without a helmet.

The helmet issue is mostly something to try to get at biking people, it is not a public health issue. That why all warning are worded along the line: “helmet prevent head injuries” (like knee pad limit knee injuries), and not “helmet improves general outcomes”.

Most studies agree that head injury absent a car strike are rare and are compensated by the long term benefits over the population. The most dangerous thing in a bike is the surrounding cars.

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This, this, this. Nobody, and I mean nobody, wears a helmet when cycling in the Netherlands - not five-year-olds and certainly not adults, and absolutely everyone cycles everywhere. Yes, people do die of bike injuries, but the number is surprisingly small, something like 160 people per year out of a country of 16 million.

That's mostly because of the culture of respect and patience amongst all modes in Holland. In Holland people queue politely on their single speed heavy bikes at stoplights while in San Francisco we've had multiple injuries this year on Market St from bike-on-bike collisions caused by people from the back of the "pack" timing out red lights and passing stopped riders at high speeds.

The UK with a much much bigger population than the Netherlands and worse cycling provision has 102 fatalities - sound's like you have a problem.

The UK has a much bigger population but far few people actually regularly cycling. A quarter of the population in the Netherlands commutes by bike. Compared to the UK they have approximately 1/4 the population but the average person bikes 10x more.

https://www.cbs.nl/NR/rdonlyres/9F9F3F71-9324-46D3-AD7E-076C...

https://www.cyclinguk.org/resources/cycling-uk-cycling-stati...

Compute this per miles traveled by bike. Or minutes spent on bikes. The comparison you chose is meaningless.

Falling off a bike or scooter and hitting your head is a non trivial injury and if your unlucky can be fatal.

You can make an argument for wearing a helmet just about anywhere including hiking, walking up stairs, and driving a car. Helmets would presumably decrease head injury rate with all those activities. But we make tradeoffs.

People get very doctrinaire about wearing helmets for specific activities. Not that long ago, people never used to wear helmets downhill skiing unless they were racing. Now they're common and, for some people, are something that it's reckless not to wear.

At least traditional helmets just don't fit with bike share and scooter share services. Maybe some of the flexible materials like D3O make sense for this sort of application as a compromise.

Bike share companies do not fit with helmets, and they choose to do business. I interpret this to mean bike share companies do not care about the safety of their customers.

Especially with undocked bikes, no one has come up with a workable way to rent helmets. It seems reasonable to let adults decide on their own whether to rent or not rent and either carry their own helmet or do without.

People make poor decisions all the time. We can create policies that nudge people into making better decisions. We should do this because it makes society better. Yes, I think the decision to ride a bicycle with a helmet in an American urban environment is a fundamentally better decision than to ride a bicycle without a helmet. I think we should not allow business to operate if they encourage biking without a helmet much the same way it is illegal to rent cars that do not have seat belts installed.

>bicycle with a helmet in an American urban environment is a fundamentally better decision

I agree. I don't bike on streets but I do wear a helmet when I do bike.

>we should not allow business to operate if they encourage biking without a helmet

The problem is that this is effectively equivalent to saying bike-sharing should be banned, especially dockless bike sharing (because they're probably not interesting to many given, say, strict enforcement of helmet laws). I'm not sure that's a nudge that "makes society better."

> equivalent to saying bike-sharing should be banned

Yeah, I said this in my root comment. I hope the city I live in bans bike shares like SF did. I addressed more issues than the helmet there too.

Edit: Reasons why I don't like bike shares as mentioned in the root comment.

* I think local DOT is expecting more ridership than will happen. This will cause us to miss our carbon reduction goals.

* They consume sidewalk space

* Heavy bikes are a bad option for a hilly rainy city. Rain gear and lighter multi speed bikes are required to effectively bike here.

I know people who have an illness that causes them to have fits and he does wear a light helmet - I bit like the ones hookers war in rugby (not that sort of hooker)

Thanks for saying this. I wear a helmet every ride because I have a friend who bumped their head in a low speed over the handlebars crash. They seem fine but they won't taste or smell for the rest of their life.

In 2015 there were almost 467,000 bicycle injuries in the United States. This is a direct quote from the CDC regarding bicycles and helmets: "Bicycle helmets reduce the risk of head and brain injuries in the event of a crash." [0] This is a strong enough warning from an accountable and transparent source that I choose to wear a bicycle helmet every time I ride a bike and I believe people that do not wear a bicycle helmet are reckless. I believe that companies that encourage riding without a helmet do not care about the safety of their customers.

Perhaps bicyclist are more likely to have a head injury if they are struck by a car. I share roadways and crosswalks to with cars when I ride.

[0]https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/bicycle/index.html

A pedestrian dies every 1.6 hours in traffic accidents in the United States. 129,000 go to the ER every year (note that the bicycle number is all injuries, not just those requiring ER treatment). Walking is more dangerous on a per-trip basis than driving.

If we did a study that compared helmeted pedestrians to unhelmeted pedestrians, I'm sure the latter would fare better in terms of head injuries.

Yet no one wears a helmet while walking and no one thinks Nike is irresponsible to sell you shoes that don't include a helmet.

We can always do more for safety. How would you strike the balance between public safety and too many regulations?

The 2010 515,000 bicycle related injuries required ER attention, [0] so the problem is significant enough in size to merit policy. The single biggest risk factor for death or disability in bicycle accidents is head trauma, and helmets are highly effective at reducing the risk of head trauma in bicyclist. [1] Bicycle helmets are a cheap and effective preventive measure to a real public health problem.

[0]https://www.cdc.gov/healthcommunication/toolstemplates/enter...

[1]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002243751...

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