We're talking about a barrier to entry to casual cycling here, people commuting in work clothes are not going to be able to reach speeds of 20mph in a busy city, if they do it's up to them to decide whether or a not they should wear a helmet.
Then there should be an enforced speed limit for cyclers not wearing helmets. There is a delicate balance between personal freedom and the greater good. Seatbelts do not protect anyone other than the person wearing it but societies have deemed making them mandatory is a good idea. Helmets have moved into the same category and I think they should stay there. The benefits of lower barrier to entry aren’t worth the increased, unnecessary risks.
> The benefits of lower barrier to entry aren’t worth the increased, unnecessary risks.
Every study I've ever seen contradicts your statement here.
You are all over this thread making strong, sweeping claims about bike safety and your only supporting data point seems to be "KE = 1/2mv^2". But there are entire cities in Europe where biking with no helmet is the norm, lots of people do it every day, and serious accidents are all but unheard of - there are other comments on this post with citations to back that up. There is also evidence that getting more people out biking increases bike safety more than anything else [1], and requiring helmets for everyone at all times makes this very difficult to achieve.
Please stop passing off your gut feeling as fact, it is spreading misinformation and - though I know it seems counterintuitive - actually making biking less safe. To be clear, kinetic energy being proportional to the square of velocity is a fact, that fact's impact on real world bike safety is a much more complicated question.
Disclaimer for what it's worth - I've been biking to and from either work, school or social events about once a day for the past 11 years, and I almost always wear a helmet :)
Firstly, I am not making sweeping claims. I am making a very narrow, specific common sense claim. I have not seen a single paper that refutes the safety benefits of a rider wearing a helmet. Helmets reduce brain injuries. Does this need a citation?
Secondly, there are a lot more than two factors at play to make the "cyclists killed per billion of km of bicycle travel" number. Culturally bikes need to be accepted. I don't see how helmets preclude cultural adoption.
I don't have a lot of faith in common sense, no matter whose it is. Especially when dealing with large numbers, large populations, diverse human behavior, common sense is rarely common and frequently wrong. So yes, a citation is needed.
> I don't see how helmets preclude cultural adoption.
Case in point. It seems completely common sense to me that helmets are a massive barrier to widespread adoption! Leaving aside the issues it introduces with bikeshare logistics, having an additional thing to keep track of and carry around and periodically replace (helmets can go bad!), here's something that I suspect you may not have considered: women! Whether it seems reasonable to you and me or not (and I'll be honest, it doesn't seem reasonable to me), the 2 reasons every woman I've ever asked gives for why they wouldn't want to use a bicycle to get around more are
1) sitting on the seat is awkward/uncomfortable when wearing a skirt or dress
2) helmets would ruin their hair
Requiring helmet wear makes cycling a nonstarter for a large chunk of 50% of the population (how I wish I had a citation for this! as far as I've been able to find, nobody has done any kind of survey that attempts to figure out if this is as widespread as I've observed personally). This alone makes me opposed to it, never mind the exaggerated claims of helmet efficacy
>1) sitting on the seat is awkward/uncomfortable when wearing a skirt or dress
Try watching a video of people in Copenhagen riding bikes. Women wear dresses and skirts there all the time while cycling. Same goes in Japan; women commonly wear dresses/skirts there and ride bikes.
You're also making the claim that bicyclists should be forced to wear helmets. That is what people are primarily disagreeing with.
And, yes, people are sometimes forced to take other steps that are primarily about their individual safety, such as wearing seat belts. I mostly disagree with those laws as well.
Bicycles are not motorcycles, the risk for injury is not so much with speed but instead with collisions between other (primarily motor) vehicles and the types of surfaces cycled on i.e., pavement. There's also a significant socio-economic influence on injury rates, cycling in a city like Delphi with poor road infrastructure and worse general road safety is significantly more dangerous than cycling in any Dutch city with world class cycling infrastructure.
Helmets are obviously essential for reducing serious head injuries (although they're less effective than generally advertised[0]) and parents/individuals should strongly consider using them, but legislation should be focused on improving road safety through education, community outreach, and infrastructure design long before it starts to seriously restrict personal liberty and hampering adoption of better modes of transport. The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, etc, have all showed that you can have world class cycling cities without requiring helmet use.
>Seatbelts do not protect anyone other than the person wearing it but societies have deemed making them mandatory is a that good idea.
This is a dangerous misconception, unbelted rear passengers seriously increase the risk of fatal injuries for the driver and front passengers[1] and in general increase the overall amount of injuries, which should be obvious when you consider that unrestrained passengers essentially become ragdoll missiles in the event of a crash.
