Another reason is that being really respectful around cyclists is an important part of driving lessons in The Netherlands. And I think you can fail your driving test if you pass a bike too close, open your door without looking if a cyclists is coming from behind, or passing over a bike lane at an intersection without looking.
I am from The Netherlands and I only realized since moving to Canada that my home country is such a safe place for cyclists. I find it interesting that no one in The Netherlands wears a helmet when cycling and yet serious cycling injuries don’t seem to be a common thing, whereas here in Canada I know of multiple people that got “doored” or otherwise have been in a bike related accident.
Cycling already has the lowest percentage of road traffic fatalities compared to other modes. The highest is pedestrians - should pedestrians wear helmets?
A helmet requirement is wholly incompatible with the role of cycling in NL. You hop on a bike anywhere, regardless of what you're wearing. It's a casual transportation mode, just like walking, not a sport activity. This proposal can only make sense for people who don't live in this reality.
In addition, as mentioned by another commenter, when the dutch traffic rules were written decades ago, it was found that helmet usage correlated to increased accident rates - people take more risks when they feel safer, and that in turn makes pedestrians less safe.
> In addition, as mentioned by another commenter, when the dutch traffic rules were written decades ago, it was found that helmet usage correlated to increased accident rates - people take more risks when they feel safer, and that in turn makes pedestrians less safe.
I'm probably a bit of an oddball in this respect, but I do not regard helmets as a means of preventing injury. Reducing the severity of an injury, sure, but even then they are of limited scope (i.e. they are only really useful if there is a direct impact to the head).
Helmets are not an excuse for taking risks. They are a means of reducing the impact of accidents.
>A helmet requirement is wholly incompatible with the role of cycling in NL. You hop on a bike anywhere, regardless of what you're wearing.
I don't really understand this. I keep my helmet clipped to my handlebars, so if I have my bike, I have my helmet. Is it really so much of an inconvenience?
I'm sympathetic to the overall anti-helmet-requirement position, even seemingly trivial concerns like "it messes up my hair" sound legitimate to me. The convenience argument in particular just never made much sense to me though.
Living in a city, the idea of leaving anything of value on your bike, and expecting it to still be there when you get back is completely foreign to me. When I visited Amsterdam, I even had the seat stolen off my rental bike. Biking in the states means carrying a helmet inside with you everywhere you go, and it absolutely sucks.
When I visited Copenhagen a few years ago, most of the bikes I saw were either unlocked or locked to themselves to prevent riding off but not carrying away. It was rather shocking.
uh, I normally lock my helmet by putting my u-lock through the double section of the strap. Sure someone could cut the strap but then the helmet would be useless. I haven't had any issues and live in a city with pretty high bicycle theft.
That helmet's getting stolen as soon as you go into a store or cafe or the office. Having inside bike parking where it would be safe is a luxury that doesn't exist in most places.
This argument gets rehashed nearly every time cycling and helmets are brought up. Usually be people talking past each other.
Here are some important conclusions:
1) Cycling as a commuter is quite safe, with or without a helmet.
2) Cycling is safer with a helmet.
3) If you found yourself in some binary where your only options were "cycle without a helmet" or "don't cycle at all", the health benefits of "cycle without a helmet" likely outweigh the risk of serious injury due to not wearing a helmet.
4) Because of #3 and other factors, helmet laws for adults aren't generally a net positive.
5) BUT - it's a good idea to wear a helmet whenver you can, and even the Dutch (fore example) would be better off if they kept their usage of cycling high, but culturally embraced wearing helmets as well.
6) Things are very different in higher-risk forms of cycling like BMX, road racing and MTB, where crashes are much more frequent and higher impact, and you'd be an idiot to not wear a helmet.
> Neurosurgeons in the Netherlands disagree with this
Neurosurgeons have a very skewed view of the statistical likelihood of head injury. They see such injuries every day, and it can most definitely make them believe that the risks involved are much greater than they actually are.
Reading the article they focus on children and e-bike users. Can kinda understand it from that point, e-bikes can go abnormally fast and children are vulnerable. Would've expected the advice to also count for elderly people. I'm a 30 year old reasonably in-shape guy using a regular bike, chance that something happens to me on a bike is small and it's even smaller that I'd get really hurt by it.
As I understand it there are 2 Dutch words for cycling [0]:
>Crucially, the Dutch distinguish between everyday cycling (fietsen) and competitive cycling (wielrennen). Fietsers (cyclists) are found everywhere.
...
The term wielrennen, on the other hand, is reserved for the sweaty, colourful and seemingly endless cycle races on which the people of Benelux are so keen.
In my experience, at least in my area of the US, mostly kids do fietsen - biking to their friends' houses, or the park, etc. Grown-ups on bikes are typically serious about their wielrennen and wear skin-tight gear and ride fancy road bikes.
I try to drive safely around any cyclists, but I think it's easier to cut folks in the first category a break - they're aware they're slow, they try not to be in the way, etc. Folks in the second category are sometimes frustrating to drive near - at traffic lights they cut to the front, only to advance relatively slowly when the light turns green, or they blow through a stop sign as a car is approaching, etc.
I wonder if we would have better rules, better set expectations, etc, if we similarly had 2 words to talk about cyclists in English.
at traffic lights they cut to the front,
only to advance relatively slowly when the light turns green
they blow through a stop sign as a car is approaching
I thought the former was entirely proper -- motorcycles do similarly, going up the gap between traffic. The latter, though ... I've seen that far too much, and is frustrating.
I also see kids and adults riding their bicycles on the sidewalk, sometimes even the wrong direction. I used to get mad at that, until I realized that our local cycling infrastructure is crap, and _on that street_ I'd not want to cycle on the road either.
In the US there's a derogatory slang for the most obnoxious form of the second category: Freds. Fred is a guy on a $10k bike that treats a pedestrian and commuter heavy bike path like their own personal tour de France.
In seattle I'm staring to see a lot more adult Fietsers than I'm historically used to seeing. E-Bikes have really opened up the audience for more casual cyclers (at least in the spring and summer months).
There are costs and benefits to requiring helmets.
Requiring a helmet has apparently been shown to depress the use of bikes for every day activities. Going grocery shopping with a bike is less convenient if you have to juggle a helmet along with a liter of milk.
Less biking means roughly more pollution, more obesity, bigger roads, more car accide ts.
On the other side of this equation is the death and injury that helmets prevent. This is non-zero, but apparently in the Netherlands we have judged this marginal benefit of helmets to be less than the advantages of more cycling.
The calculation might be different in countries with inferior cycling infrastructure.
I never used to wear a helmet, and I don’t think anyone should be forced to, but countless anecdotes about people being in comas and becoming permanently brain damaged due to no-fault accidents, combined with peer pressure from everyone I know, and finding one I don’t actively despise the look of, means that now I do. If I’m going grocery shopping I simply don’t take it off in the shop. I’ve incorporated it into my own punk self-image - can’t fuck with the system if I’m in an easily avoidable coma!
Don’t really care for requiring one at all really, our bonces inside out are our own business and if people want to take that risk it’s on them.
If my city were more like amsterdam I'd be happy to forgo the helmet, but in hilly seattle between the chances of getting clipped by a suv or taking a tumble on a steep grade.. I'll stick with the helmet. I don't find it too much of an inconvenience. I just clip it to my bag after I lock up.
Fyi, Amsterdam is one of the worst places as a cyclist in The Netherlands. It's very crowded and narrow with very few separated bicycle lanes. The average bicycle infrastructure in the Dutch suburbs are way better.
Helmets signal the choice for security over freedom which is simply not sexy. Moreover it signals your own inability to ride a bike and to recognise/avoid dangers rapidly. Just compare images of cyclists with and without helmet.
Is that what being punk means nowadays? Being sexy, and avoiding helmets / seat belts / health insurance / vaccinations because it's security over freedom?
The reduction of freedom has a cost as well. Not in the very visible form of shattered skulls but more hidden in the form of lives not lived and pills of various colors.
This is a debate that pops up a lot. I don’t think there is any consensus among health officials, but I think most public health officials tend to side on the no-mandatory but actively encourage helmets.
There are a couple of problem with mandatory helmets, including:
* It discourages a healthy activity.
* It shifts the responsibility from the person causing to danger (drivers) to the potential victims.
* It creates a false sense of safety (e.g. biking slower reduces risk of injuries far more then a helmet).
That depends on the way it is linked. If it's linked causally in the opposite direction, your advice is quite dangerous. Meaning that if higher per capita head injuries are causing more helmet wearing in sub populations (maybe because they see more news about deadly injuries), than your advice is for people in those sub populations to not wear their helmets.
So it's relevant information, but the direct effect of "wearing a helmet cuts the risk of serious head injury by 60% and a deadly brain injury by 71%" is more important information.
You're right in the sense that if you die because your head cracked open like a watermelon on the pavement, that doesn't count as a head injury - it counts as a fatality.
Yes, note he stated "if head injuries are more common with helmets".
There have been some studies that correlate higher levels of head injuries with mandatory helmet laws. The thesis was that wearing a helmet induces more reckless cycling (higher speeds, etc) due to feeling safer. I don't remember seeing any good follow-ups studies either way and don't necessarily agree with the study.
The other theory is that helmet laws reduce casual cycling by adding an impediment to just hoping on and going. And that those short trips to the strore tend to be safer.
Personally my wife can't find a helmet that fits, Asians have rounder heads and north American helmet manufacturers are oblivious. As a result we never cycle.
That's possibly true. I wear a helmet when I go for a bike ride (for pleasure/fitness) but don't wear one when I run an errand by bike. The former, speeds avg 18mph, top out above 30mph, and use different roads. The latter, speeds are closer to 10mph and use mostly bike lanes and wide sidewalks.
I am from The Netherlands and I only realized since moving to Canada that my home country is such a safe place for cyclists. I find it interesting that no one in The Netherlands wears a helmet when cycling and yet serious cycling injuries don’t seem to be a common thing, whereas here in Canada I know of multiple people that got “doored” or otherwise have been in a bike related accident.