Under our World City Bike program we have for several years now been looking at the yes/no sudden-death helmet issue in the context of public bike projects . If you click here you will find several postings that make an effort to report in a balanced manner (to the extent possible) on the issues, trade-offs and implications of creating legal requirements that force all cyclists to use helmets. An absolutely well-intentioned position which has turned out to be no less than the cold hand of death strangling nascent public bicycle projects in various projects around the world. Pity to spend all that public money on a nice bike sharing system and then find that they are not being widely used while honest citizens add pounds of fat to what should be their lithe frames. In the event, here are a handful of short videos from YouTube that take a pretty good whack at it from several perspectives. Have a look and decide for yourself.
To get a quck feel for both sides of the helmet debate, Wikipedia gives us a good point of departure. It opens like this:
A bicycle helmet is a helmet intended to be worn while riding a bicycle. They are designed to attenuate impacts to the skull of a cyclist in falls while minimizing side effects such as interference with peripheral vision. There is an active scientific debate, with no consensus, on whether helmets are useful for cyclists in general, and on whether any benefits are outweighed by their disadvantages. The debate on whether helmet use should be enforced by law is intense and occasionally bitter, often based not only on differing interpretations of the academic literature, but also on differing assumptions and interests on the two sides.
Click here for the evidence on each side as per their summary and extensive references.
Now let’s go to the movies:
Helmets save lives
Ask the Dutch (and don’t miss this one.)
Professor Chris Rissel talks helmets
M. Colville-Andersen: Why We Shouldn’t Bike with a Helmet
These expanded leisure facilities naturally brought in more cyclists, with the result that there were more accidents, and these often became news items. As a result in a number of places in North America, Australia/New Zealand and northern Europe well-meant laws were passed mandating helmets for all cyclists. (It being, by the way, a lot cheaper to pass such a law than to make the public investment necessary to ensure safe cycling for all in and around d the city.)
The case for wearing helmets was largely approved by medical authorities and a number of cycling organizations at the time, on the grounds that a good helmet offers protection from certain types of accidents. If all the assumptions are born out the case for these “partial assessments” looks pretty convincing. Reality however moves in other ways. Once you step outside of the partial assessment assumptions, the real world data is uncertain and ambiguous. (See attached discussions and references)
It only took a few years for other views to emerge. Among other things it was pointed out that (a) not all helmets are actually good enough to provide the needed protection; (b) more often than not they are not properly adjusted to provide this protection; and (c) in any event the clash between cyclist and motor vehicles are of such a level of violence that the helmet is rarely of much help in such cases.
More than that, some studies started to show that mandating helmets actually work to reduced cycling, a finding which is consistent with the observation whereby any additional barrier to using a transportation option works to reduce demand. This brings about corresponding losses in healthy activity, kinder and gentler cities,
Moreover, let us consider what happens in cities with heavy use of cycling for daily transport within the city limits. I offer the examples of cycling in cities across the Netherlands and Denmark, the two main cycling capitals of the world, as well as in the various city bike projects that are coming on line in places like Paris, Barcelona, Lyons and a rapidly growing number of other cities around the world. None of these cities mandate helmets, and if you go out on the street and look you will see few helmets. You will see some and this is, in my view, a wise but entirely personal choice.