This topic is debated endlessly on Bike Forums:
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=96298

Interesting post Warren. It's a subject that also concerned me when I first moved to the Netherlands from London where's it's suicidal not to wear a helmet! I was amazed that nobody wear's a helmet over there, but then almost all roads have their own seperate cycle lane, not just a painted line on the road. These lanes make cycling very safe, apart from when moped's think it's for them too! Another English friend in Amsterdam told me that when he asked about why people don't wear helmets when biking the response was "would you wear a helmet to walk along the pavement?" In the Netherlands bicycling is the equivalent of walking.

I don't think the car/bike deaths comparison is fair-- we would need to take into account the number of people driving and the number of people pedalling.

How many drivers are there in the US? How many cyclists? Then, find the ratio of fatal accidents to participants on both sides. NOW we have a reasonable metric.

Remember: just because your average suburban family has 4 bikes hanging in their garage doesn't mean they ever ride them anywhere.

I think a lot of this has to do with who's in control of the vehicle. I'm guessing that a lot of the impetus for bike helmet legislation was from protective parents worried about their children learning to ride bicycles. Automobile driving is done by "responsible" adults, but many of those adults probably haven't regularly ridden a bike in years, thus the greater fear for the safety of cyclists, ie. kids.



Parallel to leonora's comment, in the United States driving a car is the equivalent of walking, whereas bicycling is, unfortunately, a fringe activity in many areas.

Here in the USA, most towns/cities do not have an organic center that allows for walkable neighborhoods. Things are very spread out, walking/biking can be tough. In bigger cities that never built a good public transit system, the car still rules (my town Los Angeles is a special, embarrasing, case: in that it DID HAVE an extensive electric train system, which was apparently defunded and paved over in the early 1900's via mechanations of the auto industry). There are no bike lanes on American streets.

This is a terrible comparison. You need to do it on an accident per mile comparison. That's like saying why do we wear seatbelts in a car, but not while sitting on the can. The comparison doesn't work.

I commented on the previous article. I'm fevently against helmet laws for adults. If you want to crack your skull open, fine by me. If we're going to have laws that usurp personal freedom/responsibility, then I'd rather that we let adults on bikes/motorcycles go helmetless, but that would mean they have volunteered to be an organ donor. Young healthy, but stupid adults who die from head injuries they could have avoided are prime candidates.

The problem I had with the original post was small children put at risk by a foolish mother. Helmets would have at least given the appearance that she gave a darn about the kids. With 6 little arms sticking out to the sides there's no way even the most attentive parent is going to be able to protect them if the bike should fall over.

Thanks for the comments. I wasn't advocating that we don't have helmets for cyclists. I wear one. But then I live in Sydney, a city notoriously unfriendly to cycling. My main point was that we need to redirect the focus to enlightened transit planning for cities. Yes, the per-mile/km death rate is higher for cyclists. But when one factors in that, in the USA at least, that "Two-thirds of bicycle fatalities occur due to traffic violations and 90% involve collisions with motor vehicles" the mixing of cars and bikes is clearly the nub of the problem. (in Occupational Health and Safety - OH&S, the objective is to remove the danger, long before having to resort to Personal Protective Equipment.)

I too would prefer to see the soft skulls of cycling kids protected by helmets. By the same token it would seem obvious that kids travelling in 4WDs should probably wear helmets too. "Rollover accidents account for only 3% of all U.S. motor-vehicle accidents, but they cause nearly a third of all vehicle-occupant fatalities. And SUV occupant is 3 times as likely to die as a result of a rollover than an occupant of a passenger car."

Awesome post, Warren. For those wondering about statitics in terms of per hour of activity and so forth, the analysis has been done. Cycling relative to driving is about equally safe (or dangerous). Helmets are fine, but like Warren points out there are much bigger fish to fry than worrying about Dutch mothers and their babies who actually use bikes transportionally.

First off, I do wear a helmet, and I guilted my husband into wearing one too.

But wearing one is the least important thing on my mind when it comes to my safety. As Warren said in the comments up there, the vast majority of crashes happen because someone is violating the traffic law. Knowing and following the law has so far kept me from ever needing my helmet. If only the other vehicle operators would do the same, we'd all be pretty damn safe.

Honestly, while automobiles are definitely dangerous, if the drivers were responsible and respectful of the traffic rules, transportational cyclists wouldn't feel the need to wear protective gear. My guess is that in Holland, the motorists, as well as the cyclists and the pedestrians, are far more respectful and know how to share the roads with others, and that's why the Dutch don't feel compelled to decorate their heads with styrofoam.

I wonder how many bike accidents are caused by the bicyclist breaking laws. In california where i ride, the law says that bicycles have the same rights and responsibilities as automobiles. But i have seen many people blow through stop signs, ride on the wrong side of the road, turning left from the right hand lane etc.

Drew, your argument is a typical deflection by an autophile and a defender of the status quo, which does nothing to improve the car-bicycle dilemma. True, there are some self-centered cyclists out there, just like among auto drivers. What you don't see, Drew, however is the majority of cyclists - people - who don't ride at all because cars and their drivers make cycling hazardous. Many people are driving when they could easily be cycling (or walking)- I can think of many excuses people make for driving. It's a fact that humans tend to be lazy generally, and that North Americans are indoctrinated into a car culture from birth. Automobiles have become so accepted as a mechanical crutch or prosthesis that we don't even realize it anymore. The structure of our cities, our daily activities, our lives are all subservient to and molded by the automobile (and the oil industry of course). It doesn't have to be that way! Our society, our children, need now to be taught that too many cars/trucks/jets/speedboats/etc are bad for the quality of (and existence of) life on this planet, and that too many car trips will make you fat and/or unhealthy. Walk more, bike more, teach children that paved roads aren't the only paths they can travel (and that at one time kids could even play safely on the streets). And let's start a combination of increasing public transit while decreasing the size and quantity of roads. Let's make it harder for people to drive cars, the way we're making it less convenient for people to smoke. Let's start breathing fresher air, hearing bees buzz instead of traffic buzz, seeing and interacting with the world and our fellow humans around us instead of watching brake lights through the windshield in our daily stop-and-go commute through life.

When you look into the statistics, it turns out that cyclists and motorists are about equally responsible for causing car/bike crashes. So if you are a cyclist, you can reduce your liklihood of a crash by about 50% by following the normal traffic rules for a vehicle (as well as the equipment rules for a human-powered-vehicle, such as a headlight and working brakes). And if you are a motorist, you can also reduce your chance of hitting a cyclist by 50% by doing the same. And if everyone drives lawfully, we'll practically be able to eliminate crashes!

The problem as I (a year-round daily bicycle commuter for at least 15 years) see it is that US American society overwhelmingly treats bicycles as toys and sports equipment, rather than as perfectly normal road vehicles, so it's not surprising that so many cyclists simply don't know how to drive. Also, for the same reason, US motorists don't understand that bicycles are vehicles and are subject to the same rules and rights as motor vehicles in traffic. So motorists don't believe that cyclists belong on the roads, and cyclists don't believe that they belong on the roads. It's really a lose/lose situation where cyclists end up as second class citizens, shunted off into the corners like frightened little sewer rats. I hate that!

So what do we do? Well, from what I've seen, as soon as you get quality bike "driver's ed" programs into the school systems you start seeing a drastic improvement in road safety and comfort levels. Kids who know how to drive a bike in traffic grow up into adults who not only know how to drive a bike safely, but also know how to safely drive all kinds of other vehicles, including cars. And, the longer these programs are in existance, the safer the roads get. Holland has had these programs for decades. the US has really only started them in a few scattered places.

Adult bike education is good to, but much harder to do on a broad scale. I think the best we can realistically hope for is for bicycle awareness to be included in the DMV's tests, and for bike safety/awareness to be occasionally to be promoted in PSAs and other government safety programs. Oh, and having some famous people promoting biking as a viable transportation option might be good too.

Obviously, bicycle education isn't the only solution to road safety - fair enforcement, and good engineering are crucial too - but a quality education forms a nice solid base for all the other solutions to add on to.

@ Mike

The reason why the children don't need a helmet is that we Dutch people know how to ride a bike. The bike will not fall over. Try to grasp this concept!

Maybe you might also be aware of the principle that the more mechanical protection you have, the more unsafe you behave. Airbags, seatbelts reinforced doors, etc, have caused car-drivers to behave much more dangerously then before, increasing the danger for other road users.

So my safety proposal: cars should fall apart at the slightest accident. This will make the world very safe for pedestrians and cyclists.

I was wondering if there are any new ideas in helmet design? Possibly any that biodegrade just like the wheat based biodegradable cutlery on the other page. What about creating a biodegradable styrafoam? And I mean I want to be able to compost that thing once I've taken a nasty spill (ass-over-teakettle) and survived thanks to my trustry, but now broken biodegradable wheat-based helmet. If not we should be looking into this!

Wow, grey matter, what a knee jerk reaction.:) i guess you didn't really read the post before writing your screed.

I actually ride a bike to work, am no 'autophile' and have done so for five years. I try to reduce my chance of accident by reflective tape on the bike and helmet and have a 30 watt auto lamp on the front of the bike.

My concern is that most people who are scared off of cycle-commuting look at the reports of bicycle accidents without how they happened. From turil's post the bicyclist is at fault half the time. From anecdotal evidence, it seems fairly common for the cyclist to have been on the wrong side, at night, with no lights etc.

Pieter, it's not so much that we bicyclists fall off our bikes, it's that we get hit by 4000-7000 pound metal objects driven by people who simply don't understand how to slow down...

@Turil

My reaction was at Mike who called the proud Dutch mum inresponsible. He projected his own inability to drive a bike unto her by assuming the bike would fall over.

As pointed out before we cloggies drive bikes in traffic from an early age on. (In the country many children cycle 15 km to school). Bikers are used to it, car drivers are used to it, city planners are used to it.

The thing is Mike projects the US situation to the Netherlands. What might be inresponsible in the US, is quite responsible overhere.

From personal observation of cycling in the US and the Netherlands, there is a distinct riding style difference. Most Americans ride as fast as they can, on impractical bikes (not commuter style), with no training and no accepted standard of equipment. Dutchies, on the other hand, all ride heavy generic city bikes with racks/baskets/fenders, ride at reasonable speeds (slow enough to sustain side by side conversation or phone conversation), and have their own lanes and traffic lights.

As an American, I grew up wanting to jump over/off things and take the "cool" risks. We buy mostly bikes with things we don't *need* for commuting. Suspension, disc brakes, 2342356 gears, few racks/baskets. Dutch people are riding to work, or to school, or to the bar, or to a wedding.

As a daily (rain or shine) fixed-gear commuter in America, I ride paranoid, expecting cars to not see me. I get heckled or yelled at (often for no reason) about once every two weeks. People in cars in America are not used to seeing people riding bikes on the street.

Last I heard, here in British Columbia, the insurance and court judgements for head injuries sustained in a bicycle accident can be reduced by a significant dollar amount for failure to wear a helmet. The same goes for not wearing a seat belt and injuries sustains in a motor vehicle accident. So, while helmet and seat belt use are mandatory, enforcement is generally ignored because the real penalty happens after the collision. Of course, there is the counter-argument that the system will penalize victims who didn't cause the accident. But, the consensus appears to be that victims all deserve justice, but that someone who isn't prudent enough to protect themselve with safety equipment must take some responsibility for the severity of their own injuries.

Three months ago our family became the first in North America to wear safety helmets in our mini van at all times. In Canada people wear helmets for just about everything especially kids. Our helmet use attracts virtually no attention even at gas stations. We are doing this so when my sons begin to drive in 10 years they have one extra layer of protection if they ever have a car accident. Crashes kill more teens than any other way to end a once beautiful life. I am asking all of you to join with us in this simple way to save the next generation from an early grave. Wear a helmet driving, protect your kids, set a good example. Drive defensively and rembember always the life you save could be your own.

Three months ago trying to build a backyard hockey rink for my sons ages 5 & 7, I bought a helmet for the ATV and since that time we have become the first family in North America to voluntarily wear head protection in our van at all times. Is this going to guarantee us anything, probably not. However it is going to demonstrate to my sons that driving a motor vehicle is a serious undertaking and one simple mistake and the ball game is over. With so many teenagers and young adults dying from car crashes everyday, a new method must be tried. We can continue to debate seat belts in buses and helmets in cars for the next 20 years, but eventually common sense has to take over. Join us volunteers, wear a helmet in the car and remember the life you save could be your own.