Quote of the Day: Albert Einstein

In Australia, where I'm from originally, there are bike helmet laws, and I was always in favour of them - the medical evidence is really overwhelming.

Living in Amsterdam though, the actual potential for bikes to replace many cars is a lot more apparent... and the simple fact is that helmet laws would hinder this. Right now, in Brisbane, there is discussion (perhaps it's further along than that) of implementing a communal, rental bike system in the inner city, and the response from everyone I've spoken to is, "so do I have to carry around a helmet? do I really want to turn up at a business meeting with helmet hair? do they expect me to wear a communal helmet?" And for all that those may seem like shallow questions, they're the very things that I suspect will be the death knell to the program.

So colour me confused...

Chris,

While I'm sure the people who propose helmet laws only have good intentions, it's not the governments responsibility to make people be safe. As long as I am not endangering anyone else by my actions, let me do it!

This is so tangential to the topic, but I just read "Howard's End" which has a quote about life being like a public performance on a violin -- where you have to learn to play it as you go along.

I wish everyone would wear a helmet, but I don't like helmet laws. As much as I wish it were otherwise, helmet laws reduce the number of bike riders. And bicyclists benefit from greater safety not just from wearing helmets, but also from having more bikes on the road in total.

"As long as I am not endangering anyone else by my actions, let me do it!"

The problem is not wearing a helmet can endanger others. Let's say you're riding along sans helmet, hit a pothole, and suffer a serious head injury. Now you're probably thinking "I didn't put anyone at risk but myself" but that's where you're wrong. Chances are if you're seriously injured the paramedics and police are going to get called. Since it's an emergency they're going to respond with lights and sirens. Doing so greatly puts their lives at risk and every year numerous cops and firefighters are killed in accidents responding to calls. Every time YOU have an accident THEY put their lives at risk. You don't live in a bubble and your actions do have an impact on others.

That said, I'm still against helmet laws. I don't see anyone in Europe wearing them yet stats I've seen show that riding a bike in most of Europe is still safer than riding a bike in most of the US where wearing a helmet is the norm. If you want to make cycling safer skip the helmet laws and instead focus on stricter driver and cyclists training/licensing. When it comes to personal safety people need to rely on sound judgment, personal responsibility and common sense rather than laws.

Mark Twain said "Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live."

I'm sorry, my quote above was from "A Room with a View" --- I've been catching up this year on classics I never read. "Howard's End" actually has a more appropriate quote, talking about the city pushing out into the country-side everywhere (from p. 339 of my copy):

"Because a thing is going strong now, it need not go strong forever," she said. "This craze for motion has only set in during the last hundred years. It may be followed by a civilization that won't be a movement, because it will rest on the earth. All the signs are against it now, but I can't help hoping, and very early in the morning in the garden I feel that our house is the future as well as the past."