The Bicycle Helmet Debate is Over. Really.

Who rides without a helmet?
Temporarily healthy people.
Especially in the colonies where drivers have NO regard for cyclists.

Does this study take into account the reduction in bicycle use as a result of the law? I recently moved to Melbourne, and the local cycling community here said that immediately after mandatory helmet legislation was introduced (and strictly enforced via an onslaught of tickets), there was a downward trend in the cyclist population.

This is awesome. And although I grew up cycling everywhere without a helmet and never suffered more than a skinned knee on my bike (knock on wood) I wear one as an adult.

And every time I put it on I wish it weren't so bulky or ugly. Anyone know of a site that makes cute helmets to go with my cute bike?

While I wear my helmet on every cycling trip, no matter how short, it seems inaccurate to me to conflate children's cycling habits with those of adults.

Adults (certainly not all) ride in traffic. So it would seem that helmets might benefit us more than they do children. But we also are more...used to our bodies and just plain fall off our bikes less when not influenced by traffic.

Maybe there is a justification for a helmet law for adults, but it seems like there should be a better one.

Though (and I can't take credit for this idea), could a helmet law discourage people from riding? If so, the smaller numbers could halt driver awareness and actually make cycling more dangerous?

I think helmet laws are a distraction from more important ways to make cycling safer sometimes.

Anyone that thinks helmets DON'T save lives... should ride more and not wear a helmet. Natural selection will fix that. :)

Seriously though, I was riding in a group a few years ago when I felt something strange on my rear wheel. One of my riding partners had inadvertently scrubbed their front tire on my rear, causing them to veer into a ditch. We had to call an ambulance. Her helmet was mangled. Luckily, she wore it, as even with the helmet she bruised her brain and was sidelined for 6 months. Without the helmet, she most likely would have been dead according to the doctors.

Could that just mean there are half as many under-16 cyclists on the road?

I can't imagine getting a large proportion of commuters to shift to biking when it'll mess up their hair and anyway, lets put the blame on the cyclist for accidents eh?

In a car-cyclist accident, no matter whose fault it was, you have two participants. If the car wasn't on the road the accident wouldn't've occured and since a cyclist would find it hard to seriously injure a driver by accident it remains primarily the car's fault for just being on the road.

Like traffic lights, pedestrian crossings and school-area slow-zone signs, helmets are a way to make drivers feel at ease. In this case while passing cyclists for example - where in fact they are peforming a high-risk action with or without a helmet. Laws for helmets are laws for a car-ownership society, and car-owned roads.

I witnessed a bike accident where the helmet saved the rider's life. I was passing an obviously expert cyclist with care in my car as there was some road work going on and the surface was iffy. I checked my rearview after passing and saw his front tire hit what turned out to be newly poured concrete. The bike flipped forward and he SLAMMED face first to the ground at maybe 20 miles an hour. I was sure at that moment I had seen someone die.

I stopped the car, learned that the road workers' radio was not functioning (before cellphones were everywhere), found a payphone and called 911. Within minutes I heard the sirens. Since the cyclist was moving and the workers were there to explain, I saw no reason to gawk. I drove away.

A month later I saw a note posted for the person who had seen the bike accident to call a number. I did and talked to the guy who thanked me and asked me what had happened. He had no memory of the accident itself. He was baffled why he had sustained so much damage to his teeth - over $10,000 worth. When I described him slamming face first to the pavement over the handlebars of his bike, we both could picture the "beak" of his helmet striking first and tipping his neck back so that his jaw and not his brain hit the ground. He had a wife and three-year-old daughter at the time, and he not only survived , he sustained no brain damage at all thanks to the helmet.

So although I am not a bike rider, I am grateful for helmets because instead of being a witness to a death, I was a witness to an accident that turned out to be only a setback for this man and his family instead of a tragedy.

why do so many people not want to wear a helmet? Studies have shown for a long time that helmets save lives. some mistaken idea that you don't look cool in one isn't a reason to die or risk severe brain injury.
hopefully, readers of this article will wear their helmets when the head out later ...

Libertarian thought:
Bicycle riders need helmet to protect them from accidents caused by cars. Ergo car-drivers should pay for our helmets and for a hairdresser at every working place.

Ok, so maybe the debate over whether or not helmets help save lives is over, but the debate over whether or not adults should be forced to use them at the point of a gun (that's what all laws do) is another story entirely.

An adult should never, under any circumstance, be forced by law to wear a helmet while on their own bicycle or motorcycle.

"why do so many people not want to wear a helmet? "

I've been involved in this argument before. Apparently, there are a few studies out there, and I apologize if I can't find the source right now, that suggest that wearing a helmet causes "rotational spinal injury" when involved in an accident.

Arguments include:
1) pedestrians and drivers are also at risk from head injuries in simple accidents yet they are not required to wear a helmet.
2) helmets can impair your field of vision
3) it implies that cycling is a risky activity
4) helmets are expensive and inconvenient

So on and so forth.

However, I've always asked those same people who argue against helmet use if they can give me any, even at least one, anecdote of someone specifically losing their life or becoming seriously injured BECAUSE they were wearing a helmet and I've yet to hear one example. In the same sense, I'd like to hear of someone who's life was saved because they were not wearing a helmet.

Everytime I hear about someone getting into a bike accident whether or not it involved other cars, 9 out of 10 they mentioned how there was a serious potential for severe head injury and wearing a helmet saved them. I've never heard of a helmet being detrimental.

I don't really care, personally, if helmet use becomes mandatory for adults or not, or if people use them or not, but a lot of the arguments against just seem like people are reaching for any silly excuse.

No matter what the law says your child should wear a helmet... its just common sence, kids ride diffrently than adults... beteween doing tricks, showing off to their friends and pain just being kids it is mode dangerous for them to ride so a helmet is needed... on the other hand adults do not ride in the same way... we mostly commute and do not put ourselvs in the same situations as kids... I ride in NYC every morning to work. I have been hit by 3 taxi cabs 2 suvs and one Bus.... all minor insidents some my fault (passed a red light by mistake) some the drives fault (turning with out checking mirror, opening door after parking with out looking in the mirror, illegal Uturns etc.) None of these instances would have been helped if i wore a helmet... if i get side swiped or T bones my helmet will do nothing other than make sure my head looks nice as I sit paralized in a hospital bed... when they make a back protector I will gradly where that but intill then funny hats are just a false sence of security.

I currently don't wear a helmet, but plan to buy one soon to use for my long bike commute. Obviously they help save lives. Even once I get a helmet, I probably won't wear it if I'm just going the ten minutes down the road to the bank. Its just an extra thing I'd have to fumble with at the counter when I carry it in with me. But for long bike trips, I would wear it all the time.

The only problem I have is with the law making helmet use mandatory. Doing this will definitely create yet another barrier to entry for getting more people onto bicycles. Either people just plain won't want to wear them, or instead of just getting that old Schwinn out of the garage that they haven't ridden in 10 years, they now need to go to the store to buy a helmet too-- so that old Schwinn will stay there and they won't become cyclists.

I wore a bike helmet when I broke my leg three months ago while riding my bike; it could have been my head I broke, and I was riding on the sidewalk. No, I didn't wear a bike helmet as a child (I grew up in the '70s and '80s, when virtually no one heard of bike helmets), but thank the Creator I put one on my big 'fro that day.

They can reduce the death rate further by requiring all the muppets to wear full body armor.

Yes steel is real and it will temporarily save lives. Who cares if the kids become as big as houses and die of heart disease. Death by debilitating diseases is much easier to take than the sudden tragic death from a brutal crash.

I wear my bike helmet even when I drive my car. No one ever road rages on me anymore. Give it a try.

Since I mountain bike a lot it has become second nature to use my head like a ram, to smash through small tree limbs and whatnot. I was road riding recently and forced off the road by an old fellow in his Buick. I was travelling around 15 - 20 mph and smashed directly into a caution sign. Because of the leading-with-the-helmet-battering techinique, in a split second, I lowered my head into the pole. I wrapped around that sucker fast, tacoing the front wheel. The helmet, Giro E2, compressed and cracked, but miraculously, my head/face didn't get injured at all. My neck was a little sore and my right shoulder was messed up for a while, but that helmet likely saved my life.

Helmets for pedestrians! Helmets for passengers in vehicles! Helmets for the elderly! Helmets for anyone who ever takes a shower!

You know, maybe we just should let people ride bicycles at all--that would reduce the death rate 100%...

http://www.copenhagenize.com/2008/09/helmets-for-pedestrians-and-motorists.html

My first thought echoes many of the other commenters.

"How many kids quit riding their bikes after the legislation was passed?"

I used to wear my helmet religiously. Now I don't.

A bike helmet isn't going to help you if you get hit by a car.

And one study I read suggests that it might just hurt you more. The study found that when a bicycle helmet failed, it actually imparted more energy to what it was protecting than the impact alone would have.

Indeed. I can't believe people argue this point. Everyone who has ridden a bike has fallen off. You may not have hit your head, but that doesn't mean you won't next time. And if you have a helmet, it will hurt a whole lot less.

However, I think laws requiring helmets are silly. Same w/ seatbelts. The law should be "if you don't practice adequite precaution, you don't get medical help in an emergency". You get in a car wreck, the paramedics show up and you don't have your seatbelt on, they get to drive away. You fall of your bike and smack your head, No helmet, no help. Soon everyone dumb enough NOT to wear a helmet or a seatbelt is dead and there is less traffic, less pollution, and a safer world. Laws don't need to save people from themselves...

I know it's safer with a helmet. But I like to feel the wind whistling over my bald patch.

Let me do what I choose. If I conk me old cranium and die. It's my own fault.

Shouldn't be anyone elses business, other than my families.

Hey,

Wearing a helmet doesn't fit the urban velo trendy chic. Remember, if everyone else is doing it I don't have to think, just follow.

I suspect that a large number of the people who oppose helmet LAWS aren't actually opposed to helmet USE. Seriously, why does it need to be a law? Especially when they make exceptions to that law for particular groups of people, like Sikhs.

I would fight tooth and nail against a law requiring helmets be worn while riding, but I would still think an adult riding in traffic without a helmet was bloody stupid.

Hey,

If my insurance premium didn't pay for your brain injury, I would be totally on your side. Ride all you want without a helmet.

Bob

hand in hand with a law mandating helmet use should be a law against driving cars. the logic is the same.

The post got journal wrong, the study is published in Pediatrics not The Journal of Pediatrics. The full citation is:

Wesson DE, Stephens D, Lam K, Parsons D, Spence L, Parkin PC. Trends in Pediatric and Adult Bicycling Deaths Before and After Passage of a Bicycle Helmet Law. Pediatrics. 2008 September;122(3):605–610.

Signed,
Bicycling epidemiologist

Forcing cyclists to wear helmets is like forcing people to wear gas masks to protect them from second hand smoking. It is driving that is the dangerous activity that needs to be more regulated. For starters, speed limits should be lowered to 30kph to reduce fatalities to cyclists and pedestrians.

Fatality rates are much lower in the Netherlands where no one wears helmets. Lets make cycling safer by avoiding collisions, not making collisions "safer".

Don't force me to wear a helmet. I am an adult and well aware of the risks I take on when I get on my bike. I for one, just ride casually on a beach cruiser. Wearing a helmet will make me lose my cool factor.

I fell off my back this last Thursday and split my helmet down the back - probably saved me from a concussion or worse. Now all I have is a screwed up knee. They don't call them brain buckets for nothing. Wear 'em.

"If my insurance premium didn't pay for your brain injury, I would be totally on your side. Ride all you want without a helmet."

well, bob, you could just stop running down cyclists...

(kidding -- it's getting tense in here)

The helmet debate isn't over until this website covers the 50+ scientific studies that present the opposing view. Studies that stretch over 20 years, from around the planet.

This website really seems to be inspired by Fox News sometimes.

Mandatory helmet laws will reduce cycling in the same way that mandatory seat belts have significantly reduced driving.

"Mandatory helmet laws will reduce cycling in the same way that mandatory seat belts have significantly reduced driving."

I don't think a lot of people want to drive but haven't pulled their old car out of the basement or garage, as may be the case with bikes. Riding without a seatbelt is probably easier to get away with, though I can't say I've ever seen a lot of cops stop cyclists for breaking laws. Hell, can't say I've seen it once in Baltimore.

I agree with Richard up there. I can't even tell you how many times husband or myself have nearly been plowed over - both on foot and bike - by motorists who are driving too fast and/or not paying attention.

Yes, wearing a helmet will save my life (again - both husband I do) but putting all of the responsibility on the cyclist and very little on the motorist is certainly the wrong way to go. Even a broken bone caused by a motorist not paying attention is too much of my body to sacrifice for their cell-phone/ipod/hurry/etc.

Not riding bicycles at all saves even more lives. So, perhaps we should make riding a bike illegal, if you are after a low death rate? Otherwise, please stop forcing laws down people's throats. It's the law, not the helmet, that is so offensive. I love my helmet, but would never vote for such a law. Oh, and I almost forgot, did injuries resulting in a vegetative state increase as the deaths decreased?

I have mixed opinions. I just visited Holland and was amazed at their bike system and how well it works and how well respected the cyclists are and how no one wore bike helmets. I like having the freedom to do so if you please.

However, it this country, that same respect for cyclists does not exists and there is much more danger here. Until, there is a separate bikeway (on a curb) I will be wearing my helmet.

I really wish that helmets could have this dramatic effect. But this study is very questionable.

They should have at least compared the number of bicycle head injury deaths in this population to the total bicycle-related hospital admissions and ER visits. This would have partially normalized the data.

Most studies seem to show a reduction in bicycling in the younger age group and an increase in older bicyclists during this period.

Plus, there has been a strong overall fatality reduction trend in both pedestrian and bicyclist for Canada as a whole. They have fallen at almost identical rates over this period. About 40+% over the slightly longer period of 1990 to now. Obviously, this is unlikely to be helmet related. http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/fatals.html

Better peer review is needed.

Over the same time period, overall traffic fatalities also decreased in Ontario to record low levels.

Between 1988 and 2006 (about the same time span as this helmet study), there's been a 56% decline in drunk driving fatalities.

I suppose we can make the same connection as these medical researchers and claim bicycle helmet legislation makes driving safer for motorists AND it reduces drunk driving!

Ontario passed a number of new traffic measures in the mid 90s aimed at making the province safer, including Graduated Licensing for novices, restrictions on senior drivers, and much tougher drunk driving enforcement. They can probably reduce their nearly 800 annual traffic fatalities even more if they require helmets for motorists.

You are likely to ride a bike safer when not wearing a helmet than when wearing one. You would probably drive your car very slowly as well if there was a spear coming out of your steeting wheel. That said, people who don't wear helmets are probably a bit more wreckless than those who do. We shouldn't have laws regulating it though, until they make a fashionable helmet that doesn't make you sweat like a pig

I'm sorry Lloyd, but the "debate" is not over. The study you've published isn't bad, but the conclusions you draw from it, and at least one of the conclusions it draws are completely unsupported.

Firstly, it is important to stress what a helmet actually does.

A helmet is designed to spread the deceleration over a longer time period, to reduce the amount of force on the brain at any one time. However, a helmet can only provide a certain amount of deceleration, without the helmet being ridiculously large or heavy. A motorcycle helmet is larger and stronger, but can only provide protection up to about 14mph. After a certain amount of force, the helmet breaks. If the helmet broke, it FAILED. I cannot say this clearly enough.

Now, children, especially young children tend to have accidents. They also tend to have accidents when they are traveling relatively slowly and near to the ground. Their accidents tend not to happen in collisions with cars, and when they do are very often fatal. Thus, the impact force on their brains (which are protected by weaker skulls) is much less, and within the range of force a helmet can effectively protect in. In light of all this, helmets for children aren't a completely bad idea.

Adults are in a different category however. They are traveling faster, are much higher up, tend to be injured more often in collisions with vehicles. All of these mean that when an adult receives a head injury, the speed and force of impact are likely to be much more than a helmet can protect from. Go, read the peer reviewed literature - I'm not making this up. Helmets will protect from some collisions with hard surfaces certainly, and reduce the impact of others, but it is very easy to overstate this (and this is what helmet advocates do).

However, when it comes to injury, reducing impact is not the only thing to worry about. Brains are not meant to be spun around at high speed, and in a collision rotational injuries often occur. There is evidence that helmets increase the severity and risk of rotational brain injury, by twisting the head on impact. The other thing that helmets can do is transfer the injury from the head to the neck, by transferring the force of impact to the neck. I don't know enough about the research on this risk for cycle helmets to comment, but I do know that this is a very serious issue with motorcycle helmets.

So, the conclusions made by the pediatricians about children may have been sound, but their extension to adults did not consider the differences between the two groups.

Secondly, and more importantly: the impact on the injury rate per mile cycled.

There is no indication that the study standardized for the level of cycling over the period, or against comparable populations with low helmet use. The rate of injury among adults did not drop. There isn't evidence available for Toronto or Ontario, but for other Canadian cities and provinces where information is available there is evidence in a sharp decline in cycling among children and young people from 1995/1996 onwards after the introduction of helmet laws.

Cycle helmets do a very good job of making cycling into a 'dangerous' activity. With the promotion of helmets, cycling goes from being something that people do to something that people have to protect themselves against. Cycling becomes surrounded by a discourse of danger and risk, and parents and family members and friends start to discourage people from cycling. This is despite the fact that statistically cycling is very safe, even in countries with few cyclists/high helmet wearing.

There is very clear evidence of dramatic reductions in cycling after the introduction of mandatory helmet laws. In Australia, the number of cyclists dropped by over a third, while the level of head injuries and deaths remained static. In other words, helmets made it MORE dangerous to be a rider. And this experience has been seen across the world. There is also academic research showing that drivers behaved significantly less safely when confronted with a helmeted rider than an unhelmeted one. The safest countries have very very low levels of helmet use, less than 5%, and when helmet use increases in a country, cycling decreases and injury levels increase significantly per mile cycled.

A helmet cannot effectively protect against a collision with a vehicle. Helmet manufacturers might imply it, but they won't explicitly state it, because their helmets can only protect against low force impacts. Helmets allow Governments to avoid focusing on how to make it safer to be a cyclist (reduce the risk of impact with vehicles), and instead put the responsibility onto cyclists. Very convenient for lazy politicians who would rather build roads.

Helmets serve to make cycling a less mainstream activity. People don't want helmet hair, to look stupid, to have a helmet filled with water. They want to be free and easy, and convenient. And things like bicycle sharing programs can never pick up properly while helmets stand in their way.

Then we have to consider the excess mortality from more air pollution from cars being driven. Significantly more people are killed by air pollution than vehicle collisions. The numbers are huge. More helmets have been demonstrated to mean less riders. Less riders means more driving. More driving means more pollution and many more deaths from inhaling the toxic chemicals vehicles produce. These deaths are uncounted in most studies of helmets, but they are no less real. And then there is obesity. A country that rides to school and work is one that doesn't suffer from obesity. Obesity and related illness is a major killer in developed countries, and reduced levels of cycling mean higher levels of obesity.

Anyway, that was a lot to say, but I feel that it needed to be said. The level of misinformation surrounding helmets is huge. For more in-depth neutral coverage of the issue, and links to the research I've mentioned, see cyclehelmets.org/

And this is before we even start to mention things like the environment! This technology is far far greener than a Tesla Roadster will ever be. The energy embodied in that machine, the chemicals and mining required to manufacture it, when compared to the humble (or beautiful - check out Velorbis and Skeppshult) bicycle is huge. It is incredibly efficient (over 98% of the energy at the pedal is converted to movement at about 10mph), and incredibly green.

It is also a technology that doesn't separate you from your fellow human being behind metal and glass, poses no threat of killing others, improves your sex life, emancipated women in the late 19th century, and is credited with improving the gene pool!

Helmets stand squarely in the way of the spread of this technology.