10 Responses to “Cycle Culture: Helmets not included”

1. chrismealy on June 12th, 2009 8:26 pm

   Biking advocates often hear the complaint, “Copenhagen and Holland are flat! That’s why bikes are popular there, but Seattle’s too hilly.” I think that’s mostly bunk. However, it is the case that Seattle cyclists can and do ride much faster than people in the flatlands do. The average eurocyclist is doing about 10 mph, talking on their cellphone, and never, ever breaking a sweat. But when they’re on fast bike lanes in countryside they often do wear helmets. So it’s a mistake to compare safe slow city riding with fast city riding. And in Seattle fast riding happens all the time.

   I appreciate the view that helmets are a symptom of unsafe infrastructure. You should be able to ride from one end of E. Broadway to other without wearing a helmet. You’re nuts if you ride from one end of Denny to other without one. The cycle chic people take it too far by completely denying the appropriateness of helmets.

2. Adam Parast on June 14th, 2009 9:04 pm

   I mostly agree with Chris. It all depends on how fast you bicycle. If you are riding 20 MPH you should have a helmet on but if you are riding 10 MPH or so not so much. My helmet use depends on where and when I ride my bicycle.

   I purposefully ride my bicycle slowly because I enjoy my ride more and that way when I get where I’m going I not all sweaty.

   As you alluded to I think that helmets distract from the real danger to cyclist, vehicles and lack of infrastructure. Helmets enforce americans assumptions that bicycling is inherently dangerous, when it is not.

3. Wes Kirkman on June 15th, 2009 10:18 am

   Thanks for this posting. I have been interested in this topic for years now and at the receiving end of the helmet mantra for just as long. I was just berated with the bicycle helmet fear mongering this weekend in fact.

   I agree with the other two posters: depends on your situation. I mostly ride slowly and cautiously as I am a rather slow moving person. It may be my bias, but I find those wearing helmets are apt to move faster. My assumption is that the helmet makes the wearer feel safer and, thus, they act more dangerously. Some studies attempt to show a correlation between safety improvements for cars and the average speed at which people drive. I believe there was a large jump in dangerous behavior just after the first click-it-or-ticket campaign. Probably a phenomena not solely linked to car culture.

   I wonder about the decrease in bicycling correlation with helmet campaigns made in the links you provide. I could not find a reason for this. Anyone have an idea or care to debunk? My guess would be, if true, that it is related to a negative consequence on the culture of bicycling. With helmets (and all the other gear) comes less of a culture of utilitarian cycling and more of a culture of tour de france bicycling.

4. Squints on June 15th, 2009 10:59 am

   I find it completely ridiculous to have to wear a helmet to ride down the street in my neighborhood. I’m a cautious cyclist, I stay on the slower side streets, and I pay attention to the cars around me. There’s this cycling culture in seattle that pushes high-speed riding at the expense of enjoyment. I’d rather take an extra 10 minutes getting to my destination, enjoy myself, not get too sweaty, and not have to take 15 minutes to change my clothes, dry out, and style my hair when I get to the office.

   Being sedentary isn’t good for your heart, but neither is being in a rush all the time.

5. Squints on June 15th, 2009 11:03 am

   I find it completely ridiculous to have to wear a helmet to ride down the street in my neighborhood. I’m a cautious cyclist, I stay on the slower side streets, and I pay attention to the cars around me. There’s this cycling culture in seattle that pushes high-speed riding at the expense of enjoyment. I’d rather take an extra 10 minutes getting to my destination, enjoy myself, not get too sweaty, and not have to take 15 minutes to change my clothes, dry out, and style my hair when I get to the office. A lot of people don’t ride to work because they think cycling is too hard-core.

   Being sedentary isn’t good for your heart, but neither is being in a rush all the time.

   I also think that helmet laws scare away potential cyclists for the following reasons:

   1. it promotes the perception that cycling is dangerous and intense
   2. it messes up your hair and makes you sweaty
   3. like it or not, it’s kind of dorky

6. Squints on June 15th, 2009 11:24 am

   oops, ignore the first post

7. JoshMahar on June 15th, 2009 2:23 pm

   Thank you everyone. I agree with squints here though. Promoting helmets creates a situation in which biking is considered dangerous and bikers are a separate group of people with a unique set of “gear” and culture. By promoting cycling as a normal mode of transportation, something that anyone can do, anytime. You encourage a lot more people to get on their bikes.

   @1: To say it is “nuts” to ride from one end of Denny to the other without a helmet is simply reinforcing misinformation and the idea that cycling is dangerous. Yes, riding on Denny is probably more dangerous than say, riding on some neighborhood side street, but it is not necessarily more dangerous with or without a helmet. There is absolutely no evidence that riding with a helmet will prevent a collision (but there is some evidence to the opposite). Furthermore, a helmet is in no way designed to protect you in a car/bike collision.

   Instead we should teach people how to ride safely in vehicle traffic, as well as teach drivers (during Drivers Ed) how to safely ride with cyclists. We also need to use advocacy and signage to remind cyclists to limit their speeds on hills such as Denny. As well, if there is a street like Denny (or Rainer) which is particularly dangerous for cyclists, the city should assume no cyclists will wear helmets and improve the infrastructure so that is safer for these people.

   Wearing a helmet is a personal choice and if you feel more comfortable using one, no one is trying to stop you. It is simply that we should promote biking as a natural form of transportation that is as safe and easy as any other form of transportation (which it most certainly is).

8. chrismealy on June 16th, 2009 10:31 am

   I’m pretty sure the cycle chic people are trying to stop people from wearing helmets. They sure pick on the helmeted enough.

   I should have been more specific: Denny between Broadway and Westlake is really steep! Even if cars had never been invented those hills would be dangerous. Some blocks are over 10%. It’s easy to do 30-40 mph in places like that. It’s actually hard to ride slowly down hills that steep. I can’t imagine what improvements you could make that could naturally deter bikes from speeding down hills.

   Copenhagen’s green wave, a main road with lights timed for bicyclists to hit all the greens, is paced at 20kmh/12mph. As slow as that is a lot of cyclists don’t keep up with it. You know about slow food? That is slow biking. I think it’s great, I think we should build out our cycling system to support it as much as possible, but our hills aren’t going anywhere.

   As for cycling being natural, sadly I don’t think it is. Without safe smooth paved roads it doesn’t have a lot going for it. It needs a well-planned physical and social environment. (And when you’re outnumbered by cars 25 to 1 it sure doesn’t feel natural). I’d agree that it’s the BEST form of transportation though! And it doesn’t change the climate either.

9. Pete on June 24th, 2009 8:05 am

   Wearing a helmet while biking, like any activity, is all about acceptable risk. Do the rewards that come from not wearing a helmet outweigh the potential risks? As far as I can tell, the rewards are minimal:

   1) Maintain hairstyle.
   2) Look cool.
   3) Not having to carry it around after you park.
   4) Having an extra $15 in pocket for not buying one.

   and so on. The risks of not wearing a helmet basically boil down to allowing your skull to receive the full impact of rapid deceleration in the case of an accident.

   I like my brains. I’ve worked very hard on them. I don’t want them to be scrambled. I wear a helmet.

   Other people may like their hair. Perhaps they’ve worked very hard on their hair…

   I go back and forth on this issue of whether or not I should be advocating telling other people what they can do. As much as I’d like to live in a world where I could say “We’re all individuals and should be able to do what we want”, I realize that in the 1st world we’re not just individuals living in the moment. We’re the cumulative result of all of the resources that society has poured into us. Each one of us represents hundreds of thousands of dollars, tons of plastic, gasoline, every thing we consume on a daily basis to get us to the point where we can become productive members of society. Everything that came before we make the decision to wear or not wear a helmet.

   When you stop thinking of people as individuals and instead look at them as investments made by a society in the future, it becomes a lot easier to be angry and resentful at people who don’t wear helmets. I do have a level of self-awareness when it comes to my desire to dictate to my fellow citizen. I understand that this worldview didn’t do much for Stalin, and probably won’t do much for me. Like I said, it’s something I struggle with…

   As for the risk-compensation theory – the idea that helmets make people feel safer and thus act riskier – didn’t we solve this debate with seat-belts in cars? Pretty much everyone wears seat-belts while driving now, and I can’t remember this causing a dramatic increase in risky behavior. Are there less automobile accidents in New Hampshire because they don’t have mandatory seat-belt laws? Do seat-belts discourage driving the same way people claim helmet laws discourage bicycle use?

   Anyway, as long as the laws aren’t enforced, it’s a pointless debate. It’s not like I’d get written up for riding around my neighborhood without a helmet. The cops have much more important/lucrative things to be doing. Cyclists care more about helmet laws than the cops or the courts. Sometimes I wonder if it’s even worth thinking of or debating about when the rest of the world really could not care less.

10. Nicholas on June 26th, 2009 10:34 pm

    Helmet = Smart
    Helmet Law = Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do ?

    Just like seat-belt laws. You’re dumb if you’re too cool to put on a seat-belt, but nobody should be able to tell an adult, capable of their own decision making, that they HAVE to.

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