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.

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.

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.

@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).