davbart, back when I was in Fayetnam as we called it, I wasn’t allowed to drive but traffic could be insane. Lots of young men being convinced by the 82D that they were bulletproof. Same thing at Fts Lee ,Carson, and Hood .
Yes, really.
It starts with the sensationalist title, “The Cult of Bike Helmets”, followed by the tag line “The history—and danger—of a modern safety obsession.” Before the first paragraph, the author has already tried to paint helmet wearers as cult followers, safety as an obsession, and suggested there might danger in wearing a helmet. The first paragraph highlights harm to “marginalized” residents in a shameless ploy to hook Slate’s progressive readers before getting into the meat. The rest is a textbook example of a FUD piece designed to make you question whether wearing a helmet is actually safer. If you’re not familiar with FUD, it’s a common strategy used to advance minority views on issues where there is a broad public consensus. They know they will lose the debate if they take it head on, so the strategy is to undermine the consensus.
It’s still insane. I first came here in the 80’s when Fayettenam was still being used, but now it’s just a term used by the old guys. Of course, now we have to get used to Ft Liberty not Ft Bragg.
I was there in 69 .
This is why we can’t have a decent discussion in this country about anything. Instead of answering the arguments either name call, “anti-helmet” and/or assign motivations and dismiss the argument, and/or rely on “consensus” without support.
Perhaps the consensus you’re citing isn’t as clear as you think it is, “Looking at helmets as a solution is very shortsighted,” said Alison Dewey, the League of American Bicyclists’ education director. “It’s like a tertiary, or even farther down of a level, to keep you safe.”
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You nailed it. I was a passenger in a friend’s car. On several occasions, he edged a cyclist out or blast his horn, even when the cyclist was within legal parameters. I told him he was going to kill someone, whether the cyclist was obeying the law or not. He blew off my comments, so I stopped driving with him.
Literature about the purpose and design of bicycle helmets explained how the liner is intended to crush at a rate to decelerate the head without causing the brain to bruise. The plastic outer liner holds the shell together and allows it to slide on the pavement. However, there’s a limit to what it can do and still be wearable.
Research highlighted the g-force from a simple fall while stationary on a bike. Neck muscles aren’t strong enough to prevent a concussion if your head hit the pavement. While test driving my son’s bike after setting up and adjusting gears, the chain slipped under load. The speed was only a few mph up a steep incline, but I fell and my unprotected head tapped the pavement; not hard enough to cause damage, but it immediately highlighted the vulnerability. A helmet may not prevent injury when shot from a cannon, but it surely mitigates injury from a simple fall. Years later, I was zipping along at 20 mph and fell trying to avoid an animal that darted across the C&O Canal trail. My head wacked the ground with force. Other than the damage you may suspect, there was no lasting issue.
A near stationary fall convinced me to never get on a bike without a helmet. Made a believer out of me. Driving with a lunatic convinced me to stay of roadways as much as possible. As with PFDs, use your own judgement and hope your defining moment can be as enlightening as mine.
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Thanks, I don’t get to feel young very often, but that did it. 
Yes, that’s what bicycle helmets do, “mitigates injury from a simple fall”. If that’s why you decide to wear a helmet that’s great, especially because you recognize the limitations of the helmet.
I am definitely not against wearing helmets. I just don’t want people to think that is the end of bicycle safety or that we need mandatory helmet wear. We need more bicyclists to make us all safer, getting drivers used to seeing bicycles.
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Correct and correct. I wear one in case I fall - like on “Rowan and Martin Laugh In”. When I fall from a bike, I have been lucky enough to land on my side, and my head is too fat to prevent hitting the ground. So far so good. That’s enough reason for me. Again, you are correct that the best drivers around bicyclists are those who experience being happless victims as bicyclists. Empathy - empathy is the one sentiment that is deteriorating in modern society.
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There’s no direct argument there to answer, and that’s the point. The author is careful to avoid being pinned down by making one, which is one of the hallmarks of a FUD piece.
My objection is that the safety benefit you get from wearing a helmet is not murky or uncertain at all. It’s like you said. Helmets reduce the risk of head injury or death in a road accident, but they are not the last word on bike safety and traffic is a bigger issue. As long as you don’t frame it as either/or, just about everyone agrees with that.
But that’s not an argument against helmet laws, is it? I can get behind arguments against helmet laws for adults on the grounds of personal freedom, but I guess that doesn’t play well in large urban centers suffering from animosity between cyclists and other users.
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That Slate article would keep a self-respecting fact-checker employed for a month.
It appears that we aren’t in great disagreement about helmets as much as we disagree about the article. I simply don’t see it as “anti-helmet” as much as a nuanced view of helmet use. I can live with that; “agree to disagree”.
Edited to add; I am against mandatory helmet laws, but not only from a personal freedom aspect. There are at least two studies that I’m aware of that show mandatory helmet laws result in a decrease in bicycling. I think it is more important to get as many bicyclists as possible (safety in numbers) than get all bicyclists to wear helmets. Drivers habituated to seeing bicyclists are more likely to see bicyclists and not hit them. I have a sticker on one of my bikes that says, “hit your brakes not people”, and I wish every car driver drove with that in mind.
Of course, data about bicycles is limited and incomplete and often based on anecdotes more than hard data. Not to mention, the difficulty in recording and tracking what didn’t happen.
@RedMC that is a dilema, isn’t it. When everything is weighed, it really is about personal choice. Personal choice should only be overridden when it involve personal responsibility to protect others, such as a commercial carrier making your safety a paramount concern, a parent’s responsibility in protecting a child, a matter of liability when another uses your property, or to make sure protective devices are at least available if someone accompanies (whether using your bike, car or boat). Funny how you don’t have to provide a parachute to passengers in a plane.
A person may be considered a fool for not using the protective gear. It’s still far better than being rendered a fool because an error in judgement shattered your skull. Life, Liberty, Pursuit of Happiness. The law of the land.
Back on PFDs, I think I could make a safe exception when paddling on warm calm water if I stay close enough to shore that I’m confident I can swim to safety if I lose the boat. But I’ve only made that judgment call twice. The first time was when fishing with my Dad on Yellowstone Lake when I was a 20 yo following his lead. The second was off a Martha’s Vineyard beach when I borrowed my friend’s touring kayak to learn how to roll.
I have relatively little whitewater experience, so I have no personal scares to share like those above. I did unintentionally exit a raft on the Penobscot in Maine, but I was back in the boat in a few seconds, so it wasn’t a scare. But other paddlers on the river that day weren’t so lucky. I recall seeing one relatively mild spill result in a broken femur and the need to call in emergency services from Millinocket. We also had a person who went missing for a couple of minutes and that scared the crap out of everyone. She was found under the capsized boat, perfectly OK and just hanging out under there breathing from the trapped air bubble. Supposedly their guide had already checked under the boat right after tipover, but missed her. When we got back to the campground that evening, there was another guy in a cast with a broken forearm.
So I didn’t need to have a personal incident to make me appreciate the risks. That day was enough.
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Sorry about the bike helmet tangent, but I’ve had discussions about PFD ad nauseum, so I mostly stay out of them. Plus, I ride bicycles everyday which is more than it is even possible for me to paddle.
Lots of cyclists here. Besides, the dynamics of the helmet discussion are not so far off of the PFD back-n-forth.
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No worries, you didn’t start the bike topic and it’s related to the PFD topic anyway.
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The law of unintended consequences of public health policies are very well documented.
(Masters of Science Global Health, Northwestern)
What is optimal at the individual level is not always what is best in the aggregate (population level)
From a personal view, the thing I think about the most is that I observe that strict rule followers lose their ability to hone their risk decision making skills.
If I cross the street on a crosswalk, I don’t always look as carefully for traffic as when I am jaywalking which requires all senses to be engaged.
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It comes down to awareness of risks at all times, and avoiding the assumption that it won’t happen to me. Thinking that a cross walk is safe, or a helmet or PFD will prevent all bad outcomes is foolish to say the least.
I rode bikes without a helmet before helmets became a standard or even readily available. Commuted several miles to campus daily in grad school at UF. Saw a couple of car bike incidents so stayed off the main roads where possible. Have been a passenger in a car where the driver was disturbed that a cyclist was using the road. I don’t ride a bike anymore as there are no bike lanes in the rural town I live and so many drivers seem to think it is fine to drive aggressively. I wear a helmet when kayak surfing and when I did ww. I wear a PFD when in a boat.
It just seems to be logical choices to make. With my increasing age and experience my assessment of much of humanity is we are greedy, horny, crazy, apes.
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