Originally Posted by
alan s
Nice to hear from someone who has cycled for a while in the city I live in and the author means well, but gives the wrong impression on a few points. The Dutch people he quotes are actually debating global cycling with foreigners, not Dutch cycling. There is no Dutch to Dutch helmet debate, it's just not a subject that is debated here between Dutch on Dutch cycling, Dutch cycling safety debates are about absence of lights, mopeds, texting riders, elderly on fast E-bikes, Eastern European truck drivers and earplugs, not about helmets. They give (good) reasons why they don't wear helmet, but these are invented for the sake of the debate, it's not like they reasoned like that before they decided not to wear a helmet, because that decision has never been there to make. They also give good reasons why it shouldn't be policy to encourage helmets but that's not the reason behind the policy, the reason is that the politician proposing it would be ridiculed as a nanny state fanatic out of touch with reality. If you touch their cycling habits you touch their sense of freedom. They are all anarchists on the bike, they don't obey rules because they have to but they obey the ones that make sense, often. And as every helmet debate, because the helmet is the only thing for safety
in a crash, it holds the suggestion that the helmet is the difference between beeing safe in a crash and not beeing safe in a crash, which of course it isn't.
It's not about catlike reflexes, it's about the right reflexes.
Jeanne Misner commented: "If the adult driving the bike hit a pebble or tripped up somehow, and the child fell to the pavement, he could have a serious head injury. It would make sense to protect the children."
You don't hit a pebble or trip up somehow.
Jim Gordon backed her up: "One little twig that rolls, a wet plastic bag, an ounce of sand, a few wet leaves or a front tire blowout - any one of these things can slam you down to the pavement incredibly fast during a turn. A front tire blowout slammed my head into the pavement and cause a double shoulder separation. Without a helmet I would have been in a head trauma unit with a half million dollar bill."
I'm not going to discuss the American health care system, but this is an incompetent cyclist. Can't have someone like him cycling on Dutch streets around cycling kids who still got to learn. They'll learn that they can run over little twigts, an ounce of sand, that wet leaves and plastic bags can be slippery but a front tire blowout is no reason to go down.
tony did as well: "Agree re helmets. A few years ago I skidded on a patch of mud and cracked my head on the kerb. Fortunately I was wearing my helmet (which cracked) and since then have always worn a helmet. It was the temple area which hit the kerb, directly over the middle meningeal artery and if that pops, it's probably curtains."
How can you skid on a patch of mud? Wasn't it visible? Did you panic and hit the front brake while trying to steer around it? And why land on your head? It's about active vs passive safety (very limited passive safety), like learning to swim instead of wearing a life vest near water. If you become a good swimmer during childhood, you don't swallow a lot of water when something unexpected happens and you fall in, you just swim to surface and breathe there, and use your limbs to keep your head above the water, that's a good reflex. Not catlike, not superhuman, not genetically Dutch but just trained at a young age. You don't go there where the current is too strong, you don't dive in shallow water head first, you know what you can and can't do and that makes you safe.
Originally Posted by
DiabloScott
It appears that transportation cycling in Nederlands is more like walking. You're not mixing it up with other traffic, you're not going very fast, you're wearing street clothes, you're using well-maintained dedicated roads/sidewalks.
Yes it is like walking, only at higher speed. Often leisurely, but also 20-25 kph. Sidewalks are used, but usually only at pedestrian pace. Infrastructure is usually wel maintained, but you can't remove an old tree just because the root has caused a bump in the cycle lane. Wet leaves don't get removed immediately, little twigs are common in the autumn, it's branches often, plastic bags are rare but that's for other reasons, there's snow, ice and sometimes black ice. After roadworks they use the cyclists to push the gravel firmly in and make it settle. Sometimes people don't pay attention and fall because they brake or turn sharply on that gravel, like a friend who had a serious shoulder injury for months, but she didn't hit her head.