I'm old enough to have grown up without helmets, so my perspective is probably effected by my age. I don't bother to wear a helmet when running errands, or sporting around my tiny sleepy rural village, which gets very little motor vehicle traffic. On a Sunday evening, I can ride for an entire hour, and maybe encounter one car passing me, or perhaps a piece of farm equipment. I never wear a helmet when it's over 85 degrees, because it feels like I'm stuck in a toaster oven.

I do normally wear a helmet when it makes a lot of sense to do so, such as my 30-mile round trip commute on a state highway. Tractor trailers sometimes pass me, and motorists who are more interested in their smart phones and than the safety of cyclists.

If you ride bike without wearing helmet there might be a risk. So you need to ride bike to wear a helmet.

I live in a beach community. 98% of the people don't wear helmets and I don't see bodies littered all over the place. I'm a live-let-live kind of guy. If you want to wear a helmet, wear one. If you don't, don't.
What makes me angry is the people who do, reprimanding someone who doesn't. I've noticed it's mostly women. I've threatened a guy or 2 that if he doesn't shut up about me not wearing a helmet I'm going to run him off the road. People need to mind their own business.

For what it's worth, the one time I actually needed a helmet was right at the end of my street. Cracked it clean through. Weird things happen.

Harsh, man.

In my perception, the Dutch exception is this: They're riding upright city bikes, versus drop bar or flat bar bikes. If your posture puts you over, or just behind, the steerer, you are much more likely to endo over the bars if you suddenly stop for any reason, while someone on an upright bike, well behind the steerer, can brace against the handlebars without going over them. The other thing is that the average bike ride in the Netherlands is quite short; I've heard under three miles for most rides. Here in the states they tend to be several times that, which means, compared to the Dutch, we *do* look like we're in a race since we need to cover more distance.

If they're riding beach cruisers, they're also part of the Dutch exception.

Tell me about it. What do you think of this one: putting a helmet/skull cap and then leaving without the helmet itself :-)

I wonder which distraction is next. Going to sleep with a helmet on? (Some do have a night lamp.)

Let me dignify that question with a serious answer. I can think of many wrong Dutch reflexes when it comes to the national football team, but the question should of course be why such a small population knows so much success in important international sports that people wonder where they are when they didn't qualify. One of the reasons is that Dutch kids don't need 'soccer moms' to play football or another sport. The bicycle makes them independent, they can go anywhere to play or train by themselves.

I guess cycling is just one of those things people get very good at when they do it daily from a very young age to well into their teens, also the people who are clumsy in many other things. They don't fall off because of bumps in the road or something and if they fall off, because of texting on icy streets while drunk for example, they don't hit their head. It becomes second nature like walking.

I know it sounds lame, kids are often used as an argument against things adults to want to see. But the kids have to start young and I have no kids myself but I am in traffic with 4 and 5 year olds. If that environment isn't safe enough for experienced adults without helmets, it's not safe enough for those kids, with or without a helmet. Those kids got to be there, otherwise traffic will be a mess in 10 and 20 years.

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.

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.You don't hit a pebble or trip up somehow.
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.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.

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.

I finished a bike ride off last Sunday with a trip in an ambulance. My accident happened when I hit a rock or a root, riding at no speed, on a fairly level trail I've ridden quite a few times before.

There's a dent in my helmet, not a big impact, just a smallish dent and a bit of a mark in the coating. Did it save me from concussion, fractured skull, brain injury? No way of telling, but I was home the same night - albeit plastered and on crutches - with my family rather than occupying a much needed hospital bed.

Talking to the ambulance crew and the staff in A&E I got the same impression throughout - they were very pleased I'd worn a helmet. I heard several first hand accounts from medical staff who'd had to deal with the aftermath of brain injuries, including dealing with the cyclists' families.

So, yes, it is a free choice. But - and I really hope this never applies to any of you or your families - if you have to be scraped off the road or trail and patched up by your local hospital wearing that helmet can make everyones' lives much less unpleasant.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...79d406882c.jpg

When I go shopping, I usually just keep my helmet on !!! I wear a wet towel over my head most of the year (we have sun almost everyday here), baseball cap over the towel with my huge HubBub Mirror attached to the cap, then my helmet over the cap. I do get some strange looks …. Some people even ask what's that "thing" ? They are referring to my "HubBub Mirror" !!! I even keep all of my headgear on when I'm in the bank. I'm surprised security has not asked me to take off my helmet …..

I always wear a helmet !!! And my HubBub Mirror, which is a life saver too. I've heard stories, some personal, of people who would most likely have died, or ended up severely handicapped, if they had not been wearing their helmet. I also want to be a better example for others, especially young children. I work at many different schools, and so thousands and thousands of children (and many adults as well) see me cycling to work and all over town. I hope that I never have a serious accident … but at least wearing a helmet will offer protection to my head.

I pretty much feel the same way. I am confident with my cycling ability. It's the other people, mostly motorized vehicles, that I'm very concerned about. I see so many people driving cars looking at their cell phone, not paying attention to pedestrians or cyclists. Very scary indeed … !!!

Ha! so I'm not the only one that's done this! :)

I started cycling more than 50 years ago, so wearing a helmet wasn't natural to me. When I began to train and doing group rides, about 22 years ago, wore a helmet occasionally, but never for commuting. Now my commuting makes for 60% of my kms and more of my cycling time, so I thought I couldn't be so irrational and began wearing a helmet full time a few months ago. Now I feel strange, almost naked without a helmet. Still, I think it's a personal decision and don't look down upon those who don't wear them.
A week ago I was on a group ride, riding two abreast but nowhere near the middle of the street, when a distracted driver touched my handlebar with her mirror. I fell on my elbow, side and knee, luckily no serious consequences although I'm still in some pain. I hoped I could tell one of those dramatic "my helmet saved my life" stories, but it never touched the pavement! Frustrating.

I have a cracked helmet in my show-and-tell drawer... it does serve to get the stories going.

I saw a guy with a helmet yesterday. It has happened before but he was on a normal poorly maintained single speed oma and not dressed for the ride. It was an old guy with a grey beard in shorts and his helmet was shiny burgundy. Probably a foreign academic.

Risk Compensation is a Real Thing.

Indeed, we keep a cracked ski racing helmet for the same reason.

The FX3 looks nice. Congrats! Since I was curious, I looked it up. The helmet is on sale at the Trek website for 70 bucks, so maybe the half-off deal isn't such a deal. On the other hand, it will let you get out and ride, right away, without spending another weekend shopping for helmets. Life is short.

If you happen to be thinking about accessories, other items to consider are a rear rack, the means to fix a flat while you're on the road, and a decent floor pump for home use. Of all those things, the pump is your most important maintenance item.

I found a Rudy Project helmet on my lawn yesterday. Not sure how someone can ride off without their helmet.

This is what I found, so maybe it's like what you say. The blue does look kinda cool, in a way. ;)

https://www.trekbikes.com/us/en_US/e...elmet/p/14176/

i imagine that helmet is as good as any other and 60.00 isnt bad for a decent helmet. i agree with the last poster. get it and ride baby!

If you knew exactly which helmet you wanted, the right size, and how to adjust it - yeah, you can get some good deals on the Web. But you don't know any of those things and you would benefit from the LBS walking you through that learning process, and that's worth a few extra bucks.

I don't believe that's actually true, and I'm not a "helmet person" given that I've only worn it a couple of times in the last two weeks.

I realize that there was one study that demonstrated risk compensation, but it was deeply flawed in a basic assumption IMO. They only observed the first few hundred feet of the ride, assuming that a rider would do the same things after many miles.

I am not aware of feeling any greater security with or without a helmet, after the "this is different" feeling wears off. The first minute or so, I'm sure you would observe some difference in how I ride. After that, I doubt it. Analogously, I'd be surprised if people who don't want to ride without one would be riding any differently after 10 or 15 minutes. They'd be riding "normally" for them.

BTW @Matthew2121 my personal take is if you're going to splurge on a nice helmet there's nothing wrong with that, and I'd look for something with more style than the ubiquitous mushroom tops. Some of the Giro helmets look pretty sharp.

False! I wear one all the time and don't take any risk at all I wouldn't take without a helmet. A couple years ago I took a fall that would probably have cracked my skull if I had no helmet on. It cracked the helmet. A skim of mud on the trail from rain the night before. It didn't seem slick to me, it was. I have no pity for people who get hurt with no helmet on. Its just foolish.