I grew up in Switzerland. Lots of bicycling going on there. More for transportation than sport. You even have to pass a bicycling test in school, where you need to know the rules of the road, turning, signaling, etc. If you fail it they make you take it again. None of us wore helmets for that test and no one I know there wears a helmet. Also, no one I know there has ever hurt his head riding a bicycle. It might be a cultural thing. Cars are more used to cyclists etc.

When I moved here I did not wear a helmet ever when riding a bicycle. Then my grandmother saw this special on head injuries and made me promis to always wear a helmet. Now I do - it makes people around me happy. Been wearing one for about 9 months now. I miss the wind in my hair, but that is about it.

I still don't really believe in helmets though. Of course you are better off hitting your head with a helmet than without one, but statisticly the likelyhood to suffer a serious head injury are far greater when walking or driving a car. Do I see people wearing helmets driving or walking? Nope! Should they - yes, they should if they think bicyclist should. Anyway, at this point the people in this country have successfully scared themselves into wearing bicycle helmets. We shall see what is next. Maybe our grandchildren will be riding around in full body armor - provided they have not been scared out of bicycling at all.

Here is some good information: http://www.cyclehelmets.org/

All true. You're also about as likely to die from traumatic head injury while driving a car. Suit up, Mario.

On the other hand, there's discrepency in the data claiming that helmets save thus and such many lives because it doesn't show up in the annual fatality rate (which is already shockingly low--really!).

The design goals for bike helmets is substantially different than what typically happens when one is hit by a car.

On the other hand, when dude hit his head racing the other night that would have been exactly what the kind of impact a helmet is designed for.

Another source: http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/hfaq.html

I've worn a helmet since i was 12 (25 years ago) and i guess I am used to it--no complaints about weight, heat, etc., it's just what's on my head. Nowadays my hair never gets much longer than 1/4", which helps a lot, I think.

My accident story: riding home from work in Seattle, January 2000, same route I'd ridden for eight years or so, dark and rainy, me with a helmet and h/t lights. Pushed a yellow light and connected with a jogger who was jumping his walk signal. he touched my front wheel, the wheel became perpendicular to my direction of travel, and I met pavement. I don't remember the aerial part but the two guardian angels who took me and my bike to the hospital told me about it later. I smashed my right wrist into pieces--not the usual palm-to-the-ground but rather the more destructive hand-curled-in-toward-body. Required surgery, a nightmarish hospital stay and a plate of titanium to fix. My head slid on the pavement for about three feet, I scraped up my face and broke my Cynthia Rowleys. I don't want to know what would have happened if I hadn't been wearing a helmet, and I'm glad I will never find out.

Now the crazy part: I think that helmet laws--and helmet hysteria--are way out of line. There are some nutso statistics, like the fact that head injuries from bicycling have actually increased since helmet use became the standard. There's a site http://www.bicyclesafe.com/helmets.html that has some enlightening "debunkery" of helmet mania, helmet laws, etc. The short version being a) cars will kill you regardless (which is news to most non-cyclists, strangely) and b) you'll be much better off if you're a careful rider.

An example of this hysteria: My friend Matthew was killed two years ago while riding his bike to work. A pickup truck. He was wearing a helmet. Oddly this was the first thing a lot of people asked. Even odder, many of my non-helmet-wearing friends, shocked by the incident, began wearing helmets, at least temporarily, thereafter. His widow gets completely ballistic when she sees a person riding a bike without a helmet, even though, yada yada.

Why? Because cars are the problem, yet people can't bring themselves to deal with that? Why is it that people in European countries don't wear helmets, yet there are fewer fatalities from car/bicycle accidents? Is it simply because our streets are less safe, as a result of being designed solely for efficient car travel?

Anyway. I guess I am of two minds. but it's better than being literally of two minds, if you know what i mean.

edit: absntr, that is a beautiful poster.

Started wearing one when I was mountain biking alot. Carried the helmet over to the road for group rides, vacations, and commuting. I ride with a Giro E2 and now on my third one due to the old noggin meeting the ground. Just about had to buy a new one a couple of weeks ago when I was ran off the road during a group ride by a delivery truck.

Chicago is probably up there with one of the best cities in the US to bike in. The streets are flat, well paved (for the most part) and the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation and Mayor Daley continue to push to make Chicago a bicycle friendly city, in fact, the best. Lanes go far, even in areas where bikes are uncommon. Despite all of this, cars rarely, if ever have respect for the cyclist on the road -- the two of the three accidents that happened to me recently were a direct result of bad drivers. Cars are in a world of their own and they become uncomfortable at the sight of a cyclist. Because despite many people riding bikes here, they are still unaccustomed to it.

I'm going to say that cyclist-awareness is one thing but I also believe that cultural differences on a larger scale are another and that is a part of why things are much more intense here.

Agreed to all. I have heard really good things about Chicago, not least from the crew herein. In my experience the East Bay seems similar: a lot of top-down bike amenities in the infrastructure, and a lot of angry or clueless (or just impatient) drivers.

I wonder, too, how a simple analysis of vehicle speed would look, comparing, say, the US to Western Europe. I guess this would be vehicle speed on non-limited-access roads. That has to have a huge impact on fatalities. No pun intended.

I feel very similar to weedeater. Education is the best prevention. Education is needed for drivers AND cyclist. I took the car driving test in both countries (Switzerland and US). They are both extreme. In Switzerland you have to take all kinds of courses from first aid to driving theory, to practical driving etc. You actually have to study quite a bit to pass it. Here I did not need study for it at all had to take no courses and passed with flying colors. The whole thing all toghether took about 30min.


in terms of car drivers:

(Assuming the are thinking at all about this)

Which scenario makes a driver more alert? Which gives the cyclist better chances?

"Hmm, cyclist, crazy person, well at least s/he is wearing a helmet."

"Holy sh#t the guy is not even wearing a helmet in this traffic!"

I also really wish they would stop creating bike lanes. They marginalize cyclist. They reassure motorists that bicycles don't belong on the road. They do not improve safety. They create a false security for cyclist. They are mostly full of debries. They make people cycle to close to doors of parked cars. Etc. etc.

My favourite situation is actually when cars give me a huge berth -- essentially driving in the other side of the road to avoid me. Fine by me. This happens even when I'm in a bike lane.

I doubt a driver is contemplating whether or not you're wearing a helmet. Rather, I've felt that drivers either:

a) are courteous
b) try to avoid you,
c) are oblivious
d) try to /scare/show you who's the boss by driving really close to you
e) are out to get you for no good reason

i wear a helmet by-proxy.

i had an accident the one day i chose to wear it.
figured my time was over, so back to no helmet.

absntr had an accident (nasty one!). wore one ever since.
funny thing - i hadnt even met him yet!

also, the wise, old(er) ones on this forum all advocate helmets; figure if they know that much about bikes, must be right on this one too.

Always wear a helmet. Even in the shower --but that's a kink thing and the helmet is latex so of that subject I'll speak no more.

Brother-in-law bike-fall accident. Result: swollen brain, on disability for more than a year and still not 100 per cent.
Son's best friend pushed off sidewalk into moving car. Left for dead. Miraculous recovery one year later still significant paralysis on one side of body.

Both wearing helmets. Imagine if they were not. I can.

What irks me most are not those who don't wear helmets (even though they cause the rest of us grief) it is parents who insist that their kids wear lids, but they don't as they ride together. Is that a double standard?

I don't want any legislation or draconian rules about helmets. I just want people to know that wearing even a simple coffee cup style dome on their heads will keep them separate from the vegetable aisle.

True!

But, do you wear one driving or walking? Statisticly you are just as likely if not more likely to suffer a head injury persuing either of those two activities. Should parents make their kids wear them walking or driving? Isn't it a double standard to advocate helmets for cycling, but not for walking and driving a car if the likelyhood of injury are the same for all three activities?

a mother i know--the one whose husband was killed on his bike, actually--won't let her 4 yo daughter ride her training-wheeled bike helmetless. so the daughter likes her pedal-powered tractor better...because, for some reason, she is not required to wear a helmet while riding the tractor. this, friends, is the bicycle inferiority complex in action.

meanwhile, something like 20,000 kids are killed by autos in the US annually...mostly as passengers. non-helmet-wearing passengers, of course.

this is veering dangerously close to advocacy territory. or i am, anyway. hope i dont' crash into it.

Reminds me of the whole anti-smoking campaign.

"Oh my god he is smoking a cigarette!" Oh no mommy, doesn't he know how bad that is!?" "Don't inhale Jonny, don't inhale quick get into the minivan and roll up the window! Let's drive around the block a couple of times untill the air clears."

or the keeping-pregnant-women-from-touching-alcohol campaign

I don't always wear my helmet for short rides around the corner, but I've been doing that a lot less.

I've started looping my cable lock through a vent in the helmet and locking it to my bike (in addition to a chain) when I go to a bar, show or party and don't want to carry my helmet.

ummm...that is NOT good information. it is manipulated and misused stats to try to prove a point. on the first page they are trying to draw a connection between the high rate of US crashes to obesity. what a bunch of ******s.

statistically you are safer in a jet airplane than a car, but its ll in how you filter the numbers. how many deaths per x number of flights vs. the same for car trips. but if you do it by % survival rate of crashes, you are much better off in a car.

they are saying walking is more risky than biking since there are more walking head injuries. the authors of that site obviously are among those victims since they neglect the simple fact that there are MORE PEOPLE WALKING...

I didn't see any stats showing head injuries per crash. you would have to be a fool to think driving a car with no hlemet is more dangerous than riding bike without one. get a grip dude.

I wear my helmet except when I go to the local bar which is 2.5 blocks away. no need to ride even but as you say it's safer than walking. and more to the point, more fun too.

I grew up riding without a helmet, I had number of wrecks without serious injury. but never in traffic or in the woods where things can really leap out and crack your skull.

I did wipe out a few times when I msngr'd in baltimore, once going over trolley tracks and once on a tree planter with the center (and the tree) cut out. both times with helmet, managed to go over sideways and roll.

I skateboarded for years with no hlemet or any other protection and only once did any part of my head suffer impact w/the ground, but that was just a scrape during a multiple roll. The difference was that you pretty much knew when you were going to bail and could prepare for it, as I am sure many cyclists can do, particularly those who get aggro on trails and such. I don't trustt my body to "know how to land" the way it di when I was 18. So I wear a helmet.

I also suffer from obese american syndrome so I should probably get used to crashing. After reading that report you linked to, I'll definitely rethink my no handed fixed gear Choc-O-Dile™ scarfing in traffic on the way to work routine.

Maybe I should switch to SlimFast™ shakes in my CamelBack™.

Maybe some supertight spandex will keep the enormous rolling waves of flesh from toppling me over onto those taxicabs. Of course then I will get overconfident w/ my new skills and probably get wedged in between a Metrobus and one of those black SUV's that follow the Presidential Limo (BushMobile™)

But it is nice to hear that Siwtzerland is a safe place for biking. Perhaps someday the US will be as well.

Yes, of course these statistics are to be taken with a grain of salt (as all statistics), but if you start reading some of the papers and "scientific" studies that site can be quite interesting. Also, make sure to check the second link I posted. Good stuff!

I ride/race downhill skateboards - I wear full leathers or pads and a motorcycle helmet. The likelyhood of hitting your head are somewhat higher doing this partially because it is an inherently unstable platform. Unlike the bicycle which is inherently stable - meaning the faster you go the more stable it becomes. I have had several concussions and broken bones from skateboarding all sorts of ways (hills, bowls, street, etc.). For skateboarding I highly recommend a helmet. For regular bicycling (I am not talking gnarly drops and sick jumps) I wear one too. I am not saying that helmets for bicycling are bad, but I do think that their importance is way overrated.

And on what do you base your assertion? Me, I got some real numbers. "Science" I think they're calling it these days, or maybe it was "emprical evidence". It's so hard to keep track.


According to the Failure Analysis Associates (now Exponent), riders in passenger cars (drivers and passengers) die from car related causes at a rate of 0.47 per million hours of exposure time. Cyclists die at 0.26 per million hours.

Given that travel is typically measured in time taken, this seems to be a reasonable way to look at the stats.

Further, about 1/2 of motor vehicle related deaths are from head injuries. So if you take that 50% and multiply it by the 0.47, you get 0.24 deaths due to head injuries per million hours of motoring. Pretty comparable with the overall cycling fatality rate.

Zoom!, Mr. Earnhardt.

A vey logical if not complicated way to look at it. Bottom line is wear your helmet.,

i starting wearing a helmet last fall when i started riding a lot in NYC. i've never been hit but in NYC it just seems like a matter of time. there's really no good reason not to wear a helmet (fashion? heat? please, it's 98 out, a helmet isn't gonna make it much worse). i also started using lights which i never did before. at 26 i guess i'm finally all grown up and mature! haha

i always wear the helmet..tho its a skateboard helmet not a bike helmet...i find it potects better actually...looks better too (in my opinion)

why do i wear a helmet?
1. i have been hit so many times by wreckless drivers i lost count...the helmet has saved my head from serious injury countless times
2. i work in a profession that has me seeing brain matter more than i ever thought possible...i dont want to end up looking like my patients
3. i dont ever want to be picked up by one of my co-workers with my brains hanging out
4. i dont want to be picked up by my co-workers and put in a body bag
5. this is nyc...people cant drive for sh**...and more people have been killed so far this summer than i remember all last year
6. yeah...im a big dork...safety first....i ride a brake too

<also, the wise, old(er) ones on this forum all advocate helmets; figure if they know that much about bikes, must be right on this one too.>
Darwin at work?

<i wear mine all the time. my thought, if i get hit by a car and die ok,but brain damage the rest of my life. i dont want to be the guy who's freinds wheel to bike show,thinking there doing something nice,mean while im drooling on myself.>
Saw that at the Vancouver (motor)bike show a few years ago. Withered guy in his 30s drooling on his black leathers as his gf(wife?) wheeled him from chopper to chopper exclaiming 'See Fred isn't that one nice?'

Nothing is certain, but using a condom 'may' prevent stds.

always, always, sometimes i forget to take it off and wear it in to the house, or in class, or whatever. i even wear it on the west side bike path, so when i run into the confused tourist ill be ok. they should wear them, too.