Bike helmet, knee pads, and elbow pads when you were a kid? Why as parents today do the majority put their kids in bubble wrap to go outside and play? I have raised three kids the youngest is 10 and have never made them wear any of it and some of he comments I've gotten through the years just cracks me up....I don't care that others strap their kids up... To each their own, I just can't figure out went it all,changed and why....

Bike helmet, knee pads, and elbow pads when you were a kid? Why as parents today do the majority put their kids in bubble wrap to go outside and play? I have raised three kids the youngest is 10 and have never made them wear any of it and some of he comments I've gotten through the years just cracks me up....I don't care that others strap their kids up... To each their own, I just can't figure out went it all,changed and why....

Never wore a bike helmet or pads, played football, baseball , cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians. Proud to say this "budding Bronson" also has never had a broken bone even though a LAV ran directly over one of my feet while in the USMC. Also crossed the street many times as a youngster.....all w/o the help of a crossing guard. I did however return some movies to Blockbuster w/o rewinding them.

If you've ever sat up overnight in a hospital room watching over a child who did a bad ditch tumble sans a helmet, you tend to view helmets differently afterwards. I don't agree with all the bubble wrap apparatus, and we didn't wear helmets in my youth, well, most of us did not.

When I was a kid nobody wore helmets or pads. They were available, but there was this unnecessary and illogical negative stigma about them. I spent more than one visit to the hospital because of a bad spill on a bike or skateboard that would most assuredly been avoided had I wore some safety gear.

When our son was around 12 it still wasn't as popular to be wearing helmets and such. We had them, but he wouldn't wear them.

He took a header over his bike one day and it knocked him out. A neighbor called an ambulance. Wife made it in time to see him being loaded up and taken to the hospital. First thing the doctor said in the ER - "Why was this kid not wearing a helmet?" A couple of thousand dollars and a day later and he was home.

He never fussed about wearing one again.

Personally, I'm very glad it's quite normal to see an entire family out biking, roller blading or skateboarding and everyone from the parents to the kids is at least wearing a helmet. That said, it's still not as accepted in other countries.

Now that the stigma is removed from them, I think the last thing we need is parents arguing against them.

Do I think they should be made mandatory? No way. Let each parent, parent the way they want to. In reality, your kid is probably more likely to suffer a head injury doing something other than biking anyway.

Fortunately, most kids sports roll models not only wear safety gear but endorse others doing the same thing.

If I had kids I would definitely want them to wear helmets, especially when younger. But there is lots of interesting conversation going on in the cycling and planning communities that helmets - especially compulsory helmets - can cause the overall activity to be LESS safe. This is for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the different way motorists react to helmeted cyclists vs helmetless.

There is also concern that compulsory helmets deter people from a statistically very safe activity with tangible health benefits. In other words, they make an overall safe activity SEEM unsafe, and many people (especially women) don't want to wear helmets for vanity/convenience reasons, so they pass on an activity that has a proven, guaranteed high health benefit all over not wanting to use a device that statistically speaking they'll probably never need.

The thing that more than anything reduces the rate of cyclist injuries is MORE CYCLISTS, because their visibility makes the activity seem safer and more culturally acceptable AND causes cars to expect bicycles and be more apt to give way. Compulsory helmet laws cause the activity to be perceived as unsafe, thereby reducing the number of people who participate, AND they can cause cyclists and motorists to act in a more aggressive manner.

Here are some interesting reads on the topic, if anyone is interested:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/do-bike-helmet-laws-really-save-people/2013/06/03/6a6532b4-c6df-11e2-9245-773c0123c027_story.html

Should bike helmets be compulsory? Lessons from Seattle and Amsterdam | Cities | The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/oct/12/bike-helmets-compulsory-seattle-amsterdam-cycling-safety)

Mandatory bike helmet laws do more harm than good, Senate hears | Life and style | The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/aug/12/mandatory-bike-helmet-laws-do-more-harm-than-good-senate-hears)

The problem with the "here's a link" game is that within the vastness of the Internet both sides can usually go tit-for-tat with links.

I also never buy into the reasoning that, "Well this other idea would be better, so I'm gonna crap all over your idea." Sure, more cyclists would be better, but that doesn't IMO negate the benefits of encouraging children to wear helmets. Adults - do as you choose. Kids, lets parent them in a way that fits best for your family and your kids activity level.

As an avid cyclist and coach (I've ridden more than 10,000 miles on a bike), I have seen many times where someone has cracked their helmet in a fall and came out relatively unscathed. Why on earth would you not wear one??


This "when I was a kid..." stuff is a pet peeve of mine. We simply know much more than we did then and therefore are much smarter and more educated about how we do things. Like all information, you can ignore it if you want but it doesn't make it any less valid.

I did however return some movies to Blockbuster w/o rewinding them.

Well great, now we know why they went out of business. Thanks a lot!

I'm pretty sure I logged close to 10k miles from the age of 10 to 15 1/2 , had many of crashes but never felt the need for pads or helmets. I'm in the 40 yr old range why didn't the older generations makes us or at least give us the choice? Why is it that every sucky thing in life come from this generation? And as far as if you going to go ride your bike on the main roads with cars you probably should be protected... I would argue that most people are not smarter today, that's honestly insulting........

Did you start this thread to talk down to those who do wear helmets or put them on their kids?

For the record, I am not a cyclist but when I do ride (which requires borrowing a bike) I don't wear one. I do absolutely snow ski with one though. I went skiing recently with a buddy who grew up in Colorado and he hadn't been in years. He never wore one growing up but decided to grab one this trip just to try it out. That next day in the terrain park we were goofing off and he ate it hard on a box, and without that helmet it woulda been ugly. He's been sold on one ever since.

[QUOTE=bradh;934929]Did you start this thread to talk down to those who do wear helmets or put them on their kids?

No!, I'm not the one that said people are smarter now though.... I just find it interesting that somehow making your kids wear a helmet or elbow pads makes a parent smarter than the next, that doesn't require it....

The problem with the "here's a link" game is that within the vastness of the Internet both sides can usually go tit-for-tat with links.

I also never buy into the reasoning that, "Well this other idea would be better, so I'm gonna crap all over your idea." Sure, more cyclists would be better, but that doesn't IMO negate the benefits of encouraging children to wear helmets. Adults - do as you choose. Kids, lets parent them in a way that fits best for your family and your kids activity level.

That's funny, because that's pretty much EXACTLY what you did to my post. And I never said that helmets were bad, I said that MANDATORY HELMET LAWS are curiously counterproductive. This is being borne out by studies and statistical analysis. Did you even bother to follow and read the links I posted? You're quick to demand them, but don't seem to follow them when provided.

Again, none of them say helmets are bad. Quite the opposite. And they didn't just come from random sources. I didn't just go out and grab some links to spar with someone online. I follow this topic quite closely because it ties in with urbanism topics, books, blogs and thought leaders that I follow.

There is a dawning awareness among planning experts that more bicycling creates better, healthier cities, and that the health and community benefit derived from it vastly outweighs the risks of helmetless riding. If it becomes an either/or for some people they are statistically better off riding, even if it's without a helmet.

There is far more public health benefit from investing in bicycle infrastructure, including protected lanes and the like. There is a reason why a place like Copenhagen (virtually nobody there wears a helmet) has a tiny fraction of injuries/deaths per 1000 cyclists than a place like Australia, which has a compulsory helmet law. The reason has nothing to do with the cyclists or their gear; it is because of the way cars see and interact with them in those respective places.

And Pete, if you are talking about road bikes (the type ridden fast in traffic by aggro middle-aged men wearing spandex), ABSOLUTELY they should be ridden with helmets. What commuter cycling advocates and urban-oriented city planners want to encourage is more casual participation, bike shares, trips to work and to the store, cycling by women, etc. the kind that happens on upright city bikes. The more of those we get on city streets, the healthier will be as a city on multiple levels. If requiring a helmet is a barrier to that (and statistics show that it is) bicycle helmet laws are a bad thing.

Tundra are you the guy that doesn't wear a helmet when skiing despite the fact most skiing deaths are preventable with a helmet? Most of us realize our brain is a pretty big asset in life and take steps to protect it.

Did you start this thread to talk down to those who do wear helmets or put them on their kids?

For the record, I am not a cyclist but when I do ride (which requires borrowing a bike) I don't wear one. I do absolutely snow ski with one though. I went skiing recently with a buddy who grew up in Colorado and he hadn't been in years. He never wore one growing up but decided to grab one this trip just to try it out. That next day in the terrain park we were goofing off and he ate it hard on a box, and without that helmet it woulda been ugly. He's been sold on one ever since.

Growing up in New Mexico all the local skiers have been wearing helmets for years and years. Every year there was at least one sometimes two tourists (most of the time from Texas or OK) die because they fell, hit their head, needed a hospital only to realize it takes hours to get there and die in transit. Fortunately it's changing and I'd guess 90% of people on the mountain nowadays wear helmets.

I'm in the 40 yr old range why didn't the older generations makes us or at least give us the choice? Why is it that every sucky thing in life come from this generation?

Not sure what that statement means, but I know the older generation didn't coddle us like kids are these days... Were were taught to get up and dust ourselves off.... But that's a topic for a different discussion.

I grew up in the era of the 60's and 70's when kids were out and about all over our neighborhood and rode bikes everywhere, and when you went into a bicycle shop, safety equipment was virtually non existent. You didn't see the rows of helmets and pads like you see today. We still rode the old fat tired bikes to school, long before they were known as "cruisers", but 10 speeds were becoming popular. We made "choppers" out of our stingrays, which were popular, but kids were starting to replace their bananna seats with 10 speed seats and the BMX craze was just starting. We didn't worry about safety so much as having fun. We did a LOT of crazy stuff and had some bad crashes. But we knew not to come home crying if we could help it. .... Times were definately different.

Fast forward to when my own kids were growing up. While we weren't helicopter parents, we made sure they at had a helmet on when they went riding. Now days, all kinds of safety eqipment is available, so it makes sense to use it.

I'll admit, I still ride bicycles without a helmet, and I don't agree with the "bubble wrapped" kid mentality, but it's probably a good idea to have them gear up to save them from serious injuries that could have been easily prevented.

This is from a study on the Austrailian law, published on the (U.S.) National Institute of Health website (as opposed to coming from a cycling advocacy site): Head injuries and bicycle helmet laws. - PubMed - NCBI (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8870773)

I'll paste the inflow for those who don't bother to follow links:


Head injuries and bicycle helmet laws

Robinson DL1.

1AGBU, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia.

Abstract
The first year of the mandatory bicycle helmet laws in Australia saw increased helmet wearing from 31% to 75% of cyclists in Victoria and from 31% of children and 26% of adults in New South Wales (NSW) to 76% and 85%. However, the two major surveys using matched before and after samples in Melbourne (Finch et al. 1993; Report No. 45, Monash Univ. Accident Research Centre) and throughout NSW (Smith and Milthorpe 1993; Roads and Traffic Authority) observed reductions in numbers of child cyclists 15 and 2.2 times greater than the increase in numbers of children wearing helmets. This suggests the greatest effect of the helmet law was not to encourage cyclists to wear helmets, but to discourage cycling. In contrast, despite increases to at least 75% helmet wearing, the proportion of head injuries in cyclists admitted or treated at hospital declined by an average of only 13%. The percentage of cyclists with head injuries after collisions with motor vehicles in Victoria declined by more, but the proportion of head injured pedestrians also declined; the two followed a very similar trend. These trends may have been caused by major road safety initiatives introduced at the same time as the helmet law and directed at both speeding and drink-driving. The initiatives seem to have been remarkably effective in reducing road trauma for all road users, perhaps affecting the proportions of victims suffering head injuries as well as total injuries. The benefits of cycling, even without a helmet, have been estimated to outweigh the hazards by a factor of 20 to 1 (Hillman 1993. Cycle helmets-the case for and against. Policy Studies Institute, London). Consequently, a helmet law, whose most notable effect was to reduce cycling, may have generated a net loss of health benefits to the nation. Despite the risk of dying from head injury per hour being similar for unhelmeted cyclists and motor vehicle occupants, cyclists alone have been required to wear head protection. Helmets for motor vehicle occupants are now being marketed and a mandatory helmet law for these road users has the potential to save 17 times as many people from death by head injury as a helmet law for cyclists without the adverse effects of discouraging a healthy and pollution free mode of transport.

Now I ask you: if riding in a car - even with airbags and seat belts - has almost exactly the same incidence of head injury per mph and many, MANY more people travel many, MANY more miles per year at MUCH higher speeds, why doesn't the government require automobile drivers and passengers to wear helmets? The overall public health benefit and lives saved would be VASTLY greater.

I'll answer my own question: because doing so would create the public perception that automobile use is unsafe, and would discourage use. No way would auto manufacturers allow such a law.

Also - and forgive me if not having a link (I THINK this might have come from Jeff Speck) but I read somewhere a while back that WALKING on a city street is actually statistically less safe than riding a bike. Why again aren't we talking about wearing helmets when walking? If he were alive today Dr Atkins would probably be an advocate for such a law.

Nutshell: if wearing a helmet keeps you from riding a bike, don't let it. From a health standpoint, even without a helmet you're much better off riding than going everywhere in a car, statistically speaking.

Tundra are you the guy that doesn't wear a helmet when skiing despite the fact most skiing deaths are preventable with a helmet? Most of us realize our brain is a pretty big asset in life and take steps to protect it.

To be honest , I've done both , not being an expert skier, I'd probably use the helmet, as far as riding my bike around the block or up and down the driveway , I'm am not going to wear a helmet, and I'm not going to force my children to do it either, if they asked for one, I'd oblige but I'm not going out and buying them one just for the sake of the Govt said to...if they are box racing or going out for a road trip of course it makes sense...

Here's a pretty excellent read on the topic - by someone who chooses to wear a helmet when riding - which I think pretty fairly addresses pros and cons of required helmet use. Read with an open mind: More on why we shouldn't have mandatory helmet laws : TreeHugger (http://www.treehugger.com/bikes/more-why-we-shouldnt-have-mandatory-helmet-laws.html)

To be honest , I've done both , not being an expert skier, I'd probably use the helmet, as far as riding my bike around the block or up and down the driveway , I'm am not going to wear a helmet, and I'm not going to force my children to do it either, if they asked for one, I'd oblige but I'm not going out and buying them one just for the sake of the Govt said to...if they are box racing or going out for a road trip of course it makes sense...
Every expert skier wears a helmet, so I'd suggest as an amateur you do too. Also, speed isn't always a factor. Packed snow is as hard as concrete but hospitals are far.

Well that's your choice, but if there's one area I'll make my kids protect, it's their head. They'll use a helmet to ride a bike, and if they play football they'll know signs of a concussion.

These things are always cultural.

I can tell you that of the thousands of cyclists I came across during my time in California, almost zero were not wearing a helmet. As in way, way less than 1%. I honestly believe people don't even think about it.

It's just like seat belts.... It wasn't that long ago a big percentage of people didn't wear them. Now, most people won't even put the car in drive without all their passengers buckled up, let alone themselves.

After a while all these things become the norm and habit, and for good reason.

I would ride without one, but if one were readily available I would wear it.

Just like a seat belt. A lot of our motorized equipment doesn't have seatbelts, it doesn't stop me from using it, but when one is installed I'm better off wearing it.

Ask the people in Copenhagen about it, Pete. There is zero chance that they are less bicycle-enlightened than people in California, yet they laugh at the idea of wearing helmets for simple jaunts, commuting or other non-race activities. And yet their bicycle injury and fatality rate is a tiny fraction of California, or anywhere in the U.S. And why is that? It is because a major factor in bicycle injuries is the automobile and how automobile drivers view bicyclists. You're right about it being cultural, by the way, because in the states "bicycle" equates to dudes in spandex, riding fast with traffic. By all means these people should be helmeted.

But that same perception causes people to view cycling as a riskier activity than it truly is. Like I said, statistically you would get equal benefit requiring helmets on pedestrians, and many, many times more public health benefit by require automobile drivers and passengers to wear helmets. Would you support that?

By the way, studies have suggested that requiring cyclists to wear a long blonde wig would have a more positive effect on cyclist safety than requiring helmets. Drivers are more likely to give way to an un-helmeted woman than a helmeted man, and the vast majority of bike head injuries come from auto/bicycle collisions.

In 2012 there were 726 people killed in bicycle accidents. There were 11,622 homicides by firearm. Why aren't we talking about requiring every man, woman and child in the U.S. to wear a bulletproof vest?

Bicycle helmet laws are a form of victim blaming, and also have the unintended consequence of deterring bike riding. If we want to make cycling safer the single best thing we can do is encourage more cycling. The correlation is statistically indisputable. When cars expect bicycles and see them regularly, cyclists are safer.

We need to worry more about creating good biking infrastructure and bicycle-friendly laws, and less about requiring auto/bicycle crash victims to be armored.

By the way, im not discouraging helmet use - nor are any of the articles I've cited - im discouraging MANDATORY helmet use. This is a major distinction that seems to be being lost on most people posting here. One thing is undeniably worthwhile; the other, not so much.

Every expert skier wears a helmet, so I'd suggest as an amateur you do too. Also, speed isn't always a factor. Packed snow is as hard as concrete but hospitals are far.

Well that's your choice, but if there's one area I'll make my kids protect, it's their head. They'll use a helmet to ride a bike, and if they play football they'll know signs of a concussion.


Do biathlon competitors wear helmets? Not to point out that your wrong about how all pro skiers wear a helmet, but that's one that comes to mind....

That's funny, because that's pretty much EXACTLY what you did to my post. And I never said that helmets were bad, I said that MANDATORY HELMET LAWS are curiously counterproductive. ....

Actually, that's not what I did at all. In fact I left the option to wear a helmet or not up to the rider or parent. I also said you're probably more likely to receive a head injury some other way beyond ring a bike, skateboard, etc.

I was simply pointing out links are fine - and often necessary to make a specific point. However, this topic is way too vague and open for debate. Each side of the debate could post endless links and still nobody prove their point.

What I was pointing out is that while I agree more riders on the road would be great, its doesn't negate the importance many people put on helmets. The ONLY time myself or our son ever when to the hospital with an injury was from bike riding or roller blading with no safety gear. That's just our experience - others may vary.

Do biathlon competitors wear helmets? Not to point out that your wrong about how all pro skiers wear a helmet, but that's one that comes to mind....


So, by their example are you endorsing no helmet while skiing or endorsing skiing while carrying a rifle? -- because I'm thinking that could be the solution to long lift lines!

I've got a helmet that I use when I ride trails, etc., but when just tooling around the neighborhood, I don't wear it. My kids were the same way. Just hanging around riding the neighborhood and driveways, they didn't wear one, but when they go to friends in other neighborhoods, or to go on what they call "exploring adventures", they'd wear them. We never really wore any knee or elbow pads though, except when skating. I think most people realize the benefits of wearing a helmet and are encouraging their use, but not being fanatical about it.

These things are always cultural.

I can tell you that of the thousands of cyclists I came across during my time in California, almost zero were not wearing a helmet. As in way, way less than 1%. I honestly believe people don't even think about it.

It's just like seat belts.... It wasn't that long ago a big percentage of people didn't wear them. Now, most people won't even put the car in drive without all their passengers buckled up, let alone themselves.

After a while all these things become the norm and habit, and for good reason.

I was gonna make this same comparison. When I was a kid it was common for folks to not wear seat belts. I never saw a booster seat and car seats were only for babies. Although I remember folks carrying babies in their laps in cars. Does that mean we should go back to that behavior?

Bike helmet, knee pads, and elbow pads when you were a kid? Why as parents today do the majority put their kids in bubble wrap to go outside and play? I have raised three kids the youngest is 10 and have never made them wear any of it and some of he comments I've gotten through the years just cracks me up....I don't care that others strap their kids up... To each their own, I just can't figure out went it all,changed and why....

While waiting on some other stuff to finish, let me take a stab at your question...re the "bubble wrap."

I think it's because we have, for the first time, raised a generation to react in fear rather than react in knowledge. It isn't just in safety equipment or acceptability of helmets; it extends for the first time I can recall to nearly every facet of life.

We have developed this notion that it is acceptable if not preferable to recoil in fear at the notion of the possibility of an adverse consequence. We are able, through social media and cellphones, to spread the adverse consequence of *one* ugly reality - a bike wreck, a dog bite, a football injury, doesn't really matter - to the entire world in a matter of seconds. We sometime hear them referred to as the "daily outrage." These compelling visual images become the norm even though, in the light of reality, there exists the fact that they're *not*. The visual images drive us to react emotionally, out of fear, not rationally, out of knowledge.

For every kid who has a bad bike spill, there are *thousands* who rode their bikes without incident. For every bad dog bite, there are *thousands* of folks who took their dogs out without incident. For every bad football injury, there are thousands who played without being hurt - and I say that as the father of a kid who endured about as ugly an injury as you're going to see (and is 100% just fine now). This idea extends even to the way we practice medicine - we sell screenings on the basis of fear because *one* out of 500 or 1000 or whatever will be found to have XYZ ailment, and imply "you are at risk" if you aren't screened. How many commercials for medical procedures these days are sold on the basis of having "peace of mind," even if the probability of having the ailment-du-jour is 1:100,000 or 1:1,000,000 or even 1:100?

This whole notion has engendered the idea that we want a substantial degree of absolute safety in everything we do, and such a guarantee doesn't exist. A generation ago, we understood that in ways we don't know. We had a kind of wisdom, of common sense, that we've willingly lost.

Does that make bike pads and helmets a bad idea? Of course not. Does it make helmets and better equipment in football a wasteful idea? Surely not. What they represent is the opposite end of two very serious extremes; the "plastic bubble" extreme on the one end, and the "devil-may-care", lassies-faire attitude of "hoping" everything goes alright on the other. Reality is, as it so often seems to be, in the middle somewhere.

Right now, for myself, at the ripe age of 51, I find myself a lot more cautious than I was at, say, 15 or 25. Maybe its just getting old, maybe its appreciating risks I didn't appreciate before, who knows. But I also believe that, in those 51 years, I've seen American culture change to one much more predisposed to the "don't take the risk" end. I don't think, for example, the current generation would *ever* have gone to the moon. I can't fathom members of this generation hopping the Mayflower and setting out for a new world.

My kids wore helmets and pads riding their bikes; when I as a kid, I fell down so often trying to learn that my legs were black and blue, and I'm sure at some point my pediatrician was convinced my folks were beating me. (I was a horrendously uncoordinated and physically untalented kid). And it took some convincing for me to let my son play football - but despite his injury that I would give nearly anything to go back and undo, giving him that broader joy of playing football - however briefly - is something of which I would have hated to deprive him precisely *because* of how much joy it *did* give him - in *spite* of that injury. And he'd gladly have played into college had he possessed the requisite physical talent to play at that level....but that's a different issue.

The solution? While I believe society's problems are spiritual at their core (and THAT's also an entirely different discussion), information is next in line. We should be demanding more information about the *reality* of risks we're being taught to fear. We all know that winning the lottery is a hundreds-of-millions-to-one shot; let's hear the same risks for all the *other* things we're being sold. Too much of our decision-making is based on *one* bad example extrapolated to an entire population - and the reality of that can be seen in the absurd safety equipment and warnings plastered on nearly every retail product all because *one* person did something stupid, and a manufacturer was the one held responsible.

I look at how we've changed, and lament the loss of boldness, of fortitude, of courage, but I also see that more information can, when coupled with the right amounts of common sense and critical thinking, can identify stupid risks we no longer need to take. Right now, we are simply at a pendulum point closer to fear-based reaction rather than fact-based, and my hope is that, eventually, it swings back.

Hope that makes some sense.

Every expert skier wears a helmet, so I'd suggest as an amateur you do too. Also, speed isn't always a factor. Packed snow is as hard as concrete but hospitals are far.

Well that's your choice, but if there's one area I'll make my kids protect, it's their head. They'll use a helmet to ride a bike, and if they play football they'll know signs of a concussion.

NASCAR drivers wear a helmet and have a HANS device in their car. I have yet to see anyone driving a car on a city street with a helmet on (but I'll bet it is coming soon).

I have been hit by cars 2X while riding my bike and neither time was I wearing a helmet and neither time did I receive a head injury - despite
sliding across both hoods. I don't make my kids wear a helmet either but the ex-wife would freak-out every time she saw them without one. Personally, I am with Urbanized in that being covered in protective gear causes people to take more chances that they ever would without them. As proof, just look at the NFL and the number of concussion since the introduction of the helmet. You would never see some linebacker leading with the top of their head if they didn't have a helmet on.

Once again, for the record, I am not discouraging helmet use, in fact I think it is a great idea. That said, MANDATING them is an outsized response to a problem that is tiny in the overall scheme of things. Mandating helmets in cars or bullet proof vests for all citizens would have far more impact on public health and traumatic injury, and those things will NEVER happen. You would also have a very similar impact on public health if you mandated helmets be worn by people walking down the street.

When you combine the tiny positive impact a bicycle helmet law would have, versus how many people would not ride bikes at all if they were forced to wear a helmet, you would have a very negative unintended effect on public health, as was shown in Australia. THIS is the position I am arguing, and it is backed up by cycling advocates and urban planners galore.

Simply put, statistically you are better off riding with no helmet than you are not riding at all.

To me this is not an anti-helmet question or a "freedom" question. For instance, I am a motorcyclist and have zero problem with motorcycle helmet laws. Due to travel speeds, you are much more likely to suffer traumatic head injury on a motorcycle than on a bicycle, and the public health benefit strongly tips in favor of requiring helmets. That law is MUCH more analogous to the automobile seatbelt law, which has saved hundreds of thousands of lives. The difference though, is that if a helmet law deters a motorcycle rider from participating, or if a seatbelt law deters someone from riding/driving a car, there is no unintended negative health consequence to the public's level of fitness, or to the environment. If you keep a bunch of people off of bicycles, there most certainly is.

By the way, for the record, the state of California has no bicycle helmet law for adults. An attempt last year to pass one has met strong resistance from bicycling advocates, for the exact reasons I have outlined previously: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/19/california-helmet-law_n_6716100.html

Here's another article from Pete's old stomping grounds: Legislator sees safety in adult helmet law; cyclists see mostly harm - LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-california-commute-20150310-story.html)


..."We don't want the law to say to people, 'You should really ride a bike because it's great for your health, but you have to wear a helmet because biking is super dangerous,'" said Eric Bruins, the policy director for the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. "If you hear that, are you really going to go out and ride?"

Others fear such a law could complicate bike-sharing systems in San Francisco and San Diego, which rent to tourists and commuters on an hourly basis. Helmets are not provided. CitiBike in New York City has recorded more than 15 million trips without any deaths, according to New York Department of Transportation data...


One study from Britain suggests that cyclists who wear helmets are more likely to be hit by a car. A University of Bath psychology researcher outfitted a bicycle with a sensor that recorded the passing distance of more than 2,500 cars, buses and trucks. On average, researcher Ian Walker said, vehicles gave 3.3 additional inches of passing room when the cyclist wasn't wearing a helmet.

One possible explanation? Drivers see cyclists with helmets as "more serious" and "less likely to make unexpected moves," he wrote.

Simply put, statistically you are better off riding with no helmet than you are not riding at all.

To me this is not an anti-helmet question or a "freedom" question. For instance, I am a motorcyclist and have zero problem with motorcycle helmet laws. Due to travel speeds, you are much more likely to suffer traumatic head injury on a motorcycle than on a bicycle, and the public health benefit strongly tips in favor of requiring helmets. That law is MUCH more analogous to the automobile seatbelt law, which has saved hundreds of thousands of lives. The difference though, is that if a helmet law deters a motorcycle rider from participating, or if a seatbelt law deters someone from riding/driving a car, there is no unintended negative health consequence to the public's level of fitness, or to the environment. If you keep a bunch of people off of bicycles, there most certainly is.

You had me until here. There's either a net benefit to requiring helmets or not, and how it affects participation, IMO, isn't one of the factors that should be included. I think adults should be able to make their own decisions regardless (it's more reasonable to have laws in place for children who don't have the maturity to make informed decisions). The line I would draw would be if a behavior could put others at risk. Requiring life jacks for example, on boats, make sense, since the search and rescue operations can put others at direct risk.

From the HuffPost piece I quoted above, regarding the proposed Cali law:


Melissa Balmer, the [California Bicycle Coalition's] media director, told The Huffington Post that the group is not anti-helmet. But mandating them gives people the idea that biking is more dangerous than it is, she said.

“Then it’s a sport -- it’s not just a pleasurable pastime,” Balmer said of the feeling that helmet laws give people, especially women.

Balmer said cycling in Australia sharply declined after an all-ages helmet law took effect. According to a World Transport Policy and Practice study, the rate of cycling participation in Australia from 1985 to 2011 was 22.3 percent less than the rate of population growth.

The real solutions to bicycling dangers, Balmer said, are fewer cars on the road, more bike lanes and protected bike lanes. Focusing on helmets over those infrastructure improvements is only turning biking converts away, she said.

“We really want to encourage people to replace those short trips that we take by car and ride a bike as a way to incorporate your daily exercise into getting your errands done,” Balmer explained. “When we mandate helmet laws, we find that the people who are the safest bicyclists -- the people that are taking the short trip down a couple of blocks to get some milk or to ride for a short trip with their family to the park -- those are the people who go, ‘You know what, I just don’t want to,'" wear a helmet, usually because it’s inconvenient to carry around or keep stored.

Balmer pointed to famously bike-friendly cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, where helmets are neither required nor common. One study found that The Netherlands experienced a 45 percent increase in bicycling from 1980 to 2005, and a 58 percent decrease in bike-related fatalities.

Why is it that every sucky thing in life come from this generation?

Have you kicked those damn kids off your lawn?!?

From the HuffPost piece I quoted above, regarding the proposed Cali law:

Lots of really frustrating correlation/causation statistics issues in that piece. Not nearly enough information in that one snippet IMHO to draw a completely informed picture either way.

For myself, I tend toward a no-helmet-law person. Each individual needs to assess their own risks and act accordingly, and not be criminalized for failing to do what someone else thinks is in their own best interest.

I *do* think, however, the idea that creating a perception of risk that is larger than the actual risk is at the very core of my earlier post. We see the grisly consequences of one or two realities; we *never* hear the real-world probabilities such a grisly event will be visited on any one person. And then we legislate that way. I'm probably naive, but that's not in my book a very sound way to construct public policy.

Appropriate comic from today:
http://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/pvponlinenew/img/comic/2016/01/pvp20160125.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkVvXVDs5aI

While waiting on some other stuff to finish, let me take a stab at your question...re the "bubble wrap."

I think it's because we have, for the first time, raised a generation to react in fear rather than react in knowledge. It isn't just in safety equipment or acceptability of helmets; it extends for the first time I can recall to nearly every facet of life.

We have developed this notion that it is acceptable if not preferable to recoil in fear at the notion of the possibility of an adverse consequence. We are able, through social media and cellphones, to spread the adverse consequence of *one* ugly reality - a bike wreck, a dog bite, a football injury, doesn't really matter - to the entire world in a matter of seconds. We sometime hear them referred to as the "daily outrage." These compelling visual images become the norm even though, in the light of reality, there exists the fact that they're *not*. The visual images drive us to react emotionally, out of fear, not rationally, out of knowledge.

For every kid who has a bad bike spill, there are *thousands* who rode their bikes without incident. For every bad dog bite, there are *thousands* of folks who took their dogs out without incident. For every bad football injury, there are thousands who played without being hurt - and I say that as the father of a kid who endured about as ugly an injury as you're going to see (and is 100% just fine now). This idea extends even to the way we practice medicine - we sell screenings on the basis of fear because *one* out of 500 or 1000 or whatever will be found to have XYZ ailment, and imply "you are at risk" if you aren't screened. How many commercials for medical procedures these days are sold on the basis of having "peace of mind," even if the probability of having the ailment-du-jour is 1:100,000 or 1:1,000,000 or even 1:100?

This whole notion has engendered the idea that we want a substantial degree of absolute safety in everything we do, and such a guarantee doesn't exist. A generation ago, we understood that in ways we don't know. We had a kind of wisdom, of common sense, that we've willingly lost.

Does that make bike pads and helmets a bad idea? Of course not. Does it make helmets and better equipment in football a wasteful idea? Surely not. What they represent is the opposite end of two very serious extremes; the "plastic bubble" extreme on the one end, and the "devil-may-care", lassies-faire attitude of "hoping" everything goes alright on the other. Reality is, as it so often seems to be, in the middle somewhere.

Right now, for myself, at the ripe age of 51, I find myself a lot more cautious than I was at, say, 15 or 25. Maybe its just getting old, maybe its appreciating risks I didn't appreciate before, who knows. But I also believe that, in those 51 years, I've seen American culture change to one much more predisposed to the "don't take the risk" end. I don't think, for example, the current generation would *ever* have gone to the moon. I can't fathom members of this generation hopping the Mayflower and setting out for a new world.

My kids wore helmets and pads riding their bikes; when I as a kid, I fell down so often trying to learn that my legs were black and blue, and I'm sure at some point my pediatrician was convinced my folks were beating me. (I was a horrendously uncoordinated and physically untalented kid). And it took some convincing for me to let my son play football - but despite his injury that I would give nearly anything to go back and undo, giving him that broader joy of playing football - however briefly - is something of which I would have hated to deprive him precisely *because* of how much joy it *did* give him - in *spite* of that injury. And he'd gladly have played into college had he possessed the requisite physical talent to play at that level....but that's a different issue.

The solution? While I believe society's problems are spiritual at their core (and THAT's also an entirely different discussion), information is next in line. We should be demanding more information about the *reality* of risks we're being taught to fear. We all know that winning the lottery is a hundreds-of-millions-to-one shot; let's hear the same risks for all the *other* things we're being sold. Too much of our decision-making is based on *one* bad example extrapolated to an entire population - and the reality of that can be seen in the absurd safety equipment and warnings plastered on nearly every retail product all because *one* person did something stupid, and a manufacturer was the one held responsible.

I look at how we've changed, and lament the loss of boldness, of fortitude, of courage, but I also see that more information can, when coupled with the right amounts of common sense and critical thinking, can identify stupid risks we no longer need to take. Right now, we are simply at a pendulum point closer to fear-based reaction rather than fact-based, and my hope is that, eventually, it swings back.

Hope that makes some sense.

You put my exact thoughts, into the perfect explanation.

Have you kicked those damn kids off your lawn?!?

My wife tells me all the time, I'm going to be that guy... I already water and mow the yard in my black socks and sandals

Growing up, we were encouraged to wear helmets. We never did. One day, I went to visit my friend; heard he was in the hospital--hit something in the street which tossed him into a tree. After seeing his condition (scars, disfigured face); boy looked like a frog anyway--it made his appearance look more frightening & horrible. I went out & got me a helmet.

The problem with helmets (for those who have gone without), it takes an initial adjustment--the gear can be a bit uncomfortable when you start out. Value safety first, there are so many drivers & bikers on the road who really take safety for granted.

Buried my cousin several years ago who was killed in a auto-bike accident--he wore a helmet. My son rides a motorcycle daily (dread the day I bought him a moped), he stays alert--I just pray that I never receive a call about a dreaded accident.

A parent shouldn't have to bury a child; some protection is better than none--encourage helmets on every level....

Growing up, we were encouraged to wear helmets. We never did. One day, I went to visit my friend; heard he was in the hospital--hit something in the street which tossed him into a tree. After seeing his condition (scars, disfigured face); boy looked like a frog anyway--it made his appearance look more frightening & horrible. I went out & got me a helmet.

The problem with helmets (for those who have gone without), it takes an initial adjustment--the gear can be a bit uncomfortable when you start out. Value safety first, there are so many drivers & bikers on the road who really take safety for granted.

Buried my cousin several years ago who was killed in a auto-bike accident--he wore a helmet. My son rides a motorcycle daily (dread the day I bought him a moped), he stays alert--I just pray that I never receive a call about a dreaded accident.

A parent shouldn't have to bury a child; some protection is better than none--encourage helmets on every level....

Helmets are good, and encouraging safety is good. I just wish the same effort was put into encouraging education. I've been through 3 motorcycle courses (one was advanced techniques and one was a refresher) and am likely going to do another one in the next year. Edmond offers some great courses - Edmond, OK - Official Website - Civilian Motorcycle School (http://edmondok.com/index.aspx?NID=577)

I'm amazed the number of people who ride who don't have knowledge of what I consider to be basic riding skills, such as how to stop quickly and safely, how to avoid impact, even such stuff as the double dip for tight low speed turns and more. So many accidents are preventable by the rider (both motorcycle and bicycle). As I tell my kids, right of way means nothing when it's between you and a cage driver.

My wife tells me all the time, I'm going to be that guy... I already water and mow the yard in my black socks and sandals

My wife caught me set up in a lawn chair near the main stop sign in our neighborhood yelling at people who were using our neighborhood as a short cut and running through the stop sign. She made me go inside... *sigh*

My wife tells me all the time, I'm going to be that guy... I already water and mow the yard in my black socks and sandals

When did you move to Florida? :)

There's either a net benefit to requiring helmets or not, and how it affects participation, IMO, isn't one of the factors that should be included.Gotta disagree with you on this. The net benefit of USING a helmet is to each individual apart from the group; the net benefit of REQUIRING it is to the entire society as a whole. To be meaningful, that second benefit MUST include the effect on participation in its determination. If that second benefit is much less than the first -- which seems to be the consensus of the studies cited upthread -- then making use mandatory is counter-indicated.

However in a culture ruled primarily by fear, which it appears to be what we have at present, logic has no place at all. Ever see the graphic of what OSHA would require of a cowboy that used to circulate around insurance claims offices back in the last century?

Let me get this straight...having your kid wear a helmet while biking equals living in fear, but watching TV with a loaded pistol in your lap because of intruders doesn't?

Learning to ski in the mid-late 80's as a kid, we would make fun of the other kids at ski school who wore helmets, now I make fun of the adults who do not wear helmets. Hopefully the slopes make it a law that anyone under 13 has to wear a helmet while skiing.

When I was a kid I wore boots and a cowboy hat because a cowboy hat was all the protection a little buckaroo needed.

I only fell off a horse and on my head one time.... Well I fell off a horse more than once but only on my head one time.... Anyway..... I've often wondered how much more I could have achieved in life had I been wearing a helmet instead of a cowboy hat that day.

On a more serious note.... The protection gear available to us today is more abundant and more available than anything available to me as a kid... So why not wear it? I mean I'm all for natural selection weeding the idiots out of the gene pool, so I don't think it should be mandatory, but if I had kids. I'd at least be giving them a fighting chance to beat natural selection so they could grow up and pollute the gene pool themselves.

Gotta disagree with you on this. The net benefit of USING a helmet is to each individual apart from the group; the net benefit of REQUIRING it is to the entire society as a whole. To be meaningful, that second benefit MUST include the effect on participation in its determination. If that second benefit is much less than the first -- which seems to be the consensus of the studies cited upthread -- then making use mandatory is counter-indicated.

That would then imply that there is not a net benefit to requiring helmets.. as in a significant saving of lives. Cause surely there's not a level of "participation" which outweighs a serious health/life issue. If so, there's lots of stuff we can look back on and make changes to.

There are multiple alternatives to bicycling which could replace any so called participation benefit, that I think even looking at that is silly.

Well, we have to differ. You seem to be saying that if it's a choice between a 10% benefit and a 70% benefit it's better to choose the 10%. I disagree. Of course these are fictitious figures I pulled out of the air to make my point, but the studies do seem to show that the ACTUAL number of lives saved by mandatory use is less than the number saved when it's voluntary, once adjusted to a per capita count....

That would then imply that there is not a net benefit to requiring helmets.. as in a significant saving of lives. Cause surely there's not a level of "participation" which outweighs a serious health/life issue. If so, there's lots of stuff we can look back on and make changes to.

There are multiple alternatives to bicycling which could replace any so called participation benefit, that I think even looking at that is silly.

Nonsense. Think about what you just said - the obvious implication is that we can save a life *theoretically*, we should *always* pass a law mandating something. So why aren't there laws against, say, using box knives in the rain because if you're cut on a rusty blade you might die from blood poisoning....because the participation level is non-existent. The whole *point* of legislating behavior is because a "critical mass" of people are supposedly *engaged* in the behavior in the first place.

Nonsense. Think about what you just said - the obvious implication is that we can save a life *theoretically*, we should *always* pass a law mandating something. So why aren't there laws against, say, using box knives in the rain because if you're cut on a rusty blade you might die from blood poisoning....because the participation level is non-existent. The whole *point* of legislating behavior is because a "critical mass" of people are supposedly *engaged* in the behavior in the first place.

You went off a whole line/tangent that is way off what I'm saying. My point is that, if there is a serious (as in realistic) enough risk to justify a law/regulation, how that law affects participation shouldn't be the deciding factor. Either there is enough of a risk in bicycling to warrant a helmet law or there isn't (IMO there's not). How that law affects participation shouldn't be a deciding factor.

You went off a whole line/tangent that is way off what I'm saying. My point is that, if there is a serious (as in realistic) enough risk to justify a law/regulation, how that law affects participation shouldn't be the deciding factor. Either there is enough of a risk in bicycling to warrant a helmet law or there isn't (IMO there's not). How that law affects participation shouldn't be a deciding factor.

Well, no disrespect, but my point is that the tangent *isn't* off what you're saying. If a law stops people from doing something largely beneficial because of the issue catalyzing the law, then whom does the law serve? The law becomes vacuous.

Mind you, I'm not sure of the causal relationship that's implied with the earlier posts (as I mentioned), but you can't create laws in a vacuum. If the law is (right or wrong) destructive to a broader purpose, you *have* to consider that in the overall value of the law.

As a kid, in the 60s when there weren't bicycle helmets, not only did I never have a helmet but rarely wore shoes. Often it was a pair of cut-off jean shorts and nothing else. I had LOTS of road rash and stitches. Ran an approximately 1/8 inch square by 6 inch long sliver of wood completely trough my foot once. Also ran my foot into the front spokes once showing off for a cute neighborhood girl.

Then in the early 70s I started racing. We had to wear "hairnet" helmets. If you don't know what I mean watch "Breaking Away". Through the 80s, 90s and 00s I rode around 6 to 8,000 miles per year. I saw helmets evolve to into what we have now. Todays helmets give little reason not to wear them. They're light, comfortable look great and in some cases create airflow that make it cooler than without.

That being said. I know what the statistics say. But I, in all the thousands of rides I've been a part of, have never personally seen an incident where a helmet would have made a difference between injury and no or lessened injury. I've seen, actually been in sight of, riders who have died from heart attacks or similar on two different occasions. And once saw one rider hit by a truck while crossing a two lane highway. That one is etched in my memory forever. I'm sure helmets are a savior to many riders. I've just never been in the right place at the right time to see it.

I'm not sure I really added to the discussion much but I felt inclined to give my observations on the subject since I think I qualify as a "former anyway " avid cyclist.

I think the real question is, was the cute neighborhood girl impressed?

Well, no disrespect, but my point is that the tangent *isn't* off what you're saying. If a law stops people from doing something largely beneficial because of the issue catalyzing the law, then whom does the law serve? The law becomes vacuous.

If the activity was too dangerous to do without safety measures, then it's too dangerous period. I'm sure safety measures and laws make sky diving more expensive and reduce participation. Ignoring safety to increase participation is absurd. Now, if the improvement to safety by those laws is negligible or arguable, then the necessity of those laws would be questionable regardless of it's effect on participation.

As a kid, in the 60s when there weren't bicycle helmets, not only did I never have a helmet but rarely wore shoes. Often it was a pair of cut-off jean shorts and nothing else. I had LOTS of road rash and stitches. Ran an approximately 1/8 inch square by 6 inch long sliver of wood completely trough my foot once. Also ran my foot into the front spokes once showing off for a cute neighborhood girl.

Then in the early 70s I started racing. We had to wear "hairnet" helmets. If you don't know what I mean watch "Breaking Away". Through the 80s, 90s and 00s I rode around 6 to 8,000 miles per year. I saw helmets evolve to into what we have now. Todays helmets give little reason not to wear them. They're light, comfortable look great and in some cases create airflow that make it cooler than without.

That being said. I know what the statistics say. But I, in all the thousands of rides I've been a part of, have never personally seen an incident where a helmet would have made a difference between injury and no or lessened injury. I've seen, actually been in sight of, riders who have died from heart attacks or similar on two different occasions. And once saw one rider hit by a truck while crossing a two lane highway. That one is etched in my memory forever. I'm sure helmets are a savior to many riders. I've just never been in the right place at the right time to see it.

I'm not sure I really added to the discussion much but I felt inclined to give my observations on the subject since I think I qualify as a "former anyway " avid cyclist.

SoonerSoftail,
Wow, so many things I can think of where I agree and disagree. First, when I was very young and my brother even younger, he was riding on the back of my bike and we were both barefooted and in shorts. Somehow, he got his toes caught between the fender guard and the spokes and almost lost his big toe. All of them were damaged, but to a lesser extent than the big toe. As for helmets today, I have heard arguments both ways, but my daughter-in-law's brother is forever 14 (years of age mentally) due to riding his Harley without a helmet and he somehow lost control and planted his head into those metal road guards while entering I-44 from N. W. 10th. The odd thing is, he was a professional motocross rider (went by the name "Big Daddy Owens") and of course, wore all of the appropriate equipment. I don't know why he chose not to wear a helmet on the streets and highways. As a Harley rider, you might even have known him or been involved in the fund raising the HOG group (or some other Harley club, not sure it was "HOG") so kindly organized.
C. T.

Facts About Ski Deaths & Injuries

The average skier death in CO is a thirty-seven years old experienced male skier wearing a helmet who loses control on an intermediate, groomed run and hits a tree.

The majority of deaths — 54 percent — occurred on blue, groomed runs, while 31 percent were on expert trails.

The increase in the number of people who wear helmets hasn’t resulted in fewer fatalities. Helmets are designed to protect riders at about 12 mph, while a skier or snowboarder who collides with a tree or another rider is typically going 25 to 40 mph.

More than 80 percent of ski deaths in Colorado are men.

Last season, 54 skiers and snowboarders died at ski areas within the U.S., which saw a total of 51 million ski visits, according to the National Ski Areas Association.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins recently estimated that about 600,000 people nationally are injured each year as a result of skiing and snowboarding.
Estimates are that about two injuries occur per 1,000 skier visits — a decrease of 50 percent since the mid-1970s.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/01/sports/on-slopes-rise-in-helmet-use-but-no-decline-in-brain-injuries.html