View all posts by Eben Weiss April 8, 2020
For many years, on this blog and beyond, I’ve been railing against our obsession with bicycle helmets.
The common wisdom in this country and others is that you should always wear a helmet while riding a bicycle. It’s also the official line of governments and medical professionals, and in many cases it’s even enshrined in law. (Legislation ranges from Australia’s mandatory helmet law for all riders to our local laws requiring them for children under a certain age.) And regardless of the law there is no shortage of people who will shame and vilify you for riding a bicycle without wearing a helmet, and will even wish serious injury upon you should you choose to forego a foam hat. (I don’t have the time to go through my Twitter mentions, but I assure you there are people standing by ready to gloat should I wind up with a serious brain injury.)
Even before I started writing about cycling “professionally” and thinking and reading a lot about this stuff, our attitude towards helmets never sat well with me. The vitriol people are prepared to direct at other people for simply engaging in the benign act of riding a bicycle always seemed born not of genuine concern, but of spite. Over time, as I delved deeper, I found that there are plenty of valid reasons to not only question the overall effectiveness of bicycle helmets, but to conclude that on balance our fixation on them in fact makes bicyclists less safe. (I’m leaving out the supporting evidence here for the sake of time, but I’ve linked to it all about a zillion times in the countless other posts and columns I’ve written on the subject.) Indeed, you’d be hard-pressed to find a credible bicycle advocate who thinks the way forward lies in getting bicycle riders to wear helmets–or, if you don’t abide the “experts,” you can always just go to the Netherlands and see for yourself.
Some Thoughts – Bike Snob NYC
View all posts by Eben Weiss April 8, 2020 For many years, on this blog and beyond, I’ve been railing against our obsession with bicycle helmets. The common wisdom in this country and others is that you should always wear a helmet while riding a bicycle. It’s also the official line of governments and medical… [Read More]
