Reply to Why are there no safety rules regarding children on bikes?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The obvious solution, and end-game for cyclists, is to ban cars for the safety of bike riders.

“You don’t NEED a helmet if there are no cars to hit you”.

[/quote]

The thing about cycling safety is that no one really knows anything. If you talk to people who spend a lot of time looking a bike safety they'll tell you that bike lanes probably increase safety somewhat, but that the actual evidence that they do is essentially non-existent. The same with bike helmets.

So here's a paradox for you: The US has higher rates of bicycle injuries and deaths than other countries like Holland where cycling is more widespread. But in the US, roughly 85% of bicycle accident requiring hospitalization do not involve a motor vehicle. Of the 85%, about half involve the cyclist riding into something -- a tree, a parked car, or another cyclist -- but the other half don't, and are cyclists who simply fall off of their bikes.

So even if you did ban cars it would only reduce the number of injuries by about 15%, and the US would still have much higher accident rates than Holland. So what is it about US cyclists that makes them so much more likely to ride into objects or fall off of their bikes than their Dutch counterparts?[/quote]

I think you are conflating wearing helmets and legislating helmets. There's little evidence that mandatory helmet laws decrease injury for cyclists. However, a law that isn't enforced isn't going to make a difference in behavior. I don't know anyone who has received a ticket for not wearing a helmet on a bicycle. Wearing helmets does reduce injury, especially for populations that make poor decisions, like younger riders. Older adults, in theory, would modify their behavior to compensate for no helmet. You can't compensate away a 2 ton automobile.[/quote]

A helmet law that wasn't enforced would make it harder for cyclists who were injured in an accident through the carelessness of others to recover damages. Maryland and Virginia  are both contributory negligence jurisdictions, where the failure to obey the helmet law would probably preclude any recovery. DC generally has contributory negligence but there is a carve-out for pedestrians and cyclists who are injured by motorists. Even so  in DC cyclists have to show they are less than 50% at fault and if there were a helmet law failure to wear a helmet could be considered as contributing to the injury. [/quote]

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