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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]These people from some outfit called the CDC seem to think helmets are pretty important.

"An average of 247 traumatic brain injury deaths and 140,000 head injuries among children and adolescents younger than 20 years were related to bicycle crashes each year in the United States. As many as 184 deaths and 116,000 head injuries might have been prevented annually if these riders had worn helmets. An additional 19,000 mouth and chin injuries were treated each year."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8909479/[/quote]

+1[/quote]

Definitely important, but — as someone who rides a bike regularly, and always with a helmet, and also requires that my kids wear helmets — I was a little disappointed to see that a full 25 percent of brain injury deaths and 17 percent of head injuries that happened would NOT have been prevented by helmets. Don't know if that's because those people were already wearing helmets or because the accidents were so bad that a helmet didn't help, but still.[/quote]

Not really understanding why people are so eager to gainsay something that reduces head injuries by 83 percent. [/quote]

I'm not eager to gainsay it, I'm alarmed by the figures, which I hadn't seen before. I had assumed they reduced injuries and deaths by more than that.[/quote]

[b]There's no single thing we could do that's easier, cheaper and more effective in reducing head injuries than requiring cyclists to wear helmets. [/b]

And yet the bike lobby (while claiming safety is their priority) is like, "Wah, I don't want to wear a helmet." [/quote]

You would think this is the first thing the city would do. The problem is that the bike lobby is adamantly against helmets, and there's no organized group pushing to require cyclists to wear them. [/quote]

I am a cyclist, and I guess since I am also an active voice in vehicle related accidents and raths and cyclist infrastructure you anti bike people would call me a bike lobby person, even though I am just a person who bikes as their primary mode of commuting.

I personally always wear a helmet.  I personally encourage others to wear a helmet.  My helmet has absolutely protected my big dumb big lobbyist rain from certain death in traffic accidents in the past.

However, mandating a helmet is problematic, as it isn't always available or necessary.  If you are on a multi mile commute or are going fast on any length, or are riding in traffic then please I hope you wear a helmet.  But if you are just leaving a restaurant on a nice afternoon and decide to take a ride on a bikeshare spontaneously down a couple blocks of PBL to get home, do you really need a helmet?  Not really.  Do you carry a helmet with you everywhere?  Just in case you want to bike?  What about the stand on scooter rentals?

As with many things, the intention of a bike helmet law is good (improve safety of rider in certain types of crashes), but the execution of it would be messy and bring about another measure that is ride with potential of biased enforcement and conflict with police that just isn't necessary.  Cycling advocate groups like WABA absolutely do recommend that a cyclist wears a helmet.  They just won't back laws on that for the fairly obvious reasons above.[/quote]

Yeah, if a driver made an argument like this -- that they don't want to wear a seat belt or strap a child into a car seat because they're not going very far or it's otherwise inconvenient -- people would think they are deeply irresponsible. And people are way safer in cars than on bikes. [/quote]

A seat belt comes standard on a car, even a rental one.  A helmet must be carried by the owner and I gave an example of where that is infeasible.  People don't know they are going to bikeshare at all times and are unlikely to carry a helmet just in case.  It's not the same thing at all.

I would say that a cyclist who takes their child on a bike without a helmet is being reckless.  And they should be admonished by people around them for that.  But a universal helmet mandate is infeasible to enforce or require. [/quote]

It’s not infeasible, it’s just that it would lead to people being cited or ticketed in situations that many reasonable observers would say don’t merit a penalty. But sometimes that’s just how the law is. My bigger concern with helmet laws is that invariably, white cyclists would ride without a helmet whenever they want, but the laws would become a pretext to stop Black or Latino cyclists, or would be a charge that gets tacked on if they’re involved in some other entanglement with the law.

I’d still support helmet laws, though. Would it mean effectively that I no longer ever consider using the rental e-bikes? Probably, since I don’t routinely carry a helmet with me if I don’t have my own bike with me. But… so what?[/quote]

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