A co-worker shared an old copy of dandy-horse, a Toronto cycling magazine. It was the spring 2009 issue and featured a debate between Geoff MacBride and Derek Chadbourne discussing the merits of helmets/no-helmet. I am very much a pro-helmet advocate. But only for me, I couldn’t give a crap if you wear one of not. But don’t ride around with a helmet hanging off your handlebars, that’s just stupid.
I imagine most pro-helmet people are like me, they’ve experienced some horrendous accident and were either saved by their helmet or wished they had been wearing one. My accident came when I was around 13, I was riding home on my father’s mountain bike which was way too big for me and I came across my sister and her friend, Wendy, walking home. My sister offered to double with me. She was bigger so she could pedal easier. Wendy would sit on the seat and I would sit on the handle bars.
The bars were hurting so instead I stood on the bolts of the front axle facing backwards. When my feet slipped off I mercifully blacked out. Whether it was because my junk slammed into the spinning wheel or because the back of my head bounced off the pavement I’ll never know. What I do know is that I came to with Wendy screaming, blood running from my ear and my sister running to a nearby house to call my parents. My poor folks must have aged 10 years that day. For weeks afterwards I could see the stain on the pavement where the blood had dried and to this day I have a permanent ring in my ear and a loss of hearing.
Now you can dismiss this as a kid being stupid and that you are a responsible cyclist, but like child car seats, the powerful anecdotal experiences people make them want to prevent anyone else from suffering the same fate.
The crux of the no-helmet argument usually centers on a number of things, one is the reduction in cyclists, another is that the health benefits outweigh any risk (more people die from heart disease than cycling, which they might have staved off if they cycled), and a study showed drivers will leave more room around cyclists who are not wearing a helmet. There are issues with these arguments.
First, wearing a helmet is not about the greater cycling population any more than wearing a seat belts is about driving public. My wearing a helmet does not save anyone but me. It’s about my head, more specifically my brain and where I would like to keep it. I couldn’t give two shits if I was the only person in Toronto on a bike or not. You don’t get into an accident and say, “Well that’s okay, it is still safer than flying in a airplane!” You say,”holy shit that hurt. Thank goodness I was wearing a helmet.” or maybe you don’t say anything because you bounced your head off a curb and you’re dead.
Cycling is safe, very safe. Bicycling life has a quiz which I found though another website Take the lane.
Assuming you could spend one million hours participating in these activities, here is the risk rate for fatalities that would be expected to occur amongst participants during that one million hours.
Airline travel: 15.6
On-road motorcycling: 8.8
Swimming: 1.07
Walking near traffic. 0.8
Driving: .47
Bicycling: .26 to .41
I don’t find wearing a helmet any more onerous than wearing a seatbelt. All sorts of people fought against that too, “it doesn’t feel natural.” (Sort of sounds like an argument against condom use.) Did seat-belts make people drive less? Do condom use make people fuck less? No. Perhaps we should be asking what is it about helmets that make people less likely to cycle?