I occasionally check in on the world of bicycling. The increasing use of bicycles for everyday tasks can be a key element of successful urbanism. A recent coincidence led me to check in this week.
A reader of this blog recently commented that bicycle helmet laws may inhibit bicycling by making it seem more dangerous than it really is. It was the first time I’d heard the argument and I was slow to respond. Which was a good thing because all of a sudden a pair of articles appeared that made the same argument.
Elisabeth Rosenthal, writing in the Sunday New York Times, compares Europe where helmets are required only for children, few adults don helmets, and bicycling is common to North American where helmets are often required for all and bicycling is far less common.
Her key observation is "… many researchers say, if you force or pressure people to wear helmets, you discourage them from riding bicycles. That means more obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. And – Catch 22 – a result is fewer ordinary cyclists on the road, which makes is harder to develop a safe bicycling network." Rosenthal goes on to quote an Australian researcher who estimates that the benefits of not requiring helmets may outweigh the costs by 20-to-1.
Chris Bruntlett, writing in Hush, makes the same argument and provides further data, including the estimate that annual medical expenses in Australia are increased by $301 million because helmet laws inhibit the health benefits that would result from bike riding. He contends that helmet laws have been shown to be failures pretty much everywhere.
I’m not a bicyclist and haven’t been one for years. (Let’s put it this way. I’ve never worn a bike helmet.) But I’d like to hear from bicyclists with thoughts on this issue.
As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated. Please comment below or email me. And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)
Dave Alden is a Registered Civil Engineer. He has worked on energy and land-use projects in California, Oregon, and Washington. He was also the president of a minor league baseball team for two seasons. He lives on the west side of Petaluma with his wife and four dogs. The blog that he writes can be found at http://northbaydesignkit.blogspot.com. He can also be followed on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
However, I think that for most urban "cruising", advocating for helmet use is counter-productive. It's already enough of a pain in the butt to have to navigate antagonistic traffic, find a place to lock a bike to something, worry about vandalism and theft (bikes get stolen and damaged far more often than parked cars), figure out how to carry your purchases on the bike... to have to then carry a helmet around is just that much more of an annoyance. Furthermore, most of the urban hazards to low speed bicycling are also hazards to pedestrians, and we should do our best to mitigate all of those. Admittedly, some of those hazards are bicyclists (I was recently narrowly missed by a bicyclist on a cruiser style bicycle blasting through the intersection at 4th and B without stopping, said bicyclist was riding on the north sidewalk coming the wrong way down Kentucky St... Never a cop when you need one), but if the hazards are primarily from automobile traffic, we should do our best to fix that problem.
The only helmet laws we have now relate to young people. In CA you are required to wear a helmet if you are under 18. I work with young people and one of their favorite things is to tell crash stories. Almost all the stories end with "I was wearing a helmet and I didn't injure my head." This has led me to multiple conclusions: 1. Most young people crash at some point. 2.Helmets do make a difference particularly for young riders who are inexperienced and may be less aware of risk. 3. Parents, protective of their children's well being are more likely, not less, to let their child use a bike for transportation if they believe that child is safe. A helmet law is a benefit in that regard. The habits around exercise we establish as young people have a significant impact on what we do as an adult. This will do as much if not more to reduce obesity and heart disease as changing helmet law.
Having said that, I'm still a fan of parents making their kids wear helmets. But I also think Dave's discussion isn't just about law, but also about advocacy and the impact that even just saying that people should wear helmets has on bicycle use. To Active Thinker's statements: this is where I break out my broken record: Multi-use paths aren't bike paths, let's not confuse them. But also that I believe that building separate facilities leads to more of a feeling of entitlement by drivers, which leads to less safe roads.
And my experiences bike commuting on the path under BART in the East Bay taught me that unless you're actively patrolling and ticketing pedestrians, two adjacent paths, one marked "Pedestrian" and one marked "Bikes Only", doesn't help. I do need to check out Davis, and I also realized that my vision of Petaluma is very skewed: I live on the west side, ride downtown via 6th St, and generally the furthest east I ride is Whole Foods. There's no room for MUPs there, we'd do way better with some re-striping and better signalling (and we're all familiar with the struggles surrounding traffic circles and East D St.).
On the cracked helmets, however... The two times I've cracked a helmet, I would not have been engaging in that activity had I not had the helmet. So there's the microeconomic effect of "yeah, helmets keep heads intact", there's also the macroeconomic effect of "helmets let over-testosteroned guys think they're invincible". Gotta balance those...
I have a couple of thoughts to offer, but will fold those into a follow-up blog post. I'll probably submit it to the Patch on Wednesday, so it'll likely run near the end of the week. I hope to hear from all of you again at that time. - Dave
If that answer assumes anything about miles travelled in each transport mode: how can we collect data to support that decision? If that answer assumes something about relative dangers of each activity, what's the "per" unit, and how can we gather data to support that argument? Note that any argument on this matter needs to include some notion of behavior: We should not class over-testosteroned 20-somethings descending the rocky section of Eldridge Grade above the 15 MPH speed limit, or illiterate undocumented immigrants riding against traffic in twilight hours, in the same statistical bucket as suburban errand riding on big tires, any more than we group automobile commuters with drivers at Sears Point (whom we expect will wear helmets). Bonus question: How might advocating for pedestrian helmet use change pedestrian behavior?
What cyclists in Sonoma and Napa need is for cars to stop hitting them. Failing that, and we seem to be, we need some separated facilities, especially in the Sonoma and Napa valleys. Both a choked with cars and full of visitors who would happily take to bikes instead. Many already do, at their peril. Napa has the Vine trail in the works, although I don't expect it to be completed in my lifetime. Sonoma Valley has nothing and seems not to care.
+ I didn't advocate any change in current helmet laws. I noted that credible observers have suggested that current laws and attitudes may be impeding the growth of bicycling and asked for thoughts. + I agree that pedestrian safety is also a major concern. However, I don't think a pedestrian helmet law would make much of a difference. I suspect that most pedestrian deaths are the result of impact to the body. + Even if a change in helmet laws would improve bicycling acceptance, it wouldn't be a panacea. There are numerous other factors that come into use, including our land use patterns, how we accommodate bikes on transit, parental attitudes toward bicycling, etc.