I can’t understand why people refuse to wear helmets when riding.
I had a professor in university who got in an accident while not wearing a helmet. He went over the handlebars and landed on his head. It happened years before I met him, but he would regularly get crippling migraines as a consequence, and he would plead with his students to never ride without wearing a helmet.
A friend’s dad fell off his bike hardly moving and had severe brain damage and was a shadow of his former self. Then died young. It doesn’t take much at all. I will never not wear a helmet on a bike.
It’s probably safer to not bike.
Just don’t leave your house, ever
95% of delivery riders in the UK don’t wear helmets. Ask them
I can’t understand why people refuse to wear helmets when riding.
Because wearing a helmet makes you more likely to be in an accident and increases the risk of brain injury when you are.
The first has two causes:
- People take more risks when they wear helmets. source1, source2 source3
- Cars are less careful around riders wearing helmets. source
The second:
- A helmet effectively makes your head larger, and as such increases the risk of your head hitting the road. In fact your risk doubles. source
- A helmet protects against ‘focal’ injuries, that is injuries at the point where your head hits something. But a another type of brain injury is ‘diffuse’ injury, basically the fact your head hit something at all, and your brain rattles around in the skull. This type may cause worse problems than focal injuries. The added size of the helmet amplifies the rotation of your head on impact and makes this type of injury worse. source. Add to this the fact that wearing a helmet makes you more likely to hit your head in the first place.
In addition to this, wearing a bicycle helmet makes cycling less attractive, and as a result people will cycle less. This results in a loss of health benefits from cycling.
Sure, intuitively you might think a helmet will make you safer, but intuition is often wrong. When you look at the actual data it shows a different picture.
It seems like this is not yet settled. This meta-analysis of studies concerning increased risk-taking found that most studies with experimental data did not find that wearing a helmet increased risk-taking behavior. The author mentions the downhill biking experiment and suggests that there’s a distinction between taking more risks because you are wearing helmet and riding slower because you feel unsafe without one. This is supported by the habitual non-wearers not increasing their speed/risk when wearing a helmet.
This Other analysis looks at the actual rates of different kinds of injuries and finds that helmets significantly decrease the risk of head and face injuries while not having a significant impact on neck injuries.
This study of hospital stays related to bike accidents shows that hospital stays were significantly more frequent and severe for those who didn’t wear helmets. (and it examines some of the potential cultural hurdles in expanding helmet use).
Overall, I’m most influenced by the last study. Theoretical analysis of risk taking and injury type is certainly important, but the real life data in this and other studies indicates that wearing a helmet strongly correlates with a decreased risk of injury and death.
should we wear helmets while walking around or jogging? riding a bike at 5mph doesn’t need a helmet. or in the shower? most folks get head trauma from shower falls, far more than bicycle accidents.
helmet wearing is for when you’re going 15mph or faster. it’s for sport cycling.
This is an inherently close minded take on helmets.
If you’re sharing the road with vehicles which can go 30mph, you need a helmet. You don’t need to be moving to be killed on a bike
It’s been years since Go Pros were first becoming popular, but I remember stumbling across a biking forum and was appalled at the number of riders posting videos of assholes in cars trying to run them off the road. All it takes is once.
A helmet won’t stop a car.
A helmet will undoubtedly reduce the incurred injury of a collision or at least increase the threshold of force required for major head injury.
At the end of the day, the only thing which really matters is protecting your head. Limbs are a bonus
I fell on my bike onto the pavement going 12mph. That’s it. Not very fast whatsoever compared to some cyclists.
I ended up busting 4 ribs in half and fractured my scapula (shoulder blade). I was wearing my helmet w/front visor thank God because it’s amazing how quickly your head smacks that concrete. I went face first too and the visor + helmet completely spared me any head trauma.
Never felt pain like that in my life. The agony of getting loaded onto a gurney with that many busted bones isn’t something I wish to repeat.
Head injuries are no joke, when I ride my ebike I use a helmet with a chin bar too because I can barely afford an ebike that isn’t bottom of the barrel so I know I can’t afford to get my teeth replaced.
During that same period, the number of recorded e-bike riders seeking medical attention for head trauma increased nearly 50-fold to just shy of 8,000 visits in 2022.
So… Number of ebike riders rose by 50x since 2017. Makes sense, but doesn’t mean it’s more dangerous or anything to do with helmets
Are you really calling source on the fact that:
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Biking without a helmet is dangerous.
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Biking at 30 mph without a helmet is more dangerous.
?
I would call you a sweet summer child, but I’ve stood in your shoes exactly. A while ago I had a serious bike accident because I slipped from the wet pedals and landed head first on the concrete. Doc in the ER told me I was able to walk it off because I was wearing a helmet (which now had a serious crack).
I posted online about it and while a lot of people are logged the story with their own various tales, it was also the day I learned about the very vocal minority of bike riders who completely detest helmets. many of them go so far as to say that helmets are actively dangerous.
Their arguments are mostly variations on
- there are no scientific studies on bike helmets
- good bike infrastructure should make wearing helmets obsolete (aka the Netherlands argument)
Yes, they are rather dense. Amuses me to think of them one day having a serious injury that could have been reduced by wearing a helmet and then arguing with the doctor that if the infrastructure was better they wouldn’t have fallen off the bike in the first place
There’s biking and there’s biking.
In the Netherlands, for example, people wear helmets if they’re doing bike sports like road racing or BMX.
But if they’re just cruising down the street on their granny bike to get groceries, they don’t bother because that’s fairly safe.
It’s rather like the need for a seatbelt on the highway, vs the need for a seatbelt on a 25 mph neighborhood street.
A crash at 25 mph without a seatbelt can kill
Can, sure. I’m having difficulty finding the fatality rate for unseatbelted people in car crashes at 25 mph, but for pedestrians it seems to be somewhere in the single digits.
That’s changing. Electric bikes are involved in many more accidents now, and it’s advised to wear a helmet if you’re young or older (I’ve lived here 25 years now and you can see the changes).
Many more accidents than what?
More accidents than traditional bikes per passenger mile, or passenger hour?
More accidents on ebikes than 5 years ago on account of more people buying them?
Can’t seem to post links.
Search for “netherlands older ebike deaths injuries” in google/ddg.
I see e.g. https://nltimes.nl/2023/08/01/trauma-surgeons-express-concern-e-bike-accidents-among-elderly
Dutch trauma surgeons have raised concerns over the rising number of elderly people suffering severe injuries from electric bicycle accidents, AD reported on Tuesday.
While some injuries result from collisions, most accidents are unilateral, caused by incidents like falling from a stationary position or losing control due to high speed,
It sounds like it’s particularly impacting 65+ year old men - the same types who die from breaking a hip slipping and falling while walking.
I’m not sure to what degree this is caused by ebikes encouraging them to keep biking when they should have stopped, or ebikes just being more dangerous when they fall over.
There are a lot more links, but this is a good one. It appears many issues are possible: higher speeds, heavier bikes (maybe harder to turn), but then both require a faster mental acuity to manage them. Plus, we use a LOT of traffic circles, and very often bikes can be in blind spots - I read that circles and intersections are where most accidents occur. Older people also assume you’ll let them through, but then again - blind spots.
I’m not saying the Netherlands shouldn’t be used as an example of good infrastructure, but also there are challenges we haven’t resolved either. Let’s not ignore them.
If you’re young or older
Uh so everyone???
Young, usually under middle-school age.
Older, usually 55+. People here bike into old age.
Older, usually 55+. People here bike into old age
LOL I’m in my 50s and still racing
I’m sating this article is sensationalist shit. The information in the article does not lead to the conclusion from the title.
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Well ‘they were always dangerous’ probably isn’t the strongest argument… but that aside they also call out that
Statistically speaking, going helmet-less on an e-bike nearly doubles your odds of head trauma compared to wearing one, the study notes.
It would be interesting to know whether the increase in head trauma stems from single accidents being inherently more dangerous on e-bikes and that being the increase, or if e-bikes make biking more accessible bringing out less experienced bikers on the road where they are subsequently struck by cars.
It’s not possible to see the study without a subscription, so it’s hard to tell.
I’d not be surprised to see the latter being the case though, cars are the biggest predator when it comes to bicyclists.
ebikes ride about 10mph faster than on a bicycle.
higher speeds is the issue. combined with the inexpereince and lack of physical skill and health of ebike riders. recipe for injuries.
that and most ebike riders are much older. you don’t see 22yo college grads on them, you see middle aged adults and retirees, because they cost $2000+ not $200.
Are you claiming this on intuition or on some actual statistics?
Also, on account of your use of mph, is this relevant only for the U.S? In the EU, e-bikes are pedelec only and capped at 25 km/h, which I don’t think is 16 km/h more than the average bicyclist puts out.
The stats don’t exist because ebikes have only been around for a few years. There are no stats on them yet, and they aren’t seen as a separate category of transportation from bikes.
I’m claiming i on experience of commuting in my city daily for over a decade and seeing the changes in trends, ages, and behaviours of other commuters on bikes. I also work in cycling advocacy, education, and infrastructure.
There are however, many articles form local hospitals/newspapers cited a big uptick in serious cycling injuries the past few years, and that was when ebikes became mainstream.
Yeah, speed is a killer. A doubling in speed represents a quadrupling of kinetic energy. So, while a 100 kg man-bike moving at 10mph (~16 kph) has (0.51004.444…^2) (0.5mV^2 for kinetic energy, m is mass in kg, V is velocity in m/s) 987 joules of energy, a 100 kg man-bike at 20 mph (0.51008.888…^2) has almost 4000 joules of energy.
I got the cheapest+lightest ebike w/gears that I could find (~$700 and there were bigger sales after I bought it), it has a 250w motor and a 15mph limit… though being out-of-shape I typically only saw 8-12mph.
Could be a little of both even
Wear helmets people, they’re super cool. What’s not cool? Hitting your head on concrete, lights out, no waking up.
Yeah everyone wearing a helmet looks fucking dumb. You know what’s more dumb, brain damage. Literally.
“Head trauma cases are through the roof” is a weird way to put it. It didn’t get that much more dangerous to use an E-bike but usage is through the roof.
Overall increased bike usage makes bikes safer for the average user so it wouldn’t surprise me if the “head injury per non-professional rider” would be going down.
I recently got an e-bikes. It goes up to 20mph and honestly scares the shit out of me sometimes. I have a normal bike helmet but am looking into something a bit beefier, between a bike and motorcycle helmet
I don’t think people understand: At 20mph that’s athlete sprinting speed. Imagine going all out “impending asthma attack and you don’t even have asthma” full sprint down a hill then tripping on a curb
exactly. folks get ebikes because they wnat to go fast without being fit. they can do 20mph rather than 5mph.
falling at 20mph is going to have an impact force 16x greater than it is at 5mph
I got mine to get my asthmatic self up these Seattle hills. The person at the bike shop told me it is possible to go into a secret menu setting and up the top speed to 25mph. I did that once, immediately feared for my life, then set the max back down to 20 lol
If you think your head and its contents are important, wear a properly adjusted helmet. Every time.
tell that to everyone who rides bikes in europe, where nobody wears helmets.
Especially delivery riders. No helmets, ebikes and capatalist attitude to maximising deliveries over time is a catastrophic mix.
Anyone who drives/rides for work and is paid by the job are usually a menace on the road.
Wonder how many of those injuries are on rentals? Veo rental e-bikes are very prevalent around these parts. Have never seen anyone riding them with a helmet. If you own an e-bike and don’t wear one, that’s on you. But rental ones don’t even have a way to provide you with one.
OTOH, most rental e-scooters have a helmet carrier box on the back. It unlocks when you go to pick one up with the app.
It’s probably door dash, uber eats, etc. - our city is quite swarming with “gig economy” riders who have standardised on relatively high speed electric bikes.
The combination of time pressure and the variety of places where they need to ride (busy pedestrianised city centre areas, park paths, roads with cars) probably doesn’t help the safety.
They are also out riding way more hours each day than someone commuting or on rental bikes.
no it’s not. nobody delivers by bike in my city, it’s all cars.
ebikes are all office job commuters.
I see tons of ebike couriers in various cities across North America in the last year or two.
DoorDash has partner programs with multiple ebike companies. https://dirwinbike.partners/ https://getwhizz.com/doordash/
We have rental e-scooters around here that come with helmets mounted to the stem for the rider.
I’d say that maybe 1 out of 10 wear the helmet. And you can’t imagine how many riders, who have no control over the damn scooter, aren’t wearing a helmet.
If someone wants a brain injury, that’s fine. But they are burdening anyone and everyone who relies on them and/or has to care for them.
And for what? Laziness? Convenience? Self-hate?
Any idea how they prevent lice or such? When I was growing up in the 90s it was all the rave to scare kids to not share hats or try on hats you weren’t purchasing. Is that no longer a thing, I haven’t heard about it in years?
That said I face planted off a bicycle a few days ago without a helmet going maybe 10 mph, I’m sure my nose would have appreciated a facemask. (Wore one on my motorcycle back in the day, even though it isn’t strictly required where I lived)
Any idea how they prevent lice or such?
You’d have to contact the company offering the shared bike/scooter, as they may have their own specific schedule for cleaning helmets and such. I do believe that the helmets would be cleaned or replaced at least once a day, as our rental e-scooters don’t charge on a dock and need frequent charging.
But I think the risk of catching lice from a helmet from a ride-share would be minimal.
Firstly, because lice tends to be more common in kids, and kids don’t use these devices, the risk is already near zero.
Then you have to consider that lice don’t spread easily in an environment like a bike helmet, especially not one that’s being cleaned daily. In other words, they tend to pass between people through direct contact with hair.
Now, if you are concerned, a simple disposable hair cap (i.e. shower cap) would offer you additional protection. Or, if you’re a frequent rider, have your own helmet👌
Thanks for the response : ). Disposable sounds a bit troublesome so maybe a machine washable one where the dryer can kill them? Have to see what temp they die at. I have found asking honest questions about such here garners doubters sometimes and people think I am asking with bad intentions. I appreciate you spending the time to give your thoughts.
For those that don’t know as well, there are 2 types of helmet safety rating systems(?) in the U.S. one was Snell and the other DOT if I remember correctly. When purchasing a helmet for collisions remember to make sure it is safe.
Also, if a helmet is dropped it can cause it to not be AS effective. Still better than no helmet, but if you get in an accident thank you helmet for its service and look into investing in a new one.
Edited: DOT was mistyped
Disposable sounds a bit troublesome so maybe a machine washable one where the dryer can kill them?
Yes, you probably could. But if convenience gets someone to wear a helmet, I’d want them to use a disposable cap if that makes it easy.
For those that don’t know as well, there are 2 types of helmet safety rating systems(?) in the U.S. one was Snell and the other DOT if I remember correctly. When purchasing a helmet for collisions remember to make sure it is safe.
I may be wrong, but I think any major brand that sells helmets in North America needs to have them safety approved. But that said, you can get even safer helmets which feature things like MIPS.
comfort and cleanliness
nobody wants to wear stinky nasty rental helmet that fits like crap and ruins your hair.
Shower cap. Problem solved.
I mean, isn’t it the same concern when you rent a go-kart, go skydiving, go zip lining, play on a team sport without your own equipment, etc.?
These helmets are cleaned quite often. Far more than what most people do with their own helmets. I’d argue that they are cleaner than most of the helmets people wear on a regular basis.
I see rentals zooming around on my bike commute. No helmet, wrong side of the road, etc all the time
Yeah because there’s all these rental e-scooters and bikes in densely populated urban areas, but they don’t come with a helmet.
Even the people I see on these e-bikes look like alcoholics that lost their license. And they drive opposing traffic. I talked to one guy, who was drunk at 2pm, and told him he should ride WITH traffic, and he said no, because then he can’t see the cars coming.
I mean…
Paramedics treat pedal bicycle accidents the same as a car crash. An electric bike can go much faster and cause more damage.
Helmets and gloves.
What country? Here in Europe ebikes are limited to 25kph therefore slower than regular bike.
They aren’t limited to 25kph. That’s just when the electric boost stops. You could easily go 50-60kph downhill like a regular bike.
Like you say, downhill it’s the same. but on average it’s going to be slower because it’s speed limited, so it’s not fair to say ebikes are faster by any measure.
The point is you can still easily go as fast as any road bike…
Only if you overcome the added weight
I don’t understand why you’re getting down votes.
I’m in New York City. Here you need a special license to ride a motorcycle, but you can ride an ebike with no license. The law here treats them the same as regular pedal bikes. I would judge that they are travelling 50 kph, especially the food delivery services. Most of the delivery guys wear motorcycle helmets. A freind of mine just broke her elbow after her pedal bike hit a car door.
Perhaps I’m just ignorant but what’s the difference between an electric bike and a motorcycle? Is it just the speed or is it still a different class of vehicle?
There are two major types of e-bikes: pedelec, and scooter style.
Scooter style rides more like a severely underpowered motorcycle. Different jurisdictions have differing laws on what the maximum speed and power output of such a bike can be; in most places the maximum speed is 32km/h (25mph) with a maximum power output of typically either 350W or 500W. These bikes have pedals, but they’re intended to be ridden off power, with pedalling only needed in the case where you need extra power to get up a hill. These bike typically have bad ergonomics for pedalling all the time, and without pedalling may just grind to a halt on a moderate to steep incline.
The other style is pedelec, and these bikes typically look much more like a standard bicycle. These bikes typically have much smaller batteries than their scooter-style brethren, as instead of being powered mostly from the battery these bikes are powered primarily from pedalling, with the battery and motor only existing to provide extra boost when going uphill.
At least here in Canada, they are considered a different class of vehicle as their power and maximum powered speed would make them dangerous to ride in a situation where you’re in otherwise mixed traffic. Pedelecs are best considered normal bicycles; scooter style is typically way too underpowered to be ridden as you would a motorcycle.
(Note however that at least here in British Columbia, if you remove the pedals from an e-bike it is treated as if it were a motorcycle: the bike will suddenly require licensing and insurance, even though it’s still exactly the same power output as it was with the pedals installed. So don’t take your pedals off, even if you live somewhere almost completely flat where you never need to use them. And again — laws on e-bikes differ by jurisdiction, so check your local laws and bylaws as appropriate).
HTH!
Motorcycles are more likely to get a ticket when they blast down a sidewalk at top speed.
Different class of vehicle : on a bike you still have to pedal or you don’t move, it is an “electric assistance bike”.
The speed has to be limited to 25km/h to be legally on roads, in european countries.
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afaik only the assistance has that speed limit whereas the bike itself can still go faster by pedal power or gravity
People will put on some shorts, a tanktop and some flip-flops, get on their bike, and ride similar speeds to that of someone on a motorbike wearing full safety gear. All while surrounded by vehicles which weigh tonnes and with the most likely surface their head will hit being the curb or some concrete. It’s stupid.
I mean, seriously. Hit your self in the head with a brick or an iron bar. You’re likely to hurt yourself badly even if you do it lightly, let alone full force.
People do that with full on superbikes lol
I bought a new helmet for my downhill biking. It’s almost lighter than some road bike helmets and has great air flow. Wear a helmet, people. Your noggin is precious and cars and trucks are aiming for us.
helmets aren’t made to protect you from “cars and trucks” but from falls
false sense of security
People are downvoting you but you are right. Bicycle helmets are not designed for impact collisions with vehicles and wearing a helmet vs not wearing one — in motor vehicle accidents — statistically doesn’t matter very much.
But why does this matter? Two reasons:
— Studies have shown that motor vehicle drivers are more likely to give a cyclist more space when passing if the cyclist is not wearing a helmet. Drivers think helmet = protected and no helmet = squishy.
— People tend to blame cyclists for their injuries if they weren’t wearing a helmet. Victim blaming is bad. A cyclist can certainly be at fault in an accident, but they don’t deserve their injuries.
That said, I still always wear a helmet when riding in the US because drivers are crazy, our road infrastructure is usually in disrepair, and I am capable of making mistakes that could lead me to fall.
I also had an incident two years ago where I was cycling downhill on a road, going 22 mph, and a child ran out right in front of me. Thankfully my hydraulic brakes did their job and I stopped me amazingly quickly, but my back wheel also came a foot off the ground. I was so close to going over my handlebars and cracking my head on the pavement.
i went over my handlebars a couple of times and once had a collision with a car that ran the red light to turn left. Luckily it was before the SUV hype and i did slide over the car instead of going under. My leg had the blue impression of the bike frame and my fingers had the impression of the brakes that broke in my hands.
During those couple of times i went over my handlebars I was practising ground based movements and i was lucky to be able to just push my body along and get up to a stop. I had decent gloves :)
for those who are interested : Advanced / basic Quadrupedal Patterns
my favorite fall is when i fell onto a soft pile of sand the city left without any visible signs on the quay (? wharf? riverwalk?) to rebuild the bike/walk path. I was riding in the night and suddenly ¼ of my wheel went in the sand and i fell on the floor that was softer than my pillow 😁
Falls that can come from avoiding cars and trucks…
Cars and trucks can still smack your melon, or otherwise cause your melon to get smacked.
getting downvoted but you are 100% correct.
ignorance on this comment thread deep. people here don’t have any idea what they are talking about and just want to blowhard about how helmet wearing is the issue.
if you’re going 25mph on an ebike, a helmet isn’t going to stop you from fucking up your head.
it’s not like the information is not easily accessible 🤷
“cars and trucks are aiming for us”
As he screams past a dozen cars into a busy 4-way stop without any regard for traffic laws or personal safety
