Headcase
The other day I was relaxing at a cafe when I found myself eavesdropping.
Why did he feel the need to speak to the bicyclist and why did he assume the cyclist was somehow ignorant? Would this guy similarly attack other people doing things that he viewed as poor judgement? Or is it just bicyclists?
I’m sick of the helmet hype. It’s time to hype up infrastructure until “cycle track” is in everyone’s vocabulary. I dream of the day this guy will ask the city what’s up with the street design that makes cyclists feel like they need to wear helmets.
The problem with helmets is the following – too many anti-helmet and pro-helmet people think they are 100% right. The truth is somewhere in the middle: there are times riding a helmet is appropriate and there are time NOT wearing a helmet is just fine – and the only person that knows that is the bike rider.
Helmet use depends on so many things: rider experience, age, culture, road conditions, if you are riding in a group or not, time of day, temperature, terrain, country you reside in, whether you have had a past injury or not, are there cycle tracks, the type of bike they are riding…..and that’s just for starters.
I have been accused from both sides in my work of showing too many people wearing helmets or too many not wearing helmets – and believe it or not IN THE SAME VIDEO!!!!
So people need to let riders determine their needs. If they are wearing a helmet GREAT! If they are not wearing a helmet GREAT! I just wish I could put that in a fun comic strip to share!! 🙂
There are people who wear helmets, all the time or sometimes, depending upon what they will be doing on a bike. They see helmets as a personal choice. There are helmet-zealots who are frightened to see people riding without helmets and speak up anytime they see a helmet-less cyclist. There are people who never wear helmets, who are verbally attacked for not wearing a helmet. I have never heard anyone verbally attack a person FOR wearing a helmet. I have never heard an anti-helmet person, just people who speak up to helmet-zealots. No one questions or attacks a person who is wearing a helmet. I have been yelled at for not wearing a helmet by people driving by in their car. I have been told by one “friend” that I made him physically ill, seeing me riding without a helmet. I have had to endure long tirades for not wearing a helmet. I am forced to defend myself. That does not make me anti-helmet. I am shunned by some for choosing to not wear a helmet.
I understand why some people in the US wear helmets, not out of a fear of being injured, but because they do not want to be attacked for not wearing a helmet nor do they want to attract attention to themselves, or feel that their lack of helmet will detract from cycling advocacy that they are doing. I don’t blame them.
Just for the record – I always wear a seat belt when I am in a car. I don’t wear knee pads, though I am thinking of it to save my knees and pants from being cut when I am walking and trip. 🙂 Oh and I faithfully wore a helmet for twenty years.
It’s a US/Australian (and to a degree British) thing: continental Europeans just aren’t fussed by it. In the Netherlands no one except for a few American expats ever bothers with the things, while here in France they’re highly unusual except on the heads of weekend sport cyclists who are required to wear them under FCI rules. (and yet the incidence of head-injuries-as-sole-or-main-cause-of-death accidents is vanishingly low: one Dutch cycling activist recently calculated that in Holland you’d need to cycle 10km per day for the next 8,000 years to receive a head injury of any kind, let alone a disabling one).
Americans do seem to be obsessed with helmets for some strange reason: any Guardian cycling blog that so much as mentions them will soon be crawling with US posters telling everyone that they fall off at least twice every month, their head striking the tarmac with such force that it leaves a dent in it, and if it wasn’t for helmets every cyclist in the USA would now be sitting gorked-out in wheelchairs with their relatives spooning mashed bananas into their dribbling mouths; and why don’t you guys in Europe all wear them? Are you crazy? I put this down to a strong missionary tendency innate in Americans, a country once founded by religious sectaries.
Myself, I greatly favour the Dutch cycle helmet. This consists of a substantial concrete kerb, about 80 x 150cm, between yourself and anything likely to do you any harm.
I also think that in Australia, on purely epidemiological grounds, it would be far more worthwhile to mandate cyclists wearing sun-hats, given that country’s high incidence of skin cancers.
Schwalbe Marathon Winter is the best bicycle tyre 🙂
LOVE THIS! Thank you for speaking truth about need for infrastructure being more important.
To Dr2chase>>.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. The reason I think I might cross the “rudeness” line when it comes to a cyclist not using lights has less to do with the potential danger they may cause to others due to “no lights” and more to do with how it would affect my life if I crushed them because I did not see them. I have spent my life as a cyclist and have worked in the industry for well over 40 years. For all of that time I have had a dire fear of injuring a cyclist with my car. We have a local Cop on a bike where I live that zips around town with no lights. Whenever I see him I come out from under my politeness shell and holler “where’s your light?” We have a law to that affect in MA. there is no helmet law (thank goodness, I might add).