It seems some people are now jumping on Obama for not wearing one.
Anyway when I was growing up (1980s and early 1990s in the Midwest) nobody wore a bicycle helmet, and if you did deign to wear one you’d instantly be labeled a pussy. And we did some crazy shit too. In my town riding around an old quarry was especially popular.
Not as a kid, but in college in the late '80s-early '90s and after, Midwest as well.
No. Probably should have, but didn’t. I frankly am not sure where you even would have bought a kid’s bicycle helmet in my town in the '80s. Maybe a cycling specialty shop?
No bike helmets for us in the Seattle suburbs in 70s & 80s. Always wore one on the dirtbike, however.
Between smoking, drinking and riding with no helmet I can’t believe this guy isn’t more popular amongst the idiocracy.
Mid-to-late 70s, you may as well wear a “please kick my ass daily for the foreseeable future” sign.
I don’t think there’s a great deal of necessity in wearing one on a beach (no cars, soft-ish surface) where Obama was cycling. I did wear a helmet as a kid outside of my back garden. Children’s helmets have to be relatively over-sized to be effective so I doubt I was one of the cool kids. I had enough of an incentive, since one of my sister’s school friends ended up with brain damage and later died due to an injury, which might have been mitigated if he had been wearing a helmet at the time.
Nope. That was long ago and there weren’t such things.
Yeah, the motorcycle helmet had barely been invented when I was a kid '60s and '70s. I remember getting my first bike helmet in 1990.
I guess they expect Obama to set an example.
If you think those things are all that the “idiocracy” values, perhaps you should reconsider who the real idiots are.
I didn’t then, I don’t now. And I’m a frequent bicyclist! :eek: How long before I’m dead?
No, does it show? 
Seriously though, as a child of the 80’s, no one I knew wore one. I remember once wearing an old motorcycle helmet while goofing around on my bike. That was the one time I fell and hit my head, that I recall. Of course, maybe I only remember it because of the helmet. I have one now and wear it for 2 reasons;
Nope. Still don’t. I’m 37 today! Could it be my last birthday? :eek:
70s. I was not even aware they existed.
Bicycle helmets weren’t invented back then.
A bicycle was my primary mode of transportation for many years - rode it to work, school, the bar - good thing I never had a wreck.
I briefly wore a helmet during the 80’s when my kids were of bike-riding age. Good example and all that.
As a kid (1970s and early 1980s) I didn’t because they weren’t available. When I bought a bike mid-1980s for my primary getting around town method, my folks paid for a nice helmet. Worn one ever since and they have saved my skull more than once.
I saw a photo of the President riding sans helmet and my first thought was “He ought to be wearing a helmet”. GWB is a mountain biker and he wears a helmet as tons of photos show.
No. Nobody wore them when I was first learning to ride a bicycle; they came in when I was in my teens (early '90s), and by the time I finished high school, there was a local ordinance requiring kids under 14 to wear them. (I actually got stopped for this once, by a police officer who refused to believe I was seventeen.)
Come to think of it, it’s amazing that they went from “unheard-of” to “mandatory” in the space of less than a decade.
Of course not, we didn’t know there was any such thing. Considering some of the accidents I had, though, it probably would have been a good idea.
The one time I witnessed a really serious bike accident, near the end of high school, it was fortunately a serious cyclist wearing a helmet. He pretty much landed on his head and the helmet certainly saved his life. He didn’t look like his back was in very good shape, though. (He had been whizzing down a shallow grade, in the bike lane, when someone opened a car door right in front of him.)
Nope (80’s and early 90’s).
But, I don’t think bike helmets are a bad idea. I don’t go around thinking “I didn’t need one as a kid, why do people have to wear them now?” To me they are one of those things that are un-obtrusive and might as well be worn.
Chiming in from someone the president’s age…no. Even had they been available in the itty-bitty midwestern town where I grew up, it likely wouldn’t have been a priority at our house.
No bike helmet and no riding helmet as a kid. I haven’t been on a bike in a long time, but I do wear a helmet when I ride horses now.
StG