Seattle repeals 1993 law requiring the use of bicycle helmets because police use it to harrass minorities

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

FYI, I wear a bike helmet every day (as a Bike Expert Friend said when I saw my first helmet in the 80’s “Well, is your brain worth fifty bucks?”).

BUT compared to other public safety initiatives (inc. vaccinations), I think a helmet law is a LOT more a case of “you’ll only hurt yourself”.*

If it’s not being strictly enforced at all times, and evenly across all demographics, I’d say the laws are useless.

Around here, the helmet law (and the “Bikes are ok on the sidewalk except in front of a business IF the business is a building that extends all the way to the sidewalk” law) also gets applied to “unruly kids”.

The cops want these kids to be quiet and just go right home after school, so if they can’t catch them doing drugs or graffiti, they’ve got a law to justify rounding them up and giving them $200 tickets.
.

*And the guy who has to spatula your cerebrum off the street…

22

If that’s what you got out of what I wrote, then you do not understand anything about statistics or how to use them.

23

No, I got what I wrote from the NYT. What you said is clear and correct, but quoting those numbers in an article is angled.

24

Indeed. The article says that “up to 91% of bike riders in the city” wear helmets. Seattle has an estimated 169,000 cyclists. That means that there are over 15,000 unhelmeted cyclists in the city. So any given unhelmeted cyclist had less than a 1% chance of getting a citation, ever, in the past five years. Certainly, whatever good purpose this law was supposed to have, it hasn’t been serving it.

If a law serves no good purpose, but does serve a bad purpose, get rid of it.

25

This seems somewhat similar to jaywalking. Do most cities still have laws against it? How often are the laws enforced?

26

I think it’s similar on the surface, but effectively significantly different. Jaywalking laws are primarily there to provide a social understanding of who is allowed to be in the street. They are mostly enforced by the fear of death by automobile, and all the cases that don’t result in an interaction between a pedestrian and an automobile are basically ok.

27

Repealing a law because the police enforce it inconsistently and use it as a pretext for targeted harassment is fundamentally a statement that the police cannot be trusted.

I lived in Seattle for decades before moving to Europe. In this forum, the most I can say is this: I definitely do not trust the Seattle police.

28

I take it there is no state law?
Illinois has no state laws for motorcycle or bicycle helmets. A few municipalities have helmet laws for kids. Chicago has helmet laws for bike couriers.

29

Ironically, Seattle strictly enforces its jaywalking laws.

30

Because they didn’t make the point you were hoping to make?

In every bullet point you made in your OP except one, the article provides a link to the sources of the statistics; the other one cites the source without a link. These data come from different sources, who were looking at different things. The NYT did not conflate these statistics as you have attempted to do, they provided them as background information, scattered throughout the article.

So are you accusing them of cherry-picking the data to make some point? What point?

31

Hmmmm. I ride a bike regularly (I’m a MAMIL - well, probably now an OMIL). I do ride on the roads. I always wear a helmet. I do because I accept it reduces my risk of serious injury, and I would wear one even if there was no law.
However …
I don’t believe it needs to be mandatory for children. Here in Australia we have the compuslory helmet laws (some minor local variations, but nothing significant). I have read (opinion) articles that suggest that introducing helmet laws has greatly reduced the amount of bike usage among children - and I agree. Kids used to just grab the bike, zoom off to the park or their mate’s place, muck around doing kid stuff and then ride home. We all saw kids tootling down side streets, sometimes on the footpath, sometimes on the road and it doesn’t really create a great number of highly dangerous situations. Drivers knew to look out for such things, occasionally winding down a window to shout ‘Bloody kids!’, but that was all fine. There is (seems to be) much less of that bike casual usage these days.
I’m not just blaming helmet laws and helicopter parenting - lifestyles for kids have changed in many ways. Part of it is driven by the increase of organised activities for children, even down to things like ‘play dates’. A lot of this has come about because of greater concern for ‘stranger danger’ and ‘the streets are not safe’ - which leads parents to scrutinise all activities by children and take all safety precautions.

But - there are at least 10x the total number of head injuries caused by occupants of motor vehicles suffering head trauma - by hitting their head on the steering wheeel or windscreen etc. Now, obviously a bike has a far greater risk of such injuries - but if we were serious abourt reducung total head injuries in society we would mandate helmets in cars. This would reduce the total number far more than bike helmet laws.

But this law would never be implemented - people would complain about their ‘freedoms’ being infringed, and making a casual car jouney a bit more fiddly. Fair enough. But what is the risk we are prepared to tolerate? We can’t reduce all risk to 0% unless we ban all vehicular traffic. And so a reasonable compromise between ‘requirement of activity’ and ‘risk of activity’.

Teach your kids to ride a bike sensibly (difficult I agree). Teach them about why helmets can be a good idea. But I’m not sure I agree with enforcing helmet laws on children.

32

Not accusing, that would be much too aggressive: observing that they make a mess of their data, which are scattered all over the place, with no relation to each other that can be compared because (as you have noted too) of the qualifiers. They seem to have no point, that is what strikes me.
Or I did not get the point, would not be the first time. I’m glad that you came by to discuss the subject, thank you for your clarifications.

33

Maybe they could try enforcing the law that makes it illegal to use your phone while driving. That would almost certainly reduce bicycle injuries.

34

So you seem to have changed your view in the past hour or so. Or is this, appropriate for the topic, back-pedaling?

And thank you for dismissing me so politely. I’m sure I had no desire to make you uncomfortable.

35

I highly doubt that a car helmet would make any difference whatsoever, in a car that already has airbags. Which are, in fact, mandated.

36

My first thought was maybe they should fix their law enforcement problem instead of repealing this law. But that would be too hard.

How much could it cost to buy a couple hundred helmets a year? Buy them, have each car have a couple on hand and just give them to the people who need them. Or make the penalty be having to purchase a helmet…that they can provide an minimal cost.

37

Handing out helmets wouldn’t help much. Especially helmets for homeless people. They’d be immediately lost or stolen or sold or traded for drugs.

38

Seattle has been trying for years to fix its police problem. The police are… resistant.

39

Crack Dealer: “Oh, you want to trade some rocks for one of those things the city is giving away for free? Let me hook you up, dude!”

I find this unlikely.

40

If the helmet law was being used to give a criminal record, enforcement would be harmful to those caught. I did not see that in the Times story.

But If a cop sees my child (or now it would be grandchild) without a helmet, I hope they are stopped, educated, and, ideally, escorted home so parents know.