# What's the bicycle helmet culture where you live? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 14, 2014, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bicycle-helmet-culture-where-you-live/686099 "2014-04-14T17:43:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Little\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c57346/32.png) [@Little\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Pig)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2014, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bicycle-helmet-culture-where-you-live/686099/81 "2014-04-16T06:44:03Z")
> [@GusNSpot](#): > > Why do we have so much tech in cars that cost so many $$$$$? Agreed GusNSpot. Too many distractions. Not good. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2014, 9:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bicycle-helmet-culture-where-you-live/686099/82 "2014-04-16T09:22:57Z")
Irrespective of the helmet discussion people ignore teh reality that people who regularly commute by bicycle have a 40-percent reduction in mortality compared to people who do not bicycle. 1 in every 4 deaths is due to heart disease, this dwarfs the 1-in-36 risk for all accidents. I know this won’t convince the bike haters and those who fantasize about and take pleasure in the death of others. [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17281346&postcount=101](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=17281346&postcount=101) But helmet vs. no-helmet really is down in the weeds as far as relative risk does. That said I am a year round bike commuter and wear a helmet every time I ride. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2014, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bicycle-helmet-culture-where-you-live/686099/83 "2014-04-16T10:59:36Z")
> [@Mr.Nylock](#): > > “Overall, it was concluded that for the majority of cases considered, the helmet can provide life saving protection during typical linear impacts and, in addition, the typical level of rotational acceleration observed using a helmeted headform would generally be no more injurious than expected for a bare human head.” > > Sorry Turble, try again. I think maybe 1 more attempt to find a site the properly backs up your position would be OK, but if you can’t do it in the next try it seems as if it would be a litte impolite to keep going on about this. And maybe a citation that doesn’t rely so heavily on a single 28 year-old study would be more relevant. I like the helmet design shown in the picture - haven’t seen a bike helmet like that in over 20 years. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2014, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bicycle-helmet-culture-where-you-live/686099/84 "2014-04-16T11:43:29Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > 1.5 deaths per 100 million miles in an auto. > > 1 death per 15 milion miles in a bike. Miles don’t matter. How many hours ridden is more relevant. I could do fifteen miles on a bike in a bit less than the time I could do a hundred in a car. Legally, anyway. > [@JohnT](#): > > I just realized that if you take the transportation data alone from **Turble’s** post, you find that head injuries from bicycles are about 2.8% of all head injuries caused by transportation incidents. > > Also, it is safe to say that much less than 1% of the miles traveled on US roads are done by cyclists (see below.) The statistic from Turble’s post says 2.6%, not 2.8%, and that is for motorbikes. Motorbike are not safe, they are cool. The figure for push bikes is less than 1%. Speaking of motorbikes, I used to ride one. I’d always wear a helmet, not so much because of safety or because it’s legally required, but because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to see. Once you get above about forty your need to protect your head against sensory overload more than crashes. Especially in the rain, you can see through a wet visor but raindrops at seventy miles an hour hurt. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2014, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bicycle-helmet-culture-where-you-live/686099/85 "2014-04-16T11:44:51Z")
> [@SanVito](#): > > Not remotely my experience in London or Bristol where the commuting and weekend sporting cyclists all wear helmets as routine. Just shows you can’t talk in generalities even within one small country. London is very far away. Around here the commuters have a cycle path along a disused railway line from the residential part of town to the industrial estate, and the surrounding countryside is full of unfrequented routes. ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2014, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bicycle-helmet-culture-where-you-live/686099/86 "2014-04-16T12:05:27Z")
Tennessee reporting in. “All bicycle operators under 16 years of age must wear a bicycle helmet on any highway, street, or sidewalk.” That’s pretty much what we have here. Of course, given the mountains (OK… you Rocky Mtn folk can stop snickering about calling the Appalachians ‘mountains’), around here most of the time the only time I encounter bikers is while they are walking their bikes up a slope. I grew up in Georgia in the 60s. I don’t even know where I could have bought a helmet back then. We rode like little maniacs and not a single one of us died or was even seriously damaged. We used to wear football helmets with goggles for our eyes and joust on bikes. We jumped over 12-15 foot (3.6 - 4.5 meters) deep gullies using flimsy plywood ramps. We were idiots, obviously, but successful idiots nevertheless. If we had helmets available at the time and they looked ‘cool’ we would almost certainly have worn them. If the helmet had a Green Lantern sigil on it, I would probably have worn it all the time to the consternation of my parents. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2014, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bicycle-helmet-culture-where-you-live/686099/87 "2014-04-16T12:43:08Z")
[History of the bicycle helmet.](http://www.helmets.org/history.htm) Something that hasn’t been mentioned is that the modern helmet not only provides terrific ventilation but also protection from the direct rays of the sun which is significant in hot weather. Some models will have systems that will absorb and/or channel sweat away from the eyes. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2014, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bicycle-helmet-culture-where-you-live/686099/88 "2014-04-16T13:07:29Z")
> [@SanVito](#): > > Not remotely my experience in London or Bristol where the commuting and weekend sporting cyclists all wear helmets as routine. Just shows you can’t talk in generalities even within one small country. Also interesting because my experience in the same area of London you used to live in (heh, I know a few other people who’ve moved from London to Bristol) is that some do, some don’t. Sports cyclists do, commuters on their way to the City or whatever do, but they don’t make up all cyclists you see on the street here. Maybe half of the people I see cycling along of an afternoon won’t be wearing a helmet. Teenagers, never. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2014, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bicycle-helmet-culture-where-you-live/686099/89 "2014-04-16T15:12:56Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > Irrespective of the helmet discussion people ignore teh reality that people who regularly commute by bicycle have a 40-percent reduction in mortality compared to people who do not bicycle. > > 1 in every 4 deaths is due to heart disease, this dwarfs the 1-in-36 risk for all accidents. This is a less extraordinary claim, in my view. If you hate helmets, still bike, I guess. It’s still healthier than not biking. I guess I notice in the Chicago burbs, too, what others have noticed - road bikes and hybrids see a lot more helmet use than ‘classic’ bikes and beaters. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [April 16, 2014, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bicycle-helmet-culture-where-you-live/686099/90 "2014-04-16T17:55:00Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > Miles don’t matter. How many hours ridden is more relevant. I could do fifteen miles on a bike in a bit less than the time I could do a hundred in a car. Legally, anyway. > > The statistic from Turble’s post says 2.6%, not 2.8%, and that is for motorbikes. Motorbike are not safe, they are cool. The figure for push bikes is less than 1%. Sorry, that’s not how I came to the 2.8% figure. Counting only those brain injuries/fatalities caused by means of transportation (11,466 total), the 325 that occurred while riding bicycles account for 2.834% of all transportation-caused brain injuries/deaths. Compare that to the daily riding figures of the US and Missouri (the one sample I found) cited earlier - far fewer than 1% of the transportation miles are generated by bicyclists, but 2.8% of deaths by brain injuries (again, resulting from transportation-caused accidents) are suffered by bicyclists. Any claim that the two activities (biking and driving/riding in a car) are equally safe is not supported by the evidence supported by me and **Turble**. Even if you use the revised metric of # hours used/day, it is hard to imagine bicyclists amounting to 2.8% of all transportation time accumulated per day. Table 11 on page 78 of the PDF I linked to shows that .1% of Americans ride 3 of 4 days .2% ride 1 in 2 days The above %'s are cumulative so we have .3% of the population responsible for 2.8% of the transportation time? Is this reasonable? Not in the areas I’ve been to in the US, and I travel quite a bit. (Sorry to end on an unsupported claim, but I clicked “save” too soon. Also, don’t want to go through the work. 😛 ) ([http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/nchrp\_rpt\_552.pdf](http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/nchrp_rpt_552.pdf)) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-bicycle-helmet-culture-where-you-live/686099.md?page=4)