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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
They also say that park roads can become more deserted without a steady stream of cars, raising public safety concerns.
Pro-car people will reach for any excuse.
The only cars that should be in parks are emergency vehicles during actual emergencies.
I really dislike when the cop cars cruise through. There's one by me where they park at an entrance, causing a blind spot for any cyclists.
Still baffling they were allowed there in the first place. Friends I knew who visited there, had to put on bicycle helmets to bike in the friggin' park.
Cars or not everyone should still wear a helmet when biking.
This seems to spark inchoate rage or cognitive dissonance when I point it out, but for exactly the same reason, everyone should wear a helmet when driving a car, too. Head injuries are common outcomes of car wrecks, and a debilitating injury. It may feel unnecessary, because the majority of people can go an entire, normal lifetime without a head-injury crash. But, then, exactly the same is true of cyclists.
Certainly, everybody knows somebody who crashed on their bike and was saved by their helmet. In contrast, I knew people who crashed in their car who may have been saved by a helmet. I say "knew," because they're dead.
I didn't know there was a anti bicycle-helmet faction. I guess it's like smoking, if I ignore the dangers it won't happen to me...
There's no faction, just statistics. When a helmet comes into play it's overwhelmingly likely that the cyclist was either going intentionally fast or there was a car involved. But since not all cycling is for sport or alongside motor vehicles (Nor should it be!), universal helmet requirements often serve as an unnecessary obstacle to safe ubiquitous cycling and effectively function to displace blame for injuries caused by poor infrastructure or inattentive motorists onto the cyclist. Especially when universal helmet use is the first or primary suggestion brought up in discussions of bicycle safety, which is why it's getting pushback here. Helmets have their place (I wear one as I like going fast and have to bike with cars where I live), but that place isn't as the premiere prescription for cyclist safety.
I still don't get it, we know helmets protect, so the less cranial trauma you come across in your life the longer your life will be. It's rather simple.
What you are addressing here is just anti bike politics. If tomorrow everyone would agree to wear helmets, they would come up with speed restrictions for cycling. The goal is to be anti cycling. The idea they hide behind is replaceable.
I still don’t get it, we know helmets protect, so the less cranial trauma you come across in your life the longer your life will be. It’s rather simple.
For most people a helmet's inconvenience, discomfort, or cost is overkill for the danger presented by typical transportation cycling on good cycling infrastructure. This fact is not incompatible with your fact. Your fact is also correct.
What you are addressing here is just anti bike politics. If tomorrow everyone would agree to wear helmets, they would come up with speed restrictions for cycling. The goal is to be anti cycling. The idea they hide behind is replaceable.
That is a very strong argument for not promoting universal helmet use as a primary cycling safety concern.
I mean you could have the best car free cycling infrastructure in the world and it would still be better to wear helmets since the energy you build up with a bike is just too much for your crane to take.
This is the same reason airbags exist and we stopped putting metal spikes on steering wheels.
All of this is strangely reminiscent of the seatbelt discussion for me.
Kinda feels like we're talking in circles now, I keep putting context on your point that a helmet is always safer and you keep talking past the context and repeating that a helmet is always safer. It's kinda silly. But one more try.
Statistically speaking it's always better to wear a helmet no matter what you're doing. Walking down the sidewalk with a helmet is safer than walking down the sidewalk without one. What I've been saying though, is that if only we build an environment that actually accommodates cyclist safety we find ourselves at a point where the benefits of wearing a helmet arguably outweigh the costs. And this isn't just theory, the entirety of The Netherlands has been at this point for decades. They have both the highest rate of cycling and the lowest helmet use in the entire western world, both as a result of their dedication to infrastructure and culture that accommodates safe cycling. There is a Dutch person right here laughing at the "everyone should wear a helmet" truism that started this thread because they're living my point. Of course this only applies once you actually have meaningful cycling infrastructure. I'm not saying that American cyclists shouldn't wear a helmet most of the time. But I'm pushing back on the blanket cliché that "Everybody should wear a helmet all the time" because it's not only untrue, when it is presented as the primary recommendation for improving cyclist safety it effectively functions to derail or minimize discussions of the things that actually make baseline everyday cycling safer: Good infrastructure. Good culture. Protection from the 40-ton trucks who's tires will pop your skull like a watermelon regardless of if you have a helmet over it or not.
Does that make sense?
No thanks, this is the same stupid reasoning as "pedestrians should wear hi-vis vests when walking". It offloads responsibility from car drivers to be responsible, to bicyclists and pedestrians. A decent, separated bicycle infrastructure goes much further in terms of safety than "just wear helmet lmao".
Helmets are important for environmental accidents, too, like hitting rocks and tree roots. Most of the accidents I've had in over three decades of daily cycling have been environmental; and my helmet has saved me from head trauma multiple times. This one's not about cars.
If you're riding on a bumpy path in the woods, helmets make a lot of sense.
But most roads do not have tree roots or rocks around.
Uneven sidewalks and bad bikers still exist.
Sounds like the roads need to be made safer then.
You are comparing apples to oranges.
A high-visibility vest does not protect you at all. Its only purpose is to make drivers pay more attention to you instead of actually protecting you.
A helmet actually protects you. Also not just from some specific danger that shouldn't be there in the first place (cars) but from the results of every possible fall no matter what caused it.
Typically people don't fall by their own, unless if you're talking about the elderly (who are more brittle), or the very young (who drive on low tricycles to learn, and a fall then isn't as bad). A bicycle also typically is much less fast than a car, so when you fall, the damage is also much less bad.
By far most bicycle accidents are caused by other drivers (especially car drivers) not watching out or driving recklessly near them. Or because bicycling paths aren't cleared/salted in winter.
If you wanted to tackle accidents better, you'd prohibit smartphone usage while in traffic altogether for everyone (navigation excepted), and support separated, well-maintained bicycle lanes with protection rails.
There's a huge difference between falling and falling because a car drove you over. Don't blame the bicyclist overmuch. Blame the carcentric infrastructure instead.
What reason could you have not to wear a helmet that would outweigh simple safety in the event random disaster strikes?
Similar to how we wear seatbelts, you don't drive expecting to crash, and in a perfect world you wouldn't need it. Accidents happen though, that's why the word exists.
A bicycle also typically is much less fast than a car, so when you fall, the damage is also much less bad.
As someone who have seen someone fall at walking speed without any outside influence and end with a basal skull fracture, I call bullshit.
There’s a huge difference between falling and falling because a car drove you over.
Yes, there is. I am however not advocating for wearing heavy proctive gear that would make a difference in such a case, but for helmets. And hitting your unprotected head can simply heavily injure or even kill you -no matter the circumstances or speed- just by hitting an edge, a curb, a random pebble or just aspllated ground at a bad angle.
If basic anatomy would allow for humans to fall over and hit their heads while standing or walking around normally, we would already be wearing helmets all the time, just like we are causally protecting our feet with shoes.
No, only if going sporting speeds or riding alongside cars. Which to be fair, is 99.5% of cycling in NYC.
Unless you’re riding downhill, riding around traffic, or at racing speeds a helmet isn’t really necessary for anyone who rides regularly. You generally don’t fall on your head on a bike unless you go over the bars or are doored. Obviously anything can happen but most people would prefer to be comfortable and ride slower than ride with a helmet.
I say this as someone who rides downhill and wears a fullface helmet.
Yep, agreed, it has a lot to do with the geometry of the bike, too. The old, short-tail, drop-bar, racing-style "10 speeds" of my youth felt very precarious, and going over the handlebars was a common occurrence because of the rider's position. The longer tails, and more-upright posture of the rider, on a city/commuter/hybrid bike puts the bike's center of gravity much further aft. Going over the handlebars is quite unlikely, and good bike infrastructure that doesn't put riders in the door zone (or gutter) is much more important than a helmet.