I disagree with no helmet zones.
Thing is, if the helmet law was removed. Alot of experienced riders would probably leave their helmet on. But the inexperienced drongos at higher risk of accident wouldnt.
I’m normally pretty religious about wearing one, wore them before they were mandatory. That said, I got pinged right outside my house a few weeks ago…police man accepted that I was dialling in some new cables in a quiet suburban street, told me not to do it again. I see lots of kids and adults down my way with helmets hung on their handlebars or no helmet at all…VicPol doesn’t have the coverage to enforce helmet laws everywhere, all the time, people seem to be making their own choice about it when the risk or getting pinged is very low.
I would think that low speed areas such as parks would be riskier due to dogs, children etc running around. I would like to see a 1 or 2 year trial Australia wide. I think on quiet suburban streets, helmetless is acceptable. Do helmets hinder cycling uptake by the average person? At least we could find out. And cars seem a bit more weary of a rider without a helmet.
I would still wear one on my roadie/lycra rides due to the speeds and close drafting distances to other bikes, but it would be nice not to have to wear one when riding down to the local shops for milk runs or to the pub. I dont want to carry it around with me and I really dont want to hang a 200+ dollar helmet off my bars while Im in the shops.
^ my thoughts exactly.
ok so what qualifies as a “quiet suburban street?” where do you draw the line? who draws the line? things like this become a little too grey, the discretionary nature of “laws” like this are shit.
Why do I think mandatory helmet laws are a good thing?
Because most people are fucking morons and have little to no idea of what is good for them.
I guess near me, most of the roads to the shops are 50kmh suburbs. Very little traffic and honestly, its hard to get a car up to above 40 due to the amount of round abouts. There are so many kids around many drivers are aware of pedestrians etc. I do agree that there would need to be a legal definition but I also think some of the problem is driver and cyclist education.
Do more people die in countries where there are no helmet laws, from bike related injuries?
I had a small crash this weekend and had I not had a helmet on it probably would have been alot worse.
Wear mine all the time on my bike no question.
Plus I kinda like them, you can sticker them up… plus when the zombies come it’ll be harder for them to take a chomp out of my noggin while I fly past them looking for canned goods.
Not sure if anyone has done a comparitive study, but there is some interesting information here: Bicycle helmet laws - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Skull isn’t all that much protection. You can die from stationary just by falling on your head. Just ask one of those thugs done for manslaughter for king-hitting someone who died from hitting the pavement and not from the punch.
Someone I know almost died recently from falling off a chair while dusting a bookshelf at home. Two months in the hospital. Metal plate in the skull.
Of course that doesn’t mean you should wear a helmet when going out in Kings Cross or when cleaning your house. It all depends on probability. And for a whole lot of people the probability of falling off a bike is pretty damn high.
Some hipster on a “vintage” piece of shit ate it out the front of my house just the other night, on my quiet-ish suburban street. As far as I can tell, his front brake just fell off or something and got jammed in the wheel. He flipped, slammed his head, but was wearing a helmet and was fairly ok. Now he was riding from the hipster café around the corner to another place around the next corner. And he is exactly the sort of dude in exactly the sort of situation where he’d be sans-helmet without the mandatory laws. He’d be pretty fucked up now if that were the case. And there are fucking thousands of people just like that guy.
Edit: so, as a general proposition, I’m accepting of government regulation placing reasonable limits on the population to ensure fewer people kill themselves (or others). Now there is a fair amount of room to disagree with that from a political or philosophical perspective - whether as a general proposition or specifically in relation to mandatory helmets. Call it “nanny-state”, whatever. But I’m less convinced that there is much room to disagree with helmet regulation on grounds that it doesn’t in fact result in fewer people killing themselves. If you think that, you’ve probably already been dropped on your head.