As a Dutch person hearing people talk about mandatory helmet laws for bikes sounds very strange.

Nobody in the Netherlands bikes with a helmet, and it is incredibly safe to bike here (around 10X fewer fatalities per KM ridden than in the US). If you want evidence that biking without a helmet is perfectly safe - there you go. A case study done by an entire country with 18 million inhabitants for a period of 100+ years.

Bike safety is an infrastructure problem. Nothing else.

Wearing a helmet will not make up for bad infrastructure - biking with bad infrastructure and a helmet is still incredibly dangerous. After you have good infrastructure, biking is already safe, especially when you use a Dutch bike that forces you to sit upright [1] making it far less likely you will fall on your head.

Wearing a helmet might improve safety by a marginal amount beyond that - but so would wearing a helmet while walking, or wearing a helmet while in a car.

Comparing helmets to seat belts is nonsensical. A seat belt is attached to your car. A helmet has to be carried with you after you leave your bike. Once you use a bike for everything that means you must carry a large helmet with you everywhere you go. It is very inconvenient for people that actually use bikes as their daily mode of transportation, from going to work to going grocery shopping to going to the gym.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aESqrP3hfi8

> A helmet has to be carried with you after you leave your bike.

I see a lot of helmets with holes in them... I wonder if it couldn't be made easier to run bike locks through them and leave them chained/locked to your bike while you're away.

Yeah, I just leave my helmet on the bike (on the handlebars, not attached). It's not a high value item to steal. Someone took my front tire once but left my helmet.

> 10X fewer fatalities per KM ridden than in the US). If you want evidence that biking without a helmet is perfectly safe - there you go

What is the rate for non-fatal yet debilitating head injuries?

Personally I wear a helmet biking around "safe" areas to reduce the likelihood of serious head injuries, such as those that might be incurred if another cyclist collides with you, or if you fall to the ground somehow.

Ski/snowboard helmets seem like a decent idea as well.

You dont know how lucky you are to have a sustainable inclusive mode of transport. Here in the UK its a fight against NIMBYs and right-wing idiots. The whole thing is becoming politicized and weaponized. Its super dystopia. Stay there, trust me. Thanks

Crush? Maybe temporarily until people realize that under most circumstances, helmet use is no more troubling than seat belt use in a car. Adequate helmets can be had very inexpensively. Helmets can easily be locked up with the same cable lock as the parked bike is locked up with (I personally never do - nobody steals a helmet around here).

Circumstances where helmet use is an issue: Very cold weather where you may have enough warm stuff on your head that the helmet rides too high (I wear it anyway) and fancy hairdos that would be crushed by a helmet - not an issue in my country since the sporty set that rides has little overlap with the fancy hairdo set - may be different in which bike commuting is more encultured.

> Maybe temporarily until people realize that under most circumstances, helmet use is no more troubling

You might think so, especially if you are someone who is comfortable wearing a bicycle helmet; but in practice, sensible or not, helmet mandates do have a long-term impact on ridership rates.

In Seattle, where I live, the county board of health recently repealed the helmet law, because thirty years of experience showed that it did more harm than good.

As an individual, you should of course choose to improve your safety by wearing a helmet; as a society, however, safety in numbers has much more of an effect than helmet-wearing behavior, and the safest policy choices are therefore those which eliminate barriers and encourage the greatest number of people to ride bicycles, as often as possible.

Mandatory helmet laws for cyclists are a red herring intended to shift blame and attention onto cyclists' behaviour rather than address the real problems, namely: bad infrastructure, cars, and drivers. As long as policymakers do nothing to counteract the current trend of cars that are increasingly dangerous to other road users and that at the same time encourage / tolerate inattentive drivers, it would simply be in bad faith to adopt a policy that would impose legal penalties on the victims of this trend.

It’s the fundamental attribution error and victim blaming in action.

Has forcing helmets on motorcyclists crushed motorcycle use? Has forcing seatbelts and airbags on motorists crushed automobile use? Has forcing life vests on boaters crushed motorboat use?

I don't necessarily agree with a helmet mandate (I think adults have the right to exercise their own judgment on whether or not a given piece of equipment is necessary for one's own safety, so long as it doesn't put others at greater risk of harm), but this particular objection doesn't seem like it's rooted in reality.

Maybe it would. There's something else, though.

I find it strange that someone in the UK can argue that requiring bicycle helmets is the best way forward, or even one of the ten best things to do, when two neighbouring countries have had massively more success than the UK, and and those two don't require helmets, or even use helmets very much.

I wear helmet. It's not that. I just find it strange that it's politically possible to say things that are so weird when you look at them from the viewpoint of a neighbouring country.

A written parliamentary question sounds like a fairly serious thing? Not exactly shitposting.

I think I first saw this argument on freakanomics, but there's a real debate in economic circles about things like helmets and whether or not they have are a net benefit regulation. Requiring helmets will have a negative impact on bicycle riding, at least theoretically, since it adds friction. Bicycle riding is generally considered a healthy form of exercise, and is generally considered as having a positive effect on long term health. So then the question is, is the friction causing lower long term health greater than the general health benefits of people wearing helmets who wouldn't otherwise. And related, do helmets actually save lives in the long run. I'm not sure this is an easy question to answer. I can certainly see requiring helmets as being an obvious thing to point at for lawmakers since first order effects of saving lives is fairly easy data to come across.

> I find it strange that someone in the UK can argue that requiring bicycle helmets is the best way forward, or even one of the ten best things to do, when two neighbouring countries have had massively more success than the UK, and and those two don't require helmets, or even use helmets very much.

I think it's because these arguments generally are bad-faith attempts to distract from doing things that would be effective. Most of these people aren't interested in more or safer cycling.

What surprises me is that the arguments can be put forward. That someone like that MP doesn't assume he will immediately laughed out of the room.

That’s the sad beauty of this kind of bad faith argument - it doesn’t have to have any merit at all just “flood the zone” with alternate crap so real solutions aren’t given the time of day.

The real audience for this MP are the people out there who would prefer to blame cyclists for everything including their own demise.

Cycling is becoming politicized in the UK and some politicians are trying to score points. The other day an ex-transport minister suggested forcing registration plates on bicycles. Any cycle lane that pops up will trigger all the right-winger NIMBYs making them go full ape mode. Some cars are becoming super aggressive (most are actually cautious or unaware). Its a sad state of affairs.

Did helmet laws crush the number of motorcyclists?

Helmets became mandatory for motorbikes on 7 February 1973.

Motorcycle helmets look cool though. Bike helmets look extremely ugly and stupid.

Motorcycle helmets also offer other useful benefits beyond extra protection in a crash that make them desirable (see https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/wfrik2/d...)

Let's talk about helmets once the roads are fixed, and people educated.

Are e-bikes still illegal there?

Car drivers should just learn to watch out for cyclists (not happening in London for sure), and cyclists shouldn't skip red lights or listen to music while cycling. And a small group should stop acting like Regent Park's is a race track