{"id":1300,"date":"2014-07-30T19:44:27","date_gmt":"2014-07-31T03:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/?p=1300"},"modified":"2014-07-30T19:44:27","modified_gmt":"2014-07-31T03:44:27","slug":"wear-your-damn-helmet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/30\/wear-your-damn-helmet\/","title":{"rendered":"Wear your damn helmet!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been seeing several references on Facebook and email recently to this site<\/a> or similar sites<\/a>, which makes the claim that it is safer to ride a bicycle without a helmet. <\/p>\n

This is ridiculous nonsense to me, and I finally snapped and wrote a long email rant in response, and decided to post a version of it here as well.<\/p>\n

I do agree with these sites that the best thing for a bicyclist is not to get hit in the first place. So I have no issue with emphasizing safe riding skills and not acting stupid just because one is wearing a helmet. But accidents still happen, especially with distracted drivers on the road. <\/p>\n

I think that wearing a helmet while cycling is like wearing a seatbelt when driving. If you don’t get in an accident, you don’t need either one. But if you do get in an accident, the vast majority of your potential serious injuries will be prevented by wearing a seatbelt or helmet – according to the CDC, seat belts cut the risk of serious injury by 50%<\/a>, and I believe that helmets have a similar effect on reducing serious injuries (as a couple ER doctors in the discussions I’ve seen have suggested). <\/p>\n

The site suggests that helmets have little protective value, and that any benefit they have is cancelled out by other problems. The main problem they suggest is from one study<\/a> which suggests that cars give you more room if you are wearing a helmet than if not. I think that’s irrelevant – the dangerous drivers are the ones who don’t see the bicyclist at all, let alone whether the biker is wearing a helmet. A recent example from my experience is a BMW rocketing up Page Mill Road at 50 mph in a 25 mph zone, not realizing the next turn was a U-turn, and skidding well into the other lane where I was descending at 25 mph on my bike. Fortunately, I managed to avoid the car, but it was a close call. Those are the scenarios I worry about (or ones where a driver is calling or texting and doesn’t notice themselves drifting over into the bike lane), not ones where a car gets 3 inches closer to me because they notice that I’m wearing a helmet. <\/p>\n

The other “problems” with helmets that the site suggests (that it might increase neck injuries and that it might affect one’s senses) are equally stupid, and have even less support – they are just theories that people made up to justify their point of view. Which is admittedly what I’m doing here, but I’m not claiming that’s evidence. <\/p>\n

Is a helmet going to prevent all serious injuries? No, of course not. Is it going to prevent me from dying if I’m hit by a car going 50 mph? No. But will it help if my head gets bounced on the pavement at 20 mph? I believe it would. And I want any edge I can get to preserve my brain in the case of an accident. And I don’t believe there is any downside to wearing a helmet, despite the claims to the contrary on these sites. <\/p>\n

I do agree with the site that the world would be a better place if we had more cyclists, and that with more cyclists on the road, drivers would change their behavior. But in that transitional phase, I plan to keep wearing my helmet until after the drivers change their behavior, not before. And I don’t see how not wearing a helmet will encourage more people to ride a bike – it may make it look more dangerous, but all it takes is hearing of one horrible injury because the rider wasn’t wearing a helmet to deter somebody from riding a bike for life. <\/p>\n

All that being said, I’m totally in favor of more people biking. And I don’t want people to think biking is highly dangerous – I commute to work by bike 90% of the time, and have put ~2-3k miles a year on my bikes for the past 6 years and have not yet had an accident (knock on wood). But I wear a helmet just in case, the same way I wear a seatbelt just in case while driving – I plan to never need it, and drive\/ride defensively, but I want the extra protection if I do need it.<\/p>\n

P.S. I should note that I switched over to wearing a helmet while skiing about ten years ago for similar reasons – if I do get in a bad crash, I want the extra protection. I haven’t needed it, except for a couple falls while learning to snowboard, but it was impressive even in those minor falls how much it helped. Ski helmets are admittedly more robust than bike helmets, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been seeing several references on Facebook and email recently to this site or similar sites, which makes the claim that it is safer to ride a bicycle without a helmet. This is ridiculous nonsense to me, and I finally snapped and wrote a long email rant in response, and decided to post a version […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1300"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1303,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300\/revisions\/1303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nehrlich.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}