Comment 81354

By jim (anonymous) | Posted October 01, 2012 at 20:54:21

I get the part about forcing people to wear helmets being problematic. Especially for bikeshares, who in the world would want to wear a used helmet. But promoting helmets creates a sense of danger? How? The bike rider sees a picture of a bike commissioner wearing a helmet and suddenly they stop riding? Where's the proof? The bike rider in Toronto or Melbourne doesn't cease riding because people are pushing helmets, I suspect, but because it's miserable to bike in these cities. All it looks like to me is that they've correlated helmet promotion with bike riding. What that shows to me is that cities with crappy infrastructure where bicyclists are getting hurt frequently are looking for the cheapest way out of their liability. Show me the cause between the promotion and the bicycle rates.

In Europe they don't promote helmets because they don't need to, the infrastructure is so good. Here we have real risks and I seriously doubt that if you get hit by a car your helmet will not be a huge aid to you. Helmet use is a token thing, for sure, and maybe once we get good biking infrastructure we could do without it, though even then I'm sceptical.

And finally as to risk, we secure ourselves against hundreds of infinitesmal risks. You probably don't need to refrigerate your eggs, get vaccinated for polio etc. Where the only downside of taking a precaution is that your hair gets rustled then I think it's a bad argument.

Long way of saying non sequitur.

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