Comment 81444

By jim (anonymous) | Posted October 05, 2012 at 18:27:04 in reply to Comment 81437

Here's the missing link in the article above and throws a big wrench into my argument. Risk homeostasis. The problem with the helmet laws argument is that it doesn't address why helmet promotion or simply helmet wearing is also a bad thing, since that doesn't clearly connect to why bicycling rates would go down.

As a pure generalization risk homeostasis sounds good, but by the same logic you might have handrail users, rock climbers, sunscreen enthusiasts, etc all hurting themselves to a greater degree than they are being protected out of an inflated sense of security. That is unless you had evidence about the mechanism, which I've been doubting, but this study shows it actually exists (though I've yet to see the study showing that cyclists behave less safely with helmets).

At the same time I'd still like to know which it is: are motorists being more safe because of no helmets, or are bicyclists being less safe because of them, or both?

Finally I'm not sure that I'm brave enough to ditch the helmet for either reason: I already apparently have a heightened sense of risk, and I'm not really that confident about making the basis for ditching it the fact that drivers will suddenly view me as too precious to run into. Nor am I all that excited about ditching it to signal to the noncyclist that the activity is safe.

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