Comment 81970

By moylek (registered) - website | Posted October 19, 2012 at 07:53:40 in reply to Comment 81959

To those who are against cycling helmet laws, what are your views on motorcycle helmet laws?

Riding a motorcycle seems sort of risky to me, what with the speed and mass involved and the highway traffic. It seems like the sort of thing which warrants a helmet much of the time.

But this brings to mind something else: we keep talking about "cycling" and the risks involved in that activity. But there are - broadly speaking - five different kinds of cycling with very, very different risk profiles:

  • fast, long-distance road biking - think hunched riders all in spandex flying along the shoulders of country roads;
  • mountain biking;
  • recreational biking on trails and such;
  • utility/commuter cycling;
  • "downtown-Hamilton cycling" - typified by a rough sort of fellow, riding on and off sidewalks, an unpredictable anarchist on wheels (apologies to Undustrial), who never signals, ignores traffic signs and might be with or without a case of beer on the handlebars.

And a mental scan of the news articles about accidents and deaths mostly brings up the first and last sorts of cycling, both of which are clearly more dangerous than biking to work from Dundas to downtown, or going for a ride on the rail trail. And when one hears of accidents involving commuters downtown, it seems to be those terrible crushed-under-the-wheels affairs.

All very vague, of course, and subject to qualification by actual data. There is, perhaps, an article here. If not a whole study.

Comment edited by moylek on 2012-10-19 07:58:21

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