Helmets may protect your head but mandatory helmet laws will likely make cyclists less safe

Having survived a car knocking me to the road at great speed, head first into the pavement, I know how a helmet can save a brain and thankful I was wearing mine that day. While at the hospital for XRays,I was asked several times by various departments if I had been wearing a helmet when hit by the car.

There's additional value too in reducing brain injury in a society that supports public health care. Talk to the doctors about the brain-dead and how many are due to folks not wearing head safety...and the cost involved.

We are a long way off in both attitude and proper infrastructure compared to the more advanced cycling towns. I don't want to get into an argument about the pros and cons of helmets - I only suggest that until we have a respectful vehicle/bike culture along with safer bike lanes, helmets obviously make sense to me.

That article's ridiculous. If someone does not want to take up cycling because they'll have to wear a helmet, everyone is safer. Let that individual take up running or spinning indoors to get fit.

Toronto ain't Denmark, only a fool would ride in this city without a helmet. We don't have separated bike lines, but we DO have entitled motorists and cab drivers who resent sharing the road with unmotorized 2 wheeled vehicles.

If there's a stupid law that needs to be changed it's the one about having a bell on your bike. A pedestrian hearing a bell has very little idea where the sound is coming from or what it signifies, A driver in a car won't even hear it, and most of the time the speed differential between cyclists renders the sound pointless.

Matt: One person not cycling due to such a rule might be insignificant, but the aggregate effect is what makes the difference. The article is only ridiculous if you believe that statistics and empirical research are also ridiculous.

My problem with this is the fact that many cyclists lobby to have speed limits reduced and to take away car lanes for bike lanes while refusing to accept the fact that things may have to change for them if they truly believe safety is important

Mandatory helmet laws isn't the only thing that can kill a bike share program. A little reported fact is that Aix-en-Provence has the dubious distinction of being the first jurisdiction to cancel its bike share program. Based on what I observed while living there, the municipal authorities introduced the program because Paris had one, and whatever Paris had they must have. But after a couple of years they cancelled it due to cost - the bikes saw very little use. That came as no suprise to me because (a) they didn't put in very many stations and (b) they provided virtually no cycling infrastructure. (Contrast that with Paris which converted their bus lanes to bus and bicycle lanes practically overnight when they brought Velib on line.)

Limited service area and no cycling infrastructure. Sound familiar? I fear for Toronto's Bixi program. So far the program lives and breathes which is a testament to the tenacity of the cycling community in Toronto. Shame there aren't awards for most tenacious cycling city - we'd win hands down.

Getting back to the point of the article, I don't support mandatory helmet laws as, after spending a lot of time researching bicycle helmets and helmet standards (or rather lack of standards) I came to the conclusion that there were more of a marketing gimmick meant to separate you from your money rather than a bonafide safety device. However, I can understand that some people want to wear them because it makes them feel safer - heck I wore one religiously for years myself. Now I rely on stopping at stop signs and red lights and just generally following the rules of the road smarter and more defensively to keep all of me, not just my head, intact.

I think the current arrangement is fine. If you want to wear one, wear a helmet. If you don't want to wear one, don't wear a helmet. The important thing is to cycle more.

Cycling with or without a helmet is only as subjectively safe as you perceive it to be. Reduced cycling rates after helmet laws are introduced are not correlated with the actual accident rates (if anything, if helmets reduce the rate at which people take up cycling, that means fewer cyclists, and arguably fewer accidents).

Cycling rates have gone down in jurisdictions where helmets were made mandatory, but these have generally been places where cycling rates were already low: cycling's mode share in Australia and New Zealand is very small.

The two pictures are not the whole story. The Netherlands has better bike infrastructure (separated from car traffic) than Belgium, therefore cycling is easier and safer and more popular, therefore helmets seem less necessary. Belgium's bike infrastructure and bike culture is less developed, therefore less safe, therefore helmets make more sense in the absence of other protection. Helmetlessness is a sign of an established safe bike culture, but choosing to wear a helmet, or being required to wear one, doesn't conversely make biking objectively less safe. Nor does the safety of the helmet itself change in relation to the biking environment.

It is impossible to overstate the protective value of helmets when the alternative is ZERO protective value.

I'm not advocating mandatory helmets, but it seems like the objection to them is basically that it is a symbol/admission to drivers that cycling is supposedly unsafe; I'm not sure that going helmetless makes either drivers or cyclists more cautious and more aware any more than a helmet makes a cyclist more reckless or a driver more prone to assuming that a cyclist will be okay with less cautious driver behaviour.

Wearing a helmet does not make you less safe nor does it actually prevent bike infrastructure from being installed.

Mandatory helmet laws won't make cyclists less safe. If the author of this article was being honest they'd be able to recognize the difference between correlation and causality. They could sit down and think through the idea that correlations are not iron clad simple correlations. Perhaps even recognize blaming a helmet law for cyclist deaths is about as narrow minded as blaming mandatory Kevlar vest rules for solider fatalities.

Toronto isn't Dutch never never land and I for one, like the coroner, don't have the feverishness to pave the way with my fellow cyclists bodies.

Please put your damn helmet on and pay attention to the shitheads opening cab doors, the street car tracks and... well need I say more? Stay safe.

What really bothers me are the helmet gestapo. Sorry, but me not wearing a helmet doesn't effect you one bit. Health care costs?
Lets try to lower then nearly $7billion spent annually on health care costs strictly related to illness and disease related to inactivity in this country.

Also, head injuries aren't just a bike related issue. A pro-helmet person told me to tour a head trauma ward a few years back to see what happens.
There were 11 people there at the time. 9 had head injuries from car accidents (motorists & passengers). 1 a pedestrian who was hit by a car, another from a failed suicide attempt. Not one cyclist.

I can just see riding with a helmet in the winter now. I'd be in the hospital right away with frost bite to my ears...Toques don't fit will under a helmet.

Also talking to some people in their 60's & 70's a little while ago, they said they'd be damned if after decades of riding a bike that they'd be forced to start wearing a helmet now.

herb, ik hou van jou!

It is fine to be against mandatory helmet laws. But I do not think it is wise to tell people that "Helmets also aren’t very effective in reducing injury damage to cyclists who are struck by cars". Common sense tells us that helmets save lives in a great many accidents.

So do the Ontario data. As the report notes, cyclists dying of brain injuries were 3 times less likely to have worn a helmet than those dying of other causes. That implies that, if all these 129 cyclists who died had been wearing helmets at the time of the accident, about 30 of them would still be alive today.

So: Bloggers should tell people to wear helmets. The government shouldn't make it mandatory.

I too am against mandatory helmet laws, yet I wear one every day.

There already is a mandatory helmet law for children.

I believe my helmet saved me from serious injury. Last month I was riding home and hit a pothole. I went over the handlebars. My helmet was cracked. Because of the accident I had a black eye, road rash, a broken watch and was sore for awhile. Without a helmet I believe I would have been hurt much worse

> "(So: Bloggers should tell people to wear helmets. The government shouldn't make it mandatory.)

I agree and disagree Michael.
I completely agree that the government shouldn't make it mandatory, however as a blogger I will never tell (or even suggest) that people should wear a helmet.

I'm also not convinced helmet use/promotion is a clear cut good thing...
-Alberta head injuries went up while cycling rates went down when their youth helmet law was introduced.
-Saskatoon city council said no to a helmet law, saying more people riding bikes is better then fewer riding with helmets.
-A few (unofficial) studies that show helmeted cyclists are passed closer. I tried this for a week and lost count of how many people brushed by me....In 8 years of riding without a helmet I've had one person pass closely.

Changes should be made so that collisions with cyclists are prevented. Then you don't have to worry if the cyclist is wearing a helmet or not. The wearing of helmets only impacts the degree to which a cyclist is injured when they are hit.

Helmets do not prevent collisions, making streets safer for all who use them does.

Don't worry, the city doesn't have the resources to enforce any more cycling laws anyway. If they did, perhaps they'd get bikes off the sidewalks. Wait, no they wouldn't, because then they'd have to build bike lanes and trails for all the people they kicked off the sidewalks.

I have been cycling for 67 years and do not wear a helmet. You might choose to wear one. Bicycles are the most efficient and versatile land vehicles on earth. Anybody who only drives a car or motorbike is not competent to talk about bicycles, cycling and cyclists. With any bicycle accident it can go either way. If you wear a helmet and have a serious crash you might survive and be paralyzed for the rest of your life. If you don't wear a helmet in the same situation you might be dead. What outcome is preferable for you or society as a whole? If you fall over a ditch a stick might pierce your brain through the ventilation slot of your helmet. Without a helmet it might have missed your head. It is all conjuncture. For every argument you present for wearing a helmet I can present an equally valid one against. Do you wear a helmet walking up- or downstairs in your home? It is more dangerous than cycling. Little kids are playing in the sandbox wearing bicycle helmets. I have seen family photo albums where the kids in every picture wear a piece of of plastic on their head. Helmet laws forcing every cyclist to wear a helmet are scams, justified and promoted by evoking people's fears and insecurities. That is why you pay 50 dollars for a piece of injection moulded plastic which costs 25 cents to produce. When and where will this nonsense stop?