I agree with your general sentiment, but don't think people on electric bikes are going to improve the situation, rather make it much, much worse based on the electric bike share pilot in my city. Someone who owns their ebike might be better, but those on shared bikes are a danger to everyone and never wear a helmet.
In the city itself, I don't think ebike vs regular bike is the lynch-pin issue. But if we want to set up intra-city transport networks, if I want to go from Providence to Boston for instance, that's 50 miles which is way too much of a workout. If I have an e-bike, however, that extends my "comfortable" riding range from around 15-20 now to 50+ easily. For intra-city transport on protected paths, I think e-bikes will be a great revolution.
Within cities themselves, we simply need to get smaller cars, autonomous probably would help, less car-trips overall, less parked cars, and with raised/separated bike lanes like Holland. Eventually, with more and more riders and good education, we could have regions of the USA with strong bike transport.
Imagine, for instance, if we established certain roads/streets for non-car travel only. I'd expect a massive flourishing of businesses, increased walkability, better air quality, more room for greenery/outdoor tables and events, all due to taking one street here or there off the car-grid. Take Chicago or NYC for instance, they have numerous parallel streets, incredibly redundant network, cars could go around these non-car roads with ease.
As of right now, cars dominate all of southern New England except for the Cambridge area.
Electric bikes enable more people to participate in biking when they would have driven otherwise. It takes time to build up the leg strength it takes to bike well enough for commuting, most people don't have the time to train for weeks so that they can comfortably conquer the hill on the way to work or whatever.
More bikes on the road means more pressure on drivers to keep an eye out, and more pressure on politicians to make infrastructure safe for cyclists.
Having lived in China, I can tell you it doesn’t get better when they own their own e-bikes.
Also, bike helmets are mostly an American/ Anglo sphere thing, there are whole countries with mass bike cultures that don’t bother with helmets and are still much safer than the USA.
I live in the US and consider helmets an absolute necessity here as I'm riding alongside cars, trucks, and various other things that could kill me instantly, and riding in streets that don't have bike lanes to begin with.
The reason most other countries are safer is because of awareness of bikes and proper design of bike lanes. Google image search "bike lane china" or "bike lane netherlands" to see how safe bike lanes should be designed. In these places it's just much less common to be knocked off your bike in a dangerous manner. I've biked all over China and feel a lot safer there than in e.g. Palo Alto or San Francisco.
However, personally, I'd still wear a helmet regardless. I like my brain.
Yes, I agree with that. But it is a problem we created ourselves because of our love for car culture, not that helmets should be mandatory in other more sane countries. There aren't a lot of brain injuries in the Netherlands from bike accidents, so there is no demand for them.
China really isn't on the list of sane places, but traffic is slow enough that helmets might not matter much anyways. My point about china was more about dangerous electric bicyclists zooming on the sidewalk and almost hitting you.
I was riding too fast, carrying a TV, in heavy rain (all perfect normal for Amsterdam!). For some reason, I took my other hand off the handlebars, the front wheel spun round and I landed face-first on the road. :( 100% my fault; no other vehicles involved.
(btw, I wear a helmet 100% of the time in the UK, and in NL when on my road bike with clipless pedals)
> Rather than reacting emotionally we have to look at the numbers to make sense of this. The overall risk to Dutch cyclists (it's on page two of the document) of a "head/brain injury" is 153 per billion kilometres ridden. That means that one such injury is one per 6.5 million kilometres ridden.
> On average, every Dutch person makes a trip by bicycle 5.6 times per week. This works out as an average across the whole population of 2.5 km cycled every day. That's the highest figure for any population in the world. If we assume that people cycle every day of their lives to the age of 80, and that they cycle that 2.5 km every day of their life, they will ride a bike for a total of 73000 km during their lifetime. Divide it into 6.5 million and you find a figure that a typical Dutch cyclist can expect a "head/brain injury" once every 90 lifetimes.
One in 90 lifetimes is a high number. Considering people bike for basically their entire life in the Netherlands that basically means that 1 in 90 people gets a brain/head injury, which in my opinion is rather high.
I do think the US is much higher in terms of serious bike accidents, but with 1 in 90 lifetime statistic I'd still be wearing a helmet. I don't care if it's 1/3100 of other causes of death -- it's a simple thing that doesn't cost much and it doesn't waste time, so might as well do it.
The 1/3100 statistic is also potentially flawed for young people. If you look at causes of death in the US, for example, the top few are disease-related, most of which are usually causes of death for people 50+ years of age. For people in their 20s and 30s car accidents account for a much higher percentage of death, if not the majority of death, than for people in their 70s, for which disease is by far #1.
Obviously it's hard to get data on this, but my intuition would say that it's not not-wearing-helmets that contributes to their active lifestyle. Rather I think it's more about:
- Pedestrian- and bike-friendly design of cities. Not just bike lanes, but everything else -- water, food, restrooms, aesthetics, compactness.
- Overall healthy food culture to begin with
- General social/cultural values for physical activity
The US, in contrast, embraces a culture of fast food, fried food, lounging on couches watching TV, massive parking lots and strip malls, and getting from point A to point B via a freeway. Cities are terribly designed for pedestrians and bikers, often lacking even simple amenities such as adequate public restrooms, drinking water, healthy food options within walkable distance, and public transportation for when you get tired.
Biking or walking across most European cities is a pleasant experience.
Consider that the chance of having heart disease or a heart attack is much higher in the USA (and consequently lower in the Netherlands), and I wonder if that number really is so high? The Dutch have made a tradeoff for sure, but it seems overall to be a healthy one (more active life styles have health benefits).
So the only thing left is would they be even healthier if they were made to wear helmets? I don't think as many people would ride a bike to work/school if they had to wear a helmet, these are people who bike in semi-formal work clothes and even business suits, after all.
Bicycle helmets aren't completely unknown, I see kids under 10 wearing them more.
Cycling in the US isn't dangerous because of traffic or speed. Amsterdam has that in abundance! Its that American automobile drivers simply don't see bicycles let alone understand what they can and cannot do. Anything that isn't a car or truck does not compute.
Providence is one such city with an electric bikeshare fleet. The people who ride them appear to be in much more danger, as they rarely wear helmets and seem to be even less aware of traffic regulations than traditional cyclists.
Not that it’s this simple, but it seems to me that any one of those electric bike-share users would otherwise be contributing to localized and global pollution and congestion through the use of a car. Additionally, the lack of infrastructure (i.e. protected/expanded bike lanes) would might explain why it seems like those cyclists “a danger to everyone”.
No, I saw a an ebike blow out of golden gate park against a red and cause a 3 car accident in SF a few weeks back, despite only spending a few days in SF each year. At least one or more of the cars were likely totalled and would contribute much more significantly to waste/emissions. I also saw a lot of people on bikes/scooters using sidewalks and crosswalks like their personal fast lines and ignoring signs and signals repeatedly as well.
I live in SF. Agree that there are many reckless scooter and e-bike users. To offer another anecdote, everyday I see Uber/Lyft drivers stopped in the middle of traffic, parked in red zones, and driving 10-15 mph under the speed limit. Either way, San Francisco has a big problem of actually enforcing the rule of law for traffic violations.
Wearing a helmet increases your chance of death on a bike according to the statistics.
I personally don't, I feel less safe wearing one. I can't locate cars as accurately with audio with one on my head, the extra weight makesy head turn slower, and I think subconsciously left often. Drivers pass more aggressively and illegally (most drivers passing break the law here that requires a meter seperation when passing a cyclist, but they break it 'more' by coming closer when I wear a helmet).
> Wearing a helmet increases your chance of death on a bike according to the statistics.
I'm not aware of any study that says this. The most I've ever read is speculation that wearing a helmet might lead to more accidents, but that's not the same thing, since accidents with head protection are less likely to result in catastrophic head trauma and death. Could you maybe drop a reference link or two for this claim?
Why? Because it's an meta analysis of a bunch of actually rigorous papers written for the general public.
My original source was a blogpost written by some guy with an opinion. I promise you I'm not lying that's what it said, but I wouldn't trust the statistics he had to not be caused by some quirk like "people in safer to countries to bike are less likely to wear helmets". I can't find it again, sorry - probably because google has gotten so much worse at surfacing blogposts in the last few years. You'll just have to take my word that I wasn't lying when I said I saw such statistics (or google more yourself, I didn't try that hard, but at some point googling for statistics that support your view is unfair cherry picking of evidence).
Helmets protect you somewhat if you crash but are correlated with a significance increase in number of crashes. That page only addresses the first number.
I’ve never heard anyone say it’s actually less safe to wear a helmet. What kind of helmet are you wearing? Most helmets are so light you’d hardly even notice. I’m just confused about this comment.
I am trying to find the study, but iirc it was that in the US cars drive more carefully when they see a cyclist w/o a helmet, resulting in fewer collisions.
Doubtless in case of a collision you’d be better off with the helmet, but at a high enough speed it won’t matter anyway.
I used to play basketball with a personal injury lawyer who flat-out stated that the % of situations he’s seen where a helmet actually helped was very small.
I don’t wear one for many reasons; and I don’t judge anyone else’s decision.
> Wearing a helmet increases your chance of death on a bike according to the statistics
I've heard that too. If it's true, could the causality be the other way? As in, people wear a helmet when the chance of accidents is bigger.
When I road bike on open roads it's both fast and higher chance of accidents, so I wear a helmet. Same with downhill cycling. But when using a city bike, I bike slow in the inner city, and don't have a helmet.
Are you wearing a motorcycle helmet? My bike helmet doesn't touch my ears and weighs around 300g, about 5% of the 5 kg weight of a human head -- I can't tell the difference between turning my head with and without a helmet, but it doesn't matter much on the road since I use a rear-view mirror on my glasses so I look behind me much more often than if I had to turn my head every time.
The key component is the flexible, stays-where-you-put-it arm. Safezone is repurposing an industrial product called "coolant hose" - a 1-ft length costs less than $5. Epoxy a small mirror to the end, and attach it to your helmet with zip ties or velcro straps.
I always wear a helmet biking, and skiing for that matter. Neither helmet is likely to save me from a serious injury or death. They provide a small extra margin of safety in low speed collisions.
Bike helmets are no impediment to vision or turning one's head.
What I'd like is a cam linked to the police that would auto-ticket anyone passing too close. I would gladly sign an affidavit confirming the infraction.
In my experience as a courier and in dirt jump, the helmet puts extra weight on the head and neck at the time of impact. This can make it harder to tuck and roll. Also the size of the helmet adds a few inches, making it harder to avoid the earth/pavement.
