Good Reasons to Not Wear a Helmet

#1. It's a brain bucket. I don't want to put my brain in a bucket. I prefer to use my skull to hold my brains.

#2. Helmets mess with my comb-over and well, you know how unstylish a messed up comb-over is...

#3. Makes you look like a mushroom. I would be OK with looking like broccoli but I can't do a mushroom look...no way!

#4. It's mainstream. I'm hip so I always go the other way.

#5. It costs money. Lord knows I'm cheap. (So I spend a lot of money on personal electronics, I need that! These helmets are nothing but a way to take your hard earned cash.)

#6. It'll scare people into thinking biking is dangerous (much like STDs stopped people from having sex) and then only people who can reason that cycling can be done safely if proper precautions are observed will choose to ride and then cycling will be unpopular and less people will ride and then it'll be dangerous and then only hipsters without helmets will ride and that'll be kinda mainstream and, well see #4.

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by John Greenfield on September 8, 2015 at 3:16am

Actually, there's some truth to #6. "It'll scare people into thinking biking is dangerous... and then only people who can reason that cycling can be done safely if proper precautions are observed will choose to ride and then cycling will be unpopular and less people will ride and then it'll be dangerous."

It's certainly a good idea to wear a bike helmet in a city like Chicago that has lots of dangerous driving and relatively little safe bike infrastructure. However, in European cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, with high rates of cycling, helmet use is uncommon, but their bike injury rates are a fraction of ours.

It's kind of a chicken-or-the-egg thing. In those cities, there are so many protected bike lanes that you never have to share the road with fast car traffic. Everyone receives bike education in school, and traffic laws almost always hold the driver responsible in car/bike crashes.

As a result, it's very unlikely that you'll be struck by a fast car while biking, so helmets really are much less necessary than in Chicago. Let's not get into a debate about whether helmets are still needed in case of car-free bike crashes, but overall head injury rates for cyclists are much lower in bike-friendly European cities.

Since most people don't bother to wear a helmet in those cities, cycling is a bit more convenient, and it attracts people for whom the possibility of getting struck while riding, or the need to wear a helmet, is a dealbreaker. As a result, there are tons of cyclists on the streets, so you get the "safety-in-numbers effect," where drivers have no choice but to look for cyclists before opening a car door or making a turn.

I'm not saying that we should discourage people from wearing helmets in Chicago and the rest of the U.S. But maybe the emphasis should be less about putting the onus on cyclists to mitigate the effects of crashes by wearing them. Instead, we should be working for better infrastructure, education, and enforcement that will help prevent crashes from happening in the first place.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Marc A. Irwin on September 8, 2015 at 8:29am

You shouldn't wear a helmet because your daughter and the other cool eighth grade girls will think you're a dork.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Greg Berry on September 10, 2015 at 3:11am

As an adult male, I cannot abide while 8th grade girls snicker as I ride by wearing a helmet. At least I look pretty awesome in lyrica :0

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Filka Bean on September 10, 2015 at 3:59am

The other day I was on my way home on my wife's pale pink cruiser (pink frame, pink grips on the mustache handlebar, pink puffy seat plus chrome fenders... believe me, it's a trip, but it was a gift from a well-intentioned relative and it rides good) just at three o'clock when all the kids were on their way home. The high point was a boy walking a fixie and chatting up a couple girls, all three of whom stopped to stare a bit as I went by. I guess it wasn't primarily the helmet the were smiling at... Maybe not in your case either, Greg! ;)