The article is the reason why I'm done wearing a helmet. I write my blog as a way to expose different viewpoints around cycling. I feel comfortable with this decision and will no longer be wearing a helmet. If they're not completely scientifically sound in your judgement, fine, keep wearing a helmet. I tried to use the data to the best of my ability, as I have a master's degree in public health. But then again, this blog is not for an academic audience, so I try not to make it too heavy.

The arguments I posted are those that have swayed me. What it comes down to is this: I believe biking is an inherently safe activity, on par with driving a car and walking. When I'm biking 12-14mph on bike paths and trails, as part of my daily regular activities, I feel there is no need to wear a helmet.

The only reason that the individual states that wearing a helmet is a hinderence is:

1. You don't look as fashionable (the words are "less human")

2. Drivers see you more as a human when you're not wearing one.

I would venture to say that if a driver notices you not wearing a helmet, the assumption is that the biker is an idiot and they would be more cautious around them. (No one really wants to hit a biker) Additionally this doesn't really fix the problem. Many bikers get into an incident with cars for reasons such as:

1. The biker was not seen by the driver until it was too late. (Lack of awareness/being used to them on the road)

2. Biker cutting off the driver

3. Road rage (on the car's side): It happens but I would suggest it less common than claimed.

4. Biker not following the rules of the road. (Biking up the wrong way, ignoring stoplights/stopsigns etc)

"Although the Netherlands is probably the safest country in the world for cycling, helmet wearing among Dutch cyclists is rare. It has been estimated that only about 0.5 percent of cyclists in the Netherlands are helmeted"

Why are Dutch cyclists more likely to be injured if they wear helmets? - http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1261.html

"Helmet use may deter people from cycling", that doesn't affect whether or not you should wear one.

"Benefits of biking out way the risks", you don't lose the benefits if you cycle with a helmet.

Those are the crashes that bike helmets are designed for. Let's say you were waiting at a light, and the light just changed. A car mirror clips you just as you're pushing off and getting your balance, you fall over and hit your head on a curb. If you have a helmet on, you walk away with a headache and maybe a skinned elbow. Without a helmet on, you crack your head open and potentially die.

Is this correct? It sounds very wrong to me. I got the impression that shattering is a great way to redirect kinetic energy away from your head

Cycling is simply a safe, fun means of travel. And you don't need special protective gear unless you're doing something weird.

Children? Mountain bikers? People cycling in snow or mud? People doing tricks or trying to show off to girls? Yea, they should probably wear a helmet.

A friend of mine once compared ordinary commuting in a helmet to wearing a condom all day: it's useful if you're doing something risky, but otherwise it's just uncomfortable.

Helmets are uncomfortable and goofy, and I probably would ride less on the bike if I had to wear one all the time, as with a mandatory helmet law. The exercise benefits of regular cycling outweigh the marginal risk of head injury.

By the same logic of the helmet-shamers, we should shame motorists and pedestrians for not wearing a helmet for routine travel. But nobody seems to take that idea seriously for some reason.

More important safety equipment than helmets: bike lights, mirrors, bells, basic repair gear, and fenders.

"Many more motorists and pedestrians die in traffic collisions per year than do bicyclists. We don’t see them wearing helmets."

Doesn't this support the opposite argument of what the author is claiming? Further, I would expect as much anyway simply because so many fewer people bike than motorcycle or drive a car.

"If not wanting to wear a helmet deters someone from riding a bike, that sucks, because biking is healthy and awesome."

This is a silly argument. It could just as easily be said, "If wearing a helmet deters someone from riding a bike, that sucks, because wearing a helmet protects your head."

"I don’t want to hide my head behind a helmet, I want drivers to pass me on the street and see that I am a person, a human, just like them."

Nobody said that wearing a helmet was supposed to make a person more attractive. Would the author universally agree to "I don't wear protective gear $x because I want people to see that I'm a human being?" Probably not.

Ultimately, I don't think anybody can argue that having a protective shell around your head is somehow less safe or equally safe to having nothing there at all.

Just.. what?

Any sort of mechanical deformation is essentially an energy release. Be it compression, cracking or what else. The energy that went to cracking the polycarbonate shell is the energy that didn't reach your skull.

>"Many more motorists and pedestrians die in traffic collisions per year than do bicyclists. We don’t see them wearing helmets."

Hey. Maybe if they did wear helmets, fewer of them would die. Ever think of that?

Put differently- I wonder if you told the author a brick was going to fall on her head and then asked given the option to wear a helmet or not wear one which she would pick.

The current bike helmet standards are a good example of what happens in the absence of both good theory and experience. We have a design that prevents an injury that almost never happens (skull fracture) and that fails to protect against a common injury (concussion). The current standards make it impossible to improve things much but there are people out there that are trying:

http://www.helmets.org/liners.htm#cone-head

One of the most compelling studies is from New Zealand [1]: "The New Zealand Medical Journal published Evaluation of New Zealand's bicycle helmet law ... showing a massive plunge in cycling levels and a 20% higher accident rate since helmet law enforcement."

Also, there was a study showing that cyclists with helmets receive less space from passing cars than those without.

[1] http://www.cycle-helmets.com/zealand_helmets.html

"Helmet use was associated with reduced risk of head injury in bicycle collisions with motor vehicles of up to 74%, and the more severe the injury considered, the greater the reduction."

Is there some reason to doubt this?

The author's point doesn't stand to reason. First, not all injuries are created equal. Head injuries are more likely to kill or permanently impair a cyclist than any other injury. Second, regardless of the results of studies and confirmation bias, it's obvious that helmets do absorb a great deal of impact - impact that can kill or permanently injure you.

Beyond that, though, helmets aren't the #1 thing that can be done to protect cyclists. Improving car drivers is the #1 thing. Malicious drivers who openly hate cyclists aren't the worst - neglectful ones are. You know, the ones who turn right in front of a bicycle, or lane change into a bicycle. They don't know the cyclist is there. Often, they don't know how close they came to killing someone, as they text away obliviously.

The next thing that can be done is better urban planning, with bicycle-friendly streets. That doesn't mean sidewalk "bike lanes" that are 10mph and shared with moms pushing strollers. That means relatively safe road design where bicyclists can either integrate into the traffic flow or be around it with less danger. These designs are often flawed, though, built mostly to keep bicycles from inconveniencing cars rather than keeping cyclists safe (the "bike lanes" of downtown Minneapolis, which completely hide cyclists from cars turning in front of them, are the ultimate example).

At any rate, the article is quite wrong.

There are certainly conditions that make the use of a helmet advisable, but that depends on the situation. Anything more than that is just the result of lobbying & PR by the helmet-making industry.

The only type of helmet that can actually prevent injury is a full face motorcycle helmet with solid chinbar.

Dutch media, for example, do not focus on helmet use at all, because it's a non-issue. Well, mostly. Almost nobody here wears a helmet (though increasing numbers of children do), simply because it's not necessary.

Then again, Dutch traffic is designed with cyclists in mind. In other countries, that's not the case. You need to know what your local cycling situation is, and whether that does or doesn't require a helmet.

I haven't biked in the U.S, but from what I've seen, biking in the Netherlands is completely different.

- Cars drive slower. 50 km/h in city zones, many places that are restricted to 30 km/h.

- Our entire infrastructure is adapted to biking. Separate bike lanes, bikes get their own stoplights. We don't need to cut through four lanes of traffic just to make a left turn. We're not part of the normal car traffic on bigger roads.

- Motorists are used to people on bikes. At the very least they don't hate them like they seem to do in the U.S.

- Bikes are often considered equal to or even higher priority than cars. That means bikes get the right of way just as cars do. In many cases cars have to yield to bikes (roundabouts, etc).

There's simply no comparison to be made between the U.S and the Netherlands when it comes to road conditions for bikes. Making any claim that "the Dutch don't wear helmets so I don't need to either" is ridiculous¹

Other than that, when I see U.S bikers in full gear on their bikes, I always have to laugh a little. Spendex shorts, special shoes, helmet, fancy racing bike. I've said this before on HN, but I think they take biking way too serious. And, but this is just a guess, I wouldn't be surprised if fancy bike makes you go a lot faster than the old dinky bikes we ride around on. And speed == danger, which is why your link points out that most Dutch people getting into accidents are wearing helmets: because they're doing recreational biking on fancy fast bikes.

I don't think I'd ride a bike in a major U.S city. If I would, I'd wear a helmet.

¹) If my perception of biking in U.S cities is even slightly correct.

Here, the only cyclists who wear a helmet are tourists (much more likely to get into an accident due to inexperience) and people riding a racing bike for exercise (much more likely to get into an accident due to high speed). Wearing a helmet while riding to work or something similar is completely unnecessary.

I mostly agree with the OP, but there's one difference that might be important: we are raised to ride bicycles at a very young age. When I was in high school I was often trying to ride home without using my hands, through traffic, intersections etc., and I usually succeeded. I don't think I would ever be this comfortable on a bike if I learned riding it at a later age. I did ride a bike in New York a year ago and I didn't feel unsafe at all, but when I see tourists ride bikes through Amsterdam, that's a different story.

For me, the experience of the cyclists is the most important factor for safety, and subsequently if wearing a helmet or not is warranted.

I think the high safety in the Netherlands is mostly due to the driver education (In Holland, spending 40 hours training for your drivers license is not unusual, and you spend a lot of time in the most difficult situations around).

Another reason is that if someone gets killed on an intersection, people will have a good look if the safety in that spot can be improved. So a lot of the most dangerous places have been changed to make it safer.

EDIT: Yup, article confirms it.

In my city, the amount of trips taken by bike is over 26%, with another 12% public transport, and most younger people use bikes several times a day – but most don’t wear helmets, and most never had an issue with it, yet.

"However, if potential cyclists see everyone else in their community wearing helmets while riding a bike, it communicates that biking is a dangerous activity that requires special protective gear."

One of the author's reasons for not wearing a helmet is the image that wearing a helmet projects. The personal decision to wear or not wear a helmet affects the perception of non-cyclists, which in turn affects the number of cyclists. Or at least so goes the theory.

As an aside, since a lot of people seem to not have noticed and assumed otherwise by default: The author is female.

The best use case for bicycle is not a 20-mile ride to work or on muddy trails, but a 1-mile ride to a local coffeeshop. And for a competent cyclist on flat roads in normal weather, a helmet is plain unnecessary.

In concluding that studies about the efficacy of helmet use are unreliable, the author claims "The people who wear helmets are likely more safety-conscious than those who don’t, which makes comparing the two groups very difficult and will make it appear that helmets are more protective than they actually are."

But then, only a few sentences later, the author's agenda shifts to arguing that wearing a helmet causes other drivers to incorrectly conclude you are a safer cyclist and give you less space: "Just because someone wears a helmet doesn’t mean they’re a safer cyclist. It seems like a lot of people use helmet use as a proxy for caring about safety, and that’s just not true."

I can't see how both of these things could be true. Either the studies are not confounded as the author claims, or drivers giving cyclists less space is not the problem he thinks it is because those cyclists are actually safer cyclists. This is not to say that one or both of these arguments are totally incorrect -- there is probably a grain of truth to both of them -- but I suspect at least one of these claims is exaggerated somewhat.

If the author's argument were that localities should not mandate helmet use, I think I would agree. But it wouldn't be because of his tendentious arguments about helmet-wearing signalling that cycling is dangerous, or that drivers take more risks around helmeted cyclists. It is very very hard to believe that either of these dynamics, if they exist at all, outweigh the undisputed benefit of wearing a helmet in preventing serious head injuries. Rather, I think localities shouldn't mandate helmet use simply because helmets discourage cycling and, on balance, cycling is a very safe activity with or without a helmet, and its social benefits outweigh the risks of cycling without a helmet. (An argument which, to be fair, the author also makes.)

It does, indirectly (you may think that more people biking will make you safer in the long run for example).

"If the styrofoam does not compress, it cannot reduce linear acceleration of the brain. The most protection that it can give to the wearer is to prevent focal damage of the skull and prevent minor wounds to the scalp. It is not likely to prevent serious brain injury.

This helmet has split along the ventilation slots, which is common. However, the thickness of the styrofoam has not been compressed. It most likely gave no more than superficial protection.

Some dissipation of impact force might occur from the action of a helmet breaking, but in most cases this is likely to be small. Helmet standards require the foam to start to compress at a level of force less than that which might be expected to lead to brain injury. While it is known that many helmets do not actually meet the standards to which they are supposed to be accredited (BHRF, 1081), it follows that if the styrofoam does not compress at all, the direct linear force on the helmet was minimal and it's quite possible that the cyclist would not have received any injury if the helmet had not been worn.

Most helmets now have a plastic skin over the foam which provides some structural integrity while the foam is being crushed [1]. But you are correct, the helmet only works because the kinetic energy is being absorbed by a material whose composition (closed cells) will naturally break apart into smaller pieces when enough kinetic energy is applied.

[1] http://www.bhsi.org/general.htm

That's the reason, why after a crash the helmet should be replaced, whether there can be seen damages or not (the shell internally breaks when it absorbs energy this way, but this can hardly be seen (except when, say, you use X-ray analysis or something similar).

If the author is claiming that once it's compressed it won't be as good next time, then that's insane - helmets aren't supposed to be re-used after accidents (whether bike, motorbike, or car racing - I've had to sadly replace my motor racing helmet after an incident, and it's a lot more than buying a new bike lid - but you still do it without flinching because it's your brain on the line here).

However, cyclists get regularly shamed for not wearing a helmet. Where's the shame for the lack of complete streets traffic planning? The shame for drivers speeding and running red lights all the time?

You might as well have just said "I'm not listening to that gosh darn evolution nonsense".