Lawyers are a highly educated bunch – right? I mean, when they make a statement of law they know what they are talking about (goes the common wisdom). So boy was I excited when I read the following, written by a Nebraska Attorney:

Bicyclists always have the right of way […in Bellevue, Nebraska]

Really? Someone from Nebraska – tell me it’s true!

In my time writing for JustAnotherCyclist and VeloReviews, I’ve become accustomed to half-truths, or even complete falsehoods, being included in media publications on cycling. I find them and mentally pick apart these articles. I mean, after all it allows me to go through the rest of my day feeling all superior about myself. This guy is a lawyer after all – defending against verbal assaults in his job. So let’s take a look at the article he posted on a media website. The article starts out well enough:

In today’s fitness-centered world, bicycling has become a popular mode of travel and keeping fit.   More and more Americans are relying on two-wheeled transportation to get them to and from work, as well as replacing gym memberships for many avid cyclists.

However, that is immediately followed by the oh-so-common statement:

Cycling brings with it risks of injury that may be different than those in standard automobiles, but certainly no less serious.

Cue eye roll. What is it about American society that is so hung up on safety in completely unbalanced ways? Why do we hype the dangers of some things (like cycling) while intentionally downplaying the dangers of other things (like driving a car on the freeway.) We cover some accidents (plane crashes) on every single channel, while other accidents (like the thousands killed in auto collisions every year) go without even a mention?

I’m poking a little fun at Mr Kelley here for sure. But his article actually captures almost exactly the common wisdom of our society regarding cycling. He talks about the health benefits of cycling quite a bit. In fact, most would probably classify his piece as a “pro-cycling” article. But then he counters that by scaring the hell out of everyone with how dangerous cycling is. Few would even question me if I hit 75 MPH in a 65 MPH zone on the freeway. But ride without a helmet on my bike and oh boy am I taking my life into my own hands there.

I’m guessing that the folks writing these types of pieces don’t even realize the impact they can have. Let’s take a look at his final paragraph:

When you are traveling on the main roads, it is a good idea to avoid wearing earphones and concentrate on the sounds of the road.  Being observant as a cyclist can reduce your risk of injury.  Be sure to use your hand signals when making turns or stopping and remember to wear reflective gear.  Pay attention to traffic control measures and travel at safe speeds for the conditions you are experiencing.  Know the bicycle routes that provide the most visibility and always make sure your bicycle has working equipment and can be easily seen at night.  It is also important to inform loved ones of which routes you are taking and what time you expect to be back so they know where to look if you don’t return on time.  Ultimately, bicycling has become a safe and effective mode of transportation in the metropolitan area, as well as being a great step towards physical fitness! [embedded links his]

I agree with the first sentence. And the last statement I of course agree with. But what may be non-obvious is everything in between. Of course we want people to be safe, but every sentence in that article has an implicit declaration of a hazard that you will encounter if you ride a bike. Instead of providing a list of things to do to keep you happy, the message conveyed is really a list of things that are going to get you maimed or killed if you ride a bike. I fear THAT is the message that many non-cyclists will take from postings like this.

We need to work to reduce the presumption of risk in cycling if we are to succeed in getting more people on bikes. As I have said before, please PLEASE stop the fear mongering. We do it to ourselves as a group. We continue to use the dangers of cycling to motivate lawmakers and city planners to give us infrastructure. Lots of things in life are dangerous. However, compared to most of the things we do in life cycling is actually quite safe. And as a good doctor I know said, not-cycling is quite possibly a whole lot more dangerous than cycling.

I was walking around the city the other day, headphones on, rocking out. I’d just crossed the street, and took a step to the left off of the curb, getting ready to turn left and immediately cross another street. I heard a squeal (which in retrospect was the sound of bike brakes on the rims) and felt a thud against my left shoulder. Before I knew what was happening, I saw a guy smack onto the pavement in front of me. I’d just blindly walked in front of a cyclist riding in the road next to the curb, knocking him to the ground.

The guy popped up – and I could immediately see the blood starting to ooze out of the scrapes across his left arm. He glared right in my face and said “Maybe if you knew how dangerous it is on the streets already you could pull your head out of your ass and watch where you’re going.”

My immediate reaction was “Me? What if *I* knew how dangerous it is on the streets? Do you know who I am???“

OK. So in actuality the story above is entirely fictitious. I’ve never actually walked out in front of a cyclist on the streets. However, early today I did almost do that. Or rather, I was preparing to turn left, looked and was surprised to realize how close to the street I was, and an actual, flesh and blood, non-imaginary cyclist that was riding in traffic. That’s when it dawned on me how amazingly easy it is to have a momentary lapse in attention and get yourself in that situation. I then imagined the scenario described above as I stood there waiting for the cross signal to turn.

It was something of a revelation.

You see, I can see me reacting exactly as my imagined cyclist above did. I could see me chewing the guy out for stepping in front of me and knocking me over. And I could see me doing that, all the while assuming that the guy was just a “stupid pedestrian that had no idea about bikes, or riding in traffic, or the dangers.” And that guy losing his attention for just a moment could be a pro cyclist, or the president of the League of American Dudes that Ride Bikes, or the president of Trek Bicycles, or whatever. All I would think in that moment of rage and frustration was that he knocked me over, therefore he was my enemy, and by extension the enemy of cyclists everywhere. (Oh c’mon. Before you go labeling me an egotistical prick, really really think how you would react in the same situation.)

The revelation for me was how often we, as cyclists, tend to look at ourselves as vulnerable – as victims on the road. But is this accurate? I’ve ridden in traffic for a while now and I’ve only made contact with a car in a way that was a surprise once. All of my accidents that resulted in broken bones or scraped flesh were a result of road conditions, hazards, or (yes) my momentary laps of attention while I was on the bike. I’ve drawn more blood working on my bikes than I have riding them.

A lot of the effort to push for safer cycling infrastructure has an unfortunate side effect – it makes cycling look dangerous to the population at large. But is it really? Well, according to data shared on helmets.org, in 2010 616 people were killed in cycling accidents. Obviously there is no denying the impact those unfortunate deaths had on the people that knew them. Each of those 616 cyclists were someone’s riding buddy, mother or father, son or daughter. But if you compare that number to the deaths of people walking on our sidewalks, or riding in cars on our highways, it is statistically almost nothing. According to the 2010 US Census, there were 308,745,538 people living in the United States at that time. That means less than one out of every 500 thousand people were killed in a cycling related accident.

Since I already likely pissed off half of my readers with my “stop talking about helmets” rants, I might as well piss off the other half with this statement:

I really really wish bicycle advocacy groups would stop using the danger of death and injury to cyclists as a tool in their arsenal to effect change.

There have been so many relatively fit, active and receptive folks that I’ve talked to about dropping the car and cycling to work that cite safety as their primary reason for not riding. They’re convinced that if they start cycling on a daily basis that eventually they will get run over by a car. That’s simply not true, and the numbers cited above speak to that. In addition, if places like those glorious northern european cycling utopias have taught us anything, it is that more cycling can actually (and counter-intuitively) result in less cycling related deaths instead of more.

Believe me – I’ve done my fair share of feeling like a victim while I ride on the road. However, the more I reflect and look on that objectively instead of emotionally, the more I realize that it simply isn’t the case. Sure, I’ve been told to get out of the road, to put on a helmet, to get the hell out of the way by motorists. But that is a social, human problem – not a safety problem.

I feel safer on my bike these days then I do when I drive my car. Yes – I even feel safer when I’m travelling along side or amongst all those SUVs that the common wisdom would tell me are trying to mow me down on a moment’s notice.

Knock off the fear mongering folks. If you truly want to get more people out riding bikes (and thus voting for things that support cycling) stop scaring the hell out of them and instead show them how safe it is – even with the crappy cycling infrastructure we have in most places in the US.

I was leaving work – late – the other night in what seemed a normal manner. It was dry and clear, but dark as I’d stayed at work solving a problem (funny how you can be most productive in an office environment when 80% of the rest of the company has already left.) I grabbed my bike off the rack, flicked on the lights (they are nice and bright) and roll out the door.

About halfway home from the office I’ve got this strange feeling something isn’t right. I’m riding on lit streets, but on a whim I put my hand in front of the Planet Bike Blaze 1/2w Headlight mounted on my handlebars. It barely illuminates my palm at 4 inches.  Damn. Dead batteries. While I’m at it I stop and check the tail light. Completely dead. I try to turn it on. Dim light then nothing. Damn. More dead batteries.

Not to worry – I have spares in my backpack.  Hmmm….. my backpack. That would be helpful if I actually had my backpack instead of my messenger bag. Which also means I don’t have a lock for my bike. I’m disinclined to leave my bike sitting outside a gas station store unlocked while I grab batteries, and since I’m about half way home anyhow I decided to just pedal on and get fresh batteries at home.

As I head out, knowing I don’t have any lights seems to created a heightened state of awareness. I look both ways at intersections – about 5 times. I find myself looking over my shoulder a lot more. My hearing seems more acute – I’m conscious of hearing cars approaching from side streets. But then I remember something that I said myself, in a different context, that makes me immediately feel like hypocrite:

If you find yourself riding differently when you are not wearing a helmet then when you are, then you are doing something wrong. If you are more careful, or imagine that you would be, when you are riding without a helmet then you are putting far too much stock in the idea that the helmet will protect you. You should ride with just as much care regardless of what you have strapped on your head. Not only are helmets not shown to offer any real protection statistically, that plastic hat isn’t going to provide any protection against the more common injuries in bike crashes – road rash, broken collar bones, wrists and ribs. Don’t assume your safety equipment will protect you – always operate as if you have no safety equipment. To do otherwise is folly.

At the time I was talking more about bicycle helmets. But here I was, relying on my safety equipment. My 1/2w headlight doesn’t really provide any significant illumination of the rode in front of me as I pedal along at 15-20 MPH. It is there more to make me more visible than to make the road more visible to me.

So why was I riding differently now that I was conscious I didn’t have my bike lights. Why was I paying more attention to the road than the night before when my lights and been (presumably) shining brightly?

Well, frankly, because I was doing the exact same thing I’d advised others not to in my quote above. I was presuming that my safety equipment would protect me in a way that allowed me to relax – lower my defenses slightly.

Shame on me. I’m glad my batteries died that night. I reminded me not to let my awareness dim like my lights did – ever…

I’ve been doing a fence-straddling maneuver here at JustAnotherCyclist regarding the issue of bicycle helmets.  Again I will reiterate that I do not encourage folks to go about without a helmet.  Nor do I encourage you to ride with one.  It is entirely your choice (except for areas where specific laws apply.)  My frustration comes entirely from the dogmatic nonsense that the issue seems to instill in some folks.

I first started to become openly frustrated with the whole helmet situation when I was in the hospital for a broken collar bone due to a bike crash.  I distinctly recall one of the ER nurses asking me “Were you wearing a helmet?” I simply answered the question at first, but then I started to think a little more critically about the question.Does it actually matter, from the perspective of a health care provider, if I was wearing a helmet or not?  Will the hospital staff perhaps check for head injuries more diligently if they know that I was not wearing a helmet at the time of the crash?  Would I perhaps have been better served medically by answering ‘no’ to the question?

The same issue comes up in the mainstream media.  All too often a car driving at speeds where the helmet would do absolutely nothing hits and kills a cyclist, and the media reports that the rider “wasn’t wearing a helmet,” continuing to perpetuate this exaggerated belief in the helmet’s protective merits.

However, it was actually a comment about one of my own posts here at VeloReviews/JustAnotherCyclist that finally made me decide – yup, I hate helmets.  The article (which, incidentally, has somehow become my most popular post to date) actually had nothing to do with helmets.  It really had nothing to do with bicycle safety at all.  It was mostly about cities forcing cyclists into bike lanes.  The first video from that post featured a guy getting a ticket for riding outside of the bike lane from a NYPD officer.  He then went on – with what would seem a comedic approach – to film himself riding in the bike lane, intentionally crashing into the many obstacles that an urban cyclist will often find in those narrow patches of pavement.  I took the entire effort to be a “the law is silly, refund my fine.”

But this was a comment that I got:

You’re right.  Because he wasn’t wearing a helmet in his video, his point is invalidated.

Wait – what?  It is probably important to understand the context – the comment the above was a response to:

Did Mr Neistat have a helmet on at any point during his little movie?  I get the impression that he cares more about his precious $50 than he does about really being safe.  Nice try tho.

This is infuriating to me.  There are so many aspects of being safe while riding – but yet we (especially in the US it seems) hold the mighty helmet as the one and only idol of bicycling safety.  I do not choose the term ‘idol’ loosely there.  The helmet really does seem to have reached a religious significance to some.

Come on folks.  We need to think about these things objectively.  There is a whole slew of information available for the person willing to read and really understand what is going on.  The surprising fact to many is that much of that evidence actually seems to indicate there may in fact be greater risk to those wearing helmets.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t actually matter so much if you are chose to wear a helmet or not to every other member of the planet.  Or rather – it shouldn’t matter.  Helmets are a convenient distraction from the real – the only – safety issue: minimizing crashes in the first place.  If we are going to immediately invalidate folks opinions unless they drink the Kool Aid and put on a plastic hat, we are not going to get very far at all.

I’ve said it many many times, I’m neither pro- nor anti- helmet.  My statements on the subject have been very accurately described by others as ambivalent.

I may, however, be changing my mind.  And you, dear reader, get to come along for the ride.

So to stop skirting the issue, I’ll state my opinion, as it exists today:

I don’t really mind wearing a helmet, but I really don’t think they do squat to protect me.  The risks the helmet protect me from are the same risks I experience when walking down the street.  I’m just as comfortable riding my bike without a helmet as I am walking across my living room without a helmet.

And that is when the “Say what” and “this guy’s nuts” comments come on.  “Clearly you’re safer with a helmet on.   It’s obvious.  Anyone who thinks otherwise is a moron,” is another possible retort to my sentiment.

In truth, bicycle helmets are designed for low speed impacts only.  Bob Mionske also talked about this in his recent article for Bicycling:

The fact is, many cyclists wear helmets because they perceive that any potential for increased discomfort is outweighed by the safety benefits gained. But if safety standards only require that helmets withstand a low-speed impact, are there really safety benefits to wearing a helmet? Perhaps surprisingly, the answer is a qualified yes. In a low-speed fall from your bike, a bicycle helmet may protect you from sustaining a head injury, and considering the fact that the majority of bicycle accidents are solo crashes, helmet impact standards do address the types of impacts associated with the majority of bicycle accidents. From that perspective, there is some safety benefit to be derived from wearing a bicycle helmet.

The problem, however, is that nobody straps on a helmet because they’re afraid that they might have a low-speed solo fall from their bike. Nobody driving by a cyclist who is riding sans headgear yells “wear a helmet” because they’re afraid that cyclist might have a low-speed solo crash. Nobody passes mandatory helmet laws because they want to protect cyclists from themselves. No, the reason helmet use is considered de rigeur is because people believe that a helmet will protect the cyclist from the head injuries associated with the high-speed impact of a collision with an automobile.

In other words, there is a disconnect between what helmets actually can do, and what most people think helmets should do.

And then we come to where a great many helmet discussions end.  The inevitable stalemate of “Well, we can argue about how much they help.  But in the end they can’t hurt anything, so we’re better safe than sorry.”

Not so fast…

There actually is the potential for harm from all of this pro-helmet advocacy, and the particular harm I want to discuss here is one of PR more than anything.  Encouraging folks to wear helmets on their bikes has an underlying implication – and that message is that bikes are inherently dangerous. I’m still working on the research to discuss this particular implication intelligently and rationally.  I’d like to really understand how, statistically, the risks of riding a bike compare to driving a car or walking.  But this idea of the inherent danger of cycling can do us no good in encouraging folks to get out and ride. Mikael Colville-Andersen talked about this very subject at length recently.

The other problem is that this overwhelming public opinion provides an impression of fault should a rider not wearing a helmet get into an accident and injured or killed.  I’m sure you’ve all seen the stories online or in newspapers that read like:

Cyclist killed in collision at dangerous intersection when a motorist, traveling at 55 mph in a 35 mph zone, failed to stop at a stop sign.  The cyclist was transported to a near by hospital where he later died of head trauma.  The cyclist was not wearing a helmet at the time.

That last statement almost implies that the fact that the motorist was speeding or blew a stop sign is irrelevant compared to the “reckless behavior” of the non-helmet wearing cyclist.  The fact that a helmet is not even designed to provide protection in a situation such as this is, apparently, lost on many a reporter and reader.  That one little sentence has shifted at least part of the blame from the reckless driver and landed it squarely “on the head” of our cyclist.

Unfortunately, the “We should all wear helmets” camp has it really easy.  Wearing a helmet while you ride just seems so obvious to so many folks.  Statements like “Riding a bike without a helmet significantly increases the risk of brain injury if you get into an accident” just seem right for a lot of people, and thus data isn’t necessary in their minds.  It makes it very difficult to have rational, sane and controlled dialog if you particular view happens to lean to the contrary of popular opinion.

And I must say that my opinion is starting to lean that way.

This time around

Warning – Just Another Cyclist is about to jump into the cycling helmet debate.  If you’ve had about all you can stand of the endless arguing on this issue (and who can blame you really?) then perhaps you’ll find one of my other articles more to your taste.

I also want to point out that you will likely not walk away with a clear impression that I’m on one side of the issue or the other.  I’m decidedly neither pro nor anti helmet.  I wear a helmet when I ride if I feel like it.  I generally always wear it on group rides more out of peer pressure (everybody’s wearing one!) or habit than anything else.  I almost always wear gloves when I ride to protect my hands if (or should I say when) I happen to hit the pavement, and the helmet is kinda in the same category.  On the other hand, I do not ride any differently if I don’t have my helmet on than when I do.

The main reason for my indecision is that I’ve not seen anything that would make me think that one side of the argument or the other is correct.  I decided to do a little more digging into the issue and see what I could come up with.

I started this exercise by doing an online survey to try and get a sense of what my readers and associates actually think about helmets.  If you are the data-hungry type, ou can read the raw results of the September 2010 Bicycle Helmet Survey here in pdf format.  The helmet debate is like many things in human society – you tend to only hear the opinions of the folks on the far extremes of either side of the debate.  I wanted to know what “average folk” thought.  The results were some questions posed to readers.

So let us begin our look at the issue.   The results of the survey are probably no surprise to anyone living and riding a bike in the United States.  The overwhelming majority – over 80% of respondents – are wearing their helmets pretty much all the time.  It is interesting to note that 89.4% feel that bike helmets make them safer, while slightly less (80.9%) feel that a bike helmet will actually protect them in a crash.  There was also a small but significant percentage (14.9%) that were undecided on the protection offered by a helmet in the event of a crash.

I’m sure there are some of you that are surprised that only about 80% seem to think a helmet will protect them.  “Isn’t it obvious that a helmet would protect you in a crash?” you may ask.  “That’s just common sense!” Well in fact, from a purely objective standpoint, it is not so obvious.  Wearing a helmet is one of those things that just feels intuitively like the right answer.  If I put something on my head, then my head is protected if I smack into something.  It is, in fact, apparent that helmets can help from things like skull lacerations – nicks and cuts in the skin when you bump your head into a tree branch, or another bike, or the road.  But that is generally not what helmets are supposed to protect us against.  Rather, helmets are perceived to help protect from catastrophic injuries – concussions, skull fractures and the like.  And here is where the issue gets decisive: there actually is absolutely no evidence that a helmet provides any meaningful protection from concussions or skull fractures. In fact there is some evidence to the contrary – that perhaps wearing a helmet makes you actually more likely to sustain a significant head injury.  But before we get into the details of making things potentially more dangerous, lets dive a little more into the protection factor.

Indeed, regarding concussions specifically, an article published by the Bicycle Helmet Saftey Institute (BHSI) states:

The vast majority of consumers assume that a helmet should prevent concussion in even the heaviest hits, and that if the helmet protects against severe blows it must surely be easily protective in lesser ones. But in fact the helmets built to our standards are in many cases too hard to protect against a mild concussion in either a low speed hit where foam fails to crush or a much harder hit where clinically evident permanent injury is avoided, but a lesser concussion still results even though the helmet has not crushed completely and bottomed out.

For some the idea of needing a “softer” helmet may seem counter intuitive.  In the context of concussions, though, it is absolutely critical.  To understand concussions, let’s consider what happens to our bodies in an automobile crash.  Most of us have probably seen the slow-motion crash test dummy videos of car crash tests, so you’ll understand how, when the car stops suddenly due to striking something, the driver can continue forward and slam into the dash board.  This is why seatbelts are effective – they help restrain the driver and reduce the force with which the strike other objects in the car.  It is also why cars are now constructed with crumble zones – areas of the chassis of the car that are specifically designed to absorb the energy of the moving car and slow the deceleration of a vehicle when it hits another object.

A concussion occurs when our brain impacts the inside of our skull due to the same mechanics.  In other words, using our car and driver example above, the car is our skull and the driver is our brain.  To reduce or eliminate concussion injuries, we need to prevent the brain from slamming against the inside of our skulls when our skulls unfortunately slam into something else at high speed.  Since we obviously can not strap our brains in with a seatbelt, we are left with the option of creating a “crumple zone” around our skull to absorb some of the impact.  Helmets theoretically provide that crumple zone for us.

In my survey, just over half of the respondents agreed with the statement “Helmets clearly protect you in a crash”, while only a single respondent agreed with the statement “There is no evidence that helmets will protect you in a crash.”  The citation above (from BHSI) was from a report targeting making helmets safer, and itself raised questions about the effectiveness of helmets as the standards currently dictate their design.  The fact that just less than half of respondents to the JustAnotherCyclist survey did not select “Helmets clearly protect you…” would seem to indicate a general ambiguity about what, if any, protection is provided among the survey takers as well.

This kind of gets us to the issue – the actual, subjective data is lacking.  Further more, that lack of data combined with human behavior naturally skews our impressions in one direction, in favor of helmets.  Consider the situation where a cyclist gets critically injured or even killed and isn’t wearing a helmet at the time.  It is very easy to claim “If only he’d been wearing a helmet…”  Furthermore, when a serious head injury happens and the cyclist was wearing a helmet, the natural inclination is to think “The helmet saved her life.  Imagine what would have happened if she hadn’t been wearing it…”

You see, we can’t derive real, actual data from specific crashes because we can’t test both sides of the hypothesis.  We can’t see the outcome of a crash without a helmet, and then take the cyclist, put a helmet on them and completely recreate the same exact crash and compare the results.  What we can do, however, is look at overall statistics and see if the rate of serious head injuries among cyclists is higher in areas where helmets are either mandated by law, or commonly used by convention.

And guess what – on the surface helmet usage seems to actually increase your liklihood of a head injury -purely by the numbers.  The Netherlands is often used in these comparisons.  They have an extremely high percentage of trips taken by bicycle – the highest in the world.  They also, as a cultural norm, pretty much never wear helmets.  In contrast, the United States has a much lower percentage of trips taken by bike, with almost ubiquitous helmet usage.  In stark contrast to what common sense might tell us, the United States has a significantly higher percentage of head injuries per cyclist than the Netherlands.  We must also take into account, however, the environment of each country.  In a country where bicycles are the predominate form of transportation, it is possible that folks are just better and safer riders.  It is possible that cars are more aware of cyclists and don’t hit them as much.  It is also entirely possible that the Netherlands has more “casual” cycling – i.e. cycling at slow speeds – and thus has an overall reduced risk of serious head injury.  Or it could just be that helmets somehow elevate our risk of head injuries.

Further muddying the waters are studies that demonstrate the opposite.  For example, you can find the following chart in a 2008 publication of the Insurance Institute for Highway Saftey

Bicyclist deaths by helmet use, 1998-2008
Year	No helmet use		Helmet use		Total*
	Num	%	Num	%	Num
1998	741	98	16	2	757
1999	698	93	42	6	750
2000	622	90	50	7	689
2001	616	84	60	8	729
2002	589	89	54	8	663
2003	535	85	58	9	626
2004	602	83	87	12	722
2005	676	86	77	10	784
2006	730	95	37	5	769
2007	646	92	50	7	699
2008	653	91	58	8	714
*Total includes other and/or unknowns

And there is what is often cited as the most definitive study, A case-control study of the effectiveness of bicycle safety helmets. (Thompson RS, Rivara FP, Thompson DC.)  This study claims as much as an 85% reduction in head injuries by wearing a helmet.  The study does have its detractors, however.  It was at least partially funded by a helmet manufacturer (Snell) which presents a potential conflict of interests.  For example, the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation goes into some details in their counterargument to the study.

At this point – let’s take a leap and conceed that “OK – so we don’t have any idea if helmets help or not.  Clearly they can not hurt, right?”

Wrong.  Or at least according to Dr. Ian Walker.  His research  – conducted in the UK in 2006 – seems to indicated that motorists may actually drive closer to cyclists wearing helmets compared to non-helmeted cyclists.  Or, said another way, there may actually be more likelihood of a collision with a motor vehicle when you are wearing your helmet than when you are not.  There is also an often cited human behavior where, on the whole, folks are more apt to engage in risky behavior when using safety equipment than when not.  There was a question in the JustAnotherCyclist study that was intended to capture this latter point explicitly – and in fact 17.9% selected the statement “I change my riding (slower, different routes) if I don’t have my helmet” as a statement that fit them.  This would seem to agree with the idea that people do not necessarily show the same level of caution when they use safety equipment (such as helmets), presumably assuming that the safety equipment mitigates the increased risk.

I invite you to look over the data – from the JustAnotherCyclist survey and other sources – and draw your own conclusions.  I will not put forth a particular opinion one way or the other.  I believe that, in the lack of subjective data supporting either position, wearing a helmet or not is an entirely personal choice.

I do, however, encourage tolerance and acceptance in the cycling community.  Stop the peer pressure and divisive comments between wearers and non-wearers.  Instead, let’s all unite to help make cycling safer over all.  Avoiding a crash entirely is undeniably more effective at prevent injury than any safety equipment imaginable.  Let’s work to make the roads safer for all non-auto users and not alienate cyclists into “helmet” and “no-helmet” camps.  Us cyclists already spend too much time dividing ourselves up into subgroups.  Let’s leave this debate to the scientific community to sort out and just keep pedaling, eh?