You don't have to "pretend" that helmets save lives. Helmets save lives and you should wear one every time you ride your bike.

Your argument that a helmet isn't necessary because if you get hit by a car it won't help is as logical as arguing that you shouldn't wear seatbelts since if a semi truck runs over your car the seat belt won't do any good. A helmet may not save you every time you are hit by a car, but if it does it has done its job. I have been hit by motorists twice in my twenty five years of cycling and both times the helmet saved my life. The emergency room doctors told me so.

There are situations that are beyond the boundaries that safety equipment can protect us but that doesn't mean their use is futile. There is no silver bullet, only layers of protection. A bulletproof vest won't stop every bullet, but police wear them because in the two or three times in the officer's career where they might be shot at it could save the wearer's life. Helmets do a very good job of reducing the odds of serious injury and that is worth their use.

To try and put the blame on the government for not providing enough bike trails is short sighted and selfish. Even if there were extensive cycle trails, odds are they would cross roads regularly and the danger of being run over would not be removed. Additionally, the danger of falling off of your bike would not be removed.

Slow moving accidents where the cyclist falls head first to the pavement are the most dangerous accidents in terms of head injuries. These accidents generally do not involve cars. They are basically the equivalent of dropping a pumpkin (your head) to the pavement from about five feet up. These types of accidents happen frequently on bike paths at slow speeds where sliding doesn't occur but rather result in a violent drop to the pavement.

Bicycle paths are statistically more dangerous than riding in traffic since they tend to be poorly designed for high speed large volume traffic. Most bike trails are laid out for low speed ambling by architects who don't see a bicycle of a vehicle capable of anything faster than a walking speed. Additionally they are populated by joggers, roller skaters, pedestrians, children and pets. For this reason, most jurisdictions give cyclists the option to not use a bike path.

The reason more cyclists are injured in traffic is because most cyclist fail to comprehend the basic value of following the traffic laws. Have you ever ignored a stop sign or rolled through a red light while cycling? Ever pass a motorist in their blind spot on the right to do this? Ever ride on the sidewalk or against the flow of traffic? Why do cyclist feel they are immune from traffic laws and then whine when they get hit blowing a stop sign? Rather than building bike trails they should just start enforcing the traffic laws, which last time I checked apply to cyclists.

Maybe governments shouldn't require helmets. It would probably improve the evolution of intelligent humans by weeding out the weak people who are more concerned about "hat hair" than a functioning brain. But the fact remains that a large number of those brain damaged from cycling without a helmet will not be killed but rather will become wards of the state where they will live out their lives drooling incoherently in state funded long term care facilities.

Safety standards are not necessarily evidence of a nanny state but rather the basis of a society and examples of how we are all looking out for each other and trying to share the same resources. They are far sighted measures to promote social well being. But maybe you'd prefer to live in a world where no one vaccinated their kids, everyone drove whatever and however they wanted and concepts such as socialized medicine and security were non existent. To me it sounds like Potterville from "It's a Wonderful Life".

I mean if you take your anti-nanny state argument seriously, why the heck should I not run your skinny ass off of the road with my big SUV? You're in MY way. Get a car loser. Buck up and stop whining for a nanny state to make you special little roads so you can ride your ill fitting bicycle with the squeaky chain to your granola hang out where you whine about the government when it suits you. Why should my tax dollars pay for you to ride a bike on a separate road when you won't even take basic safety precautions to avoid becoming a vegetable ward of the state sucking even more of my tax dollars? Face it, me running you over and killing you is saving tax money for more important things like wars to get more oil.

Get with the program. If your hairstyle is more important to you: get a car or ride the bus. It's that simple.

Yes, helmets do reduce the risk of injury *if* you get into an accident. That's undeniable. However, they may increase the risk of getting into that accident in the first place, not just because of risk compensation on the cyclist's part, but because other drivers (whom you cannot control) have been shown to exercise less caution around cyclists with helmets (see the research of Dr. Ian Walker).

Second, as Ms. Flint pointed out, wearing helmets would also reduce the risk of head injury from car crashes, getting hit crossing the street, etc. and in fact injuries from these form the vast majority of hospital cases. So why not require helmets for these activities as well?

Third, helmet laws perpetuate the notion that cycling is dangerous, and distract from the real solution to bicycle safety: education for both cyclists and motorists. Cyclists need to learn to ride safely (which includes following the traffic laws) and motorists need to learn to treat bicycles as they would any other slow-moving vehicle (because that's the law). Investing money and effort into this is going to have a far greater impact.

As a closing note, I don't place much value in any of the numbers I've seen thrown around in this debate, because you can find data to support any position. Unsurprisingly, studies funded by bicycle advocacy groups and helmet manufacturers have vastly different conclusions. Many studies fail to distinguish between mountain biking, touring, and transportation cycling. I'm not going to fault anybody for wearing a helmet, but I remain unconvinced of the benefits for day-to-day transportation cycling.

The article makes a few very valid points. In deciding whether to encourage helmet use or not, you need to decide 1) what problem are you trying to address and 2) will the proposed solution address the problem and 3) what costs are there associated with the proposed solution.

1) the problem. Fatalities from head injury on a bicycle are not an epidemic. In fact, they are almost entirely comparable with fatalities from head injury while riding in a car, or while walking as a pedestrian (and both are higher than the fatality rate in an airplane). And, the same arguments about injuries could be made about car passengers and drivers. Can you imagine how many MORE lives we could save if everyone in a car had to wear a bicycle helmet?

2) The helmet proponents also claim that the helmets will help prevent a fatality. However, the statistics on the percentage of cyclists who wear helmets and the percentage of killed cyclists who were wearing helmets are not convincing. Most of the evidence comes from Emergency Room studies which have a substantial selection bias.

3) Encouraging the use of a helmet has several costs. First, there is the cost of a helmet. Second, requiring helmet use actively discourages bicycle use. Every mandated helmet law reduces the number of cyclists. In our present day society in which obesity and type II diabetes are at all time highs and exercise is at an all time low, the costs associated with discouraging people from cycling are real and quantifiable (unlike the benefits from requiring helmet use). Now, these costs are absent in the case of wearing bicycle helmets in cars. So why shouldn't car passengers be required to wear bicycle helmets, and bicycle riders not be similarly constrained?

Bike helmets are a simple case of people with good intentions causing more harm than good through over-regulation (at least in the case of adult helmet laws). If you look quite carefully, you will find there actually is evidence that helmets help reduce head injuries in kids. However, the caveat is that they still reduce the use of the bicycle, so the cost must be weighed against the benefit. In adults the cost-benefit is easier - I have thoroughly researched the topic and leave my helmet at home.

I am in my forties and have ridden a bicycle all over the USA my whole life. When I was young there were no bicycle helmets, and there was no epidemic of head injuries. That is not to say no one ever gets hurt - my college roommate was nearly killed cycling. But those events are not common with respect to rate of occurrence per hour of use compared to other common everyday activities like riding in a car.