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I see tons of people (other than fathers with their kids) riding without helmets.
I rarely see them.
If you do see them, they (adult rec cyclist, kid cyclist) really stand out.
If he's an adult rec cyclist, he's probably 45 or older and is set in his 1980s ways of not wearing a helmet. He may even have wear a mullet. If he's a kid cyclist, he comes from a single parent household.
Rode to work without a helmet today. I'm not a father and I'm under 45 :-) . Usually when I ride for fun, I wear a helmet, but sometimes I forget, and on a warm day it feels so nice not to have it.
Just a little devil advocating here, but then why so many bikers claim that helmets really don't do that much positive, nor so many states do not require such to be worn?
Mostly because some of the statistics used to justify mandatory helmet laws are dubious. It is difficult, if not impossible in some cases, to definitively say when a helmet prevented a serious head injury and when it did not. There is also a tendency to overstate the effectiveness of helmets in certain situations. Helmets are great tools. If you want to wear them, you should. I fall into the category of a more serious recreational cyclist. I put in 200 or so miles last week. I wore my helmet every time. I wear it 99% of the time. The week before that, there was a day when it was particularly hot that I left it at home. Should I be required to wear a lid, as a grown man? No, I don't think so, but I'd never try and tell someone not to wear one. About the limitations, I think everyone should have an understanding of how most cycling accidents occur. They are usually at lower speeds, in cities. Helmets are very effective in these situations. There is no question that helmets have prevented thousands of potentially serious head injuries in these cases. On the other hand, it's important to understand when that helmet is not going to protect you. When I'm out on the road, cars are always a ready threat in my mind. I ride a lot of county highways where folks drive 60 mph. A helmet will do me absolutely no good in such a collision. I will be dead. The purpose of a helmet on those rides are if I go down myself on a corner or run into an animal. For that matter, I'm highly suspicious of the protective ability of current helmets if I go down hard at 40-45 mph on a descent down a hill.
I'm merely repeating the words of someone else, but let me just say that helmets are tools, great tools. I make use of them most of the time, but there are times I do not. My fear with a cycling culture that takes it as sacrosanct that helmets must be worn at all times is that it will keep people who would otherwise ride a bike from doing it. I'm most concerned about kids. When I was 12 or 13, if my folks had made me wear a helmet to go down the block, my riding days would have been over. They generally look dorky and they're hot. Mostly, they look dorky. We have enough kids not exercising. I would also fear the same thing happening with adults if we mandated that everyone wear a helmet whenever on a bike. Let me just state this: Riding a bike without a helmet is still a comparatively safe activity compared to many other, more common behaviors in a typical day. If you sometimes take a two-lane highway when you could have gone a little bit out of your way and taken a four-lane, you're putting yourself and your passengers in more danger than in riding your bike without a helmet. And that's kind of my problem with the folks who border on being zealots on the helmet issue: They ignore the multitude of far more dangerous behaviors in which we engage, and become focused on this one. If the choice is between my kid riding his bike around the block without a helmet vs. putting on a helmet at all times and then giving up bike rides, I will side with riding the bike without a helmet.
Finally, I'm essentially "pro-choice" on this issue. If someone were to demonstrate that the costs of not wearing helmets was interfering with the well-being of great numbers of people, and the externalities were sufficiently large, I would probably change my mind. I'm not seeing that and I think we can allow grown men and women to make this decision for themselves.
If you do see them, they (adult rec cyclist, kid cyclist) really stand out.
If he's an adult rec cyclist, he's probably 45 or older and is set in his 1980s ways of not wearing a helmet. He may even have wear a mullet. If he's a kid cyclist, he comes from a single parent household.
I ride in many different environments - rural roads, burbs (the worst), congested city. I used to race and am now a recreational rider but still put it about 5k miles/yr., which isn't a ton but I get around. When I was competitive I rode more than 5K and in a few different States, not that I was a Pro but I liked it enough and was OK enough at it to justify the travel. Anywhoo, I've seen all types of people on all types of bikes in all types of situations without helmets, including racers out on a spin with some teamates or friends. I'm not saying it's more common than not but I've seen it plenty of times. And this is in the USA, let's not forget that there is a much much bigger cyclig community in the European lands, and most of them don't wear helmets.
I now live in Boston and see many people with no helmets. Many of them are young adults, students. And they ain't idiots either. I ride by Boston U every day, twice a day on my commute to and from work. I ride kind of by MIT (MIT is just across the Charles River on the Cambridge side of the path I ride) but there see many MIT students with no helmet, I also ride by Harvard a few times a week and...you guessed it, many of them with no hlemet. There is Boston College as well that I ride by often and same thign applies. And let's not forget all the professionals I see commuting to work with no helmets. Helmets in the USA are definitely more popular than in Europe (there is much more of a stigma here) but I'll see people from many backgrounds with no helmet, it's not terribly uncommon (I would say maybe 20% aren't wearing a helmet).
Looks like you caught a rooster under there and he's trying desperately to get out.
It was time to get a haircut.
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