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What's
wrong with bicycle helmets?
by Michael Bluejay
Many
readers are surprised that I don't make a big deal on this
site of insisting that cyclists wear helmets, especially
since wearing helmets is what most people equate with bike
safety. And in fact that's one reason I
avoid cheerleading for helmets in the first place. The idea
that cyclists should wear helmets is already so much a part
of the collective consciousness that it doesn't make any
difference whether I encourage helmet use or not. So instead
I focus on what people haven't heard elsewhere:
How to ride safely. Let's face it:
nobody is going to wear a helmet just because I say they
should. People will not be motivated to action hearing
something from me that they've already heard a thousand
times before.
But it goes further than that:
Focusing on helmets distracts people from
what's more likely to actually save their lives: Learning
how to ride safely. It's not that I'm against
helmets, I'm against all the attention placed
on helmets at the expense of safe riding skills. Helmets are
not the most important aspect of bike safety. Not by
a long shot.
Unfortuntely, helmets have become a
panacea: Many parents and city & state
governments think they can slap a flimsy piece of styrofoam
on a kid's head and they've done their part to make sure
that kids are safe. But it's actually the opposite. This
approach is akin to outfitting somebody with a flak jacket
and then having them run through a firing range. If you had
to choose between giving a child a helmet or the education
about how to ride safely, you should choose the education
and ditch the helmet every time.
Of course you don't have to choose between one or the
other, but the point is that most people are
choosing, and they're choosing the helmet only. For
example, helmet laws are popping up all over the country,
but how many of those same jurisdictions are mandating
classes in how to ride safely? Almost none. In Adam
Sandler's movie Click, he sends his kids out biking
at night, dutifully decked out with helmets -- but no
lights! That's what the problem is: A misguided focus, a
belief that bike safety begins and ends with putting a
helmet on your head.
Three big problems
with helmets
The main problem with helmets is not with the helmets
themselves, it's with the attitude towards them, the idea
that they're the first and last word in bike safety. If
that's the definition (and that's pretty much how
people view helmets) then there are two big problems with
that:
- A helmet does nothing to prevent a cyclist from
getting hit by a car.
- The effectiveness of helmets in preventing injury is
seriously exaggerated.
At this point helmet supporters are jumping up and down
with rage and reaching for their email (believe me, I hear
from them), so let me be clear about this: Saying that
helmet effectiveness is exaggerated is not the same thing as
saying that helmets are useless. I don't believe that
helmets are useless. I think if you want the maximum
protection possible in a crash you ought to wear one.
But I also believe that if you think a helmet will do as
much to protect you as you probably think it does then
you're kidding yourself.
Helmet use among U.S. cyclists was nearly non-existent
before the 1990's. Nobody wore helmets in the 80's and
before. So what happened when helmet use skyrocketed in the
1990's? Head injuries went down, right?
No, head injuries went up. Let me repeat that:
When helmet use went up, so did head injuries.
There's a big article
about this in the New York Times, showing that head
injuries among cyclists went up 51% in the 1990's as more
and more cyclists started wearing helmets.
I'm not suggesting that helmets caused the head
injuries; there are other plausible explanations for why
head injuries increased (more attention to helmets and less
attention to safe riding skills being one of them). But what
I am saying is that the protective value of helmets is so
small it's hard to measure.
Most of us have heard that "bicycle helmets can
prevent up to 85% of head injuries". Many times the
phrase is printed without the "up to", stating flatly that
bike helmets "prevent 85% of head injuries". Typically, no
source is ever cited for this 85% figure. Everyone believes
it anyway, so who needs a source, right? But where did this
85% figure come from, and is it credible? The answer is that
it came from a flawed 1989 study, and it's probably wildly
inaccurate. The study was roundly criticized in the
Helmet FAQ by the
Ontario Coalition for Better Cycling and by CycleHelmets.org,
which states:
This paper is by far the
most frequently cited research paper in support of the
promotion of cycle helmets. It is referred to by most
other papers on helmets, to the extent that some other
papers, and most helmet promotion policies, rely
fundamentally upon the validity of its
conclusions.
The claims that helmets reduce
head injuries by 85% and brain injuries by 88% come only
from this source, yet are quoted widely as gospel by
people who know nothing more about cycle helmets. The
prospect of achieving such massive reductions in injuries
to cyclists lies at the root of helmet promotion and
mandatory helmet laws around the world.
Those who have taken the trouble
to analyse the paper in detail, however, have found it to
be seriously flawed and its conclusions untenable.
(more...)
They also note that not a single helmeted cyclist
considered in the study was involved a collision
with a motor vehicle!
 CycleHelmets
has other good information, such as the chart at right
showing that countries
with the most helmet use also have the most head
injuries. This is important enough that it bears
repeating: countries with the most helmeted cyclists also
have the highest rate of cycling head injuries. And of
course the converse is true: cycling head injuries are much
lower in countries where cyclists don't wear helmets very
much.
And that brings us to the third problem with helmets:
Helmet-wearing may actually promote injury. A
study at the University of Bath showed that motorists
gave less room when passing helmeted cyclists vs.
unhelmeted ones. The researcher was actually struck twice on
his bicycle when conducting the study, both times while
wearing a helmet.
Another theory is that helmets effectively make the
cyclist's "head" much larger, so with a bigger head a
falling cyclist is much more likely to slam it against the
road or a car (causing traumatic brain injury because the
brain is still slammed against the skull), or possibly even
breaking the cyclist's neck.
Patrick Goetz points out another possible problem with
helmets:
With some trepidations,
I've actually been wearing a bicycle helmet for
recreational road biking, However, [a recent
car-bike] accident points clearly to one of the
problems with helmet usage: I can no longer hear cars
coming up behind me since I've started wearing a helmet
It's quite unsettling to be biking down a quiet rural
road and suddenly have a giant, noisy pickup blast by
completely unanticipated. There's something about how the
wind passes through the air vents that greatly attenuates
sounds from the rear (and perhaps otherwise).
If any of these things are true then it could explain why
we don't see any reduction in cyclist fatalities when helmet
use goes up: helmets could be saving some cyclists but
killing others.
Putting things in
perspective
It's funny how dramatically perceptions have changed
in recent times. As recently as the 80's virtually
nobody wore helmets, and no one thought anything of it. But
today cyclists are considered stupid and
irresponsible if they don't do something that nobody did
the first 80 years that cycling was around. Today some
motorists feel it's their obligation to scowl and yell "Get
a helmet!" at unhelmeted cyclists.
And this brings up another point: The motorists who are
so insistent that cyclists wear helmets aren't wearing
helmets themselves. This isn't silly: crash helmets could
potentially save more lives for motorists than cyclists.
About 38,000 motorists die on U.S. roads every year compared
to fewer than 700 cyclists. If helmets are good for
cyclists, they ought to be great for drivers and passengers.
Why is nobody banging the drum about this? After all,
helmets save lives, right?
Helmet
laws
Another problem with the focus on helmets is that they
encourage state and local governments to enact helmet
laws. Unfortunately many people don't understand
that just because something is a good idea that
doesn't mean it should against the law if you don't do
it. It's a good idea to brush your teeth. Should you
have to risk arrest if you don't?
The main problem with a helmet law is that it ignores the
unintended consequences. If a city passed a helmet law and
the only thing that changed was that more cyclists
started wearing helmets, then there might be a public safety
benefit and no downside. But that's not the only thing that
happens when a helmet law gets passed. The most
significant result of a helmet law is to discourage
cycling. That's because many would rather quit biking
than have to wear a helmet, and because a law promotes the
idea that cycling is an incredibly dangerous activity.
Reductions in cycling by 33% to 50% are typical in places
where helmet laws have been passed.
(CycleHelmets.org,
Cycle-Helmets.com)
Ironically, helmet laws thus make cycling more
dangerous, because fewer cyclists on the road means that
motorists are less used to seeing cyclists. It's no surprise
that the countries with the most cyclists have the lowest
rate of injuries per cyclist. Helmet laws ensure that the
rate of injury per cyclist goes up. In fact, helmet
laws make driving and walking more dangerous, because
when people stop biking, they start driving, and it's cars
& SUV's that kill other motorists and pedestrians, not
bicyclists.
There are yet other problems with helmet laws. In some
communities police have used helmet laws as an excuse to
target minority kids. In Austin the last time anyone
checked, over
90% of the no-helmet tickets given to kids went to black and
Hispanic kids.
Once something normal suddenly becomes against the law
these kinds of excesses can occur. In Palm Beach County,
Florida a
sheriff's deputy handcuffed a nine-year-old boy
for not wearing the obligatory helmet.
But one of the biggest problems with helmet laws is that
the shift the blame onto the cyclist in car-bike collisions,
even if the motorist was clearly at fault. The idea is that
if a cyclist gets hit by an at-fault motorist, it was the
stupid cyclist's fault for not wearing a helmet. This is no
exaggeration; this exact opinion has been promulgated by the
defense in countless court cases, effectively denying
cyclists and their families justice against at-fault
motorists. When Ben Clough was killed while bicycling in
Austin both the police press release and the article in the
local paper made sure to point out that Ben hadn't been
wearing a helmet. What they didn't point out at all was that
the driver who killed him ran a red light to do so.
Wait, it gets richer. The driver in question was not
arrested, paid no fine, served no jail time, and did not
even receive a traffic ticket for running the red light.
This prompted one local cyclist to comment that the best way
to avoid a ticket for running a red light is to run over a
bicyclist while you do so. (more
on cycling justice issues)
BicycleAustin has a whole laundry list of arguments
against mandatory helmet laws.
Summary
- Bicycle helmets probably have some protective value,
but not nearly as much as has been claimed, or most
people seem to think.
- Wearing a helmet does nothing to prevent you from
being hit by a car.
- Real bicycle safety involves learning how
to ride properly.
- Crash helmets could easily save more lives for
motorists than bicyclists.
- Helmet laws restrict personal choice, may result in
the targeting of minorities, discourage cycling, make
cycling more dangerous for those who remain, and shift
the blame in car-bike collisions to helmetless cyclists
even if it was the motorist who was at fault.
Pages
referenced in this article, and other
resources
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How to Not Get Hit by
Cars
Read our guide about how to bicycle
safely.
Fan
Mail
Splendid! I have been commuting to work year round
for several years, and have come to many of the same
conclusions you have. You put things very clearly, and there
are a few points I hadn't thought of--thank you! I'm going
to pass this info around. --Ron Grosslein, Amherst, MA
I would like to say that your site is absolutely
terrific. From the title to the last word, it is
logical, sensible, and utterly devoted to what should be
every cyclist's number-one priority: avoiding death and
injury. Way to go! -- Phil Hickey, Boulder, CO
I'm saved! I have got to tell all my friends about
this site! (Both biking and non-biking.) Seriously,
great advice and great graphics. I am going to try to get
our club webmaster to link to you. -- Gerry Maron
Carolina Cyclers; Palmetto Cycling Coalition
See more
fan mail.
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Safe Road Riding Game/Quiz
The Pennsylvania Dept. of Transportation has an excellent
Safe
Road Riding Game/Quiz. Most bike safety stuff
I see tells you little more than to wear your helmet and
follow the law -- as though it were that easy to be safe.
But PennDOT's quiz presents real-world scenarios: How do you
avoid that car door opening in front of you? What do you do
when you're approaching a sewer grate? Good stuff.
Links
See the other sites which
link to us.
Note to "Effective
Cycling" fans
If you're about to send me an email telling me how stupid
the advice on this site is, please save yourself the
trouble. Trust me, I've heard all the arguments before (ad
nauseum) and I simply disagree. I never write to EC websites
to complain that I don't like their advice, so
there's no need for you to complain about mine. (Here's more
about the the difference of opinion
for those wondering what the fuss is about.)
Disclaimer
I have developed this site to provide what I believe is
very good advice to help you avoid getting hit by cars. But
of course, bicycling will never be 100% safe, and I can't
guarantee you won't get hit by a car, even if you follow all
the advice on this page. (Naturally, I believe if you follow
this advice you will be much less likely to suffer a
collision than if you ignore it.) Ultimately, you are
responsible for your own safety.
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