> I also find it interesting the Dutch rarely ever wear helmets.
Good or bad; I am Dutch and I would confidently say that all people I know would never ride a bike again if they have to wear those silly helmets. More likely if it would be mandatory, they just would refuse and not do it, but if largely enforced they would just not use bikes anymore.
Although there are separated roads for bikes and cars we do still share roadspace.
The major difference I think is that in the Netherlands there is a law which gives vulnerable road participants (pedestrians, bicycler) the benefit of the doubt whenever there is an accident. Even if the guilt is proven to be with the bicycler, the car driver should have paid more attention.
One way this is good for bicyclers because they are protected but on the other side they do tend to be more aggressive and reckless in their driving.
The major difference I think is that in the Netherlands there is a law which gives vulnerable road participants (pedestrians, bicycler) the benefit of the doubt whenever there is an accident. Even if the guilt is proven to be with the bicycler, the car driver should have paid more attention.
As far as I know, this is also true in Germany and many people wear helmets. I never wore a helmet in The Netherlands, but I do now that I live in Germany. Why?
- German car drivers are less used to cyclers. They are either extremely careful (like driving behind you for five minutes or passing you with a distance of 2 meters). Or they are extremely reckless (e.g. cutting you off on the very few bicycle lanes). So, in general I feel less safe than in The Netherlands.
- Altitude differences. The Netherlands are mostly flat. Here (southern Germany) it's quite hilly. That often makes it more difficult to brake abruptly.
Pretty much the same for me here in the US. I grew up in the Netherlands and always felt safe bicycling there. The first time I went bicycling around San Jose, I felt like I was going to die.
Odd that you say this about helmets. It only takes one mistake, one cyclist not paying attention, one mechanical fault, one swerving car or an obstacle in the road - and you'll be landing face first into the tarmac wishing you wore a helmet.
185 cyclists died last year in the Netherlands [1]. I wonder how many of those weren't wearing a helmet.
I also found this interesting article [2] going into a lot more detail on why the Dutch don't seem to want to wear them.
Typical bicyle helmets don't help much with a face-first landing on the tarmac, your chin takes most of the pounding. I can confidently say that from repeated ... 'experiments'. In contrast, a motorcyle helmet that also wraps around the chin would be of great use in most bicycle accidents.
185 cyclists died
A more interesting statistic would be: how many of those deaths would have been prevented by a bicycle helmet?
That depends entirely on how you fall off your bike, which depends on your speed and numerous other factors. The problem here is that it's pretty hard to tell after the fact whether a death would have been prevented by a helmet. We can guess, speculate but it's hard to measure the exact forces exerted - and also how someone's biological material will react to that (the brain).
In all my reading around this issue, those that don't want to wear helmets don't tend to wear them for fashion reasons, and interpret the stats they read to insinuate that helmets don't save lives. They don't like how it looks, feels, or that they will be teased for wearing one. I'd rather live to see the next day than care about what a helmet looks like.
And one other point to end on, it's not just deaths we're talking about here. Many people have suffered brain injuries from the impact of falling off their bike. Imagine there was something you could put on your head that would prevent that impact.
> I'd rather live to see the next day than care about what a helmet looks like.
Do you wear one while walking? Or hiking? There's also an increased risk of brain injury from these activities.
Most people I know don't wear one, because the combination of the discomfort, hassle, inconvenience and appearance aren't worth the perceived low increased risk of cycling compared to, for example, walking.
I wear one when rock climbing, kayaking, snowboarding, skiing, motorcycle, bicycle, skateboard, football, etc. Pretty much any time I go over 8mph. I even considered one in aussie rules football but they were hard to find in the states.
I found that helmets for winter sports are better than hats. They don't soak up sweat like a hat does so do better in cold and are better vented than a hat as well. They also really help with the trees.
It's also interesting that they used to be "nerdy" on ski slopes in the US, then several major states required everyone under 18 to wear them. Now 80% (feels like) of kids wear them all the time, so you actually look wierd if you don't wear a helmet.
I definitely wear them on bikes and have needed them (and bounced off of them) many times. I tend to tuck when I go off the bike so I bounce the back of my helmet. There's a heart warming sensation of relief when you hear that hollow thunk sound of the helmet taking the blow on the pavement, tree, hardpack, rock, etc, with no bad effects on you.
Also on my commute I tend to hit 45 mph multiple times in the first 2 miles (I drop 500 ft in 2 miles and I feel it's safer to do 35 like the cars on the nicely paved winding suburban road than to sit in the bike lane).
Finally... I made this guy (who hates helmets) put one on after the kite pulled him up into the goal posts on a previous run. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PGKG5ZFMQg He thanked me a year later.
That's a completely different situation than the average Dutch cyclist faces. First, there are no hills to be seen, so not that easy to pick up speed. Especially on a city bike which is 99% of the fleet. It's unusual to even reach 20km/h. People carry their shopping, kids, furniture and pets in them. They cycle in whatever they are wearing - suits, skirts, jeans, whatever; the fact you can just hop on a bike without having to gear up makes it much more attractive to everyday life.
There was also this study from a university in Utrecht showing that [in the Netherlands] cyclists wearing helmets are more careless and cause more accidents, nullifying any safety benefit...
> There was also this study from a university in Utrecht showing that [in the Netherlands] cyclists wearing helmets are more careless and cause more accidents, nullifying any safety benefit..
Are there any links in English to that study?
Someone said only people racing (or with racing bikes) trend to wear helmet in Netherlands. Knowing that it feels like that study confuses correlation with causation, but a university probably knows more than I do, hence why I'd like to read the study. Maybe it's just the press getting the wrong conclusion out of the study for agenda purposes.
I don't know. The helmets are not weird nor nerdy. They save lives even though you might not need it ever if you're lucky. I always wear helmet, high viz, reflective vest, lights everywhere... You know, I don't want to be that guy in the statistics.
Nice link, thanks. That seems to be another education issue: Drivers think cyclists with helmets are more experienced, so they don't feel the need to leave as much room as they do with "less experienced" cyclists.
It is an interesting point and I didn't know about it.
Almost unrelated, but I've found this part of the article funny - shows how we have to be careful with grand headlines and look at the article itself:
> Henry Marsh, who works at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, London, said that many of his patients who have been involved in bike accidents have been wearing helmets that were ‘too flimsy’ to be beneficial.
Well, no shit Sherlock. The cases where the helmet helped don't end up in your hands. Guy's a neurosurgeon.
Yeah, I guess you've got a good point there. Also, the infrastructures to cycle are not as good here as in The Netherlands.
I just think, based on people's comments, that there's some silly stigma associated to the helmets like "they're ugly" or "you look silly with it". I've only started cycling again a few years ago, after a childhood of cycling every day without any safety gear; it was hard at first to make myself comfortable with the idea of wearing a helmet. Some time later it just feels natural and I actually get worried when I see people without helmet.
It seems to be something similar to the seat belt. It took time for people to get used to it and nowadays I still see that problem in some countries (usually with old people in small towns).
I wear a helmet for bicycling, in-line skating, snowboarding and whitewater kayaking. In the case of the first three sports, the helmet has saved me from nasty head hits:
- Two over-the-handlebars crashes on my bike at relatively low speed (one when mountain biking).
- A low tree limb and several backwards falls when inline skating.
- Countless backwards falls when learning to snowboard.
For whitewater kayaking, a helmet is effectively mandatory because head strikes against underwater rocks may knock you unconscious in rapids (and because very few groups will paddle with somebody lacking standard safety gear). I once saw a guy paddling in a hockey mask with a cage, which is non-standard for whitewater kayaking. I later learned he had bounced that face cage off an underwater rock once.
As for cars, well, I once hit my head against the door frame in a car accident (no side air bags in that vehicle) and ended up needing to work half time for over 6 months. Even minor concussions can be no fun at all. Happily I made a full recovery.
I like my helmets. I earn my living using my brain, and I intend to strictly minimize the risk of future concussions.
Do you wear a helmet when going for a run? What about going for a walk?
Most Dutch riders are cycling slower than a running pace.
I noticed that you categorized bicycling as a sport. For most Dutch people, bicycling is not a sport but a form of transportation. Commuting by car is a form of transportation, just like Formula 1 is a sport form which uses cars. The safety requirements are quite different between those two, just like they are different between those who mountain bike as a sport and those who use a city bicycle to get groceries.
> Most Dutch riders are cycling slower than a running pace.
Just to confirm, this is absolutely true. When running, I overtake bicyclists all the time. Especially uphill :) (by which I mean traffic overpass, not actual hills of course :p)
Personally I go a bit faster on my bike, but not much. 15 km/h (9.3mph) usually, and if I go much faster than that, I find that it does indeed get a lot more dangerous! Amazing, right? So, I don't do that. Just another clever Dutch workaround, I guess :-P
Wearing a helmet is of course never a bad thing. But studies has also shown (on mobile, can't find now) that people see helmets as really cumbersome, and that many of the potential cyclists chose another mode of transporation if they have to use a helmet. Seems strange to me, I ride with a helmet every day. But each to his/her own.
[…] In contrast, despite increases to at least 75% helmet wearing, the proportion of head injuries in cyclists admitted or treated at hospital declined by an average of only 13%. The percentage of cyclists with head injuries after collisions with motor vehicles in Victoria declined by more, but the proportion of head injured pedestrians also declined; the two followed a very similar trend. These trends may have been caused by major road safety initiatives introduced at the same time as the helmet law and directed at both speeding and drink-driving. The initiatives seem to have been remarkably effective in reducing road trauma for all road users, perhaps affecting the proportions of victims suffering head injuries as well as total injuries. The benefits of cycling, even without a helmet, have been estimated to outweigh the hazards by a factor of 20 to 1 (Hillman 1993; Cycle helmets—the case for and against. Policy Studies Institute, London). Consequently, a helmet law, whose most notable effect was to reduce cycling, may have generated a net loss of health benefits to the nation. Despite the risk of dying from head injury per hour being similar for unhelmeted cyclists and motor vehicle occupants, cyclists alone have been required to wear head protection. Helmets for motor vehicle occupants are now being marketed and a mandatory helmet law for these road users has the potential to save 17 times as many people from death by head injury as a helmet law for cyclists without the adverse effects of discouraging a healthy and pollution free mode of transport.[1]
There are plenty of ways to have an accident that don't involve face-planting. The one time I flew over my handlebars, I landed on my left shoulder (breaking my collarbone), and my helmet probably prevented me from getting a concussion when the side of my head bounced off the road.
I think the more interesting stats would be in the are of non-fatal injuries.
If you die, the hit was probably pretty hard, but there are loads more people getting injured but not life-threatening.
Breaking boths legs and a concussion would not be part of that stat.
(71/129)×185×(100-65)% = 35 of these people would have not have been killed.
Of course, the figures are probably not quite right for Netherlands. For instance, in Canada a majority of bicycle fatalities involve another vehicle, whereas where I live (Finland), this is not true because we have separate bike/pedestrian paths in many places. Like the Netherlands. This actually increases the effectiveness of helmets, because fewer of the accidents are about being crushed by a big vehicle, and more of them are falls.
And the physics of falling off your bike are not that different and the ground is about as hard in Canada as in Netherlands.
>And the physics of falling off your bike are not that different and the ground is about as hard in Canada as in Netherlands.
You would think that would be true, but no.
1. The ground in Holland is flat.
2. The bike is heavy.
3. The bike is the type where you are sitting up (not leaning forward like a race bike).
So, when a dutch person bikes they are going no faster than 15 km/h. When they stretch their legs they are standing still. When they fall to the side they generally fall into grass or sidewalks (which are thin stones on top of moisty earth), that can actually absorb quite a lot of energy/momentum.
A guy I saw a few days ago got one of those heavy chain-type locks in his frontwheel while riding his bike a few days ago. Of course, his bike stopped instantly. He was carrying a painting, so driving with one hand. Amazingly, he didn't even fall to the ground. It really takes a lot of effort to land on the top of your head; I imagine that being hit or run over by a car causes way, way more serious accidents.
It helps that our bikes are heavy and you sit up straight.
The rest of the world keeps talking about helmets, even though they ride complete death traps. Their mountain bikes and race bikes. Off course you are going to die riding one of those in NYC.
I would advise them to just outlaw those bikes, instead of making/keeping helmets mandatory.
You are partly wrong. Encouraging (or even worse, enforcing) cycle helmets is known to reduce the number of people cycling. Since they presumably still need to get around, they're going to use other forms of transport, some of which add pollution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet_laws#Effects_on...
Well, no. I'm not wrong: Using helmets does not increase pollution.
Forcing helmets onto people seems to increase pollution (by the reduced use of cycling), so the problem in fact should be: A lack of proper health and safety education leads (indirectly?) to more pollution.
That's why I think that statistic is very good for a different discussion - I don't think it should belong into "Should people wear helmets while cycling?", it belongs into "Should we force people to wear helmets while cycling?". The answer to those two questions could be YES and NO without being contradictory really.
At least in [0], the reduced use of cycling was only an issue for teenagers. Children and adults cycled more after mandatory helmet law; people who most fiercely oppose putting protective gear on their head seem to be 12-17 years old.
I'm not really saying that helmets should be mandatory, but the attitudes and arguments remind me a lot about the time when mandatory seatbelt laws were coming to force. People will be trapped in burning cars and sink in vehicles and can't get out, and it will mess up the cothes, etc.
Like said; most accidents I have seen with near fatal results (mostly in Amsterdam where that happen(s)(ed) quite a bit), the helmet would've helped nothing at all. It's usually someone falling and then getting driven over/into. But yeah, I have no stats; not sure if anyone has, about if they do any good.
I also said for good or bad; like smoking or drinking or processed meat eating; you collect the info you can and believe, interpret it and make your choice; it's your life. I'm just saying that most people I know wouldn't be caught dead (...) with one of those things on even if it would mean they are less safe.
Note that many accidents happen with people going very fast on race bikes, and those people do wear helmets.
Normal Dutch bikes for everyday use go much slower (say 15-20 km/h), and you sit in an upright position. That gives you a much better overview of the road (you look over all the cars) and it also makes it easier to recover from a near fall.
In Denmark. The percentage of people here wearing helmets seems to be dropping again after having been on the rise for the past few years (based on my anecdotal evidence of biking around copenhagen), but it's still relatively rare. I know at least 3 people who had simple accidents while not wearing helmets and while they did not die they suffered severe concussions that take years to fully recover from (if ever). One guy was unable to work for close to a year, and still 3 years later suffer frequent intense headaches. You don't have to die in an accident in order for it to be something you really should try to avoid.
Yes, I think that is one of their main purposes. It basically takes the impact energy and distributes it over a larger area and over longer time, reducing the risk of permanent brain damage. This website has some charts of a lab experiment showing the difference in the energy spike felt by the brain. http://www.bhsi.org/general.htm
I fell onto my bike helmet, on pavement, splitting it in half. I can tell you from personal experience that helmets definitely protect against concussion.
People seem to ignore the elephant in the room with this one. By making helmet use pro-choice, what health benefits does a nation gain? How does this impact obesity? The cost of health to the nation? Productivity? Mental health? Pollution related problems?
The bicycle is a very simple solution to a lot of problems.
Wearing a helmet in your car would prevent a lot of injuries as well, and nobody does that. This is just a risk/reward trade off and I (as a Dutch cyclist) feel a few additional deaths on the total population is not worth the effort.
And the things are uncomfortable and impractical: what are you going to do with it when you arrive on your destination? Lug it around all day? Bring a bag everywhere?
You're already locking your bike, you can loop the lock through one of your helmet straps (I do and have never had a helmet stolen, except when the whole bike was).
You can trivially undo helmet straps, because it needs to be adjusted it's not one solid piece of webbing.
It stops someone from just picking your helmet up and walking away with it, but it takes no more than half a minute to undo the strap, so it's not going to stop someone intent on stealing it.
This whole thread including this comment feels like people who haven't ever been to The Netherlands making suggestions that make no sense for the cycling culture here.
So firstly as has been covered in other comments here, cyclists in The Netherlands don't want to wear helmets for their daily commuting, it doesn't solve any sort of safety problem for them when you factor in the inconvenience they cause.
Secondly even if they did most bicycle chains here are over an inch thick, not something you can thread through a bicycle helmet.
Sure you could carry some extra wire just to lock the helmet to the bike, but that gets you even further down the road of making a bunch of special accommodations to solve a problem that doesn't exist in the first place.
>cyclists in The Netherlands don't want to wear helmets for their daily commuting, it doesn't solve any sort of safety problem for them when you factor in the inconvenience they cause.
This sounds very much like "I don't wear my seatbelt for commuting. It doesn't solve any sort of safety problem when you factor in the inconvenience it causes."
Let's say there was a country where 0.5% of the drivers used seat belts[1], and out of those mostly just race car drivers. Yet that country had no notable increase in injuries or fatalities in car crashes as a result compared to countries where seat belts were mandatory.
Add into that that in this parallel universe driving a car daily had big long-term health benefits, and the introduction of seat belt laws in other countries had caused driving to drop by 1/3 [2], causing fewer people to cycle, overall health to decline, and a reduction in car safety due to less car safety in numbers. Since a major cause of accidents was that few people used cars daily, leading to accidents where people weren't expecting them.
Then yeah, I think it would be completely fair to question whether wearing a seat belt in your car was worthwhile. But of course none of this analogy makes sense, which makes your argument rather nonsensical.
Answer me this: if you needed or wanted a bike helmet, would you buy a used one to save money? Especially if it's never been cleaned? (Those foam pads inside don't seem to be conducive to cleaning.) What kind of person would steal a helmet?
Don't know about Netherlands, but here in Finland I've left my helmet hanging from the bars of my bicycle for a few years now and it hasn't been stolen yet. Bikes themselves do get stolen especially in the city center, but helmets don't.
I've been doing this in Austin for years. And not just a helmet:
* $40 pump attached to the seat tube.
* $20 helmet on the handlebars
* $20 biking gloves in the helmet
* $80 biking jersey on the handlebars
* $20 bike light
* $?? seat pouch, with bike tools.
I've had the bike light stolen twice (both in January this year), and the jersey vanished once, but I think it blew away. No one's ever taken my helmet, which has somewhat surprised me. I've also gotten too lazy to lock my tires these past few years, and they've been let alone.
Admittedly anecdotal and maybe a little lucky, but there don't seem to be people trolling around for bike helmets to steal. They're probably not easy to resell. I'd go for the pumps and lights first, personally.
My girlfriend in college had her bike stolen. This was in a college town (in the US), so bike theft was not uncommon there. She had her helmet attached to the bike, or sitting on it, not sure which. The bike thief took the helmet off and threw it aside before grabbing the bike.
Stolen bikes can be resold. But who wants to buy a stolen bike helmet??
Most people don't really want to buy used items which are personal in nature. While a bike helmet isn't underwear, it's still in contact with your head and your hair, while you're sweating a lot, and probably never gets cleaned. I imagine that for the same reasons, no one would want to steal your jersey or gloves. I'm more surprised that your pump and tools never got stolen, but there again it probably has to do with the black market realities: people will buy stolen bikes, but how many people are looking to save money by buying a stolen tire pump?
Don't you carry a bag around already? If your commute is one hour cycling in guessing you might sweat and need a shower?
I cycle to work (in the UK, similar climate I guess) for about 15 minutes each way with no steep roads and I gotta be very careful with my pace if I don't want to sweat.
It's much easier to control your pace and avoid sweating on a dutch commuter bike surrounded by your fellow dutch commuters whilst in the pancake flat NL.
> If your commute is one hour cycling in guessing you might sweat and need a shower?
Not really. Our cycling is pretty relaxed, it's not like we're trying to race there as fast as possible. And we don't have steep hills to climb either. The only time I really sweat on a bike is when I'm wearing a rain suit. The lack of ventilation causes transpiration.
The country is compact enough that most people have < 30 minute bike commute, and it's flat, so people don't really break a sweat. Getting wet is indeed a bit of a problem. As children we're told "you're not made of sugar", i.e. you deal with it. (Some places provide showers for people who want to come to work jogging or race biking, but that's not standard)
Very few people shower after entering the office. That's only for the fanatical long-distance racing-bike commuters. Most people ride their bike in their work clothes. A helmet would be a tedious and useless bit of extra luggage.
> If your commute is one hour cycling in guessing you might sweat and need a shower?
1. The weather is Holland is kind of optimal in maximizing not sweating.
2. We are not going that fast. The effort we put into it is identical to a normal walk. You just go three times as fast.
The difference between walking/running. Which is why you don't need a shower and why you don't need a helmet. So you go about 15 km/h at most. The bike is heavy (giving you much more stability). You sit up straight (giving you a much better view). You stretch your legs and you are standing still with a bike between your legs. You don't fall with a bike a holland, you loose balance and choose to stand.
For all intents and purposes, its just like walking and every non-dutch person keeps coming at it as if we are doing sprints or a marathon.
I hardly know anybody who commutes by cycle for an hour every day, that is too long. Personally I ride to the train station (8 minutes), take the train to the city I work in (~20 minutes), then ride the other bicycle to work from there (15 minutes).
185 bike deaths is a lot less than the roughly 500 car deaths every year. Keep in mind that people bike a lot here. I ride my bike every single day. I rarely use a car. Never had a meaningful accident.
In countries where helmets are mandatory, cyclists tend to run a much bigger risk of serious injury. Whatever Netherland is doing differently is clearly working. Claiming that Netherland should adapt to countries that are doing worse is ridiculous.
Netherland takes bike safety very seriously. Don't just assume that you know better than the country that has the highest bike density in the world. I have seen research about the effect of bike helmets, and while some research showed that helmets offered substantial benefit in very specific, artificial situations, other research showed that those benefit didn't translate to practical real life situations. And research that only tests how much a helmet protects your skill, tends to ignore the impact of the helmet in preventing the accident in the first place. Some research suggests that simply wearing a helmet can make people more reckless, putting more trust in their helmet than in their own carefulness.
Also, of those 185, 48 were 70-80 years old, and 51 were 80 years and older, so in total over half were over 70 (compared to only 17 who were under 20 years old)
It's a fairly safe bet most of those over 70's weren't going so fast that hitting a car or the ground hit much harder than a hit or a fall while walking would.
E-bikes may be changing that; that is being studied and may lead to changes in helmet laws. I think it is more likely it will lead to changes in road design and to recommendations to certain groups to wear a helmet.
It suprises me that people, in this time of environmental problems, seriously want to deter even more people from riding bikes. Traffic accidents will always happen, and modern countries are only getting safer, but environmental problems are only getting worse.
How would you feel if you had to wear a helmet every time you walk outside? That's a bit like how the Dutch people would feel if they had to wear a helmet on their bikes. Arguably, it would help to avoid some injuries, but it is just not worth it. People in the Netherlands don't just bike to work or school; they bike when they go out (yes, even after drinking), when they visit friends, when they have a doctors appointment. Bringing a helmet every time would both be a major inconvenience and make you seem like a huge dork. People usually bike pretty slowly, and there are not many accidents. I live in one a city where the biker density is one of the highest in the Netherlands, and I have never been in an accident. I would never wear a helmet every time I would ride my bike. I would even argue it would reduce my quality of life.
When I was in primary school and maybe high school I remember not wanting to wear a helmet because it looked silly. As a adult I think it would be a lot more silly to loose my life, health, ability to focus or to walk just because I didn't want to look silly. I'm not saying you are wrong, but that all people you know are. Besides the helmets these days really do look better, the producers have moved on from a purely utilitarian focus to actually having someone think about the visual aspect as well.
Yes, I have and it's great. Similar to Denmark where I live, but it's even safer if you wear a helmet. There is a clear benefit to wearing one and not much of cost so it's an easy choice IMO.
I haven't been to Denmark (yet, will be in CPH in Nov!) but I understand ytour cycle infrastructure is comparable to that of the Netherlands. Do you find more people wear helmets there than in NL?
I'm strongly against mandatory helmets for the reason that you suggest. But I'm one of the people (Im in the UK) who now wears helmets for both skiing and cycling. My cycle helmet almost certainly saved my life when a car gave me a knock and my head went onto the kerb.
This was a slow collision in London traffic - probably doing about 10-12 MPh.
The transition on attitude towards skiing helmets (at least in European resorts) has been really interesting to watch.
It has gone from being something that only children and the seriously hardcore off piste snowboarders.
I never used to wear one, and neither did most of the people I ski with, but over the last 5 years its changed until we now seriously judge people for being reckless if they won't wear a helmet.
The death of Natasha Richardson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natasha_Richardson#Injury_and_...) was fairly well publicised in the UK and I think that had a bit of a catalytic effect for us, but it was pushing at an open door of a change that was already happening.
In France it has taken time, and there are still some holdouts (most notably the national ski school, ESF).
I believe it's mandatory already in several Swiss resorts, I know it is in Zermatt.
I really hope the ESF will mandate helmets for all instructors, this would go a long way to normalising them.
I don't think wearing a helmet when skiing is comparable to commute cycling. I think motorcycling would be closer. In both cases you're going at relatively high speeds with quite long breaking distances.
It's true in (at least some areas of) the US as well. I went downhill skiing in California for the first time in a few years last winter and, for the first time, I was very aware that I was definitely in the minority not wearing a helmet. (I do wear a hat with some impact resistant padding.)
There's been a big shift. I suspect at least part of it has been that helmets have been the norm for kids for a while--especially after snowboarding became common. I assume many parents felt they had to start wearing helmets if they were telling their kids they had to.
Yup. The people who don't stand out - and they're almost universally the older generation of serious skiers (>= retirement age) who are too stuck in their ways.
To quote my Dad (who admittedly hasn't skied in years) "You wear a helmet? Why? I never needed one".
Yeah. For me, it's pretty much: I don't ski much these days. I don't ski particularly aggressively. I've never worn a helmet and I'm not about to start now.
It's not that I think they're stupid or anything. And I do wear helmets for various other sports. I just never have for skiing and don't feel compelled to change.
But that's what the Natasha Richardson accident proved - it's not about your skiing, it's about other people's skiing. In much the same way as you wear a seatbelt even if you're a perfect driver - someone else can still crash into you.
Also, the fact that I've never had a potentially fatal car accident doesn't mean that I don't see the need to wear a seatbelt. The safety numbers made a risk obvious and the behavioural pattern changed to manage the risk.
I'm certainly not going to argue that people shouldn't wear helmets or that you can control all the factors that could lead to being glad you had a helmet on.
But there's risk in everything and, for me, I'm not going to worry about the incremental risk of downhill skiing without a helmet a couple days a year.
Right. There's no doubt that wearing a helmet makes you safer. Helmet use should be encouraged. However, the outcomes for society are considerably worse if helmets are made mandatory.
This has been demonstrated by the experience of New Zealand where helmet use was made compulsory in the 1990s. Not only did cycling rates decline by more than 50%, the rates of serious cycling injuries and deaths actually increased. It turns out that when there are less cyclists on the road, remaining cyclists are more vulnerable - helmet or not.
Your use of the pejorative "silly" is indeed indicative of why Dutch people wouldn't use them. They might be silly for low speed commute cycling, but labeling the helmets silly in and of themselves is, uh, silly. Perhaps you should have said Dutch people would view wearing the helmets for bike commuting to be silly.
But, to make up for it, we also consider driving a racing bike in city traffic at speeds over 15 km/h silly (although the outfit doesn't help either). And we look before we open the car door, because there's bikes everywhere. I guess that evens it out a little :)
> I am Dutch and I would confidently say that all people I know would never ride a bike again if they have to wear those silly helmets. More likely if it would be mandatory, they just would refuse and not do it, but if largely enforced they would just not use bikes anymore.
Weeelll ... not use a bike any more?? How are you going to get around then? :) :)
Indeed most would refuse and not do it, and if largely enforced, many would still refuse and not do it. ... but give up our bikes? Never! :)
They'll never enforce it though. Too many bikes. Take mandatory working front and back lights. I don't know about all cities of course, but where I live, they only enforce that a few weeks per year, at only a few same spots every year. Any other time, anywhere else, you can drive past a police car with no lights and they won't stop you (because they are there with something better to do). And this is for a bike law that pretty much everyone agrees is useful and important for safety (it's just that those damn lights break so quickly).
Good or bad; I am Dutch and I would confidently say that all people I know would never ride a bike again if they have to wear those silly helmets. More likely if it would be mandatory, they just would refuse and not do it, but if largely enforced they would just not use bikes anymore.
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