Me in stage 1 of denial
For my 200th post (which this is, yay) I wanted to do something special. Something to celebrate this blog, its readers and viewers and normal cycling in general. Still not feeling well (the after-shocks of a flu), I quickly realized I wouldn’t be able to serve your visual senses with images of joy and hope that come with feeling liberated on a bike.
Since Monday, however, things started falling into place on their own. Yes, (20-20 hindsight) a topic was decided for me by fate…or let’s just call it ‘the forces of fluidity of the web that will just suck you in’. Not that I particularly wanted to touch on this topic, not that I didn’t fight it (as I restrain myself from doing so every day). No, on the contrary. Let’s just say: my taste for food is far-reaching, I just won’t eat spinach. Are we clear? This post is my ’spinach’.
My submissions (here, here and here) on Andrew’s Carbon Trace blog (and his cross-posting) inadvertently initiated the string of ‘events’ that would have me end up here. But that stuff was still on the positive side of the equation. I would quickly be drawn to the Dark Side.
Me, relenting
Because I bookmarked this dreadful piece of fear-mongering and dishonesty, but(!) decided not to post about it. I was so proud of myself. Sure, I’ve posted on this subject before, but decided some time ago that I don’t want to be sucked in, I just wanted to show and share. So naive of me.
[RB's comment below made me decide to elaborate on this part]
Here are some excerpts from the Houston Chronicle article called “Helmets coming to Huntsville, Conroe, Sugar Land and Houston“:
There are lots of excuses for bicycling without a helmet. Helmets can be hot, uncomfortable or just plain uncool. But, safety experts say, there’s an excellent reason to wear the protective headgear: It may save your life.
Up to 88 percent of 67,000 head injuries suffered by bicyclists each year could be prevented through proper use of helmets, the Bicycle Safety Helmet Institute estimates. Two-thirds of bicycle accident deaths occur as result of head injuries.
Beginning Saturday in Huntsville, the Texas Medical Association and associated sponsors will distribute hundreds of free helmets to children and teens in the Houston area as part of its Hard Hats for Little Heads Program.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that, on average, 80 children are killed annually in bicycle accidents. As many as 250,000 children under 16 are injured each year in bike mishaps.
“We see them every day,” said Dr. Charles Cox, a University of Texas Medical School pediatric surgery professor who practices at Memorial Hermann Hospital in the Texas Medical Center. “It’s probably a self-evident truth: You’re better off with a helmet than not.”
Speaking for the medical association, Fort Worth pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. David Donahue said he has “seen patients arrive at the emergency room with shattered helmets, unscathed heads and big smiles. The helmet takes the hit, not the head.”
To further humbly quote Amsterdamize reader RB: “…claims that 88% of head injuries could be prevented by wearing a helmet. Of course they could! I’m surprised the figure isn’t higher. It’s like saying that the majority of shark attacks could be prevented by not swimming in the ocean!
And, again, why does this type of document continually refer to bicycle accidents or cycling fatalities. When pedestrians are killed by cars they don’t refer to it as a “walking” fatality. We need to reclaim the language as well as the street!”
I’m also sure those ‘affiliated sponsors’ were more than happy to be associated with ’saving childrens’ lives’. But they are only one of many parts of the bigger problem (the problem being the complete shutdown of logical thinking concerning any of these ’statistics’, and the industry, policy and society wide propaganda that’s led to this fear-mongering state of affairs.
Before I continue, I deplore you to really check all the linked material in this post. There you’ll also find this solid graph from the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation:
This morning my feedreader delivered the final blow, showing me Tom Vanderbilt’s post about the bicycle helmet ‘debate’ (let’s call a spade a spade, it’s a war based on lies and misconceptions). Tom Vanderbilt is the author of the book ‘How We Drive‘, by many considered the best book for cyclists, as it intelligently deals with human behavior on both 4 and 2 wheels. However, Tom tried and failed to find answers to end this war for once and for all.
Instead, he passed the buck to Dr. Ian Walker’s, famous for his cycling safety tests, conducted with and without wearing a helmet, in which he measured the space he was granted (or not) by cars who were overtaking him…or ‘her’, as he also dressed up as a woman. His findings certainly were in ‘our’ favor. Again, information I had previously passed on to others, such as Andrew of Carbon Trace.
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Dr. Walker’s take on it was as to be expected, intelligent, pragmatic and thoughtful. However, he also ‘failed’:
And finally, having said all that, I would like to suggest that this is all the wrong question to be asking anyway. Nearly all of the serious danger to bicyclists comes from drivers. Instead of fretting about the utility of helmets after collisions happen, bicyclists should be focusing on the careless or reckless driving that causes those collisions in the first place. Consider burglary for a moment: I would suggest the prime responsibility for this social ill lies with the burglars who choose to perpetrate it rather than the householders who are the victims. I can’t help feeling bicyclists are in a very similar position when they allow themselves (ourselves!) to get drawn into this debate.
I would go further and say he’s missing the point. “What, Marc, YOU have the answer?”
Ha! I do! Let me solve and be done with this friggin’ nonsense, this age-old annoying mother-f**** of an issue that shouldn’t be one in the first place. Humans are not animals because we can think, reason and speak, right? Well, that’s overrated, that’s for sure, history shows us.
Two ladies cycling in Amsterdam, 1895.
But people, more recent history also shows us it’s not rocket science. The solutions are there, already practiced. It doesn’t come quickly, easily or cheaply, but then again, what does? Prioritize. For any country, city or town to reach some level of bicycle-friendliness, it needs to build. Provide. Service. Enable. Inform. Educate. Promote. According to its own needs and specific fabrics of society. That’s it. Yes, build it and they will come. Also, get on the bike and they will have to build it. The push for the use of bicycle helmet and even legislating it is a distraction, a bloody hoax and a diversion from utter failures of societies and policies. No vision, no will.
That’s my general answer. Now I’ll get more specific and throw the ill-informed and obnoxious zealots a life line. There is one person in this cycling universe who eloquently and intelligently provided us with the ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’.
His name is David Hembrow, a passionate UK, ex-pat individual, who fled with his family to Assen in the Netherlands to live a better cycling life and live from it. So, somebody who has seen the worst, decided to act on it and is able to compare notes. I quote:
Family on bikes.
I used to do cycle promotion work in the UK, travelling from city to city and talking to a great number of people about cycling. They all already knew that cycling was healthy, good for the environment etc. Many people would like to be able to cycle. The number one reason that the average person in the street would give for not cycling was “it’s too dangerous”. So, what did they mean by this?
There are three measures of safety, all of which have their place in Dutch bicycle provision:
- Actual safety - How many km you can expect to travel before you’re injured on your bike.
- Subjective safety - Are you near fast moving traffic ? Is it easy to make a turn across traffic? Do you have to cycle “fast” in order to keep up?
- Social safety - Is there a mugger around that blind corner? Will I be attacked in the street if I cycle?
David then deals with all the specifics of these types of safety. Are you still with me? Ok. I urge you to read it in full. Top to bottom. Absorb, deal with it.
Let’s wrap this baby up:
To summarise… No-one will do anything that feels too dangerous to them. Everyone wants their child to be safe and their partner to be safe. That’s why so many journeys which ought to be cycleable are made by car. There is no point in arguing with people’s decisions, or ridiculing them. The person making the decision to use a car has made it for quite logical reasons. Their level of confidence about cycling in the conditions around you is not the same as your own.
What to do… If you want people who do not cycle to take up cycling, then the right thing to do is to campaign for or design in road conditions which make cycling into an appealing option. That is what the Dutch have done. Everywhere. It is the key to the high cycle usage and high cycle safety figures.
So, where do helmets and fluorescent clothing fit in? For some individuals, merely wearing such a thing improves their own subjective safety to the level that they will ride. However, these items do little to improve actual safety and can have a negative effect on the subjective safety of other people due to making cycling look dangerous. Where cycling has a high degree of subjective safety, as it does here, no-one wears these safety aids. Dutch cyclists are safer without them than cyclists elsewhere are with them.
Those Danes with funny Dutch accents subscribe to the same sentiment, so I’ll throw some of that in there, too. Or read these reflections on cycling in the Netherlands by two humble Canadians.
I’m now officially done on this subject. Use these words against me when you see me utter them again from here on.
As punishment, make me eat spinach.
Mikael from Copenhagenize & CCC basically feels the same (sans spinach, I’m sure), but he has the stomach for fighting it relentlessly. Here’s one of his funny counter-attacks from his other bastion called Cykelhjelm:
