Bike Helmets Least Effective for Safety

Today's article on Tree Hugger jumps on a ridiculous bike helmet ad by the American Auto Association (always good for botching bicycle safety).

The great thing about this article is that the author offers a far better way to look at bicycle crash prevention--construction zone safety. Here's an excerpt:

"...So on a construction site one makes sure that there are safe routes, protection from dangerous equipment, picking up the crap and keeping everything in good order, and lots of fencing to keep people who are not construction workers away from those who are. Then there is education and training of the workers, strong enforcement of the rules, and good maintenance of the tools..."

Nice insight.

But whenever I read an article about bicycle helmets, even if it starts off showing how ineffective helmets are, I wait until the end to rejoice. For some sick reason, authors of articles that expose the truth about bike helmets, tend to wrap them up with a guilt-ridden paragraph or two stating their ingrained opinion that cyclists still should wear a helmet no matter what the facts show.

Not this one! To my joy and relief it ends with this:

"...If the American Automobile Association was really concerned about cyclist safety, it would be telling its members to slow down; it would be supporting the installation of bike lanes even though they might lose a driving lane here and there; they would work to get people out of giant pickup trucks and SUVs with big flat fronts that are disproportionately deadly, and they would support Vision Zero campaigns. But instead we have this."

How refreshing.

Read the article and enjoy!

Concussion, the Movie

I watched the recently released movie, Concussion last night. It’s a nice, fictionalized story about the man who revealed the debilitating results of repeated head trauma in American football. It’s certainly worth watching for the storyline, but as a fan of American football, I was disappointed with the lack of detailed information. The film includes nothing about the steps the National Football League has taken to try to prevent this problem. Perhaps this is because the film is only about this man and the time during his discovery.

However, the film did offer a few benefits for the bike helmet problem. For one, it was refreshing to spend two hours amidst a topic that is encased in helmets, without the slightest assumption that helmets would offer anything toward a solution. There are many scenes showing football players slamming their helmets together, which hint at the helmets actually worsening the problem.

There’s even a scene where the doctor shows his girlfriend the problem by holding out a sealed glass jar that contains water and an egg as he explains that a human brain floats loose in fluid. He then shakes the jar repeatedly to demonstrate what a football player’s brain goes through. Of course the egg breaks. I very much appreciated this as a needed twist from the misuse of eggs in terrifying children into wearing bike helmets.

Anyway, I can recommend the movie as good entertainment, but don’t watch it expecting to garner many gems for fighting bike helmet laws or promotions.

Sue

Bicycle Helmets – Today’s Bloodletting

(I wrote this article seven years ago. So sad it remains relevant today.)

Bloodletting seems a distant absurdity to us and yet, just a few hundred years ago, we lost George Washington because he trusted its rhetoric over logic when he agreed to it as treatment for a nasty cold. With only a few quiet voices protesting the countless deaths caused by bloodletting, the practice continued well into the 20^th century. Today’s bicycle helmet promotions and laws hold an alarming resemblance to the pronouncements used by the bloodletters. When an illogical practice is presented as the only means of safety and dismissal of the practice is equated to certain death, even the most brilliant leader can succumb to its absurdity.

Myths about helmets charm countries most where bicycling is not commonplace. In these countries, helmet rhetoric has escalated to the point where those not familiar with bicycling believe that if you so much as swing your leg over a bicycle without wearing a helmet you will smash your head open. In such places, those who ride a bike without a helmet are chided by onlookers at every turn for their reckless, irresponsible behavior.

Where did these chiders get their information? Most helmet propaganda is originally published by insurance companies, health practitioners and government agencies who have avoided countless law suits by blaming bicyclists in crashes for not wearing a helmet, sometimes even when their injuries or death did not involve injuries to their head.

While many studies have shown that bicycle helmets do little to prevent major head injuries beyond minor skull fractures and lacerations (Curnow 2001), a few poorly executed, misleading studies are the only ones to have reached mainstream distribution. The most common bit of jargon of them all is that “cycle helmets prevent 85% of head injuries and 88% of brain injuries” when in fact, where helmet use is high, there has been no detectable reduction in head injuries. See this link for a good overview: http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1027.html .

Helmet rhetoric that sets bicycling out as far more dangerous than it is, is the greatest hindrance to programs for increasing bicycling. A great deal of truthful yet catchy promotions will be necessary to counter this noise. Remember, bloodletting was “common sense” for 2,000 years! One of the best examples for illustrating the truth is this fun quiz on the dangers of bicycling: http://www.bicyclinglife.com/SafetySkills/SafetyQuiz.htm

Mandatory helmet laws often follow the spread of bicycle helmet rhetoric, adding the weight of the law to the idea that bicycling is more dangerous than any other form of transportation. In fact, as you will have found in the above quiz, if these laws took a realistic approach to their attempt to prevent head injuries, all pedestrians and car drivers would be required to wear helmets as well. And, it seems, a law requiring the wearing of helmets inside the house would also be a good idea.

Helmet laws also present another barrier to potential cyclists who already see many barriers to starting cycling. Mandatory helmet laws add to this list and thus prevent many new riders from starting. These laws have also been proven to decrease numbers of current cyclists thus increasing the potential for crashes by hindering safety in numbers. This theory has been proven to show that a motorist is less likely to collide with a person walking or bicycling when there are more people walking or bicycling (Jacobsen 2003).

Bicycle helmets may provide some protection against minor skull fractures and lacerations, but they do not prevent major brain trauma that happens within the skull. In fact, because bicycle helmets are soft which increases friction in certain crashes, unlike motorcycle helmets, some studies have shown that they can cause neck and brain injuries from rotational motion (V J M St Clair, B P Chinn. 2007).

So, in minor crashes, bicycle helmets can assist in preventing minor injuries, though the potential of their doing harm in a major crash must be considered. Like bloodletting, which, in retrospect was found to have unintentionally benefitted a few lucky survivors because they were later discovered to have high blood pressure, helmets have surely prevented nasty gashes and painful skull fractures.

Bicycle helmets can be a good choice for someone concerned about minor head injuries as long as they understand their helmet’s limitations for preventing major head injuries, not unlike choosing to wear knee pads and gloves. However, some studies have shown that helmeted bicyclists take more risks than those not wearing a helmet (Pless IB, Magdalinos H, Hagel B. 2006). Thus, whenever a potential helmet benefit is mentioned, the potential of a helmet causing neck and brain injury, as well as this risk compensation, must always be included for bicycle helmets to be presented in a truthful light.

Another important point to understand is that helmets do not prevent crashes. Improved road and pathway conditions, driver and bicyclist education, better protections for cyclists and increased numbers of bicyclists through safety in numbers, prevent crashes. Too often government officials, health practitioners and insurance companies grasp at helmet laws as a quick and cheap solution that removes them from liability and the responsibility of providing quality provisions for bicyclists.

Helmet laws and overblown promotions also set in place a ready-made blame-the-victim reaction. Each time a helmetless cyclist is in a crash, their bare head becomes the focus even if the driver deliberately hit them and their injuries were not head related. Remember that whenever one of these laws is presented, it is from a knee jerk reaction, either to a recent crash or fabricated rhetoric, usually by officials seeking to avoid liability, framing the argument as making crashing safer.

Let’s replace our helmets with thinking caps. If we can agree that increasing bicycling is in the best interest of our people and our planet, it’s time to shift our promotions and policy efforts away from the illusion of safer crashing and into reshaping our communities into places where everyone knows the safety of bicycling.

Aussie Situation Worsens

One of the top reasons any of us fight bicycle helmet laws is that they set a foul stage for more anti-bicycling laws. Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening in New South Wales, Australia with proposed laws that will stop many more people from bicycling and make criminals out of those who do.

This urgent alert dropped into my email box this morning:

"You have probably heard about the anti-cyclist New South Wales government and their new laws and higher fines. It's presented as a "trade-off" for a 1 meter passing law, but that makes no sense - if a law is worthwhile then it shouldn't require a bad law to justify it.

Increased penalties include:
- Not a wearing helmet (from $71 to $319)
- Running a red light (from $71 to $425, 500% increase)
- Riding dangerously (from $71 to $425, 500% increase)
- Not stopping at a pedestrian crossing ($71 to $425, 500% increase)

Making it compulsory for adult riders to carry photo ID at all times.

There is no evidence that higher fines or compulsory ID will make anyone safer. There is plenty of evidence it will turn people away from using the bicycle for transport.

Sign the Community Run petition, whether you live in NSW or not, it concerns you. Compulsory ID is an idea that needs to be stopped now. By the way, it's not just any photo ID. If you don't have a NSW driver's licence,   you must obtain specific cycling ID from a NSW government department before you can ride a bike in NSW. So if you aren't a NSW resident, don't think about visiting - cycling there will be illegal for you.

For NSW residents, cycling ID and higher fines are just another barrier to the convenience and ease of using a bicycle to get around. This government has ripped up cycleways in Sydney and is now looking for other ways to make cycling less popular. Overall result? More traffic congestion and higher health bills as exercise levels go down.

If this anti-cycling government succeeds in having the NSW Parliament pass this new law, it could spread, just like bicycle helmet law spread after Victoria became the first jurisdiction in the world to make helmets compulsory. We need to stop it now, so lend your support by signing the petition organised by cycle.org.au at

https://www.communityrun.org/petitions/a-cost-too-high-for-cyclist-safety "

Until we can wipe overzealous bicycle helmet promotions and bicycle helmet laws from this planet, we are going to have to spend valuable time mopping up the messes they create. But we've got to do it. Please sign the petition and offer your support to these battered bicycle advocates. Thank you!

Sue

Aussie Fund for Helmet-Free Cyclists

Seems like Australian bicycle advocates are gaining some momentum in their fight against their mandatory bicycle helmet law. I posted about a potential overturn of the law last summer in my post called Australian Mandatory Helmet Law Challenged. That decision has been deferred until June 2016.

But that doesn't mean it's nap time for the advocates fighting the law. They've started a fund to pay the fines of cyclists ticketed for riding without a helmet. Here's their intro to their fundraising page:

"Help us make bicycle riding normal in Australia again.

In the early 1990's Australia introduced an all ages, nationwide ban on bicycle riding without a helmet.
The result on normal bicycle riding has been devastating. Thousands of everyday people simply stopped riding. Only sport cycling has survived.

It's now 26 years later, and despite a mountain of evidence against mandatory helmet laws , the Australian government has never actually evaluated the effect of the law and the ban is still in place..." READ MORE

Take a look and drop them a donation to keep their spirits up as they wait for that next big challenge to their unjust law.

BMJ Article Finds No Benefit to Bicycle Helmet Laws

I have read countless scientific studies since embarking on this bike helmet discovery journey more than ten years ago, so when I find one that is readable, concise, and easy to understand, I just have to share. This one, recently published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), clearly shows the important finding that bike helmet laws have little if any effect on head injury rates.

To give you an idea of how thorough the study is, here is an excerpt:

“…Helmet legislation was not associated with hospitalization rates for all injury or traffic-related injury causes. We separately examined potential associations for each body region expected to be protected by helmet use (brain, head, scalp, skull or face; brain; head, scalp or skull; face) as well as for the neck which, in some studies, has had elevated odds of injury with helmet use. ^{7 8} There was variation in helmet use with helmet legislation, and this may have been related to municipal by-laws mandating helmet use within some provinces or territories without helmet laws (table 3). We therefore also examined the relationship between hospitalization rates and helmet use proportions in the strata, and again did not find the expected protective effect. Studies among those injured in a cycling crash consistently show lower odds of head, brain or face injuries among those who wore a helmet,^{7 8} though the potential for uncontrolled confounding in observational studies of a health behaviour suggests that confidence in the effect estimates should not be unquestioning.⁴⁷ Before–after studies of the impact of helmet legislation have shown weaker and less consistent effects. Some have found reductions in brain or head injuries of 8–29% related to legislation,^10–13 whereas others have found no effect for some or all outcomes.^{9 11 13} Differences may be attributable to study design features including location, the selection of a control group unexposed to helmet legislation, whether baseline trends in injury rates were modelled, and whether surrogates were used for cycling rates and if so, which ones. Our study compared bicycling hospitalisation rates across jurisdictions rather than within a jurisdiction before and after legislation, and used exposure-based denominators to control for differences in cycling rates.”

To read the whole article, click here. Great stuff.

Sue

Are Helmet Programs Scaring Kids Away from Bicycling?

When I was in elementary (primary) school in the 1970s, my friends and I rode our bikes as naturally as we walked. We might walk to the house next door, but a journey of any farther distance was obviously done by bike – duh, no discussion. Also no helmet. And no finger wagging at “improper” riding methods.

The only bike safety course I recall was in fifth grade when the teachers cleared our paved playground to show us braking distances. A car was brought in and set at one end of the playground. At the wave of one flag, the car took off. At the wave of another, the driver slammed on the brakes. Tires squealed and blue smoke billowed. The distance was marked between the flag wave and where the car stopped. Then we each got our chance on our bikes and the braking distances were compared. The whole exercise took about half an hour, but it stuck with us because it was cool and involved us in the discovery of the message. From then on, we gave cars a lot more room.

We never went through bike rodeos or learned hand signals or got lectured about our heads splattering like dropped melons. How did we survive? Quite happily, thanks. And with those happy memories of riding as children we became proud adult cyclists.

As I found myself involved in bicycle advocacy, bicycle safety programs gave me pause. I get twitchy anyway around the term “safety.” To set something out as “safe” is simply a lie. We all know that it is an impossible aim. And yet bike safety programs propagate along with their escalating assertions that if cyclists do this or that they will be safe.

I understand that certain riding behaviors will increase the likelihood of a cyclist reaching their destination unharmed. But these behaviors are easily taught through exercises like the one I enjoyed on that playground. We weren’t frightened about any potential outcomes, only shown a bit of physics so we could change our riding behavior to accommodate them. The same could be done to show riders why riding with traffic is a better choice than riding against it.

Yet today’s bicycle safety programs go far beyond physics and most land squarely on an irrational assertion – that all cyclists must wear a helmet all the time in order to be “safe.” Not only is this a lie, it does nothing to teach cyclists better riding behaviors so they can avoid a crash.

Taking this message to our schools is a dramatic change from my experience as a child. I wonder how my friends and I would have responded if we had spent that half hour watching our teachers drop melons and eggs as if they were our heads as we rode our bikes. I hope we would have been independent thinkers enough to call bullshit and just continue to ride. But we sure wouldn’t have learned about braking distance and the whole thing would have been a negative, miserable, and scary experience.

Do an internet search for kids bike safety videos and you will find countless, proud examples of melon drops. Look for kid’s bike safety brochures and you will find many with scary titles like “The Dangers of Bicycling.” This is the backdrop teachers are now expected to use when discussing bicycling with their students.

Never mind that bicycling is one of the least likely ways to suffer brain injury. Find a few charts that show this clearly on One Street’s Bicycle Helmet page. I’ve never seen a melon drop video made for children who ride in cars, but that would be the more logical reason for searing this horrifying image into children’s memories.

Never mind that frightening children into wearing bike helmets does nothing to show them how to avoid a crash.

And never mind that bike helmets are only designed to withstand crashes up to the speed reached by falling over from a standstill. They do little if anything to prevent brain injury in most crashes. See my previous post “My Bike Helmet Saved My Life!” for more details on this misconception.

More importantly, I am concerned that bicycle safety programs are scaring our kids away from bicycling. If children aren’t riding, we are losing our next generation of adult cyclists. The evidence is frightening in itself:

• U.S. National Sporting Goods Association found: fewer kids riding bikes
• European Cyclists’ Federation article showing significant drop in child cyclists after helmet law: What happens when you mandate helmet-wearing among young Swedish cyclists?
• This U.S. Bicycle Market found that bicycling is not for kids any more.
• Australian studies show significant drop in child cyclists since helmet law was passed.
• U.S. Safe Routes to Schools programs show no measurable increase in kids bicycling.

Kids who buck the trend, perhaps because they are independent enough thinkers to call bullshit on these scare tactics, are losing the Safety in Numbers protection we enjoyed as kids. We rode in packs, which made us very visible. But my pack was just one of many packs of bike-riding kids in my town and others around the world. Drivers expected to see kids out on bikes and drove accordingly. Now to see even one kid riding a bike is a surprise.

This mess bothers me to no end. I can hear all the bike safety schoolmarms justifying their strict doctrine with their belief that if just one life is saved the reduction in bike riding by kids is worth it. Bullshit. No one can claim they saved a life with a frightening safety message. The life, rather the person in charge of that life, needs a whole package of knowledge in order to make the decisions that will keep them from harm. With that full package, including the knowledge of how safe riding a bike actually is and how little protection a bike helmet offers, the decision to wear a bike helmet will be the last on their list for crash avoidance tactics.

Even as I wallowed in the sorrowful heap of fearmongering materials to write this post, I was cheered by one hopeful discovery from, of all places, Detroit. Awhile back some fearmongers had passed a slate of ordinances criminalizing any kid in Detroit who dared pedal a bike in the streets. As I waded through the muck left by similar fearmongers all over the world, I came upon the uplifting news that Detroit has repealed all their restrictions on youth cycling. While it was a sad occurrence to begin with, this repeal may be a sign that people of all ages are finally calling bullshit on scare tactics that do nothing but frighten away our next generation of cyclists. Thanks Detroit!

Are you fed up with fearful tactics that could be scaring kids away from bicycling? Do you have childhood memories that cause you to question their claims? If so, please offer them in the comments section. A solution may take many small steps like the one in Detroit, but the more people who stand up against these scare tactics, the more small steps will be taken until kids can finally ride free again.

Sue