The Problem with Bicycle Helmets
Helmet rhetoric that sets bicycling out as more dangerous than it is, only harms efforts to increase bicycling.
To adjust your perspective take this fun Bicycle Safety Quiz.
Mandatory helmet laws often follow the spread of these myths, adding the weight of the law to the idea that bicycling is dangerous. In fact, if helmets were actually effective, they should first be required for pedestrians and car drivers, as well as inside the house.
We support people who want to wear a helmet especially if it helps them choose to bicycle more often. But people who choose to wear a helmet need to understand the limit of safety that helmet will provide them. Combining this understanding with the facts about how safe bicycling truly is will do wonders for efforts to increase bicycling.
These graphs help show why the hysteria over bicycle helmets is so absurd:
The Bike Helmet Blog discusses the latest findings on bike helmets, news on campaigns against mandatory helmet laws, and ways to counter common bicycle helmet myths.
See this web page for a good overview of reasons to question overzealous helmet propaganda: You will also find important papers linked from that site. Here are some more we recommend :
- The Efficacy of Bicycle Helmets Against Brain Injury
- BMJ article on bike injuries in Canada compared to helmet laws
ECF Campaign to Stop the Dangerisation of Cycling Through Helmet Promotions
One Street has been helping our partners at the European Cyclists' Federation (ECF) with their Helmet Working Group and campaign to stop the dangerisation of cycling through helmet promotions. Some resources from the campaign:
- ECF position on KPI and helmets 2022
- ECF helmet fact sheet
- ECF brochure on the dangerisation of cycling through helmet promotions
This popular button (badge) for the hundreds of helpers for the campaign:
This sticker for our bikes:
Safety in Numbers
Safety in numbers is a critical concept regarding the helmet problem. Just as we point to studies that show decreases in cycling caused by helmet laws, we also must point to the positive increases in safety caused by increases in bicycling. These studies show this profound discovery:
- Safety in Numbers - updated 2015
- Safety in Numbers by: Peter Jacobsen, 2003
- Cycling UK Safety in Numbers
This graph, created by CTC and ECF for their campaign, does a great job of demonstrating disparities between helmet wearing percentages and cyclists' safety:
Campaign Planning and More Talking Points
Fortunately, more and more high-level analysts are questioning the helmet propaganda and finding the earlier figures to be false. Below are some more tips on how to fight helmet laws if the threat ever comes to your community. Also, make sure to visit our Campaign Planning page to plan out a comprehensive campaign that will stop the law and, ideally, guide the effort to improve bicycle safety towards preventing crashes.
1) Helmets do not prevent crashes! Improved road and pathway conditions, driver education, better protections for cyclists and increased numbers of bicyclists through safety in numbers, prevent crashes. Too often government officials, health practitioners and even insurance companies grasp at helmet laws as a lazy solution, following the misinformation that has proliferated about helmets decreasing head injuries.
2) Helmets do not prevent major head injuries (see the efficacy paper above) – While helmets help to prevent minor head injuries such as minor skull fractures and lacerations, they cannot prevent major head injuries caused by brain trauma inside the skull. They have also proven to be of little use in car-bike crashes.
3) Helmet laws are another barrier - Potential cyclists 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 is the main point on this site: http://www.cyclehelmets.org/ which also has lots of other good resources.
4) Helmet laws 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 ran them over and they died not from head injuries, but internal injuries.
Remember that whenever one of these laws is presented, it is from a lazy knee jerk reaction, either to a recent crash or fear mongering rhetoric. They always divert discussions away from the real remedy - making the bicycling environment safer in order to prevent crashes. Any time we hear of efforts to make crashing safer, we must respond immediately and demand that they instead work to prevent crashes!
More Resources
Helmet law threat in Spain 2013
Spain’s Helmet Results Paper and the Poster 2007 ->
Bicycle helmets - no net protection (Elvik 2011)
Health impact of helmet laws (de Jong 2012)
Repealing Bicycle Helmet Laws
We are always seeking successful examples of campaigns that resulted in the repeal of bicycle helmet laws. We know they're out there! If you have any good info on such a repeal, please email it to Sue Knaup: sue{at}onestreet.org. Even if the repeal occured through simple actions from law makers, it will be an inspiration to those oppressed by these laws.
Here are the three big repeals we know of:
- Bosnia and Herzegovina repealed their helmet law to promote cycling for sustainable transport
- Mexico City repealed their helmet law in order to increase bicycling
- Isreal's partial repeal for adults, outlined in this letter to the ECF Helmet Working Group
We can also offer these impressive efforts to repeal bicycle helmet laws:
Push to repeal New Zealand's bicycle helmet law
The battle in Austin, Texas to repeal the bicycle helmet law and prevent an all-ages amendment
Efforts to repeal Australia's helmet law
Source: www.OneStreet.org