I teach in Portland and, last weekend, one of my students received a phone message during a break between classes. When she returned, she was clearly shaken. Her girlfriend, a 22-year-old Reed College graduate like herself, had been in a bike accident. There wasn’t much information, but what was known was she had broken her collarbone and had a severe concussion.
“She almost never wears her helmet,” my student told me, before adding, “I’m not sure why she was today, but I’m so thankful.”
I drove her to Emmanuel Emergency Care, where her girlfriend spent the next 72 hours under observation for cerebral bleeding. When she hit the pavement, her helmet was smashed, and it didn’t take much imagination to consider what the outcome would have been if she had not been wearing a helmet.
Yet, in spite of the simple logic—and, truly, the mild, if any, hassle—of clicking on a helmet, wearing one does not seem the norm in Bend.
Over the past few days, I had editorial staff informally tally bike riders (not including road cyclists) in the downtown area—how many riders and how many wearing helmets. The results exhibit a cavalier attitude: Out of 43 cyclists we saw, only seven were wearing helmets, including two young girls biking (and wearing helmets) with their father (not wearing a helmet).
This week, I (without much support from the rest of the newspaper) give the Boot to all the dunderheads in Bend not wearing helmets when biking.
If you have a 10-cent head, you wear a 10-cent helmet, my dad told me when I was young—and, even though I shudder to repeat his advice, hear me out: Yes, I get it. As a kid, my mom insisted that I wear a giant white styrofoam bike helmet when I went to school just two blocks away. It made me look like a mushroom head, and instead of feeling protected, I felt as if it opened me up to ridicule. I would bike out the driveway, turn right, and head straight for a nearby woods where I would stash the helmet for the school day. I was never caught, even though I had my share of bike accidents, but only scrapped knees and elbows.
When I discussed what seems like Bend’s propensity to not wear helmets, various people in the office smirked and dismissed me as if I were a schoolmarm tsk-tsk-tsking. One friend of mine responded by rolling her eyes. “I just want the freedom to bike to Newport Market,” she retorted. She capped her comment with the exclamation: “It’s summertime!”
I’ll get off my high seat in a moment, but consider the argument by the numbers and by the medical evidence. Last year, there were roughly 51,000 bicycle accidents in the United States that resulted in some form of head injury. The cost is remarkable, including not only the obvious reduction of mental and physical functions (e.g., an inability to learn new functions, lost memory), but research increasingly links head injuries with future emotional problems like depression, drug dependency and suicide. Two summers ago, three former professional hockey players killed themselves due to depression directly linked to their head injuries, none older than 35 years (OK, fine, not from bicycling accidents, but from blunt trauma in the game; still, I’m making a medical point).
If the wind through your hair is worth the risk, God speed, young (wo)man. But don’t even get me started about bike lights. Here’s THE BOOT to those who ride without helmets.
This article appears in Jul 11-17, 2013.
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You’re more likely to get a head injury while riding in a car than while riding a bike – so where’s your impassioned plea for drivers and their passengers to start wearing helmets?
Or doing their part to keep vulnerable road users safe by, for example, obeying speed limits? My informal survey says 95% of drivers are exceeding the speed limit in areas such as Riverside, Galveston, and Franklin. If you’re so concerned about biker safety, why not talk about a behavior that much more substantially enhances the risk of injury or death for people not ensconced in 2,000 pounds of metal?
Yes, what DJ said. Riding a bike is not inherently dangerous, it is in fact a much safer activity than driving. It is only when bicycles are forced to interact with motor vehicles in the same limited space that an element of danger is added (from the motor vehicles, who pose a potentially serious risk to cyclists, while cyclists pose virtually no risk of bodily harm to drivers). Personally, I wear a helmet because I know that no matter how careful and aware of my surroundings I am, there will always be drivers who are not paying attention/driving too fast/on cells phones. But I have no problem with those that choose not to wear helmets either. The need (perceived or not) to wear a helmet while riding a bicycle has more to with than with the risks posed by riding in an environment designed for motor vehicles than the actual danger of the activity itself. More bike paths and and physically separated bike lanes would contribute greatly to a safer cycling environment and reduce the need for helmets in the first place.
Obviously, none of this applies to mountain biking or road riding where increased speeds and other dangers are involved. I would never consider going for a mountain bike ride without a helmet (and it has saved me several times while doing so).
No surprise that people in Peter Pan town object to the notion of wearing helmets. I’ve had 4 friends who’s lives were saved by helmets. The only reason people don’t wear them is that they aren’t cool looking. That’s it. Is it worth it?
Thank you for this important reminder. I’ve seen both possibilities up close.
A few years ago, a friend of ours, a father of a young boy, was hit by a truck while bike riding without a helmet. He has been in and out of comas ever since, and can’t even recognize his son. In January, our landlord had a similar bike accident – hit from behind by a car. But he was wearing a helmet, and while he is not yet fully recovered, he has no head injuries.
What a huge difference a helmet can make! It may be human nature to think that serious accidents only happen to other people, but it is incredibly foolish. Where are all these “other people”? Magical thinking has never saved anyone’s life!
I don’t disagree with encouraging helmet use but I do have a problem with you taking pot shots at one activity based on statistics where you don’t even cite your source. I am confident that 51,000 bicycle related head injuries pales in comparison to the number occurring from motor vehicle use or simple falls. This diminishes your argument to simple fear mongering and minority bashing based on an isolated and anonymous statistic.
A friendly acquaintance of mine was recently mugged, and shot in the process. Nobody thought to ask why he wasn’t wearing body armor, even though it might’ve helped. No, the Police foolishly went looking for the man with the gun instead, and my friend was carted off to the hospital without so much as a verbal lashing from the medics.
Placing all the responsibility on the most vulnerable people is truly foolish. I hope nobody asks why Phil wasn’t wearing his helmet when he gets leveled in a crosswalk downtown.
This editorial is really irresponsible. Not only does Phil fail to note causes of bike crashes, but he gives absolutely no context to his student’s incident. Without providing context, it’s impossible to effectively assign responsibility. Maybe she crashed on her own, maybe she was forced into a parked car by a freight truck, who knows. MAYBE KNOWING THE CAUSE OF THE INCIDENT HELPS PREVENT FUTURE PROBLEMS.
“Wear a helmet.” A brief and righteous statement that requires no thought whatsoever and really does nothing for anyone’s safety outside of being a last defense from a cracked skull.
Any way you want to look at it, helmets don’t prevent crashes. Nor do they prevent concussions. You don’t have to be an M.D. to know that a hard shell on the outside of your skull can’t keep your brain from impacting the inside of your skull (this is the cause of a concussion, in basic terms). To prevent a concussion, you have to prevent the impact.
Riding a bike is not always a sport. We forget that in this community but, ya know, not everybody who gets on a bike rides the Cascade Cycling Classic. Just as there is Running, there is walking. Well, there’s Cycling, and there’s riding a bike. Some people are just using their bike to get to where they need to be. They ride slower than Max King can run, and nobody ever bothers him about leaving his “running helmet” at home. Full disclosure: I, myself, don’t always wear a helmet when I ride my bike. Worse yet, I NEVER wear a helmet when stepping in and out of the tub for my monthly shower!
If you tend to fall off your bike a lot, slow down before you hurt yourself in a permanent way that your helmet can’t prevent. You know, like a ruptured spleen, or a severed spinal chord, or any of the other billion injuries that occur BELOW the head.
Yes, there’s always that chance that you could get hit by a car, and that really sucks, but your helmet won’t keep it from happening. Bad things can happen and you do what you can to avoid the events that allow bad things to happen to you (p-r-e-v-e-n-t-i-o-n). What you DON’T do is assume that you’re going to be maimed today, put on safety gear, and use no caution whatsoever assuming you’ve done all you can to be “safe”.
There is such a thing as “safe riding”, and a helmet is the last thing on the list. Saying “Here, this hat will keep you from dying” is, at best, a distortion. At worst, it’s an all-out lie. I’ve said it, too. If I’d been less lazy, I’d have taken the time to talk to some of those riders about how to ride safely instead of telling them to wear a hat. Instead, I handed over a piece of foam and many of those riders immediately went out and blew every red light on the wrong side of the street after dark with no lights. Helmets don’t change actions. Not that they don’t help if you actually hit your head on something, but that’s the last line of defense.
Sadly, the only thing Phil mentions that can actually help keep bike riders from getting hurt at all is about lights, which are a legal requirement for everybody. We downplay that critical bit of equipment, just make sure you wear your magic hat.
I hope this isn’t your highest-paid writer.
Gearhead4077:
If we don’t already know each other I hope we meet. You took more time to say what I had to say and said it better. That is an excellent counterpoint and I thank you for presenting it.
Pardon the pun – my hat is off to you!
All that DJ and Gearhead 4077 said plus a few more things to consider:
Bicyclists are considered “traffic calming devices” – simply their presence has the effect of getting traffic to slow down and drivers to pay more attention to their driving. Studies show that the more bicyclists there are on the road the greater the traffic calming effect. It is also documented that more people bicycle when there is little or no requirement to wear a helmet and, ergo, there is substantially less bicyclists when helmet wearing is mandatory. So, logic indicates that if we want more people bicycling with a greater impact on traffic calming (and related safety) we should not tell individual bicycle crash stories to argue for more helmets, but rather argue for more bicyclists out there with or without helmets riding on the road in designated bike lanes or in the roadway if there are no bike lanes or sufficiently wide enough shoulders.
FYI – Riding on sideWALKS – note they are NOT named “siderides” – is statistically more dangerous than riding in a legal fashion in designated bike lanes (and illegal in the designated downtown area.) And, while designated bike paths separate from roads are the safest approach, good luck with getting the average motorist to agree to open their wallets for the large cost of building such things and even better luck getting land owners to allow such paths to be built on their land.
Scott Aycock is cycling the wrong direction. The number one reason people don’t wear helmets is because helmets can be inconvenient – not because they “aren’t cool looking”. Short distant commuters and errand riders find that a helmet gets in the way of the task they are attempting to accomplish as it is one more thing to remember, to take, to wear, to take off, and to remember to put back on for the ride home. “Not cool” is way down the list past “too expensive”, “too hot” and too “just not me”.
P.S. I always wear a helmet when I mountain bike as stationary trees and rocks don’t move well when I hit them. I almost always wear a helmet when I road ride for exercise and/or recreation as it keeps my hair in place. But when I commute the helmet gets left behind.
Remember, bicycles are “vehicles” according to O.R.S. so “Take The Lane” / Share the Road when there are no bike lanes or whenever it is for your safety (O.R.S. allows this).