EDIT: Don’t bother reporting people criticizing others for not wearing a helmet. It’s not victim blaming, just like criticizing someone for not wearing a seatbelt isn’t victim blaming.
Wear your helmets people: Of course nobody deserves to get hit by a car but the reality is people are getting hit by cars.
If I have to hit my head onto concrete I rather do it wearing a helmet than without.
I can’t believe the amount of hatred I used to get on reddit for suggesting that cyclists should wear a helmet so I no longer do. I don’t care. Not my head.
It’s a tricky subject on account of the levels of victim blaming stemming from car drivers.
I wear a helmet while bicycling as well, and I recommend that others do while cycling.
Simultaneously, I understand that mandatory helmet laws are a net negative, and that helmets have lower priority in the harm reduction pyramid when it comes to protecting the lives of cyclists. We must also push back against car drivers who blame cyclists who get injured or killed by car drivers if they happen to not be wearing a helmet or hi-viz.
I’ve read that twist a few times on Reddit about ‘victim blaming’, but suggesting mandatory helmets for bicycles it nothing about blaming anyone for anything. There is a problem on hand and there are are various solutions to improve it. Some solutions are more complex, some are simpler, some are projects with decades runtime to maybe achieve something.
Suggesting mandatory helmets is simply looking for the simplest and cheapest solution of them all, which has also the potential to achieve good success.
It’s just numbers, nothing to do with blame.
Pushing for higher diver education, better infrastructure, better technology on vehicles to avoid missing cyclists in the dead corner etc. is all good and important as well. But it’s all a lot more effort, way more costly, way longer time frame and the success is hard to judge for some ideas.
I don’t think it should be mandatory. I’d probably apply that to seatbelts too though I’m pretty sure that such mandate does increase safety. I just don’t think it’s the government’s job to decide such things. It’s not illegal to hit oneself in the head with a hammer either.
Here in Finland it recently became mandatory to have lights on your bike when riding in poor visibility and I think that’s actually a good thing. Not because it increases the safety of cyclists, though it does, but because I as a driver don’t want to deal with the burden of killing/injuring an irresponsible cyclist/pedestrian that I didn’t see untill it was too late. It’s unreasonable to put the full responsibility on drivers. Especially outside of cities.
Not wearing a seatbelt makes you more likely to harm others in the event of a collision. And there’s a little bit of necessary nanny-state of making parents do the smart thing and protect their children.
How? The way I see it is that not wearing a seatbelt only makes it more likely to harm yourself with the exception of rear-seat passengers possibly injuring front-seat passengers but I think that’s on the driver’s responsibility to make sure they’re all buckled up. My car doesn’t move if the passengers doesn’t have their seatbelts on.
I’m a light fender-bender, there’s not much danger. In a full-speed collision, an unsecured person becomes a blunt force projectile. An unsecured person can move with enough force to be thrown out of the car. Imagine that same force thrown at a passenger instead.
As I mentioned. Other than that I don’t see what the danger is. You got to be insanely unlucky to be hit by an unsecured passenger that was thrown out of a vehicle.
Not an unsecured passenger that’s thrown out of the car, an unsecured passenger being thrown into another passenger who is in the car.
If the driver becomes dislodged in what would have been a minor collision had they been strapped in. Much more likely to lose control of the vehicle and crash into others.
Do you think seatbelt laws have a negative effect on mode share for cars?
Then ask yourself the same question about helmet laws.
I’m not advocating for neither
They’re stupid. Wear a helmet
Not my head, sure.
But when they rack up a few million in hospital bills that they can’t pay because they’re in a permanent vegetative state, the hospital will pass that cost on to everyone else.
If they want to go without a helmet, I say that they should not be allowed to access EMS without first being able to demonstrate ability to pay.
Yeah I get what you’re saying but then again; cigarettes, alchohol, fast food, sedentary lifestyle… This same argument applies to so many more aspects of life aswell. We got to draw the line somewhere. I don’t want to live in a world where hospital denies treatment because you “caused it yourself”
Then that’s your argument for mandatory helmet laws right there. Which I don’t actually object to. I ride a motorcycle, and most states have helmet laws. I don’t wear just a helmet though; I ride with full leathers every time because I’m aware that riding a motorcycle potentially fatal. I think that you can make a reasonable distinction between, “riding without leathers could cost you a limb” versus “riding without a helmet could cost you your higher brain function”, and say that a helmet law is reasonable, while requiring leathers is not. I think you could quite reasonably require that a helmet be worn by all people riding bicycles–electric or not–on public roads.
I don’t understand how that’s an argument for mandatory helmet laws. Obesity causes way more healthcare costs than head injuries. Should people be mandated to stay lean aswell then or else we wont treat their heart attack before making sure they can afford the treatment?