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To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets

Do helmets keep you safer in an accident? Or by discouraging cycling, do they increase your risks in other ways?

8:34 AM Sep 30 2012

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2

I'd like to think they keep us safer.

But this made me rethink that.

9:35 AM Sep 30 2012

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Anyone who has landed on their head in a bike accident (flipping over your bike, which is rather common) know bike helmets make you safer.

Landing and sliding your bare head at 15-20mph across a surface like concrete or asphalt is not only unpleasant, but leaves most with some rather nasty wounds.

3:25 PM Sep 30 2012

I have not flipped my bike, and do not think it is common for bike commuters -- as opposed to mountain bikers who really do it all the time. However I have landed on my face while going at a good clip, and it was unpleasant but the helmet neither hurt nor helped.

If helmets discourage you from bike commuting, they are exchanging the rare situation in which a helmet saves you from a direct head impact, for the near certainty of fitness-deficiency related illnesses in our society.

7:43 AM Oct 01 2012

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1

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