Report: City should consider mandatory helmet law for bicyclists

enforcing the laws and ticket bikers who choose to violate them.

Mandatory helmet laws in Australia and cut cycling rates in half while doing nothing to reduce the # of injuries. Depending on the type of collision a helmet either does something or does nothing depending on the type and location of impact (i.e. getting doored and falling a helmet will help, being crushed by a multi-ton vehicle it won't). It would be better for the city to focus on safety in numbers, enforcement, and infrastructure rather than relying on mandating a safety device which isn't helpful in all situations.

for red lights and using helmets would do wonders to reduce collisions and injuries.

If cops start writing tickets to cyclists that run red lights, then who is going to stand around and play with their cell phones at construction sites?

A helmet law for pedestrians

1. If you're going to run red lights, pay attention. I ride daily and I do go through lights when safe, and I don't really see it as any worse than jaywalking. I've never had a close call from that in four years of riding in Boston, but I've also seen plenty of bikers blow through intersections and nearly cause accidents. I'm surprised to find that 28% of all bike/car collisions involve a biker running a light/stop sign but that has got to stop. If you aren't absolutely certain there are no cars coming, just don't go.

2. The specter of bike-pedestrian collisions that's always brought up in these threads is a red herring. The numbers are so low as to be essentially meaningless (35 injuries in 2012 vs ~1700 bike/car incidents).

3. Allston/Brighton is a deathtrap for cyclists and the infrastructure badly needs to be improved. It's crazy to me that there are still no bike lanes on Brighton Ave or Cambridge St between Union Sq and the river when this data shows those are among the highest-traffic bike corridors in the city AND each has more bike crashes than even the rest of the Allston area. Also, the intersection of Comm Ave and Barvard is incredibly dangerous for everyone, not just bikers. A start would be restricting the turns that can't and can't be made from those carriageways.

is that many bike riders are transplants (college students, grad students, people affiliated with universities/medicine etc.) who may not be from areas of the country or world where bike helmets are strictly enforced, or where not wearing a helmet is lower-risk because there are fewer opportunities to get into accidents due to no traffic.

So every September, you're going to have a whole new crop of people from rural Nebraska and China who aren't helmet-savvy, no matter how much local enforcement you do.

IMHO, we should start licensing bicyclists, so we can catch the scofflaws.

Your brain is important! In some cases it could also be damaged in an auto accident- we need to protect people, it's just common sense! The same goes for the MBTA, and also pedestrians.

Look, why take unnecessary risks? Also, all clothing should be mandated to have at least an inch of bubble wrap. Safety first! No matter what trivial inconvenience you might have to live with, it's all worth it as long as you safe one life.

Maybe we just shouldn't allow adults to go outside.

that your fat ass should not be left unsupported by less than 65% of the bicycle seat. Studies show that bicyclists who are injured during riding, have bike seats that generally only cover their ass crack.
You want to listen to somebody to tell you to wear a helmet, move to France.

The weird thing about measuring bicycle injury rates is that helmets can reduce the severity of injuries, but they can't really reduce the number of injuries. If you're in a position where your helmet does any good, you're going to have an injury of some sort.

Yes, as the report found, injured cyclists are less likely to be wearing a helmet than the average cyclist. But correlation is not causation. Helmet-wearing cyclists are more likely to be cautious in general, stopping at lights, not riding against the flow of traffic, being aware of door zones, riding in high visibility areas, using lights at night, not making unpredictable movements, etc.

Wearing a helmet is a good idea. But it doesn't suddenly turn you into a safe cyclist. And on occasion, it's a pain to have a helmet with you (e.g. I don't usually use a helmet when I'm picking up or dropping off my bike at the shop, since it's a short ride home, and I don't have a convenient place to leave my helmet). The city should encourage helmet use, but they shouldn't mandate it.

If you're an adult and you choose not to wear a helmet while biking through busy city streets filled with Massholes, then I suppose it's your right to be a dumbass.

Mandate helmets and watch Hubway use plummet. Nothing like crippling the program. In countries and cities with mandated helmet use bikeshare is suffering significantly. I use one myself while on the road but I take it off while on the esplanade (ironically that is possibly the opposite of what I should be doing since a helmet will help very little if hit by a moving vehicle but could help a lot if I hit a tree root or squirrel on the esplanade. I would honestly think twice about riding in Boston at all if they mandated helmets (being hyperbolic here). It would be a stupid move on a whole lot of fronts. (that said unlikely to happen and if they want to run out the vending machines and free helmet campaigns great, waste of money, but go for it. If you need a helmet it is already too late, we need to work to prevent the need of a helmet in the first place (better lighting, street+bike, mandatory training in schools, better separated infrastructure at intersections and on major corridors etc) Now if we are talking mandating lights sold on all new/used bikes, now that is something I could get behind (though it really needs to be done at the state level).

This report is idiotic - helmets don't reduce number of accidents - only the severity of head injuries. plus NOWHERE in the report does give any data on head injuries - just injuries. in all injury-related accidents, roughly half were wearing helmets and it was mostly clueless cyclists riding blithely out into traffic like a toddler. report also fails to mention that in every single death last year each cyclist was wearing a helmet. clearly someone from the helmet lobby was involved.

if they want to reduce number of severe accidents they need better infrastructure, better education, and enforcement/refining of traffic laws. trying to increase helmet usage in hopes that you can prevent people from acting like idiots is stupid.

The comment at the top, labeled "No Subject" from anon, with a little graphic of someone reading a book sends the reader to a bad URL.

you know - maybe in places where cyclists run red lights - they should install bike-specific signals so it's absolutely clear when they're supposed to go. It seems like these accidents are caused largely by people who are confused as to what they're supposed to do, so it's pretty clear that we need a third kind of signalling specifically designed for cyclists in high-traffic areas. I'm amazed that this (and addressing poor infrastructure design in general) was completely missed in this report.

as a daily motorcycle commuter 9 months a year from jp into cambridge i love these bicycle threads. we went thru this years ago with the helmet laws and no one cared for us. cell phones? constantly, cut off by cars? daily. rearended? twice.

So, if I wear a helmet and stop at red lights, I have maxed out my safety allotment? That's not the greatest position for the city to take.

Just like every other traffic law. Until some teeth are put behind ANY type of traffic enforcement in the city, all new laws are moot. If traffic violations were enforced like parking violations are, then I'd be on board. Otherwise, it's just pointless.

Imagine the revenue Boston could bring in from actually ticketing drivers and cyclists for breaking laws! Thousands of people could be employed, all over the city...just stand at an intersection, and rake in the dough!

How come whenever a discussion about driving/riding safety comes on, it always devolves into an argument about drivers vs. bike riders, each side demonizing the other?

It would be more productive, and more realistic, to admit that there are excellent drivers and riders who obey traffic laws, have good reflexes, respect and watch out for each other, and would probably never even get in an accident regardless of whether they wore seatbelts/helmets or not (and doing so is their choice anyway)... but there are also terrible drivers and riders who plow through traffic without a care for anyone else on the road, run red lights on a whim, get into accidents (or cause others to have one while they don't even notice,) and whose lives wouldn't really be that protected by however many laws the government enforces for their own safety.

All drivers have horror stories about riders, and vice versa. But that's because only the bad experiences are memorable. If you're riding a bike on your lane, and a car slows down to let you pass before it makes a right turn, you probably never noticed it because you were concentrating on being a good rider yourself. If you're driving and come to a red light, do you ever really notice the rider that stopped alongside you and patiently waited for the green? But when you, rider or driver, have the right of way and someone else makes a mistake and careens into you, that's what you remember, and that's what colors your perspective on all other drivers/riders.