Mind Yer Topknot

People are talking lately about bike share programs, helmets (or lack there of) and bike safety. Folks who don't like bikes clogging up their streets and who believe that cars are king may side with folks like Wall Street Journal board member Dorothy Rabinowitz, who last year blasted NYC's CitiBike program with some pretty bizarre rhetoric. More recently, a Washington Post article erroneously claimed that cyclist head injuries have increased in cities that implement bike share programs when the study they cited actually found something different: Bike share programs lead to an overall reduction in bicycling injuries, but the proportion of injuries involving head trauma increased slightly. So let's get this out of the way: Bike share programs reduce bike accidents overall. The Washington Post recently edited the title of that article to be more accurate, but the debate on helmet-less cyclists continues to simmer.

When my wife and I used a bike share in Boston two summers ago, we solved the helmet issue by visiting a local bike shop and purchasing two low-cost helmets. At the end of our trip, we shipped the helmets back home to keep as spares. We were very much aware that the lack of helmets in a bike share rental leads to a subtle pressure to simply ride without a helmet. If you're a tourist, all sorts of rationalizations spring easily to mind: "I'm on vacation, lighten up!" "What are the odds that I'll be in an accident?" "I'll be extra careful." "People in Europe ride without a helmet all the time."

I'd like to think the main reason we chose to buy helmets is that I'm good at recognizing and managing risk. As a pilot and flight instructor, god knows I've had plenty of opportunities to learn about risk management and one trait I see in a lot of pilots is the inability, the lack of imagination if you will, to recognize hazards and risks. Another trait I see is people who recognize a hazard or risk, but rationalize it away with optimistic, magical thinking: Keep yourself from thinking about potential bad consequences, think good thoughts, and nothing bad will happen.

If you ride a bike in the US, your odds of having a collision with a car or truck are an order of magnitude greater than if you ride a bike in Europe. There are many possible explanations for the greater risk in the US, but the main reasons seem to be that there are fewer people riding bikes in the US, traffic laws often do not adequately protect cyclists, and when cyclist are injured in a collision the driver of the motor vehicle is often not held accountable.

Based on a sampling of other Washington Post articles, it would seem they have a bias against riding a bike without a helmet. I tend to agree with that position, but that doesn't justify skewing an article so much that it ends up misrepresenting the facts.