Copenhagenize has an interesting, albeit shrill, counterpoint to bike-helmet advocacy.
It starts out as a defense of Matthew Modine and his lack of helmet wearing while advocating cycling, and it does touch on good points in defense of Mr. Modine’s choice to not wear a helmet.
Magnificent!
For the record, I strongly suggest everyone wear a helmet while riding, I also believe it is a choice. I think Matthew Modine is doing an awesome job advocating bike riding. If he wants to ride around helmetless with nothing but his beautiful mane of hair protecting him, that’s fine. It’s a damn good head of hair, that’s for sure.
I took exception to many of the points in this article though, many I hear often enough when someone is trying to rationalize not wearing a helmet. Some of the points have merit, and some of them are off the deep-end crazy (sorry Mikael, it had to be said).
I’ll give you a sample;
The general attitude towards helmets in North America is the result of decades of exaggeration, misinformation, emotional blackmail all backed by the economic interests of the helmet industry. If I was ‘over there’ I’d feel duped and brainwashed.
So go ahead and read the rest of the article and come on back.
Mikael seems to connect helmet manufacturers with other fierce lobbying groups like the tobacco industry in shaping the general consensus for North America’s viewpoint on cycling and safety gear. Example;
Would I want cigarette manufacturers at the table when deciding about health laws and campaigns? Nope.
Bad connection. The Tobacco industry is a negative, pointless industry with a chemically addicting substance. Very different from an industry advocating safety. Even if you think helmets are stupid, that connection doesn’t work.
It goes on..
In the current debate, nobody seems to give a shit about the 40,000 motorists killed in America each year, not to mention those who are maimed.
That’s way wrong too. We’ve accepted that cars are horribly dangerous, and also very convenient, but that doesn’t mean nobody cares. Ralph Nader has been advocating vehicle safety and seatbelt laws for longer than I have been alive. The statistics for motor vehicle accidents are grim, indeed, but who knows what that meat grinder would look like if safety standards had not been increased to the levels they are now through his advocacy? Do seatbelt laws do nothing? People who don’t like seatbelts could probably come up with a statistic showing how they are ineffective when your car is hit by a truck.
The risk of drowning is much higher than dying while cycling, so where are the lifevest advocates?
In Canada there are a swath of boating safety advocacy groups. Hell, they’re everywhere. I haven’t been on a boat in 20 years without seeing orange vests on almost everybody.
What about the 87,000 people hospitalised each year in America because of THIS shockingly dangerous activity? Why aren’t they sold safety gear? Where’s the logic?
The logic is in doing what you can within reason to help prevent injuries. A life vest isnt a guarantee that you won’t drown, a bike helmet isn’t a guarantee that you won’t get hurt, and not owning a cat isn’t a guarantee that you won’t trip and fall in your own home anyway. Obviously from the statistics car seatbelts don’t always save your life, but not wearing one is inviting disaster even in a low speed crash.
So bike helmets are no guarantee either. Should we take no precaution? Because that’s what you’re doing when you don’t wear a bike helmet. It’s an easy ounce of prevention that has a big payoff when you need it just that one time.
It takes a lot of cognitive dissonance to look out on any busy urban environment in North America and then tell everyone that it’s “perfectly safe” to ride your bike around in it. Let’s be honest, it’s safe, but not that safe. Can grandma do it? Sure! I see it all the time. But it’s reckless to strongly argue that people should not wear bike helmets.
One key component of advocacy is being honest, quite frankly.
There are a million zillion ways to fall off of a bike, and a lot of them involve landing on your head. And if you haven’t landed on the very top of your head, you haven’t fallen nearly hard enough!
I suspect the hidden meat of the argument sadly is summed up in this paragraph here. Sorry Mikael, I don’t mean to be insulting, but…
The difference between North America and other Emerging Bicycle Cultures is remarkable. I covered the rebirth of the bicycle in Paris last year and I was recently speaking in Riga and Moscow. Helmets don’t even feature on the radar. Before the start of our Cycle Chic ride in Moscow, one of the organisers apologised that there was an older chap in a helmet and he hurried over to ask him to take it off. In Spain, France,Italy it’s the same. When a Polish fashion blogger asked other Polish fashion bloggers to take a photo of themselves with a bicycle in the style of Copenhagen Cycle Chic, there weren’t any helmets in the photo montage.
Long story short, all of the cool kids ride lidless. Be like the cool kids, disregard safety for fashion? I can’t decide if Mikael is bucking groupthink, or rolling right along with groupthink. I can’t argue that wearing a helmet is useless, because one directly saved my noggin, and I know more than a few people within my social circle that have been saved from more severe head injuries by wearing a lid.
There’s only one “logical” reason I can conclude to not wear a helmet while biking in North America, and that’s because you find it embarrassing. That’s ok, I guess, but don’t gussy it up by saying that wearing a helmet is futile, or even more absurd, dangerous for you (I reference the comments to the Copenhagenize article, Mikael didn’t go there).
There are a lot of rationalizations you can use to make it look like a wise choice on your part but they all lack integrity. Own what you’re doing, it’s dangerous! You’re not wearing a helmet, danger boy! You’re so alive! That seems to be Matthew Modine’s stance.
But no, really, don’t make other people out to be fools for taking safety into consideration. There are lots of things wrong with the North American lifestyle, but helmet advocacy is not one of them.
As far as why Matthew Modine chooses to not wear a helmet, stripped of rationalizations, I have a guess;
He might look like a dork, and dorky doesn’t sell when you’re a famous well known actor. Oddly, contrary to everything I’ve said above, it might be the right choice, for his agenda. Being a famous, respected actor is his job. If he looks like a dork, it takes away from his hard-fought message.
On the opposite end I do wear a helmet because using my brain is my job. I’m not afraid of death (per-se, in the existential sense, I’m comfy with it) but I am afraid of forfeiting my abilities because I chose not to wear a light, non intrusive helmet while biking through traffic just one time. Also I don’t fear looking like a dork. The older I get, the more I seem to own it.
I still won’t ride a recumbent though, and no helmet mirrors! [Max, Finn, you can make fun of me in 20 years when I do both of these things -- love, Dad]
In the end I do hope though that anyone who gets on a bike because of Matthew Modine’s advocacy will eventually pick up a lid, but it’s a choice. I’d rather see people on bikes than not, and when on bikes I’d rather see them taking that ounce of caution.
The best coverage I’ve found so far comes from The Oil Drum, a peak-energy focused blog. The discussion in the comments are pretty in-depth and cover the less-than-magic aspects of this new technology very well.
So just move on. Same goes for Honky McHonk that can’t wait for you to get out of “the way”. Hell, I even wave and nod at those people as they pass, without smirking.
