Helmet Advocates, Haters Square Off
Some action in the comments section of David Montgomery’s Saturday Post story about bicycle commuting. I thought the piece was fine, even if it’s not the freshest idea out there. A lot of commenters are freaked about the lede (not about its florid style, mind you):
This is the summer of women on bicycles riding around town free as anything, wearing long dresses or skirts, sandals or even high heels, hair flowing helmet-free, pedaling not-too-hard and sitting upright on their old-school bikes, the kind with front baskets where they put their laptops, and handlebars that curve gently back in a bow shaped like the upper line of someone’s perfectly drawn red lipstick.
Specifically, the trouble is with the the “hair flowing helmet-free” part. I find the helmet vs. non-helmet debate dreary; people who pish-posh helmet use offer us a rare opportunity to test the theory of evolution at every sticky intersection.
The reason I hate this debate is that it turns a necessary conversation—should people in cities get around more by bike, and if so, how—into a mere safety question.
Plus, c’mon, it doesn’t take many trips through town to expose how flimsy the anti-helmet position is. A straight shot up 17th Street NW is rife with terror, from car doors opening (surprise!) to trucks in the bike lanes, to people who SCARE THE BEJESUS OUT OF YOU BY HONKING FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER. And then there’s the vehicles that don’t see you before they back up (two times last month), the pedestrians who cross at you daring you not to swerve (though maybe that’s just my neighborhood), the pitted streets that threaten to turn you into a human cannonball…
But hey, argue about that all you like. We don’t have bike boxes, or car-free-streets days, or any number of good ideas for integrating cycling into daily life, but people droning on about helmets or cyclists running stop signs? Always available.
Photo by Flickr user kendra e
3 Responses to “Helmet Advocates, Haters Square Off”
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August 4th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
And seriously, look at that guy! Harping without his helmet on. Dude, don’t come crying to me when a contra-bass falls on you and gives you a really, really sore bump on your head.
August 6th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Yes, riding without a helmet is stupid, but what is more stupid are the people in DC riding around without a helmet, listening to an ipod on one of those fixy racing bikes without brakes. Often these are the hard-core bicycle messenger types. I guess they think they are “sticking it to the man!” Whenever I see one of these guys/girls running a red light all I can think of is my brother-in-laws funeral, my sister crying and his friends looking shell shocked, contemplating a life taken to soon due to the collision of a cyclist and a car.
Andrew Huston
August 7th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Well said, Andrew, well said.