The potential for the SmartBikeDC system would be dramatically limited if helmet use were mandatory because there's no feasible way to have sanitized helmets of a variety of sizes available for rental with the bikes. That's the main reason I lobbied against a mandatory helmet law in Annapolis this year.

Additionally, there's some research showing that the health benefits for a limited number of individuals that wear helmets are offset by the much larger health benefits of having more people ride bikes and have an active lifestyle, which can be seen as discouraged by helmet mandates (or articles such as this one) because of the implied level of danger (which is real but being disproportionately hyped).

This isn't to say that cycling doesn't pose risks or that I don't wear a helmet, but driving in a car poses a lot of risks as well and no one is pushing helmets for them (aside from the following link).

http://www.copenhagenize.com/2009/05/motoring-helmets-for-real-high-risk.html

11:11 PM EDT, April 30, 2009

Rodale's Bicycling magazine staffers accepted a National Magazine Award tonight in a gala at New York City's Lincoln Center.

Loren Mooney, Bicycling's editor-in-chief, and writer David Darlington were nominated for "Broken," which appeared in the magazine's January/February 2008 issue. The article spotlights laws that fail to protect bicyclists or penalize drivers in bicycle-car crashes.

The 2009 Ellies drew 1,707 entries from more than 350 print and online magazines. A total of 26 winners across 20 categories were presented with awards from the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Columbia School of Journalism.

Bicycling won in the public interest category, which "recognizes journalism that sheds new light on an issue of public importance and has the potential to affect national or local debate or policy."

Finalists in the category included Businessweek, Newsweek, Vanity Fair and Mother Jones.

By David Darlington
Ross Dillon and his father, Rusty, Oct. 2007. Ross took his last bike ride on June 3, 2002.
© Jeremy Harris
Click here to find out more!

As Dillon was taken away in an ambulance, Nelson thought he was probably a fatality. By the time Nelson returned to talk to Hamer, she had calmed somewhat. "I was just driving along and then there was this big bang," she said. "I thought to myself that I had been hit by another car. All I saw was black, and there was glass flying everywhere. It all happened so fast. I just ended up here, and I got out and that was when I realized I had hit somebody. Did you get any witnesses? Was he in my lane? I really don't know what happened. It just went black, and I guess now I know that the black I saw was the guy rolling over my windshield."

Nelson asked Hamer if she was aware she'd drifted onto the shoulder before the crash. "I was just driving straight," she said.

"Were you talking on your cell phone, or reaching for something in the car?" Nelson asked. Hamer said that her phone didn't get reception in that area, and that she'd been looking directly ahead. Finally, Nelson asked if she'd taken any medications or drugs before driving, and she said she hadn't. As her car was being impounded, Nelson gave Hamer a ride home, during which he concluded that she wasn't under the influence of alcohol or otherwise impaired, though he didn't administer any chemical tests.

When the ambulance crew arrived at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, an emergency-room nurse told the operating room: "I'm not sure you have a patient." Dillon had catastrophic head injuries-a member of the trauma team said he had the biggest brain hematoma she'd ever seen-and his C-7 vertebrae was broken, but his spinal cord was undamaged and, thanks to the quick reactions of passersby and emergency personnel, he entered surgery within 45 minutes of being hit. Over the course of his ordeal, he'd stop breathing four times - immediately after the crash, once in the ambulance, once in the operating room and once in intensive care.

Betsy and Rusty Dillon didn't learn about their son's crash until that night. When he failed to come home for dinner, Betsy telephoned the Highway Patrol, which confirmed that a cyclist named Ross Dillon had been involved in an accident. When Betsy asked where he'd been taken, she waited for several minutes on hold before learning the name of the hospital. (Later she realized that the CHP office probably thought Ross was in the morgue.) By the time the Dillons arrived at Memorial, surgeons had already removed part of Ross's skull to relieve the swelling in his brain, and when Betsy first glimpsed him in the intensive-care unit, she was overwhelmed. "One of his eyes was yellow and swelled up to the size of a baseball," she remembers. "They had him hooked up to a bed that was moving him from side to side like a rotisserie."

The prognosis was equally bad. The Dillons were told that Ross would never be the same, and that they should prepare themselves for some very tough decisions. "People thought he might be brain dead," Betsy says. "When we got there, they started talking to Rusty about donating Ross's organs." By the next day, Dillon's condition had stabilized, but he remained in critical condition and in a coma. Six days after the crash, a neurosurgeon friend of the Dillons rated his chances for future improvement at 5 percent.

Upon receiving all this news, Rusty telephoned Kate Moore, a family friend whose son had grown up with Ross. "My beautiful boy is broken," he said.

http://www.bicycling.com/article/0,6610,s-3-12-16637-3,00.html

Alternatively, a similar shock article going after drivers who talk on their cell phones while driving. Cycling without a helmet is entirely legal and at worse endangers only the cyclist whereas driving under the influence of phoning is both illegal and more debilitating than driving while very intoxicated (check out the NHTSA report).

Cyclists in DC are an unpopular minority. The "myth of scofflaw cyclist" allows for constant vilification of a vulnerable population and the City Paper has failed by ignoring journalism's obligation to speak for the little guy. When a journalist protects the status quo by attacking its victims, they have failed the very spirit of the tradition and neutralized the essence of the exercise.

Good journalism shocks the conscience rather than the facade of propriety. I swear like a sailor but the profanity in the CP response to Mr. Laymans criticism wrecks any shred of damaged dignity and instead comes of as a shrilly snarky defense of the accidentally empowered.

Thankfully, either a change in staffing or the chastening of conscience has allowed the CP management to come around with their coverage of todays Ride of Silence.

Three dead cyclists. Young people killed by illegal or irresponsible driving and no justice has yet come down. There has been no resolution, there has been no trial, there has been no change in a community that is willing to accept these as acceptable losses and these are the few. The area has seen so many people on foot killed by cars and once again, no change.

The government is simply the mask of the people. If you want change, don't blame the city, blame yourselves for not demanding change. But the journalist is especially to blame as they are tasked with being the voice of the people. And when the voice of the people is a snarky defense of blyth and bloodied power it becomes reactionary and it becomes an accomplice.

Todays cover offers a chance at redemption, I hope the City Paper will embrace it and become "The City Paper" it should be.

-Ben West
rhyswest@yahoo.com

And Dave -- yep! As you know, there is the research result that finds that the more riders there are the safer it is--because drivers have to change their behavior. So more riding of any kind does improve the overall environment for safety. OTOH, it doesn't necessarily make the riding environment personally safer for any one individual. Hence the helmet...

injuryprevention.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/9/3/205

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080903112034.htm

I'm not saying we should encouraging helmetless riding. But by putting so much emphasis on wearing a helmet, we may be discouraging some people from getting on their bikes at all. This makes biking less safe for everyone. It might sound paradoxical, but forcing people to wear helmets might actually make biking in the city less safe.

do you really need 6 pages and all those great photos to say "it's really f****** stupid and risky to not wear a bicycle helmet!"?

And yes Erik, all the examples were very good--sadly sadly tragic and terrifying really, if you are a regular bicyclist. I guess looking at the story from your perspective, (if I may paraphrase) that you are "stupified that otherwise likely to be intelligent people don't wear bicycle helmets on what can be very mean streets", I can see why you felt it necessary to devote that amount of space and number of photos to exhaustively reinforce the point.

My reaction was a little different, that if you're going to dedicate that much space to this important issue, go further. It wouldn't have taken all that much extra effort and it would have made a decent story even better.

Maybe it's just because after my last bike accident, I didn't really need any convincing that it is really stupid and risky to not wear a helmet.

I don't think there are "two sides" as another commenter said, because what is the public health benefit to encouraging helmetless riding?

At least, until we have a place where 35%+ of trips are made by bicycle, a la Copenhagen. Then, not wearing a helmet could be a safe choice, given fundamental changes in the underlying conditions.

But I think I the reason this article elicited such a strong reaction was that it seemed like the writer was advocating for one side of this issue and wasn't examining all sides fairly.

Of course, everyone *should* wear a helmet and those who don't are taking serious, unnecessary risks to their health and well-being. But there is a school of though that the only way to make cycling more safe is to get more cyclists on the road. By doing this, motorists become more accustomed to dealing with cyclists and adjust their driving habits accordingly. This, many believe, is the reason cycling fatalities in western Europe are so low despite their low rates of helmet use.

Snyder didn't even come close to addressing this school of thought. In fact, I spoke with one cyclist who said her story made biking in D.C. less safe by giving the impression that cycling is extremely dangerous and thus discouraging people to get on their bikes.

Surely in her reporting on this topic, she came across someone who ascribed to the More Cyclists school of thought. And yet she chose to ignore it entirely. Why?

So snark snark snarky snark. And snark snarked the snarky snarkington.

Snarkingly,

Snark.