Wow. Yet another way you're a fucking idiot.

On a bike lane - sure.

But you should not do what I did and go down a 7.5 percent grade highway from Rossland to Trail BC on a racing bicycle without a helmet.

Mind you, it was really fun doing that for years.

It's insurance companies that dictate these kinds of laws. They're not going to sign up for paying out millions to you or your loved ones because you don't have the good sense to protect your brain.

Head injuries don't necessarily involve cars.

You should have a word with my friend who works the head trauma unit in the ICU at Harborview, brave free one.

@3
and when insurance runs out (reaches its max) guess who gets to pick up the medical bills for brain damaged intern?

Of course that is assuming he has any insurance to begin with. Same outcome either way.

A meta-analysis of 16 observational studies dated 1987–1998 by Attewell et al. (2001) concludes that bicycle helmets prevent serious injury and that there is mounting scientific evidence for this.

Even if it only reduces head injuries by 20%, or 10%, it's worth it, right?

Also, "the city is as it should be" means you're always following all traffic laws like stopping at red lights and stop signs, signalling all turns and lane changes, etc.

This is a great idea. Idiots should ride in traffic without helmets so they get more catastrophic injuries and are less likely to breed, thus less idiots in the future. Charles Somethingsomething wrote about this in the pre-internet days.

I've worked with brain injury patients that are disabled for life. Very tragic and completely unnecessary when a helmet could have prevented it.

"It is also, however, a protruding sign strapped on top of your head of submission to the status quo."

No. Not even close. It's a sign that should my head come into contact with another hard object, I would like to increase the chances that my brains will stay inside my skull.

That's it. That's all it means.

This thoughtful article is worth every penny you guys paid for it.

@7,

I was referring more to car insurance companies that understandably don't want to pay a huge cash settlement in the event of unhelmeted bicyclist + car = millions of dollars to the family or to the now vegetable cyclist. But I'm sure health insurance companies don't want to deal with it either.

"Christ what an asshole."

Don't wear a helmet, you guys- it doesn't look very cool. And you do want to look cool, right?

@7, Not an excuse.

Whatever, if this dude doesn't do it, who cares?
If others do, WHO CARES.

I agree with the article, until.... "It is also, however, a protruding sign strapped on top of your head of submission to the status quo."

Ugh, duuuuuuuuummmb.

you should just walk.

I actually applaud your philosophical approach here: Prefiguratively politically speaking. When people ask me if I'm not scared riding a bike to get to and from work I don't say: Yes, often! I prefer to say: as long as my fellow road users behave legally, rationally and considerately there's no reason to be scared.

(Of course many of my motoring fellow road users are complete fuckwads, but that's not the change I want to see in the world...)

That said, per Ruke @5, head injuries don't always involve cars and I wear a helmet and I replace it every few years.

I wear a helmet when I ride my bike (which is every single day). However, I don't pretend that it's going to keep me safe in a serious accident. That kind of magical thinking is what gets people hurt.

My helmet motto is "Wear one, but ride like you aren't."

I respect your right to not wear a helmet, just like I respect your right to acquire a meth habit, cut yourself with broken glass you found in the gutter, or have unprotected sex with people of dubious health.

You decide your own level of risk, dude.

Me? Helmet all the way. I've had waaaay too many near misses, some of which, to be fair, have been my fault, but the vast majority of which are due to oblivious or intentionally psychopathic drivers. Plus, I ride fast (where appropriate). Tumbling off your hipster fixie at 10mph is a wholly different event from doing it at 25.

"Submission to the status quo" is a way of saying "recognizes the reality of the world as it is today, and behaves accordingly." Ain't no submission there pal, that's just working with what we've got. If we lived in a city of protected bike lanes, I might ditch the lid. But we don't. So I don't.

I'd also second #6 - my friend, the ER nurse, has seen enough helmet-less cyclist's head-wounds to be pretty fucking adamant about helmets.

helmet, no helmet, I don't care one way or the other, as long as you obey all the traffic laws while you're riding your bike (which includes coming to a full stop at stop signs), and not being a general dickbag when you ride (weaving between the sidewalk and the street, pissing off both pedestrians and motorists, for example).

So, when you catch your front wheel in a streetcar track, and you crack your helmet-less head open when you flip over handlebars, you're doing your part to bring on the anarchist utopia? Carry on please.

I was never a big fan of helmets, but wearing one when I impacted into pavement at 30+ mph meant that I merely lost a few teeth rather than spend my life as a diaper shitting vegetable.

I don't care if you wear a helmet. I didn't for years, careening 30mph down Denny from Capitol Hill. Then I turned 30 and no longer felt invincible. This will happen to you, too.

I crashed and was unconscious and split my bike helmet in two places. I'm still here. I wear a helmet with or without a law.

No hire.

As a helmet-wearing lawyer who represents injured bicyclists (with and without helmets) I think a helmet is worth wearing... but it's better not to get hit than to have a helmet with very limited protection.

There is at least some evidence that drivers give less room when passing helmeted bicyclists than they do to those without. http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl…

Other ways to achieve this effect while wearing a helmet include appearing to be female and wobbling on your bike. Statistics can be deceiving. Lest one think that wobbly unhelmeted women never get hit by cars, that is not the take-away here.

So do you not wear seatbelts because you don't want to submit to a climate of fear?

In example of Mythbusters being close to a public service, watch episode 141: Bottle Bash. Look at how effective a football helmet is at absorbing impacts and how much trauma the brain experiences from even mild impacts. If you want to argue that they use a football helmet, not a bike helmet, then that is an arguement for making bike helmets stronger, not helmet laws weaker.

I predict that at some point in the not too distant future you will, either through the wisdom of age or the pain of experience, feel very silly for writing this post.

Ansel mistakes magical thinking for "prefigurative politics".

Those who oppose helmet laws often claim that wearing helmets reduces safety by convincing riders they are safer than they really are. In this case, however, Ansel willfully pretending that he already rides in a future world where bicycling is safer, as if ignoring physical risks will bring about a world where they don't exist.

"Prefigurative politics" isn't an exercise in wishful thinking. It's an approach to social change that says you have to actively build institutions that model your values. It's not about pretending; it's about doing.

Ooooooh this is juicy! This is almost as good as when Slog had the white-mail-libertarian Unpaid Intern guy!

in 1992, i t-boned a jeep at an unsigned intersection in wallingford (versus the jeep t-boning me). my front wheel, my collar bone, and my helmet broke. but my skull didn't, and i didn't get a concussion.

you're a stupid puppy who thinks he's a libertarian torch bearer.

My aunt went for a nice bike ride on a bike trail in the early 1980's. No cars around, but she hit a bump and fell of her bike, landing on her head. She spent the final 25 years of her life with severe brain damage - couldn't even go to the bathroom by herself.

Two years ago, a good friend got run off the road by a truck, slamming headfirst into a lightpole. She walked away with a broken bike helmet and a concussion. Better than a broken skull in a body bag.

Later that year, another friend was struck by a Hummer limo. Again, the helmet mitigated the severity of his injuries.

Look, do what you want, but don't pretend that not wearing a helmet is anything besides recklessness. Concepts like prefigurative politics seem small in the scheme of things when you can't wipe your own ass or feed yourself due to a major brain injury.

My husband is an avid bicyclist. (Me, not as much.) He has wrecked his bike 3 times in the last 15 years, none of which involved a car. One of those he hit a downed branch on the Burke-Gilman and went right over his handlebars and landed on his head. It would have resulted in a serious head injury if not for his helmet.

So, risk serious brain injury for some imagined political statement if you want to, I guess. You can likewise flout the seatbelt laws to stand up to the man. But I think you're an idiot for doing so.

Hear Hear, I'm exactly the same although every time I try to defend my argument people say I'm an asshole. Kids should wear helmets, so set an example, etc. Whatever, make your own kids wear a helmet then, don't bother me.

@6 & @10 I've spent a week in Harborview with staples in my chest and a tube wrapped around a lung; I've also spent a week in a post-concussion haze. Give me that week in Harborview everyday, plus twice on Sundays, versus another concussion.
With every other kind of injury, you can be aware of the pain & healing process, but not with a brain injury. You're just constantly at sea in a storm with no navigation.

@14
I am not so concerned about the insurance companies. It is just the fact that once that million or those millions run out for medical care for brain damaged intern cyclist the costs continue to mount. They are absorbed two ways - one: the hospital counts it as a lose while covering the difference by increased fees for other patients and two: the government pays for a portion of it. So, either way the rest of us potentially shoulder the burden so that idiot boy can look cool on his fixie.

Hey Stranger, fire this intern and hire me. I can, you know, actually post links to actual studies.

That was a little tl;dr as potential epitaph, UI, but rest assured (heh) someone will dig it up (snigger) if the need rises (BWAHAHAHA!).

This is- by far- the dumbest thing I've ever read in the Slog. Even if cars treated you every bit as respectfully as they treat each other, THEY ARE IN A FOUR THOUSAND POUND STEEL BOXES AND YOU ARE PERCHED ON A TWENTY POUND ROLLING COLLAGE.

You are of course entitled to act stupidly, and if you want to risk permanent disability you should be able to do so. But the problem with your article here in Slog is that people who are only half stupid, or just too lazy to buy a helmet, will read it and use it as justification for doing nothing. And you will be in some small way responsible for their resulting disabilities.

That was a little tl;dr as potential epitaph, UI, but rest assured (heh) someone will dig it up (snigger) if the need arises (BWAHAHAHA!).

If I had kept it, I would be happy to show you my old cracked helmet. No cars involved . . . and better my helmet than my head.

BTW, you might want to get and use some gloves too (any sort, fingerless, net, whatever) since before your head hits something hard when you go over your handle bars, one of the first things to make contact will likely be your palms on the road. Road rash on a limb or shoulder - bad. Road rash on your typing hands - so very much worse. If you live (without your helmet).

I have a friend whose life was saved via organ donation, and so I say: Go For It! You ride without that helmet, kid!

Young organs are better and fresher than old organs, btw.

Berlin is not a valid comparison. You must know this.
I ride with a helmet because other people are stupid and so, occasionally, am I. But I'm sure you aren't.

(Very high correlation between clickbait, server hiccups, and double-posting.)

For the same reason, I ride my bike straight through stop signs.

@36 for Insightful Win Of The Day.

I agree with @49 about the gloves. Also, I have literally shredded shirts and pants when I wiped out going fast on gravel or macadam, so I recommend the gloves too. And don't ride fixies with a t-shirt and a speedo - it really DOES HURT. For a long time.

RIP unpaid intern who won't be needing a new camera after all.

So you're not going to wear a helmet as a way of protesting our lack of sufficient bicycling infrastructure, but you'll start wearing a helmet once that infrastructure's in place? Seems bass ackwards to me...

And Berliners - with their 400 miles of bike lanes - can ride helmetless for two reasons: first, people in Germany know how to drive, so cyclist are less likely to get hit by a car in Berlin, and second.... They HAVE 400 miles of bike lanes, as opposed to Seattles pathetic collection of disconnected bike lanes, sharrows, and otherwise inadequate infrastructure.

@53: Stop signs are part of the tyranny of the state. (Duh.)

If you really do make your living with your brain, your future prospects do not look bright based on the quality of brain usage in this post. Good luck, UI...you're going to need it.

Actually, dibs on his new camera when it becomes available.

I'd say the odds of a bicycle rider being injured without wearing a helmet are about the same as having your unattended valuables stolen from a public place.

Ach, so late to this conversation. Regardless, here are my two bits of anecdotal helmet knowledge from being an avid bicyclist for well over 20 years.

1. Wear a helmet when you bicycle DRUNK!

2. Helmets are very useful for supporting helmet-mount REAR-VIEW MIRRORS, which allow bicyclists to be very, very nimble and aware in traffic.

3. White or light-colored helmets improve bicyclist VISIBILITY to other vehicles. I like being visible on my bicycle.

Otherwise, do as you wish. Freedom of the road, no tickets/free parking, etc., etc.

Annnnnnd you're stupid. I am sorry. You are. Jeff Speck sad it best. Riding around with the wins blowing through your hair doesn't magically turn your city into Amsterdam. Have you been hit by a car? I've been hit by a SUV and my helmet cracked but my head didn't (though l was still knocked unconscious). Getting hit by a vehicle doesn't feel good, even with a helmet on but it's bullshit to say that they don't cut down on head trauma.

I threw away my broken helmet because the dried blood started to gross me out. My skull was fractured on the bottom where my spine hit it with the rest of my body, the top of my skull was fine.

@37- You are committing the logical fallacy of "argument from final consequences." If people wear helmets some people won't ride bikes (really?). Let's face it, most people who don't wear helmets are just shallow and don't want to mess up their hair, let's not try and pass it off as some statement against the man.

This post is something you will stumble upon in 10 years and feel embarrassed by.

Shouldn't pedestrians wear helmets for all the reasons commenters have given above?

I mean, even if it only prevents 5% of injuries, it's worth it for all pedestrians to wear helmets at all times. Right?

And full body protection as well. Because it's safer. Even if it only prevents 1% of injuries, isn't that worth it?

Car drivers should also all wear helmets and full body protection. Maybe Kevlar.

If it just prevents one person from dying out of 100 trillion superficial injuries... than it's worth it, right?

One last comment from me: If you ride a bicycle regularly, and especially for many reasons (commuting, errands, work, drinking, etc.), it's not a question of IF you will have an accident, it's a matter of WHEN you will have an accident.

It's possibly that you are in the very small, magical percentage of bicyclists who never, ever crashes in their entire life. But that's a tiny group, and you can't predict if you'll be in that group.

Concussions suck. They are brain damage. Helmets actually help prevent brain damage for that time when you crash.

I don't care for mandatory helmet laws because there are in fact times when I choose to go without (long-distance bicycle trips in particular), when I feel it is safer (bcz. fewer intersections and cars).

But I will always wear a helmet bicycling around the city. My life, my choice.

Take you own life in your hands, as you already do. As everyone does.
"Do what thou wilt, shall be the whole of the law"

"I look forward to one day wearing a helmet"

That day will come sooner than you think, what with all the impatient drivers we have around here.

Just keep your unsafe self off the sidewalks (you're a vehicle, remember) and obey traffic signals (like all the rest of the vehicles have to) and we'll be fine.

Motorcyclists have the ABATE clowns and their idiot anti-helmet silliness.

With, predictably, the same results. States without helmet laws or with tecently-repealed helmet laws see increased fatalities and serious, debilitating injuries.

Only idiots dont wear helmets.

Urgutha Fork with the reductio ad absurdum strawman, everyone.

All I hear when I read this post is:

"I'm rebel, Dottie! A lone wolf!"

You know why it's so cool to ride without a helmet in Amsterdam and Paris? They have universal healthcare.

Therefor these oft exampled super-cool helmet-less Europeans don't end up suing somebody and/or elevating the cost of care for everybody else when they eventually ram their semi-socialist skulls through a granite wall.

Here not so much.

I'm totally cool with bicyclists or motorcyclists not wearing helmets, so long as any cost for treatment of head injuries comes 100% out of their own pockets. Not from pooled insurance premiums - treating TBI raises premiums for everyone - and most decidedly not from any publicly-funded ER care (which we all pay for).

I remember a court case some years back on the helmet laws where a motorcyclist defended his right to go lidless by saying, well, the helmets always crack in an accident anyway! The doctor presenting the evidence for the other side said, "Yes, it's true, if I take this helmet and strike it against the corner of this table, it may well crack. On the other hand, if I take your skull and strike it against the corner of the table, it will definitely crack. You have to decide which you'd prefer."

Fuck you. My wife was released from Harborview yesterday. Last week Wednesday she was riding to work and apparently got her wheel stuck in the SLUT tracks and fell in the construction area on Mercer. I say apparently because she has no memory of what happened. She was unconscious for 5 minutes and cracked her skull. That's with a helmet. The helmet itself has a crack all the way through the Styrofoam where her head hit. And no cars were involved in her accident.

She's alive and is on the way to making a full recovery, but she won't be able to return to work until next month, if then. She has mild traumatic brain injury which is affecting just about every aspect of her life right now, but only moderately so. I can't imagine what shape she would be in if she wasn't wearing a helmet. Maybe she'd be dead.

All I can say is that every time I now pass someone not wearing a helmet, I want to yell, "Wear a fucking helmet!" But I guess in your case I'm willing to make an exception so you shut the fuck up after your massive brain trauma.

@19: and don't forget animals and other critters that jump out in the road at you. Just last night outside my city a cycling group was out on an 18 mph ride on a nice country road. A labrador retriever ran out and charged at a guy, knocking him off his bike at high speed. His helmet cracked, but he suffered nothing worse than bumps and bruises.

While I drafted this post, Eli wrote to me, "Wear a helmet! You make your living WITH YOUR BRAIN!"

He must not read your stuff.

I'm so sorry about your wife's crash, taco hut @72. I hope she makes a speedy and complete recovery.

the data ARE, the data ARE!

Thank you emma's bee.

@72: I wish your wife a complete and swift recovery. That really sucks and I'm sorry.

I know this will probably have no effect whatsoever on the tone of this comment thread, but notice that I do not say helmets are worthless or that you should never wear one. I occasionally wear one on longer weekend rides, or if it's rainy and slippery out. If I was to race, I think I'd wear one. I make a judgement based on the conditions. In this post I'm talking about bicycling as a form of city transportation. For that, we shouldn't need to wear a helmet or be required to.

Two words: Gary Busey.

This post is right up there with the one he wrote accusing people who support members of the National Guard of being warmongers.

What a fucking tool.

Any chance this is a trollpost?

@69,
For it to be a strawman argument, I'd have to have torn it down. It's just reductio ad absurdum sarcasm.

I don't bike, so it doesn't apply to me, but seriously... with all this ranting over wearing a helmet, most of it with screams of BECAUSE SAFETY!, why shouldn't pedestrians wear helmets? Would it not be safer? Ignore the body armor stuff I wrote... just pedestrian helmets. What if rigorous scientific studies showed that pedestrians wearing helmets were 10% safer. Would there be as much vitriol as there is right now over the bike helmet thing?

Just want to say thank you to Ansel Herz for not wearing a helmet. I wish more people like you would not wear helmets too.

Everyone not like Ansel Herz should definitely protect their brain, though.

Furthermore, sex without condoms has way more freedomness. Seriously, there are studies in Africa saying condoms actually cause HIV.

@71

Dream on. Everybody pays more for these morons. How much more?

One year after relaxing its motorcycle helmet law, Michigan has seen a 22 percent rise in medical insurance claim costs associated with cycle crashes. The data is clear: When helmets are off, injuries and death increase.

The average medical claim rose to $7,257 in the wake of the change...

From Michigan motorcycle injury claims rise
with helmet law repeal at Consumer Reports. Keep in mind that bicyclists don't have any insurance at all, and these young anarchist twats in particular don't pay any health insurance premiums. All these extra costs get passed on to either your uninsured motorist clause, your health insurance, or your taxes. Somebody pays and that somebody is all of us.

That extra $7,000 was the average. Motorcyclists are only 5% of the population. Think about how much money they had to cost us to drag the average of the other 95% up by 7 grand.

Before we get all high and mighty and preachy about bike helmets - There were 32,367 motor vehicle-related deaths in 2011 in USA. (Thank you, Wikipedia). Why aren't motorists - And for that matter, the pedestrians they put at risk - also required to wear helmets? The answer is that human beings aren't particularly accurate, rational or honest with themselves about assessing bodily risk.

The thing about a TBI (traumatic brain injury) is that you could wake up in a hospital and not know that you’ve had one. When your family patiently explains to you, after you’ve woken up from a two-week coma, that you’ve fallen and hit your head, that you are seriously injured, and that for your own safety you absolutely cannot get up to walk to the bathroom unaided, you won’t understand why. You will get up and try to take a few unsteady steps, angry, confused, and yelling. You don’t know why your voice is slurred when you try to speak. You can’t walk, but you won’t sit back down because you don’t know why you’re in the hospital, and when you are told, it doesn’t sink in.

You don’t understand that the men in Harborview scrubs who have taken you down and are tying you to your hospital bed with soft restraints are doing so to save your life. If you try to walk before you’re steady, you will fall, you could hit your head again, and die for real this time. You have already died once, but a 3 year old saw out the window. She saw you fall and hit your head, she saw you have a seizure, and she saw you die. She told her father, and he gave you CPR.

You don’t know why your sister is crying, watching the nurses take you down and write down "noncompliant" in your chart. You didn’t hear the nurse tell her that it could be two years before you have recovered as much as you’re going to. You didn’t see your family come to visit you every day of the two weeks you were in the coma, wondering if you would ever walk or talk again, or if this was it. You didn’t see the tube coming out of the hole drilled into your skull through your forehead to monitor the pressure. You didn’t see your sister playing music for you while you were in the coma, hoping you would come back to this world. You didn’t see your mother’s brave smile. And when you came back to this world, yelling, you didn’t know that you’d have permanent volatile personality changes, that you’d never smell or taste a cup of coffee or any food ever again, that you’d never be able to hold down a job again. You couldn’t see the rehabilitative therapy that was in front of you, the years of headaches trying to get on Social Security Disability, the days of severe migraines you’re now prone to, and you didn’t know that you’d spend the next ten years living with your elderly parents.

Now, to be fair, my brother was not biking—he was assaulted. My brother’s brain injury was the result of falling backwards onto his head onto concrete from a standing position. It wasn’t just the force of the initial impact that caused the brain injury—it was the brain rebounding into the front of the skull, and then the swelling. The physics forces that could would into play in a head injury sustained in a bike accident, from even a casual ride, would be much greater than just falling backwards from a standing position. At any speed, a life-altering traumatic brain injury is a real possibility for a bike rider in an accident, regardless of whether the bike rider was 100% in the right, whether they were on their usual ride where they “should” be safe, whether the pavement was dry, whether there was a car involved, whether roadways were designed and maintained for the safety of cyclists, and whether the world is yet exactly the way we want it to be.

Wearing a bike helmet is not an act of fear. It’s an act of optimism and hope, of planning to go on living life and being in the world with one’s personality and unique mind wholly intact. Wearing a bike helmet is also an act of generosity, to do what one can, however slightly inconvenient, to avoid putting one’s family and friends through grief and heartache and worry. You could even look at wearing a helmet as an act of selfishness—looking out for number one. But not wearing one? There’s not an argument for that that stacks up against the possibility of waking up in Harborview in the way I’ve described (or not waking up at all.)

It's less about you and your dumb, unprotected head - and more about the driver who will get an involuntary manslaughter charge when they accidentally hit your dumb, unprotected head.

Just like motorcyclists, you are far more likely to receive a head injury or death from crashing without a helmet - and that is why they are mandatory. Moreover, they are mandatory because we share the road with cars...and if a car hits us, it is JUST like hitting a motorcyclist. If you kill someone, it can ruin your life.

I bike to work every day AND own a car, and I would rather ride safe and drive safe, than have some hipster fixie come flying down the hill without a helmet, signals, or lights...it's just dumb.

http://www.hipstercrite.com/2012/10/23/h…

CARS MANNNN WHYYYYYYY! TWWEEET TWEEEET RIGHT OF WAY!! hahah

The other part of this is that if you look at YT vids of Europeans on bikes on cycletracks...they ride slow! They don't dress up in body suits and speed along in packs of 4 weaving in between pedestrians.

The bikes they ride are big and slow classic style bikes with high handlebars and baskets. And people wear their normal clothes.

But most of all. They don't speed. They go slow.

Bicycles in away a bit like street cars. For a while they were a standard mode of travel. Then they become just for kids and then finally entered the very rarefied mode of the $7000 track bike edging along a highway driven by high strung Lycra whippets on their way to a project management job at Pharmasoft.

Now I see the bike returning here in Kent. The cheap bike, the one that every kid can afford. Kids are sitting on their bikes, then taking off, going in circles, learning on training wheels. America is coming back. In the suburbs, where one can grow up healthy and play in the street or park all night long.

History repeats itself. The more or less same nonsense was uttered in this state by the no-helmet laws motorcycle crowd about three decades plus ago. Absolutely selfish, inconsiderate crap.

F'ing preposterous. But that's cool. Want to come smoke a meth cigar to protest public obnoxious health messages about trying to save your life with me sometime?

"It is also, however, a protruding sign strapped on top of your head of submission to the status quo."

As are personal grooming and clothing. Your reasoning is about the most childish I've ever heard. Bravo fair idiot, you win at dumb.

Bike helmets prevent head injury the same way filtered cigarettes prevent lung cancer.

It's for show. You wear one for piece of mind, but deep down you know that if shit get's sketchy you'll be relearning your ABCs helmet or no helmet.

@78. Thanks. I take back what I said in the last sentence of my post about you. That was over the top.

Oh man. Oh man. This is great. There should be more of these and eventually the internet will catch on fire.

Sunscreen!

You should do sunscreen next. C'mon, set your iconoclastic sites on that sacred cow! Do it!!!!

Cars now have airbags to stop your head banging things in an accident, they also have daytime running lights. If a bicyclist wants to ride in traffic, head protection and lights should also be required for them.

@92, but that's the point. You won't be.

The purpose of a helmet is the absorption and distribution of impact energy through the media it's made of. Much like how body armor takes a bullet or shrapnel impact and instead of letting it penetrate, breaks your ribs and gives you a bruise 3 feet wide. It's still painful as all hell, and you're certainly incapacitated, but you're going to live most likely, instead of having your liver painted all over someone else.

Given how many people ride without helmets in the face of helmet laws, I find it hard to believe that helmet laws are the big impediment to bike riding.

(And wear a fucking helmet, jackass. It might save your life, it might save you from a nasty head wound that bleeds all over your favorite shirt, it might do absolutely nothing, but it's really not much of a sacrifice.)

On that note by the way, if you're in an impact fast enough to make the protection of a helmet to your brain irrelevant, chances are you're going to die. That's the territory of major organ and bone damage, and severe internal bleeding.

In the interest of fairness, I'd love for slog to invite a trauma surgeon to post a response. I think it'd be amazing.

Helmets are a good place to put lights....