(Note: I always wear a helmet, even when riding in the ravines and park trails of Toronto, which sometimes garners me funny looks from people... but it's like being in a car without a seatbelt on... it just doesn't feel right not wearing a helmet.)

I'm catching up on all the stuff I missed the past couple weeks, and this story on helmet use in Toronto caught my eye, especially since I object to the public perception of bike helmets being the solution to cycling fatalities. The story is about an unscientific study done by a second-year medical student that counted 1,446 cyclists in "various times over a period of three weeks this spring" and saw only 44% of them wearing helmets.

The Spacing.ca Wire covered this story back on June 6th, and the debate in the comments section brings out some issues:

1) Do helmet laws reduce fatal head injuries? A helmet law in Australia (good graphs in that link) in the 1990s reduced fatalities, but this may be because it reduced cyclist numbers since there is an opposition in some segments of the population (in any country) to the perception that a helmet makes a cyclist look stupid or "uncool". This page makes the case that mandatory helmet laws in Western Australia have increased cyclist hospital admissions, lessened the popularity of cycling, and damaged public health.

2) Helmets are not body armour. They will protect you from a very specific type of injury, namely a serious head injury. They will NOT protect you from anything else. I've found that in city cycling, one is much more likely to be side-swiped by a passing car, right-hooked by a turning car making a last-minute, unsignaled, and inattentive right turn, crushed under the wheels of a truck, or "door-prized" than landing directly on their head. A helmet will not protect you from inattentive drivers.

3) The study size is pretty low (less than 1500 cyclists in a city of 2.5 million), and studying 0.06% of the population is not considered a representative sample, even discounting the fact that many cyclists may have been counted twice if the cycled past the same point twice within a small period of time. This doesn't matter though... your study will be publicized in the Star. This is either proof that the Star has low standards or that cycling is becoming more of an issue in Toronto, and so the safety issues surrounding it matter more. I'm going to go with the latter.

The Wikipedia page on helmets is an excellent place to learn about some more issues, such as if helmets reduce fatalities and serious injuries, or if helmets only serve as a deterrent to using a bike as a form of transportation.

My favourite part of the article is when the medical student says:

...she knows there's a lot of opposition, with people pointing to places like Denmark and Holland, which have no helmet laws yet enjoy much lower rates of cycling fatalities. "You look around Europe and nobody's wearing a helmet, but there are so many cyclists," says Gardner, reached by cellphone in the B.C. Interior, about 50 km west of Kamloops. "It's safer because the drivers are very cyclist conscious."

It's obvious that what we need are more cyclists. It's more cyclists, not more helmets, that will make everyone safer. More cyclists slow down car traffic, and make drivers more aware of cyclist needs and safety.

Get on your bike and ride. Bring friends.

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