Here's an observation fresh from the bicycle lanes of Copenhagen. It has to do with the old question of the hen and the egg: which came first? Is it that people who wear Styrofoam padded plastic hats are transformed into rotten bicyclists, either by riding recklessly and showing blatant disregard for fellow bicyclists, or by turning insecure and wobbly? Or is it that these hats just attract that kind of bicyclists?
You want numbers to back that up? Nine out of ten times the bell is used on the Copenhagen bicycle lanes, it is by someone wearing a helmet. And nine out of ten times for no good reason. Eight out of ten bicyclists I have seen crossing red lights are wearing helmets. Half of those cross several in a row. Entitlement is the word, really. And here is where it gets weird: they even wear their hats in the supermarkets. It is almost like this little piece of overpriced plastic empowers them. The entitlement you sense from them on the lanes transforms seamlessly to the great indoors. "Out of my way, I need milk"! I am not kidding you. They will aggressively bump their cart into you, perhaps for no other reason than you are being such a suicidal ignorant not wearing a plastic hat when shopping for lethal and skull fracturing groceries.
Half of the time I feel sad for them. The other half I just want to smack them on the damn plastic hat and tell them to snap out of it. I have been riding a bicycle since I was about four years old, going from three wheels to two. Naturally over the years I have fallen off my bike a couple of times, and I have seen people fall off their bikes too. What happens? You put your foot down, you bruise a knee or a hand. But I have never in all my time on a bike fallen on my head, nor have I seen anyone do so. Any collision that may occur is unlikely to involve the head at all (I am not saying it is impossible to be torpedoed by a car, but are we really at the point where we should dress for that?). So how did the manufacturers succeed in scaring everybody into these ridiculous hats?
Scientific studies suggest the helmets don't work, unless you count the overwhelming effect they have in discouraging people from riding bikes in the first place. With the fresh label of being dangerous, and all. Studies even show that you may be worse off by wearing a helmet. On the off chance you do have an accident involving your helmeted head, it is more likely to get caught and twisted. Not to mention that drivers buying into the false sense of security are reported to take less precautions around helmet-heads.
And the strangest thing about the helmets is that they just seemed to appear overnight. Ten years ago, before the Copenhagen infrastructure was nowhere near as bicycle friendly as it is today, no one wore helmets. But along the way the nation have been bullied into believing that the most natural thing in the world that we have been doing for hundreds of years, is suddenly dangerous. Why was this such an easy sell? I still don't buy it.
It's that simple.
If you want to educate yourself on the subject of bicycle helmets, try: