Darn. My outrage over a front page story in today’s Oregonian about a proposal to require every bicycle rider to wear a helmet has been cut short.
There’s no better blog subject than my righteous indignation (RI).
So it was sort of disappointing to learn that state Sen. Floyd Prozanski has backed off his notion of an Oregon adult bike helmet mandate (those under 17 already are required to wear one).
Sounds like other bloggers beat me to the RI.
The Eugene Democrat says he’s still all in favor of helmets. In fact, he says he survived a bike crash in June with nothing worse than a sore shoulder and cracked helmet.
But Prozanski also got a pounding this week from bloggers responding to news reports that he intended to introduce a mandatory helmet law in the 2009 Legislature.
Ordinarily, as a proud progressive who recognizes many opportunities for appropriate government action to make our lives better (like passing Measure 49, a welcome Prozanski proposal), I’d be in favor of a vehicle safety regulation.
But my wife and I frequently ride our mountain bikes in central Oregon’s Camp Sherman area – carefully avoiding any hint of a mountain by sticking to paths that are as level as possible.
The closest thing to a highway that I ride on is the dirt road from our cabin to the Camp Sherman store. Sometimes I’ll pass a car or two on my 2-mile ride to get a newspaper in the morning. No big deal.
I feel perfectly comfortable, and safe, in my cap. Even more so, when we venture out onto the forest paths and the graveled Camp Sherman bike trail. (We’ve named our own favorite route the “Creeks and Coffee Trail“; check it out if you’re in the area.)
Yes, many mountain bikers wear helmets. But our sedate off-road style doesn’t require them. No jumps. No daredevil downhill descents. No blasting at full speed in between tall timber.
So we’d hugely resist a law that said “thou shalt wear a helmet.” We have helmets. We wore them the first few times we went mountain biking. Soon we put them aside, not seeing any reason for them.
I took the Oregonian poll on the subject. Surprisingly, the No’s were only at 52%, with 48% supporting a universal helmet law.
Well, there’s some science on my side. A Scientific American article says that it’s “Strange but True: Helmets Attract Cars to Cyclists.”
At any rate, I doubt that Oregon will see an attempt to mandate helmets for adult bicyclists. Sen. Prozanski seems to have gotten the message from riders who prefer to choose for themselves what to put on their heads.
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If you decide you’d like to ride in town, please join us for Breakfast on Bikes, Salem’s bikey breakfast on the last Friday of each Month. Visit the blog @ breakfastonbikes.blogspot.com for more information! The more cyclists there are, the easier it is to argue for safety and infrastructure improvements!
If the government is going to require people to wear helmets on bikes, why not require helmets when driving as most auto fatalities are due to head trauma and there are many more auto fatalities than bike fatalities. In fact I am going to propose legislation that every driver and passenger must wear a kevlar body suit in addition to a helmet. We’ll put another tax on cigarettes and liquor to pay for them. Let those bad smokers and drinkers foot the bill. They deserve it for being so stupid! Third violation for not wearing your body suit…five years in the slammer.
Seriously though, it is amazing how the head flops around even in low speed bike crashes. I was cruising easily with a friend when his wheel got stuck in a rut. He flew over the handle bars and landed on his head. His helmet was cracked but not his skull.
It’s an adult decision whether you wear one or not. We don’t need the government meddling and micro-managing our lives to that extent.
The problem with any government regulations for safety is when it comes up against what we personally like to do… They have more comfortable helmets but if someone doesn’t want them for bicycles, what about dirt bikes or motorcycles, what about auto seat belts which might not be important at 25 mph or might be…
Rain said: “The problem with any government regulations for safety is when it comes up against what we personally like to do… ”
–Exactly. There are situations where a bike helmet is not absolutely necessary as Mr. Hines described. There may be some risk, but shouldn’t that be up to him as an adult to decide? It’s his skull. Let him decide what to do with it. Same with seatbelts.
This control of our lives has crept into modern cars. Sometimes when it’s hot I want to sit in my car with the door open for air circulation and listen to the radio (Michael Savage of course) while I’m waiting for somebody. The damn car won’t let me do it by continuously sounding an alarm to keep me from leaving the key in the ignition. By trying to help they’re messing me up. Leave me alone to make my own mistakes. I’m a big boy.