Why It Makes Sense to Bike Without a Helmet
30th July 2014
As I was cycling home the other night I came across a few of my fellow students from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Several of them asked me: Where is your bike helmet?
I get this question a lot. I have made a careful and conscientious choice to not wear a helmet when I’m cycling in urban areas because I strongly believe that it will help improve the overall safety of cycling in the long run.
It’s an unintuitive position to take. People have tried to reason with me that because I’ve spent so much money and time developing my brain, and the cost of an injury would be so devastating, it’s clearly more important to wear a helmet. But if we start looking into the research, there’s a strong argument to be made that wearing a bike helmet may actually increase your risk of injury, and increase the risk of injury of all the cyclists around you.
July 30th, 2014 at 08:49
I laugh at all the Lance Armstrong wannabes biking around the area. Spandex does not make you an athlete.