Bike Snob - Anonymous [31]
By now you’re probably thinking, “I know who’s behind the Gump/stuffed crust/Creed/bike conspiracy—it’s the oil companies and the auto industry!” Well, it’s not so simple. Sure, they may have been involved, but they never could have pulled it off by themselves. Oil companies are too busy controlling the auto industry, and the auto industry’s not even smart enough to keep itself in business. No, none of them could have done it without the cycling world. Yes, the cycling world has done as much as anybody to convince us that cycling is a high-risk activity. Between the bicycle companies and the bicycle advocacy groups, there’s now a perception that you have to be a raving lunatic to ride a bicycle without a helmet. Thanks to them, people consider simply going near your bicycle without a helmet tantamount to lighting up a mentholated cigarette, taking a deep drag, and exhaling it right into a newborn baby’s face.
Of course you should wear a helmet on your bike. It’s a smart thing to do, and there’s really no reason not to wear one. But rather than sell you on the practicality and inherent safety of cycling, bicycle companies want to sell you on the high-performance, high-risk image of cycling. Not only can they get you on a bike that requires constant upgrades to remain on the cutting edge, but they can also sell you plenty of safety gear to go along with it. Why sell you just one thing when they can sell you two? High-risk activities are “cool,” yet doing high-risk activities without matching protective gear is “uncool.” But hopping on your bike without a helmet is simply not a crazy thing to do, and not every type of cycling requires protection. Yes, jumping on your downhill rig without a helmet and blasting down the side of a mountain at 50 mph is possibly stupid and definitely crazy. Likewise, you are required to wear a helmet during any type of sanctioned competitive cycling, which makes sense since it requires speed and aggression and crashes are an inevitable part of the sport. But hopping on your townie bike to go to a friend’s house, or to head down to the beach, or to pick up some mayonnaise at the store is simply not something that requires a helmet (unless you’re making an “extreme mayo run”). Sure, some people become interested in cycling through racing, but others purchase that image and quickly get fed up with the fact that simply putting on all the necessary gear and getting on a racing bike is only slightly more convenient than scuba diving.
I know that cycling advocacy groups certainly mean well when they promote helmet use, but the unfortunate side effect is that when they push it too hard it helps to feed the fear. Instead of an efficient and convenient way to get around, cycling seems like an extreme sport. The truth is that it can be an extreme sport, but day to day, it’s not. In bike-friendly cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam where everybody rides, nobody wears a helmet, and they manage just fine. Again, I will say that you should wear a helmet. Plenty of people will tell you tales of having crashes that broke their helmets, and that it’s better to break your helmet than your skull. Then again, when I wear a helmet I bump my head on all sorts of things my head would not have otherwise touched, like doorways, because I suddenly have a lot more head. In any case, let a helmet serve as the precaution that it is, but don’t let it scare you from