>should be _against_ mandatory use of helmets. Helmets make it less convenient to cycle and reduces perceived safety, in turn reducing the amount of cyclists and as a result _actually_ making cycling less safe (and the vicious circle ensues).
Not mandatory and at your own risk IMO, but as a simple thought exercise on your argument, answer me this: if a car hits you on your bike or another cyclists knocks you off your bike and your head hits the concrete/kerb, are you gonna escape better off from the accident with or without wearing a helmet?
Spoiler alert from my GFs sister who works at an ER in Austria: helmeted patients walk away without permanent brain injury which she can't say the same for those involved in accidents without helmets. Helmets saving lives isn't a lobby issue, it's a medical fact.
People telling you to not wear a helmet because it somehow reduces safety through some convoluted spaghetti argument, must be off their rockers, when they clearly save lives at impacts. That's like saying governments should be against mandatory seatbelts and airbags in cars because their added safety encourages a cycle of unsafe driving leading to more accidents, and that without them divers would be forced to drive more carefully and lead to more safety.
It's perfectly fine to militate for the utopia of building of safe cycling infrastructure everywhere for everyone, but please let's not unnecessarily put people's lives at risk by promoting this FUD that helmets don't increase safety, just so people can literally die on this hill.
By all means, each individual should do of course as they see fit according to their desired risk profile of where they live and how they want to live their lives, just don't ask others to put their lives in danger in order to emulate the lifestyle where you live where the risks for not wearing a helmet are much smaller.
> People telling you to not wear a helmet because it somehow reduces safety through some convoluted spaghetti argument, must be off their rockers, when they clearly save lives at impacts.
No, they simply have different ethical frameworks/moral philosophies (consequentialist vs deontologist).
I’d mostly agree with you in that I find it unethical to not promote bike helmets at all, even if this were to somehow increase aggregate safety, especially if that increase is delayed and hard to measure.
But I do see the point against making them mandatory if that makes people take their car instead of a bike.
It’s not like not wearing a bike helmet is a dangerous, addictive substance that people are somehow defenselessly exposed to and that they need protection from, and it’s ultimately their own decision if they value their hairdo more than their brain.
> Not mandatory and at your own risk IMO
In the basis we seem to agree. Note that I am not trying to discourage helmet wearing (nor for governments to do it), just arguing against making it mandatory or even officially advised (for healthy adults) to wear them. Actual cycling safety is in numbers, more than in individually taken measures. This is all discussed in way more depth on reddit btw [0].
> but as a simple thought exercise on your argument
I realize could have written the sentence you respond to better, I should have written "and [mandatory helmet wearing] reduces perceived safety", also I said "should" in the sentence preceding the one you quoted, but I should've said that the NL ones ARE against making helmets mandatory for exactly the reasons I specify (and that my opinion is that other rights' organizations SHOULD be against it). Quoted directly from tbe website of the, quite well-regarded and not off their rocker, Fietsersbond [1] (under the header "Veilig gevoel?", translated by kagi):
So yes, given that you got into an accident, it is very obviously better if you had worn a helmet (and knee, elbow and wrist pads). However, we don't want only to reduce mortality rates on accidents, we actually want to reduce the amount of accidents wholesale. The above point (and the point in my previous post) is that given mandatory or officially encouraged helmet wearing, you are more likely to get into an accident in the first place, further reducing the number of people willing to cycle, and thus safety for all those who still are willing.I wanted to react to your car/seatbelt point, but I realize now you are the same person arguing about what constitutes starting points in the sibling thread. I don't mean to spread FUD and I also disagree that this is indeed FUD. I'm sorry that Austria is not as nice a place for cyclists as you would like it to be. I hope with this oil crisis you will find a way to foment some change re the emancipation of cyclists in your locality or even country.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/ut5fcx/why_is_thi...
[1] https://www.fietsersbond.nl/helmplicht/