> Mandatory helmet laws are effective at achieving that goal
…in the short term.
In the long term, if they prevent cycling from ever becoming a viable alternative to driving, then they’re still worse.
If someone is interested in trying a bike from one of those sharing locations, but they don’t have a helmet, they won’t try the bike in the first place. Especially if a city law makes a bike-sharing app “validate” that you’re wearing a helmet, to enforce the law, before giving you a bike.
Fewer people try the idea of riding a bike around their town, so there’s more pushback against improved cycling infrastructure because “it would never benefit me”, so there’s less infrastructure investment.
Continued ad nausium, cycling is less safe due to the limited number of people who are willing to advocate for safer infrastructure in the first place, which makes a much larger difference to safety than helmets.
Mandatory helmet laws are not the thing preventing cycling from becoming a viable alternative to cars. Plenty of places without mandatory helmet laws still are dominated by cars, and mandatory helmet laws reduce cycling participation by small percentages - most cyclists wear helmets without being required to, and it's not a particularly heavy burden. I know if given the choice between a car payment and wearing a helmet what I would prefer.
There's resistance to improved cycling infrastructure because there's resistance to improving any infrastructure, no matter how critical, and the overwhelming majority of people don't see a massive rework of the entire transportation system to shift away from cars as a realistic possibility even in the moderate to long term.
But of the places known to have a large share of cycling, none have mandatory helmet laws (at least as far as I know). Thus, it may not be sufficient but it seems necessary.
If most cyclists wear helmets, why do you need to mandate it?
1. Because it causes disproportionate harm to other people
2. Because it causes disproportionate harm to other people
3. I’m pretty sure that law isn’t universal and probably depends on city codes.. Regardless, if studies showed that requiring smoke detectors was burdensome enough to decrease the amount of new construction, to the point that it could be detrimental to society, then we should reevaluate that law.
…in the short term.
In the long term, if they prevent cycling from ever becoming a viable alternative to driving, then they’re still worse.
If someone is interested in trying a bike from one of those sharing locations, but they don’t have a helmet, they won’t try the bike in the first place. Especially if a city law makes a bike-sharing app “validate” that you’re wearing a helmet, to enforce the law, before giving you a bike.
Fewer people try the idea of riding a bike around their town, so there’s more pushback against improved cycling infrastructure because “it would never benefit me”, so there’s less infrastructure investment.
Continued ad nausium, cycling is less safe due to the limited number of people who are willing to advocate for safer infrastructure in the first place, which makes a much larger difference to safety than helmets.
That’s the idea.