For the record, I ride with a helmet – though I’m not convinced it provides any benefit. I never wore a helmet when I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, and despite being a true klutz I can’t remember ever suffering head trauma – pretty much every other part of my body, but not the head.

From an injury standpoint, you’re better off wearing durable gloves and long pants for the minor stuff.

As for someone’s earlier comment about motorcycles and no helmets being referred to as “organ donors” – motorcyclists have accidents typically at about 40-60mph. Cyclists have accidents typically at about 1/4 that speed – much more survivable and much less damaging.

Respectfully,

One can certainly opt to ride without one, but speaking as a onetime victim of a brainless motorist, landing on my head, I suggest they’re a very good idea. Most recent fatalities in Manhattan were of people riding without helmets, no? Every time a see a “ghost bicycle” memorial, I think I should hang a note pointing this out.

http://www.streetsblog.org/2007/05/31/weird-science-do-helmets-attract-cars-to-cyclists/

BTW. It’s about time that Americans finally figured out that the only thing better than a beautiful woman, is a beautiful woman on a beautiful practical bicycle, wearing practical but stylish cloths. Every time I’m over in Europe visiting family I always seem to falling in love with the beautiful ladies riding their bike to get around town. Back home, American women barely grab my attention. And to reciprocate, I try to dress with style as I ride my old 3-Speed Ross complete with grocery baskets, on my way to work, the store or out on the town.

It’s just nice to look nice, particularly when riding around the town on the most elegant form of transport ever devised. How could anyone argue with that or am I just a overly sentimental, hopeless romantic?

It is a tongue-in-cheek way to highlight what a real bicycle culture looks like.

For more sober and interesting posts about our bicycle culture, feel free to visit our sister blog at http://Cycleliciousness.blogspot.com – Copenhagen Bike Culture blog.

Here you’ll find a wealth of info, inspiration and stats about the world’s best cycling city.

Are you REALLY that much more pretty with your head without a helmet, if that same head lands on the pavement and starts bleeding profusely? I think not.

A helmet could mean the difference between a simple fall and a serious head injury.

Someone earlier mentioned that the helmets can’t protect you against a full-on impact crash. NEWS FLASH: *nothing* but the Will of God can help you against a huge impact. But the helmets will protect you for those simple falls and mild crashes (like a car door opening in front of you suddenly), and save you from a trip to the emergency ward.

Keep in mind people fall head first, because the head is the heaviest part of the body. (Although looking at some of these logs, I wonder if this is universally true…)

Why not make bicycle helmets part of the fashion accessory, or is coming home in one piece not sexy enough for you?

This kind of blatant disregard for safety is common in the motorcycle community – hence the EMT’s synonym for a motorcyclist: “organ donor”. Let’s hope bicyclists don’t end up on the same pavement.

Though if I did catch a glimpse of some SYT (sweet young thing) on a cruiser, talking on her Crackberry, I’d have to yell, “Get off the phone!”

Today I was crossing Bleecker Street at Broadway, and who should roll up to the red light but a willowy brunette, flowing locks unfettered by a helmet, sporting short-shorts and over-sized sunglasses, her long, long legs astride a vintage cruiser with a beaten-up basket attached to the handle bars. I think I actually looked around to see if I might be on Candid Camera.

As for the definition of “hipster,” if you have nine minutes, here, in the spirit of StreetFilms, are the “Hipster Olympics.”

The bikers I worry about are the ones riding ahead of her and behind her. They’d better be wearing helmets.

As for these women not wearing helmets, that’s their choice. Glam on.

And speaking of image change, here’s a link to Plimpton statute I mentioned:

http://plimptonproject.org/

Just load the site, click on “statue,” and then “view designs”. I encourage folks to write in to the project planners and urge that they select the bicycle-themed design over the competing equestrian and pugilist versions!

If mark doesn’t want to wear a helmet, that’s fine with me; I wear a helmet, but I don’t support mandatory helmet laws, and in general I don’t like to tell people how to live.

But helmets do save lives, and brain function; that “piece of strofoam” can make the difference between a mild concussion and a crippling or fatal brain injury. There was a fairly spectacular example of that in Madison last May, when a biker fell under the wheels of a delivery truck. The truck’s wheel rolled over his head and crushed his helmet, but he was basically OK, and took his med school exams two days later.

Of course the truck driver (who has still not been found) is at fault for this incident, and it’s a shame innocent riders have to wear helmets to protect themselves against these idiots. But if this rider hadn’t been wearing his helmet, he might well be dead now.

The Copenhagen blog is a little creepy. A shoe fetish does not make a cycle advocate.

Aside from those minor gripes, it is cool to see the beginning of an image change. I think bicycle advocates spend too many resources whining about infrastructure. Many communities, outside NYC, have completed the low hanging fruit of infrastructure projects. I think more could be gained by focusing resources on changing the image of cycling. Things like lobbying advertisers to show cycling in favorable light to highlight products.

Of course once you start to approach other bicycle advocates about pursuing something like this, the Cult of the Styrofoam Hat rises up to suck the life out of any project that fails to promote said hat, and it will often raise the ire of the priests of Orange Safety Triangle. There is a schism in bicycle advocacy that has been glossed over for thirty years. Unfortunately, the schism has jumped into the current generation of younger cycle advocates. I was there the first time we were here, I saw it then, and I think it is coming again.