You will find these here and there — a reminder of a vulnerable road user, now dead.
This is at 8th Ave and Ontario St in Vancouver.
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A little history behind that ghost bike and hopefully it will those who dismiss helmet laws a reason to reflect:
“What if the car had got caught at a red light? What if Dan had cleared the intersection two seconds earlier? What if he’d beenwearing the helmet they found in his apartment as they cleaned it out?
Jim and Penny try not to dwell on the hypotheticals,but that last one irks them. They’d been here in April with Dan and rode bikes, Penny asked him about his helmet and now she wishes she’d nagged him more.
There’s no question the accident was Dan’s fault, a needling fact that’s difficult for his loved ones to reconcile themselves with. But the doctors suggested there might have been a chance of meaningful recovery if he’d been wearing a helmet.”
http://ghostbikes.org/vancouver/dan-winnick
So strap one on when you get in a car or walk beside a busy road. Why no helmet laws for those activities? What about climbing ladders or walking down stairs?
Cycling accounts for 0.5% of serious head injuries in Canada. Why are cyclists made to feel like they’re taking crazy risks? Why is Dan being blamed for that last one?
If you want to promote helmet laws, at least be honest and demand them for everything that puts your head at risk!
Bob. you mention “those who dismiss helmet laws”. There is a huge difference with dismissing helmet laws and choosing whether to wear a helmet. Helmet laws are destructive since they yell out that cycling is unsafe – so unsafe that one must wear a helmet to survive. This scares many people into not cycling at all. I wear a helmet all the time but I also believe that our helmet law is very destructive to society. To my mind, cycling is way safer than driving and may even be safer than walking, the reason being that with cycling one gets transportation and exercise at the same time, thereby gaining a health benefit way in excess of the tiny risk associated with not wearing a helmet. Note further that we are one of a tiny number of jurisdictions worldwide that have a helmet law. How arrogant is it to assume that we know better that almost all other jurisdictions worldwide?
What if he had read here or elsewhere how “harmful” helmet laws were? Or how making complete stops at stop signs wasn’t necessary? If the most experienced cyclists go out with the message that new riders don’t need to wear a helmet, that’s irresponsible.
Don’t be absurd. Nobody has said wearing a helmet is harmful. Nobody has said blasting through a stop sign is a good idea. Straw men don’t make good arguments.
New riders don’t need to wear a helmet. It happens safely all over the world. But it’s totally cool if they prefer to wear one until they’re comfortable. They work not too badly for low speed falls. But they won’t do much in a tangle with a motor vehicle. Almost all cyclists who have died locally were in a collision with a car. Almost all were wearing helmets.
Bob, you’ve got it completely backwards. I never said such a thing. Note further that in Portland where there is no helmet law, more people wear helmets than here. In the Netherlands, hardly anyone wears a helmet, but when my cousin goes for a ride on his racing bike he wears a helmet since he is riding faster. And yes – not stopping at stop signs is actually safer for those riding bikes, in spite of what you think. Just because a law exists does not mean it is necessarily a good law. The Australian Senate is studying many of their laws including the helmet law and is planning to weed out these kind of nanny state laws which have no right to be in our law books. As someone I now says, “Helmets good – helmet laws bad”.
Right RV and heavne knows cyclists never have low speed falls:
“Police learned the cyclist lost control of his bicycle while coming off the overpass and struck his head on the ground. He was not wearing a helmet at the time.
The man was taken to the Royal Columbian Hospital, while officers took the children home.
Once officers notified their mother of what happened, police escorted the family to the hospital, but sadly the man had passed away prior to their arrival.
“This is a very sad and tragic event that very likely could have been prevented if a helmet had been worn,” said Cpl. Sherrdean Turley.”
http://www.richmond-news.com/news/cyclist-dad-dies-after-fall-without-helmet-1.497738
Drink the kool-aid Bob. You could write the same article substituting motorists, pedestrians or somebody changing a light bulb.
Police officers are not trauma specialists. Cpl. Turley has no idea if a helmet would have helped. The totality of studies on the issue paint a very fuzzy picture of the likelihood that a helmet will reduce serious injury.
By your assertion, Bob, the Netherlands should be the most dangerous place in the world to ride a bike. Nobody wears helmets. But it is, in fact, the safest place.
Explain.
Perhaps one of the key considerations here is riding in mixed traffic. Copenhagen liberated 100,000 m2 of downtown land from cars over a 40-year period and created a vast pedestrian street and bike network. The bike lanes often feature separation, turn lanes and signals.
Maybe another question to ask is, How many deaths and serious head injuries of cyclists have been prevented by creating separated bike lanes in Vancouver? I know I will always wear a helmet while riding in mixed traffic, justified or not, but feel much safer riding in a physically separated bike route.
“BMW just revealed a self-correcting motorcycle you can ride without a helmet”
http://mashable.com/2016/10/12/bmw-motorrad/