I don’t ride a bike all that often—because Chicago has a dearth of safe, protected bike lanes on roads I might use for commuting, and because I lack the vigor and bravery needed to ride alongside cars and buses on most of our thoroughfares. But when I do, I hate wearing a helmet. In the summer, it’s hot, in the winter, it’s cold, and at all times it messes up my hair and looks ugly and stupid. There’s also something about wearing one that takes away from the feeling of freedom I associate with being on a bicycle.
I thought I’d write this piece about the pros and cons of wearing a bike helmet, but there’s already plenty of literature on the topic a quick Google search away. Much of it is devoted to painstaking (and often mind-numbing) analyses of accident data, comparisons between biking cultures in the U.S. and elsewhere (or between U.S. cities), and riffs on what should and shouldn’t be a matter of public policy. There are also lots of memes about how, since driving puts people at much higher risk of head injury, it’s drivers, not cyclists, who should be wearing helmets.
Currently, no states in the country require bicycle helmets for adults, though more than 60 municipal governments do, according to data compiled by the nonprofit Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute. In Chicago, only bike messengers and delivery people are required to wear helmets. Nevertheless, the overwhelming cultural message around biking is that you should wear a helmet—and shame on you if you don’t.
About a year ago, I actually had my first bike accident—a collision with another cyclist on a tight turn on the lakefront path at a busy hour. It resulted in me crashing headfirst into a quickly moving, Lycra-clad man on an expensive bike. I googled my symptoms and described them to my physician parents, and I suspect that I suffered at least a minor concussion. But the incident didn’t make me feel like I should be wearing protection. Instead it made me reluctant to bike on the lakefront path during rush times.
