Riding w/o a helmet

[thekarens]

There are lots of things that are not worth it to me. But that doesn't mean I get to impose my will on others. If I could impose my will... oh boy! That would be cool!

Veronica

Trust me, I have no desire to impose it on others, just like the people who don't use a seatbelt or ride their motorcycle without a helmet. My next door neighbor lets her 5 year old ride both motorized and pedal vehicles without one and he's a little daredevil, but I don't say anything because that's their business. It's not worth it to me, but it's not my or my family's health that's at risk.

FWIW a guy in our bike club was hit by a car and the helmet saved his life. He still spent a month in the hospital, but he was saved permanent brain injuries and is riding again.

[Pax]

Trust me, I have no desire to impose it on others, just like the people who don't use a seatbelt or ride their motorcycle without a helmet. My next door neighbor let's her 5 year old ride both motorized and pedal vehicles without one and he's a little daredevil, but I don't say anything because that's their business. It's not worth it to me, but it's not my or my family's health that's at risk.

Took me a long time get to this point but I'm there, that pithy phrase "not my circus, not my monkeys" reminds me that I need to keep my sights on my own business, I don't have enough of an attention span to spread it around.

[Crankin]

I can honestly say that when it comes to kids, I will never "get there." I don't say anything to roadies who are helmet-less, but that is extremely rare in these parts. It's the newbie recreational types that seem to bother me. While commenting to adults is not the thing I always do, I'd be lying if I said I've never done it. I don't sit around and think/worry about this stuff, but when I see it, I do get upset.
Yeah, I know the stuff about the nanny state, etc. Perhaps that's why I like living in Massachusetts.

[emily_in_nc]

I hate seeing people riding without helmets in the US, kids or adults, path or road. And I absolutely always wear one here -- would feel naked without one. But interestingly, in Belize, where literally NO ONE wore a helmet, it didn't bother me because it was just the cultural norm. I admit that I also did not wear a helmet there. There are few vehicles (mostly other bikes and golf carts), and because of bad roads, speeds are slow. Riding a beach cruiser on the sandy beach path and even on the bumpy road, I never worried about not wearing a helmet and never had a problem. I did fall a couple of times in the sand (slow speed spin out type falls), but never hit my head. I know many of you here would not have even taken that much of a chance, but culturally, being from the US, we were already "different" enough, that I just didn't care to stand out even further from the local crowd. When in Rome, I guess...

[PamNY]

In the OP's situation, I probably would have made exactly the same choice. As others have pointed out, that's not entirely logical -- you can certainly have a serious crash without cars around. But it "seems" safer to be away from cars.

I occasionally take off my helmet if I'm cycling very slowly in a park and looking for birds, but other than that I always wear one. I keep the helmet on the bike, so forgetting it is less likely.

I see a lot of people cycling without helmets; it would never occur to me to say something to them. Recently I saw someone cycling with a helmet-less (and very young) infant in a backpack. I found that shocking and upsetting. I hope they weren't going very far, and I hope they got there safely.