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The Case for Not Wearing a Bike Helmet
Helmets have been mandatory in the pro peloton for well over a decade. Where’s the data that it’s helping?
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Bicycle Network campaigns for helmet law reform
Australia's Bicycle Network has come out in favour of reforming Australia's mandatory bicycle helmet law.
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Cycling Tips: Commentary
Commentary: Why I stopped wearing a bike helmet
by Peter Flax
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Bicycling Magazine
It’s Okay If You Don’t Wear a Bike Helmet
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Carlton Reid, transport writer
I Do Not Wear A Bicycle Helmet
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More on Why We Shouldn't Have Mandatory Helmet Laws
Over on VOX, Joseph Stromberg rounds up the studies about bike helmets and concludes that if you want to get more people to ride bikes, then you shoul
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Give Kids Bikes, Not Helmets
Why helmet giveaways are an act of surrender
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Enough with the Smashed Watermelons! Helmet Mania Is Scaring Kids Away from Biking
Free Range Kids
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A study in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine has failed to "find significance in relative risk of cycling without a helmet". Instead, it suggests a link between alcohol use and cycling injuries, and proposes harsher laws and penalties (such as the vehicular-related "driving while intoxicated") to cyclists.
Cyclists who use alcohol are more prone to injury, less likely to have health insurance, and more likely to incur hospital charges. They are also less likely to wear helmets, but that was not found to be in itself a significant factor as to whether they incurred head or brain injury.
It has been suggested that the study was established to prove the case for a helmet law in Austin, Texas. A news release in 2008 on GoodHealth.com said that the study was being extended by a further year to prove the benefit of helmets. This news release was withdrawn when Australian statistician Dorothy Robinson challenged in a letter to the journal the basis for the authors' assertion that laws should be passed requiring cyclists to wear helmets. Such an assertion is not supported in any way by the outcomes of the research.
Sun 3 Jan 2010