GETTING TO WORK ON TIME is a struggle with my 40-minute T commute from Back Bay to Dorchester. There are disabled trains and other delays, not to mention the rush-hour lack of personal space. But in late summer, a Hubway bike-sharing station opened up at the JFK/UMass T stop near my destination. There has been a Hubway conveniently placed just outside my Mass. Ave. apartment since last year. So now I can hop on a bike and be at work in 20 minutes, and this is the option I take most days. Biking is convenient, fun, and gets me outside and moving. And I do it without a helmet.
When I was younger, I wore one all the time. Even before I could mount a bicycle seat, my parents would put helmets on my sister’s and my heads while they ran our double stroller down the bike path in Northampton. I remember the two of us banging our indestructible heads together, laughing at how it didn’t hurt. Since I first learned to pedal, the house rule was that I always wear a helmet. I stopped only when I moved to Boston for college. Twenty-one now, I don’t even own a helmet anymore. (I also don’t have my own bike.) I acknowledge that a helmet can protect your head, but I’ve weighed the risks and the inconvenience of lugging one around and decided I can do without.
Comments
Hey Nick, I totally see your point. However, a friend of mine had a low speed collision with a pedestrian while riding on a calm city street. My friend bounced off of a parked car and broke her arm. The helmet took a good hit. I wear a helmet all of the time and I'll carry one in my backpack (this is a Boston must have) if I plan to ride. You're free to do as you please.
"I remember she and I banging our indestructible heads together..." I remember she and I? She and I? PLEASE, Globe, hire a copy editor.
Nick, Sorry to hear of your decision, and hope you reconsider it. This is how the fashion-conscious, and perhaps unintentionally dumb rider, becomes a free rider problem. I'm older than you, and I've had two bicycle falls that, without a helmet, could have been traumatic and led to tragedy. If you died, that would be your problem, and not a happy one. If you had a traumatic brain injury, you would quickly exhaust the long term care benefits of institutionalized long term care, as well as a lifetime of health care. That is not good for your health, and not good for the financial health of our state and nation, which would cost the rest of us several million dollars if you lived out anything close to your life expectancy. So please, reconsider, and wear and carry a bike helmet as you push for better design. I did not realize the mandatory bike helmet age in MA ended when someone turns 17. Legislators, start your engines on this one, please.
I know that there are people who believe in personal choice. "Being made to wear a helment, would be government interfering in an individual's liberty". There may be truth in that statement. However Mr. Olender is living in a society where we are interconnected. If he were to hit his head and suffer a traumatic brain injury, society, as LHR stated, would ultimately pick up his care. That is money that could be used for other purposes, such as education, medical research, improving roads or even cutting taxes. Hopefully Mr. Olender does not have a serious accident, but if he did, his personal freedom would be at the expense of other societal good.
Hey Nick... Ride Free and bare headed.. Just because you wear a helmet doesn't guarentee your invincibility as some people would have you believe or absolve you of being and idiot on a bike. You have to look no further than the current hand wringing over concussions in the NFL and NHL. I would say those gentlemen have plenty of head protection.... and yet the problems exst. I've even heard that helmets in the NHL have made the game more violent and faster because the players DON'T worry about concussions. Perhaps the same is true of cyclist who wear helmets and ride with abandon in the city.
I usually wear a helmet when I ride from home. But in the city, on the Hubway, I just hop on the bike and pedal along on my merry way. As you say, you need to be careful and conscious of your surroundings as you bike in the city or anywhere for thet matter. Have consideration and concern for your fellow humans.
Ride like the wind, BullsEye !!!
Stooopid.
Ride fast with helmet. Ride slow without. When with- it's part of my head. I just wear it, don't take it off unless sitting down to eat at a restaurant. Whether or not it's "fashionable" is a matter of ever changing perception. Don't really care how it looks or what other people think, which can be fashionable in and of itself.
The byline should read Nick Olender is a future Darwin Award winner.
"I have never experienced a bike accident nor ... a close call..." Well, Nick I have, and since it was in the era before helmuts were around, I ended up in the hospital with a concussion, a face full of stiches, and pain that has not gone away in the 37 years since (I was 15) . It wasn't a car or a collision with a truck, or whatever you may assume is going to come at you: it was just me going end over front because of a tiny stick going into the front wheel. Probably more common than we like to think.
Point is, you think you've weighed the odds, and you think you'll be fine because you think you'll see it coming. But you won't. And all for the "glory" of lightweight travelling. Seems pretty stupid.
I admit to feeling a little maternal. First, let me stand in for your mother. What, are you crazy? Head injuries change your life forever. My daughter went over the handlebars and broke her jaw in 2 places because of a pothole. She spent 8 weeks drinking through a straw and week in the hospital and an operation to put 2 steel plates in her head. She can still talk and think and function because she had on a helmet. Really, you can't carry a helmet because "it's too heavy??"
Why do you think we call bicycles and motorbikes "Donor Cycles"? Be sure to get your organ donor card today, Nick!