VIDEO - Should Wearing a Bicycle Helmet be Mandatory?

I equate this dilemma with the seatbelt law that became mandatory.  The countless lives this safety device has saved or minimized injury is immeasurable.  I recall my mother making a point at that time that the Gov’t was taking the “choice” away from adults.  I was young and naive at the time but I recall her rationale and while I thought she was right in some respects, I remember thinking, “why wouldn’t you want to reduce or even prevent death or injury by wearing a seatbelt?”  I think that same rationale for cyclists.  There’s tons and tons of gear, equipment, clothing, machinery etc.etc. to protect your well being....  why wouldn’t you?  I think it’s not only selfish if you don’t wear that safety/protective equipment, but you obviously have some askew vision that you are invincible or it won’t happen to you, not a fair and respectful outlook upon the rest of us left to deal with your death or serious life long head injury.  Wear your gear!  

You asked "Should wearing a bicycle helmet be mandatory?" and also "Where do you stand on bike helmets?" - those are two different questions.

As for helmet laws, the evidence is overwhelming that the introduction of mandatory helmet use laws results in a significant reduction in the number of people who cycle. This, in turn, results in higher medical costs to society due to the negative health impacts of a more sedentary society and more tailpipe emissions. I could quote numerous studies to support this, but the website https://www.cyclehelmets.org/1122.html does it already. The BC helmet law was introduced specifically to reduce the number of fatalities and injuries, but those rates have not decreased. So by any objective measure, BC's law has been a failure.

As for wearing a helmet... bike helmets are not magic. A helmet will provide some protection for certain types of impacts at low speeds. The testing method used to certify bike helmets uses a deceleration limit 300g limit, which is considered to be unsurvivable by medical standards. The 300g limit corresponds to an impact speed of 20-23 km/h - above this speed, a helmet will likely provide no protection whatsoever (the average speed of a road cycling club is 30-40 km/h). Also, bike helmets can cause a spinal cord injury due to the increased mass and effective head diameter. Bike helmets aren't all they're cracked up to be.

You also ask, "Does the cost to society in having to support a brain injured cyclist for the rest of their life outweigh their freedom to choose?" That is a loaded question as it implies you cannot have one without the other. People can choose to wear helmets in absence of a helmet law.

Why is there so much interest and, dare I say, hysteria, over an issue that affects so few people? According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over 15,000 people die annually in the US from traumatic brain injuries due to motor vehicle use, while, for cyclists, the number is down around 100. Why aren’t we promoting helmet use amongst drivers and their passengers? Every year, hundreds of thousands of seniors are injured due to traumatic brain injuries, yet we don’t insist that Grandma straps on a helmet when she goes for a walk. We are so focused on protecting an incredibly small number of cyclists with these "magic hats" yet don’t seem to care about losing, every year, a group of people equivalent to the population of a small town. If everyone who got into a car had to wear a helmet, tens of thousands of lives could be saved.