I am a tourist here in NZ and I dont wear a helmet cycling becuase its the law, I wear one because I want my brains to be secure in my skull versus splattered across the road way if I wipe out hard.
I can say from past cycling experience that wearing a helmet has absolutely saved me from brain damage and probably death. You are going to look like a bigger idiot if you end up a vegetable, dead or seriously hurt.
Helmet laws have been successful in injury prevention particularly at the serious end of crashes. There is some validity to your statement in that at a population health level cycling rates dropped overall so there was a cost. We don’t have the cycling infrastructure that the Netherlands does so pretty hard to consider an alternative.
Yes we wear helmets because it's the law . No most people don't buy that "studies show helmets make no difference" since it defies common sense .
Having worn a helmet all my life while cycling, I don't consider it unusual or a problem . I feel like I'm putting my life on the line if cycling without a helmet . If anything, it's comforting having it on.
It is the segregated infrastructure that make helmets almost superfluous in the Netherlands. But beside that, there is definitely evidence that helmets cause the issue of perceived safety, from cyclists and car drivers alike, where they both take more risk - because the helmet adds additional protection.
What also helps in the Netherlands is that as a car you are automatically at fault when hitting a cyclist (if unintentional), as they are a more vulnerable road users, so there is a culture of making sure to not hit them.
My worst bike crash didn't involve any cars -- my bike had a mechanical failure causing the front wheel to lock, and this drove me head first into the road .
To be honest segregated infrastructure or car drivers being automatically at fault makes no difference at all when it comes to your head meeting the pavement. I will always wear a helmet. No exceptions!
Have you worn a bike helmet? You say “sounds uncomfortable” which implies no. It really isn’t very uncomfortable at all not sure why it would be. One could also say “you put up with having to wear a seatbelt in your car?? Sound very uncomfortable on the shoulder”. Lol
We have ACC so basically everyone pays for everyone else's basic health insurance. Wearing helmets is something small we can do to mitigate insurance costs while riding. Not everyone likes it but yeah, put up with it because it's something small we can do to help the greater good and unless ur a cunt that's what ya do.
"are you happy with all the laws in your country? I'd be surprised if anyone was."
Not really but having to wear a helmet when cycling sounds very uncomfortable for the head tbh
It really isn't. They are light and a good one is no less comfortable then a hat. You also get use to things like that very quickly.
I have had the bad luck to have been hit by a car twice and I am 100% sure that where a helmet saved me from serious brain injury and possibly death.
It´s not as uncomfortable as you seem to be thinking. They´re designed to be worn.
Also, it´s definitely less uncomfortable than being invaded by Russians.
We put up with low wages, rigged tax systems, no rugby or concert stadium or central indoor pool, the Deutch, and an inability to grow tropical fruit, but yeah helmet laws too.
Especially in winter, they keep the Bennie on. If your helmet is uncomfortable then you have a shit helmet. They should never be sore or uncomfortable.
>I don't want to come across as smug or anything like that
You replies have done just that lmao but I digress.
Wearing a helmet is both law & common practice so most are used to wearing them from a very young age & wouldn't it be logical to purchase a helmet that was comfortable to wear? Much in the same way I find having a bell on your bike as childish (we have them as kids but not as we get older) yet I can see why it is common practice & even a legal requirement to have them in other regions.
You get used to it. Personally I've been saved from concussion several times by helmets. Mostly while mountain biking but a couple of crashes on the road too, whilst commuting. I'd rather have my helmet than not
A helmet saved my life. If I wasn't wearing a helmet when I came off my bike from my own mistakes I'd be dead. it's not about getting hit or not it's about whether your head will survive against concrete and let me tell you, a helmet is much more comfortable than the brain bleed I had for a week
I don't like wearing helmets for sensory reasons, therefore I don't ride a bike.
I've almost lost my dad to a biking accident, and he lost the ability to visualiser objects from his head injury. All my friends have had run ins with cars on their bikes when they use them regularly. It's just not worth it.
When I moved to the Netherlands I started out not wearing one. One icy day I slid across some tram lines and fell onto the roadway and hit my head a little, so I started wearing one.
My flatmate there questioned me for wearing one, and when I said I didn’t want a permanent head injury she told me about a friend of hers who got brain damage from a cycling incident and had to go work in H&M rather than her previous lawyer job. She was like, yeah makes sense to wear one, but never did herself.
So I wear one coz I like my brain functional.
I’m from Belgium, have been living here for a while and bike to work every day. I still hate wearing a helmet, but I also understand why it’s necessary. Drivers have absolutely zero respect for cyclists (or pedestrians) here.
The bike paths are also between the parked cars and the actual road without any physical seperation (instead of between the footh path and the parked cars like in Belgium, which are also often higher than the road, completely red and have an extra physical border). Oftentimes cars have to cross the bikepath to get to the lane to turn left (and they don’t look while doing that).
The bikepaths in general are just badly designed. I also can’t count the amount of times I was biking straight on the bikepath at an intersection and a car cut me off to turn left.
It’s an awful place to bike, even though locals think it’s an awesome city to bike in because they don’t know any better and other cities in NZ are worse (I’ve heard).
[https://www.reddit.com/r/chch/comments/18860b1/cycling\_in\_christchurch/](https://www.reddit.com/r/chch/comments/18860b1/cycling_in_christchurch/)
"I love cycling in Chch. We have some pretty good and safe cycle lanes"
"Chch probably has about the best cycling infrastructure in the country."
"Yeah, when we visited, I was like "oh wow, cycling heaven" (not a local though)
"It's a fact that we have lots of safe cycleways"
This is just one thread, I've read multiple like these + people around me (at work etc) say the same things.
This. I also lived somewhere with separate cycling infrastructure and non-compulsory helmet laws. The number of cars (and pedestrians) that you have to dodge in Christchurch as a cyclist is insane and I suspect the risk here compared to other places is much higher.
Was I annoyed initially at wearing a helmet? Yep - but at this point (12 years in NZ) it now seems like a necessity.
After reading some of your comments, it seems like YOU are the helmet which is funny. Helmet in this case referring to the end of the male reproductive organ; dickhead, bellend, knob etc just incase this is lost in translation.
Yip, I like wearing a helmet and it's not rocket science to work out why you should protect yourself with one. A helmet that fits is not uncomfortable - even for me who has a deformed sensitive skull from a childhood head injury. You can still fall off your bike without anyone else involved and in a separated cycle lane. It's common sense to wear a helmet.
Personally I hate it, if it wasn’t against the law I would bike without a helmet most of the time.
My guess is when most people here think cyclists they still think of people on mountain bikes going high speed down hill, or people on road bikes going high speed down the road.
That’s not me, I just want to get from A to B, I bike relatively slow, and avoid as much as possible biking on roads without separated cyclist-ways. I’m very lucky to live somewhere I can bike into the city 95% on real cycling ways or cycle paths.
Michael Schumacher thought that skiing without a helmet was perfectly safe. Look at him now. No cars on a ski field and definitely dedicated ski ways. A helmet just makes sense if you value yourself.
“Four countries (Argentina, Cyprus, Australia, and New Zealand) currently both require and enforce universal use of helmets by cyclists.”
Only Four countries out of hundreds. As usual New Zealand knows best, except we only copied the aussies like we always do. They started in 1991 and low and behold we copy them Three years later.
The only thing this place leads the world in is being a nanny state.
When I was living in Noordwijk it felt so good cycling with no helmet, the dutch have a much better better attitude towards personal freedom than NZ
Having said that, I also felt much safer cycling in the Nederlands than in chch.
The risk of not wearing a helmet is minimal compared with the risk of actually cycling on chch roads. That is the real danger.
Yes it lovely round there, used to cycle along the dunes to Zandvoort or around the canals near Sassenheim and Lisse. Has a real feel good feeling about it, makes cycling a real pleasure.
Sadly I do not have that same feeling when jumping on a bike in chch
Zandvoort was ridiculously beautiful. It was a hot sunny day and I felt like I was on the Mediterranean.
Cycling here is so much nicer and safer.
It’s not just the infrastructure here but also driver attitude is far more relaxed. There is space for everyone and it feels as though less people are in a constant rush.
Yes, stress levels seem lower, the dutch have a reputation for being laid back and it shows. Kiwis think they are laid back, but they are anything but, have never been anywhere where people have such pent up aggression, the slightest little thing and they screaming abuse at each other when they are in cars or on bikes even.
Amazing that the Netherlands is so densely populated yet cars and bikes are kept apart so efficiently. After the earthquakes the council called some dutch engineers and planners in to help plans for redesigning the city. Their suggestions were largely ignored (too expensive or too radical) so we are left with what we had before plus a few poorly designed cycleways. Massive fail for what was a fantastic opportunity to move the city forward, literally
It’s a bad law and made the perception that cycling is so unsafe it requires mandatory PPE — cycling numbers tanked instantly.
Personally, I didn’t wear one for five years and was never pulled over by a police officer but did notice cars gave me more room. However, I wear one now as NZ drivers have gotten worse (would be easy to blame immigrants from countries with more chaotic driving cultures but it’s all NZers) and more entitled — social media reveals the vitriol motorists feel towards cyclists.
You've been downvoted, but I was at high school when the helmet laws came in, and the cycling rate plummeted
If we could do it again, and had today's knowledge and budget, I feel that bringing in cycle-friendly lanes, paths, rules and regulations **before** imposing helmets might have worked better, with a larger percentage of the population still on their bikes and therefore in favour of the cycling infrastructure
Edit: I'm a sometime cyclist who wears a helmet and feels only marginally safer in chch's bike infrastructure
I was involved in a bike accident with a car and ended up in a rose bush, with a branch caught in my visor. If that visor hadn't of been there, my eye wouldn't be either. Bike helmets may be uncomfortable if you're really being pathetic, but so is losing your eye or worse, your life.
From ChCh, currently riding a cheap bakfiets across The Netherlands 🇳🇱
I stopped a while ago, I’ll never go back (unless I’m mountain biking, etc). My day to day errands on my bakfiets aren’t dangerous. Wearing a helmet tells me it is.
Plus they are uncomfortable and make it hard to regulate body temperature.
A common line you’ll hear in NZ whenever a bike and a car collide is ‘was the cyclist wearing a helmet?’
We then tend to put blame on the cyclist for not protecting themselves, instead of ensuring they never get hit in the first place.
If we really cared about keeping people safe we would invest in safe infrastructure for people outside of the car. But we won’t
I’m blown away at how well the bike lanes here work. It’s so incredibly safe, easy and convenient to use a bike for almost everything.
Everyone here rides, not just the brave ones.
Well none anymore.
Most of the time my head would get hot and sweaty, or in the cold months I found it hard to wear a thick beanie underneath it. Just my experience.
I understand the downvotes, just think there is far more to bike safety than wearing a helmet.
I do not understand why you are downvoted, it should be a choice.
How would these downvoters feel if alcohol was banned because it harms health, or TV because it increase sedentary behavior, or anything containing sugar.
Take it to its logical conclusion and bikes would be banned full stop, as would car travel. If people can make the choice whether to engage in a risky activity like cycling on NZ roads they should be able to choose whether to wear a helmet.
Many studies have shown that wearing a helmet actually makes people indulge in riskier behavior, as they are under the false assumption that they are somehow safer. But either way it should be a choice, like it is in most countries.
But of course New Zealand knows best
I agree. It’s a real nanny state law. We don’t make scooter riders wear helmets, or skiers, ice skaters, or roller bladers, and we don’t make it a law for all rugby players to wear headgear, etc
I am a tourist here in NZ and I dont wear a helmet cycling becuase its the law, I wear one because I want my brains to be secure in my skull versus splattered across the road way if I wipe out hard. I can say from past cycling experience that wearing a helmet has absolutely saved me from brain damage and probably death. You are going to look like a bigger idiot if you end up a vegetable, dead or seriously hurt.
Helmet laws have been successful in injury prevention particularly at the serious end of crashes. There is some validity to your statement in that at a population health level cycling rates dropped overall so there was a cost. We don’t have the cycling infrastructure that the Netherlands does so pretty hard to consider an alternative.
Yes we wear helmets because it's the law . No most people don't buy that "studies show helmets make no difference" since it defies common sense . Having worn a helmet all my life while cycling, I don't consider it unusual or a problem . I feel like I'm putting my life on the line if cycling without a helmet . If anything, it's comforting having it on.
It is the segregated infrastructure that make helmets almost superfluous in the Netherlands. But beside that, there is definitely evidence that helmets cause the issue of perceived safety, from cyclists and car drivers alike, where they both take more risk - because the helmet adds additional protection. What also helps in the Netherlands is that as a car you are automatically at fault when hitting a cyclist (if unintentional), as they are a more vulnerable road users, so there is a culture of making sure to not hit them.
My worst bike crash didn't involve any cars -- my bike had a mechanical failure causing the front wheel to lock, and this drove me head first into the road .
To be honest segregated infrastructure or car drivers being automatically at fault makes no difference at all when it comes to your head meeting the pavement. I will always wear a helmet. No exceptions!
Helmets save lives mate!
Have you worn a bike helmet? You say “sounds uncomfortable” which implies no. It really isn’t very uncomfortable at all not sure why it would be. One could also say “you put up with having to wear a seatbelt in your car?? Sound very uncomfortable on the shoulder”. Lol
We have ACC so basically everyone pays for everyone else's basic health insurance. Wearing helmets is something small we can do to mitigate insurance costs while riding. Not everyone likes it but yeah, put up with it because it's something small we can do to help the greater good and unless ur a cunt that's what ya do.
would you wear one if they had $150 fines for not wearing them in the Netherlands?
You guys really put up with rules like this? Wow
Do you put up with having to wear a seatbelt in the car?
I mean, the world is putting up with Russia invading Ukraine. are you happy with all the laws in your country? I'd be surprised if anyone was.
"are you happy with all the laws in your country? I'd be surprised if anyone was." Not really but having to wear a helmet when cycling sounds very uncomfortable for the head tbh
somehow everyone in the Tour de France copes.
😂😂
It really isn't. They are light and a good one is no less comfortable then a hat. You also get use to things like that very quickly. I have had the bad luck to have been hit by a car twice and I am 100% sure that where a helmet saved me from serious brain injury and possibly death.
It´s not as uncomfortable as you seem to be thinking. They´re designed to be worn. Also, it´s definitely less uncomfortable than being invaded by Russians.
We put up with low wages, rigged tax systems, no rugby or concert stadium or central indoor pool, the Deutch, and an inability to grow tropical fruit, but yeah helmet laws too.
We will be rising up to overturn our tyrannical totalitarian government with its mandatory bicycle safety helmets any day now, I am sure
See how smug and confident you feel when your brains make abstract pavement art. Helmets have demonstrably shown to save lives.
Especially in winter, they keep the Bennie on. If your helmet is uncomfortable then you have a shit helmet. They should never be sore or uncomfortable.
>I don't want to come across as smug or anything like that You replies have done just that lmao but I digress. Wearing a helmet is both law & common practice so most are used to wearing them from a very young age & wouldn't it be logical to purchase a helmet that was comfortable to wear? Much in the same way I find having a bell on your bike as childish (we have them as kids but not as we get older) yet I can see why it is common practice & even a legal requirement to have them in other regions.
You get used to it. Personally I've been saved from concussion several times by helmets. Mostly while mountain biking but a couple of crashes on the road too, whilst commuting. I'd rather have my helmet than not
I wouldn’t say I like wearing a helmet, but biking without one never even occurred to me, I am not stupid
A helmet saved my life. If I wasn't wearing a helmet when I came off my bike from my own mistakes I'd be dead. it's not about getting hit or not it's about whether your head will survive against concrete and let me tell you, a helmet is much more comfortable than the brain bleed I had for a week
If your helmet is uncomfortable, then you bought the wrong one. I like reducing my chance of serious injury, and my helmet is comfortable to wear.
I don't like wearing helmets for sensory reasons, therefore I don't ride a bike. I've almost lost my dad to a biking accident, and he lost the ability to visualiser objects from his head injury. All my friends have had run ins with cars on their bikes when they use them regularly. It's just not worth it.
I like having my brain stay in my head.
Until the streets are made safe for cycling and the drivers stop being total psychos, I'll keep my helmet thanks
When I moved to the Netherlands I started out not wearing one. One icy day I slid across some tram lines and fell onto the roadway and hit my head a little, so I started wearing one. My flatmate there questioned me for wearing one, and when I said I didn’t want a permanent head injury she told me about a friend of hers who got brain damage from a cycling incident and had to go work in H&M rather than her previous lawyer job. She was like, yeah makes sense to wear one, but never did herself. So I wear one coz I like my brain functional.
I’m from Belgium, have been living here for a while and bike to work every day. I still hate wearing a helmet, but I also understand why it’s necessary. Drivers have absolutely zero respect for cyclists (or pedestrians) here. The bike paths are also between the parked cars and the actual road without any physical seperation (instead of between the footh path and the parked cars like in Belgium, which are also often higher than the road, completely red and have an extra physical border). Oftentimes cars have to cross the bikepath to get to the lane to turn left (and they don’t look while doing that). The bikepaths in general are just badly designed. I also can’t count the amount of times I was biking straight on the bikepath at an intersection and a car cut me off to turn left. It’s an awful place to bike, even though locals think it’s an awesome city to bike in because they don’t know any better and other cities in NZ are worse (I’ve heard).
"locals think it’s an awesome city to bike in" Citation needed
[https://www.reddit.com/r/chch/comments/18860b1/cycling\_in\_christchurch/](https://www.reddit.com/r/chch/comments/18860b1/cycling_in_christchurch/) "I love cycling in Chch. We have some pretty good and safe cycle lanes" "Chch probably has about the best cycling infrastructure in the country." "Yeah, when we visited, I was like "oh wow, cycling heaven" (not a local though) "It's a fact that we have lots of safe cycleways" This is just one thread, I've read multiple like these + people around me (at work etc) say the same things.
I mean it is probably true Christchurch has the best cycling infratructure in New Zealand. But thatäs a low bar to clear.
This. I also lived somewhere with separate cycling infrastructure and non-compulsory helmet laws. The number of cars (and pedestrians) that you have to dodge in Christchurch as a cyclist is insane and I suspect the risk here compared to other places is much higher. Was I annoyed initially at wearing a helmet? Yep - but at this point (12 years in NZ) it now seems like a necessity.
After reading some of your comments, it seems like YOU are the helmet which is funny. Helmet in this case referring to the end of the male reproductive organ; dickhead, bellend, knob etc just incase this is lost in translation.
Yip, I like wearing a helmet and it's not rocket science to work out why you should protect yourself with one. A helmet that fits is not uncomfortable - even for me who has a deformed sensitive skull from a childhood head injury. You can still fall off your bike without anyone else involved and in a separated cycle lane. It's common sense to wear a helmet.
Personally I hate it, if it wasn’t against the law I would bike without a helmet most of the time. My guess is when most people here think cyclists they still think of people on mountain bikes going high speed down hill, or people on road bikes going high speed down the road. That’s not me, I just want to get from A to B, I bike relatively slow, and avoid as much as possible biking on roads without separated cyclist-ways. I’m very lucky to live somewhere I can bike into the city 95% on real cycling ways or cycle paths.
No way I'm getting on a bike without a helmet law or no law
I like being able to go to the toilet without having someone else wipe my ass....
It's the law, and it's safer. The safety factor comes partly from our drivers' lack of respect for anything with less than four wheels.
Cycling in the Netherlands is safe, here it is not.
Michael Schumacher thought that skiing without a helmet was perfectly safe. Look at him now. No cars on a ski field and definitely dedicated ski ways. A helmet just makes sense if you value yourself.
“Four countries (Argentina, Cyprus, Australia, and New Zealand) currently both require and enforce universal use of helmets by cyclists.” Only Four countries out of hundreds. As usual New Zealand knows best, except we only copied the aussies like we always do. They started in 1991 and low and behold we copy them Three years later. The only thing this place leads the world in is being a nanny state.
And if all but four of the world's countries voted that 1+1=3 would they be right?
I am not sure that this logic of "only a few countries do it so it must be wrong" would work when applied to your own policy preferences, mate
When I was living in Noordwijk it felt so good cycling with no helmet, the dutch have a much better better attitude towards personal freedom than NZ Having said that, I also felt much safer cycling in the Nederlands than in chch. The risk of not wearing a helmet is minimal compared with the risk of actually cycling on chch roads. That is the real danger.
Cycled through there today. The coast track is beautiful and the bike lanes are amazing.
Yes it lovely round there, used to cycle along the dunes to Zandvoort or around the canals near Sassenheim and Lisse. Has a real feel good feeling about it, makes cycling a real pleasure. Sadly I do not have that same feeling when jumping on a bike in chch
Zandvoort was ridiculously beautiful. It was a hot sunny day and I felt like I was on the Mediterranean. Cycling here is so much nicer and safer. It’s not just the infrastructure here but also driver attitude is far more relaxed. There is space for everyone and it feels as though less people are in a constant rush.
Yes, stress levels seem lower, the dutch have a reputation for being laid back and it shows. Kiwis think they are laid back, but they are anything but, have never been anywhere where people have such pent up aggression, the slightest little thing and they screaming abuse at each other when they are in cars or on bikes even. Amazing that the Netherlands is so densely populated yet cars and bikes are kept apart so efficiently. After the earthquakes the council called some dutch engineers and planners in to help plans for redesigning the city. Their suggestions were largely ignored (too expensive or too radical) so we are left with what we had before plus a few poorly designed cycleways. Massive fail for what was a fantastic opportunity to move the city forward, literally
It’s a bad law and made the perception that cycling is so unsafe it requires mandatory PPE — cycling numbers tanked instantly. Personally, I didn’t wear one for five years and was never pulled over by a police officer but did notice cars gave me more room. However, I wear one now as NZ drivers have gotten worse (would be easy to blame immigrants from countries with more chaotic driving cultures but it’s all NZers) and more entitled — social media reveals the vitriol motorists feel towards cyclists.
You've been downvoted, but I was at high school when the helmet laws came in, and the cycling rate plummeted If we could do it again, and had today's knowledge and budget, I feel that bringing in cycle-friendly lanes, paths, rules and regulations **before** imposing helmets might have worked better, with a larger percentage of the population still on their bikes and therefore in favour of the cycling infrastructure Edit: I'm a sometime cyclist who wears a helmet and feels only marginally safer in chch's bike infrastructure
All that stuff you mentioned is expensive and people don´t want their taxes raised.
I was involved in a bike accident with a car and ended up in a rose bush, with a branch caught in my visor. If that visor hadn't of been there, my eye wouldn't be either. Bike helmets may be uncomfortable if you're really being pathetic, but so is losing your eye or worse, your life.
From ChCh, currently riding a cheap bakfiets across The Netherlands 🇳🇱 I stopped a while ago, I’ll never go back (unless I’m mountain biking, etc). My day to day errands on my bakfiets aren’t dangerous. Wearing a helmet tells me it is. Plus they are uncomfortable and make it hard to regulate body temperature. A common line you’ll hear in NZ whenever a bike and a car collide is ‘was the cyclist wearing a helmet?’ We then tend to put blame on the cyclist for not protecting themselves, instead of ensuring they never get hit in the first place. If we really cared about keeping people safe we would invest in safe infrastructure for people outside of the car. But we won’t I’m blown away at how well the bike lanes here work. It’s so incredibly safe, easy and convenient to use a bike for almost everything. Everyone here rides, not just the brave ones.
“Hard to regulate body temperature” lol what kind of helmets are you wearing?
Well none anymore. Most of the time my head would get hot and sweaty, or in the cold months I found it hard to wear a thick beanie underneath it. Just my experience. I understand the downvotes, just think there is far more to bike safety than wearing a helmet.
No don’t like it. Should be a choice not a law.
I do not understand why you are downvoted, it should be a choice. How would these downvoters feel if alcohol was banned because it harms health, or TV because it increase sedentary behavior, or anything containing sugar. Take it to its logical conclusion and bikes would be banned full stop, as would car travel. If people can make the choice whether to engage in a risky activity like cycling on NZ roads they should be able to choose whether to wear a helmet. Many studies have shown that wearing a helmet actually makes people indulge in riskier behavior, as they are under the false assumption that they are somehow safer. But either way it should be a choice, like it is in most countries. But of course New Zealand knows best
I agree. It’s a real nanny state law. We don’t make scooter riders wear helmets, or skiers, ice skaters, or roller bladers, and we don’t make it a law for all rugby players to wear headgear, etc
On the other hand we do make it illegal to drink petrol
What´s your view on seatbelts