Bikes as Public Transport
I wanted to respond to this great Tedx Talk. The gist of his message is that forcing - or even encouraging people to wear bike helmets is wrong. It places a burden on the cyclist - and decreases the utility of the bicyle - because you always have to have a helmet with you.
Much of the response to the video has been along the lines of "why would you not wear a helmet? - why volunteer to have your brains splattered?" I'd like to posit that the people with this point of view live in areas where cars are zooming down wide busy streets en masse and at speeds that can do serious damage.
It's not like that everywhere. When I lived in Japan, cars were subservient to bikes. Streets were narrow and slow, slow, slow. Everyone hopped on bikes to get to the train station, the supermarket, school. Almost no helmets to speak of - and accidents were of the scraped knee kind.
In many countries, riding a bike is like "walking plus". It's an extension for your legs that lets you go faster and carry more stuff.
Where I live, here in Brisbane, Australia - getting to work is starting to be a problem. They keep building and widening more roads - but more and more traffic is getting stuffed onto those roads. The city has taken a progressive step in starting a citywide bicycle rental program called CityCycle. Little stations for the bikes are situated at various points in the city and you can pick-up and drop off at any of them that you like.
The city has spent millions on this project. So far it's a flop. There may be many reasons for this. Brisbane is semi-tropical so it gets pretty hot for biking in the summer - the pricing structure is weird and unsuited to casual usage. But the biggest reason they're a flop in my opinion is because it's ilegal to ride withou a helmet. If you leave the house for a stroll and decide you'd like hop on a bike, you're out of luck unless you always keep your helmet in your bag - and who does that?
I hope more people abandon their cars for bikes - but it's not going to happen unless we make them extensions of our legs. Sometimes we just want to pick up some groceries - not pretend that we're in the Tour de France.
Much of the response to the video has been along the lines of "why would you not wear a helmet? - why volunteer to have your brains splattered?" I'd like to posit that the people with this point of view live in areas where cars are zooming down wide busy streets en masse and at speeds that can do serious damage.
It's not like that everywhere. When I lived in Japan, cars were subservient to bikes. Streets were narrow and slow, slow, slow. Everyone hopped on bikes to get to the train station, the supermarket, school. Almost no helmets to speak of - and accidents were of the scraped knee kind.
In many countries, riding a bike is like "walking plus". It's an extension for your legs that lets you go faster and carry more stuff.
Where I live, here in Brisbane, Australia - getting to work is starting to be a problem. They keep building and widening more roads - but more and more traffic is getting stuffed onto those roads. The city has taken a progressive step in starting a citywide bicycle rental program called CityCycle. Little stations for the bikes are situated at various points in the city and you can pick-up and drop off at any of them that you like.
The city has spent millions on this project. So far it's a flop. There may be many reasons for this. Brisbane is semi-tropical so it gets pretty hot for biking in the summer - the pricing structure is weird and unsuited to casual usage. But the biggest reason they're a flop in my opinion is because it's ilegal to ride withou a helmet. If you leave the house for a stroll and decide you'd like hop on a bike, you're out of luck unless you always keep your helmet in your bag - and who does that?
I hope more people abandon their cars for bikes - but it's not going to happen unless we make them extensions of our legs. Sometimes we just want to pick up some groceries - not pretend that we're in the Tour de France.
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