Helmet Scolds Could Unwittingly Undermine Bike Safety in Seattle

Eight months after Seattle's publicly-funded bike-share system, Pronto, folded under financial pressure, bike-share in the city is back and growing as private companies deploy dockless systems.

One of the oft-mentioned culprits in Pronto's flop was Seattle's all-ages mandatory helmet law and a requirement that helmets be provided for every bike-share trip. The helmet law is still in place, but the private companies aren't subject to mandatory helmet provision. If two public health researchers get their way, however, that could change.

Frederick P. Rivara and Janessa Graves, authors of a disputed study about the safety impact of helmet requirements, recently published a piece in Crosscut urging Seattle to compel the companies to provide helmets. As Tom Fucoloro points out at Seattle Bike Blog, the researchers' raw data actually showed a decline in total bike injuries after cities launched bike-share -- a finding that could support the idea of "safety in numbers." But Rivara and Graves emphasized that the proportion of head injuries was higher in bike-share cities, even though total head injuries declined.

Fucoloro says the emphasis on helmet use ignores the unintended consequences on the safety of cycling:

More recommended reading today: Bike Portland reports that Portland City Commissioner Dan Saltzman will call for congestion pricing on a section of I-5 before shovels go in the ground to widen the road. And Modern Cities profiles a rare type of place in Florida -- a walkable neighborhood.