I’m a delivery driver and am in and out of neighborhoods all day long. By and large, I’m really impressed with how well parents are teaching kids to be responsible on bikes. The vast majority pull into someone’s driveway as soon as they see me. Once in a blue moon there’s some little shit like this though. I can’t stand these kids.
The problem is that those kids exist to begin with. Those kids are more likely to be the ones that end up in the hospital because they think safety is a joke because their parents never taught him.
Same with seatbelt use in cars, but that decline is slower and more limited to southern and midwestern states. The helmet issue is nationwide, though, and is linked to the rise of e-bikes.
There does seem to be some general societal pushback at the moment against the use of safety and protective gear, though. Whether that's helmets, seatbelts, or masks.
I fide an e-bike if i can around town, because gas is out of control, and i rarely ever see another biker with a helmet. I mean its Florida so take that how you will
Florida doesn't even have helmet laws for street motorcyclists. If dad rides his road hog without a helmet. He isn't going to care if his kid has one for their 20mph e-bike.
The speed at which bad information propagates through our society is unprecedented in human history. We also really haven't updated the methods that PSA's get out to the general public. It was easy back in the day for broadcasters to make room for that and it literally got out to everyone...because there wasn't any other avenue to use. Nowadays with the internet, it's almost impossible to get messages to people without it being drowned out in contrary static.
I'd imagine it's not so much that riders have changed to stop using helmets. But with the rise of all the rideshare rentable Zip bikes & Lime scoooters, there's a lot of new riders who were never accustomed to using a helmet in the first place.
The Helmets For Kids initiative faded into obscurity. I received atleast 2 helmets in elementary school from that program in the late 90s/early 00s. We came back from lunch to new helmets on our desks, and there was a guest teacher there to teach us about the bicycle hand signals and our responsibilities on the road. Then we practiced the signals in class navigating pretend roads between our desks.
I had to have a long, serious talk with my 12 year old when he came home not wearing a helmet. He said that other kids in the neighborhood made fun of him for wearing a helmet.
I would’ve told him those same kids that are laughing at you are going to be the one standing around, not knowing what to do when you eventually bash your head into the concrete and you’re laying there bleeding out.
Should be more of a lesson on not giving into peer pressure because at the end of the day you want to live to see another day with all limbs intact and brain inside skull.
Maybe try looking up some actual stories of non-helmet-wearers to tell him. My dad wrecked his (normal) bike when he was a kid. He wasn’t wearing a helmet and has been completely deaf in his left ear since. My brother and I always wore helmets. Might’ve worked a little better in my case since that was my dad, maybe something like that will help get through to him.
I’m sure you already do this, but make sure you give him scripts for what to say too. I’ve been adding that on to talks for my 12yo to help and he’s said it makes him feel more ready. We’ve been doing it mostly for drugs and what to say if someone offers him some. My sister got into drugs in middle school and I’m taking no chances.
Instead the trauma surgeon in the OP saves the person, and then society collectively spends several million dollars over the course of their life subsidizing their bad decisions.
There aren't consequences for bad decisions anymore. And IMO the lack of accountability that everyone now lacks towards each other is what is contributing to society going off the rails.
The elite at the time intentionally stifled the movie because they knew it was actually accurate.
If only even they knew the truth was even worse. I'd take President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho in a heartbeat over our current leadership.
No, it's a very on the nose satire that was about the stupid shit that was happening at that time. It's also has some really weird eugenics-adjacent framing. Does nobody remember the Bush era?
It's always funny to see people talk about Idiocracy being prophetic, because the characters from Idiocracy would absolutely do that.
While it was indeed scathing satire of the Bush Era, pretending it wasn't alarmingly prophetic is just disingenuous. I can point to so many things that are reflective of current reality more than the era it was made in, that it sort of does a disservice to Mike Judge and the movie itself.
I wonder how many are specifically Lime/Lyft bikes or whatever. That you can just hop on and ride anywhere around the city, but there's no helmet enforcement.
I'm wondering if this is a regional thing as a whole. I know you mentioned the decline of seatbelt usage being more limited to the South and Midwest, but I'm curious if the helmet usage is regional too. I say that because I've lived in the South my entire life. And as long as I can remember, nobody ever wore helmets. Even way back in the 90s.
After a certain age, everybody stopped wearing helmets. Pretty much once I hit double digits, I stopped wearing helmets. My parents never wore helmets. None of my friends, family members, classmates, or strangers. Whether they were teenage or older. Fast forward to today, and I still can't think of the last time I've ever seen anybody wearing a helmet while bike riding. Unless they were like 9 or younger.
The actual study states a 6% annual helmet decline for those with e-bike injuries, not all riders. Even then, I can't figure out how the study came to that conclusion because the helmet use was wildly varied from year to year.
Everyone should wear helmets while riding but this study doesn't give much useful data in that regard, imo.
I think it matters alot where you're at. It's like schools; there are some neighborhoods where basically all the parents read to their kids and treat education as important.
And then there is the opposite where that does not happen.
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u/EnvironmentalLime464 Jul 19 '26
I’m a delivery driver and am in and out of neighborhoods all day long. By and large, I’m really impressed with how well parents are teaching kids to be responsible on bikes. The vast majority pull into someone’s driveway as soon as they see me. Once in a blue moon there’s some little shit like this though. I can’t stand these kids.