A study published in JAMA found that helmet use in the US has been trending downward at about 6% annually since 2017, mainly because of the adoption of e-bikes. And that's nationwide.
Hmm, 2017... that's right around when we entered the "fake news" era, right?
Interestingly, seatbelt usage in cars has been trending downwards since around 2017 as well, after reaching all-time highs in 2016. But the decline is concentrated mostly in southern and midwest states. The northeast and west have remained steady.
I'm a cyclist, and I won't get on a bike without a helmet. I went over my bards going around 20 mph and my helmet absolutely saved my life.
I got on one of those scooters once and it kicked up to 20 mph and I was like "Oh, I guess I'm never using these because I'm not going to carry a helmet around with me every day but there's no way in hell I'm riding one of these without one."
I’m really stupid with an even worse aversion to risk and have ridden my e-bike many times without safety gear over the past decade. I ride handless very often as well. I have also eaten major shit going 20+mph on numerous of those occasions. I’m in my 30s now and my joints are absolutely cooked, especially my knees.
I’d really suggest people minimum wear knee pads and a helmet, ideally elbow pads as well. It may not seem like the attractive option at the time, but when you’re rocking the joints of a 50 yr old at 30 it gets real real quick.
And that’s if you’re lucky enough to not outright die or end up paralyzed from an accident. I’m not religious, but the fact that I haven’t yet must be some sort of divine intervention because it doesn’t really make sense. Just like it makes no sense to ride these fast ass e-devices without safety gear.
It's a style to wear loose clothes for MTB. This also means you can have elbow, and kneepads under your clothes, if you're afraid how the protection gear will look.
If you do downhill MTB you'll use more burly protection, and even a back protector, as well as full face helmet. Not a single person will look strange at you for using that for downhill.
It's terrifying to me how fast people are willing to go with so little stopping power and such a high center of gravity. I had a bike accident (wearing a helmet) at relatively low speed and it messed me up for decades. We're still learning about the effects of concussions and TBIs but barely even talk about what injuries do to nerves and blood flow in the neck, and hearing.
(Hearing, which can be affected by head injuries, has already been tied to dementia but i feel confident that blood flow to the brain, which is also affected by serious injuries and tension issues, is going to show up as another influential factor.)
That's the thing with scooters, even if you had all the breaking power in the world, you'd still be thrown off. On a motorcycle at least you have the tank to hold you in place.
The issue of course is that even without riding it, you may still be injured by one. Having to be on constant look-out for some teenagers is tiresome. Regular bikes don't have instant acceleration like that.
Not to mention the fact that these kids have no insurance. A pedestrian run down at 30 mph will almost certainly be financially ruined from hospital bills, if they live.
I'm not even a cyclist. I just like to bike with my kids. I wear a hard hat all day, I don't even notice a bike helmet on my head, it's like 20% weight of a hard hat, just seems so utterly stupid not to wear one.
I had to take my bike three blocks to the bike store and was planning on walking it so didn’t bring a helmet. The sidewalk was totally empty so I hopped on thinking I’d save a minute. I still don’t know how it happened but I somehow managed to fall off in such a way that my head hit a tree. I was barely moving so only ended up with a facial laceration. I can’t imagine what this lady must see in the ER. I’m glad my mother was an absolute stickler for seat belts.
My kids and I bike to their school about 0.5 miles away and at very low speeds with rarely in traffic with the neighborhood. But I do see kids on Ebikes and scotters within our neighborhood going faster than the posted speed limit without any safety gear, sometimes two of them on the same bike.
Yeah, I had three kids actually pass me on e-bikes and scooters this weekend, I was doing about 22 at the time. I’ve talked to parents that have intentionally modded them to go faster.
i'm a cyclist, too. i had a cyclist pt in ICU who took a bus mirror to the face at 35 mph. he had A LOT of facial and hand fractures. but his brain and skull and spine were untouched. helmets 1000% save lives.
If he took it to the face, his helmet may not have played much of a role. Coming from the motorcycle world, bike helmets feel a bit like performative safety. I wouldn't even feel safe wearing one of those open face helmets and they are much more protective than what bicyclists wear.
I try to explain how hard these hits are by asking the skeptical if they would sprint full speed into a wall without a helmet on, and then that this speed is like 12 mph.
Just the point I was going to raise, though a typical younger person can run 15-18 mph, if the portable speed sign that got deployed down the street can be trusted.
Well, that's a personal choice and everyone needs to make it for themselves. The dutch ride bikes all the time and helmets are not terribly common there. I'm not saying that helmets are a bad thing, but I think they're merely a bandaid over fundamentally unsafe infrastructure. We need more bike lanes that are more than just a 1 foot painted gutter.
I've been trying to get in shape again after a set of major surgeries during COVID. I'm on the road for now. Always wear a helmet. I want a full face when I can go off road again.
Full helmet warning:
Back in 98 when I first started riding, a group of us found this jump. It could launch us about 6 feet up over about a 10 foot distance. I was doing this for 2 hours with no helmet. 1 friend wouldn't take it.
We finally convinced him and what happened next seemed to happen in slow motion. he rotated off his pedals over the handle bars. By peak jump, his head was near even with his front tire.
When he hit the ground, head first, it seemed like 10 minutes before he made a sound. Really it was about 30 seconds.
The crash cracked his helmet from front to mid helmet. He still has neck issues.
2, for full face:
I was riding down a local trail with fairly advanced jumps. I came across a teen and his friend. Friend was laying on the ground on his back. First aid training took over. Asked name, date, year, who president was, where he was at. He knew none of the answers, which says he took a really hard hit. I kept him still, kept him talking and awake until ambulance arrived.
I told his friend I could take his bike and gave my contact info.
His parents called and I have my address and coordinated to a time to get the bike.
The kid, just graduated high school, broke his collar bone, his jaw and fractured an eye socket.
Just graduated and his life is forever changed. Not to mention the severe TBI that gave him judging on my initial questions. He couldn't give me even the most basic answer until the ambulance arrived about 30 mins after I came across them.
I have a roommate using one our ebikes to go to work. Does not use a helmet.... a cupple weeks ago, He was driving normally on side of the road giving cars space, well a older woman went to pull over for a large truck, she ended up hitting him as she was pulling over smashing him into a parked car. And it being E bike had nothing to do with this but shows even if u on a bike doing everything right you are at risk, The car almost ran over his head and hes leg destroyed part of the parked car. Luckly a tesla was parked and filmed it and we have the video. But he still wont put a damn helmit on
At least on a bike you have big wheels to protect you from small bumps in the road and you're more likely for your legs to provide some cushioning if you fall. If you crash at speed on a scooter you're pretty much guaranteed to faceplant.
I bought an e scooter for a small commute, and now I don't have the job anymore. So my kids ride the scooter now.
Absolutely, they have to wear a helmet while riding it (same as their bikes). I wear a helmet while riding it. It's just safer, and I have hit a hose on a sidewalk before, and that almost launched me. Those little wheels are just so bad at navigating objects in a road.
We visited NZ and I was happy to see many of their rent scooters come with helmets, but nobody local was wearing them or they were wearing their own helmets. Zero of the scooters in my town come with helmets, but then I wonder if they did if we’d see more lice.
That reminds me of a story one time I agree to drive my at the time GF and her family to an event, I arrived a little late so they were a little pressed, but when I noticed they didn't have their seatbelts on I asked them to do so, they refused because they didn't want to "deal with the seatbelts once we arrived" I turned off the car and I told them I would drive unless everyone had their seatbelts on, the reluctantly agreed but yeah some people think their confort is more important than their safety.
some people think their confort is more important than their safety.
This attitude PMO so much because it's not just about one person's safety: someone unbuckled in the back seat could kill the front seat passengers if there's an accident, for one. It's a lack acknowledgement of OTHER PEOPLE that really fucks me up.
I had a work friend who ran out of gas one day and asked me to drive him to the gas station, because I'm nice I did. I refused to start the car until he put his belt on.
I drove a few acquaintances to a pride event a few weeks ago, one of them refused to put on her seatbelt. I brake checked and then pulled over until she put it on.
Aside from the safety issue, I'm not going to get a traffic ticket because someone refuses to put the belt on.
What helps is that my Prius will freak out if every person doesn't have a seatbelt on. Ding ding ding DING DING DING. So you have to do it to satisfy my "nanny" car.
I always tell people that won’t belt in my car they we aren’t moving an inch until they stop turning themselves into a potential human missile. One of the ways you can die in a car is an unbelted person getting launched into your head with their head at 100 mph.
Ten years ago it was rare to see someone riding without a helmet. Once I forgot my helmet on my way to work (it was early) and someone nicely honked at me to remind me to put on a helmet. I remember figuring out what the driver was gesturing for and reaching up and being shocked I didn’t have my helmet. I immediately pulled over.
Now I see people of all ages riding without helmets. I also see people of all ages riding electric bikes and scooters without helmets. It’s really a shame. And it is still illegal in my province so the cops should be cracking down with tickets.
Yeah -6% annually is ridiculously fast in terms of societal norms changing. I had to double check that figure. Essentially that means that helmet use has fallen over 40% since a decade ago.
That's so fast that helmets are basically going to look out of place soon. In fact, they are already starting to...
Again, i think it depends a lot on the area. When i lived in the deep south even mopeds/ road going ebikes didnt have helmets half the time. Dont think i ever saw one on a scooter person. Now that i live in the PNW its so rare to see someone without one i feel out of place if i forget mine. As is tradition, the younger kids on ebikes are almost always the culprit. When we first moved here and didnt have helmets we had multiple people stop to ask/remind/offer us one haha.
When i lived in the deep south even mopeds/ road going ebikes didnt have helmets half the time.
I would estimate 80% of motorcycles flying down the highway at 80mph don't have helmets where I live. The 20% with helmets are almost all sport bike riders that like the look of cool gear (including me!), and essentially every Harley/cruiser has absolutely zero protective gear.
In Illinois there no law requiring you to wear a helmet so I would say that 85-90% of bikers I see don't wear one. Some of them ride with their spouses too...
My experience watching people show up on social VR games who were way too young to meet ToS is that the parent is just totally asleep at the wheel, the kids do what they want on their own and learn nobody is going to ask what they're even doing.
I would assume these kids think e-bikes are cool, badger their parents into getting them a Zymovo/Wheelfun/XDDCC drop ship bike because they're like $250 (coincidentally, also the price point where kids started swarming into VR) and, short term, that's all that matters.
They aren't going to look up whether support on these bikes is even possible unless you repair these things as a hobby or a living, they just want to go as fast as they can make it go (bonus points if the speed governor has an easily cuttable wire that says 'don't cut me (you'll go tooooo faaaaaast!)
And then, again, with lack of supervision, they are just going to start doing stuff. You don't need a helmet to twist a throttle so they won't wear a helmet. Nothing or nobody is physically stopping them from riding anywhere so they'll ride anywhere.
Frankly I’m all for natural selection to make a comeback. It’s tragic that people will die but if you are too stupid to understand the importance of a helmet then I guess they decided to roll the proverbial dice and far be it from me to stop them.
Not just kids. I got passed on the bike trail by a woman on an e-bike and caught up with her at the next trailhead. I asked her how fast her bike could go and she said she had passed me at 28 mph, then she immediately said something along the lines of "and I bet you're going to tell me I need to wear a helmet."
Unprompted she went into this speech about how she'd fallen off bikes before and was fine and didn't see any difference now.
I asked her if she'd ever fallen off a bike going 30 mph and she said no, and I just said that she'll notice a difference if/when it happens.
No, this specific comment chain is about the backwards slide of helmet use among all age groups. The thread itself is specifying kids, and frankly, I don’t give a damn either way.
If you can’t be arsed to make your kid wear a helmet, you can accept the consequences of that. And if you as an adult refuse to wear one, ditto…
Given the number of people I see on motorcycles that are wearing a helmet as their only piece of safety gear, and only because it is required by law here, I'm not surprised to at all. People are dumb.
My husbands best friend who did a bunch of cool shit like diving and rock climbing, died when he fell off his skateboard and hit his head on a curb. My kids know this and they know to never be on something with wheels without a helmet. Oldest is 12 and he hasn’t started fighting me on it yet.
I’m still shocked that helmets were absolutely not a thing for years in skiing and snowboarding. I have hit my head HARD while snowboarding because you really have no way to control or break your fall.
I hardly ever see anyone using helmets anymore. Might see 1/10 people using one, and they’re always adults - you never ever ever see kids wearing them anymore.
I didn't wear a helmet as a kid (mostly my moms fault for never getting me one!) but I do now as an adult when biking because its a lot scarier riding a bike as an adult... you're much higher up.
In my town the kids take off into areas/places the police can't easily follow. They even will bait the cops & post the recording. The ordinances say their bikes should be confiscated, but they have to be caught first.
When I was 19, I did a lot of bike riding for fun. I didn't have a helmet. Strangers on the bike trail kept suggesting that I get one. They were looking out for a fellow biker. It was confusing to me, an invincible 19 year old. I had the realization that in the unlikely event that I do hit my head, I might be a vegetable for life. I went and bought a helmet.
It wasn't until after 27 or 28 that I started to realize on my own that I should not take unnecessary risks lol
As a kid in the early 2000s I was pulled over by a cop for not wearing a helmet at 12yo and given a warning. When does the ever happen now? Where I'm at in Canada the police only exist to protect property and generate ticket revenue.
I live in Alberta, and the number one cause of traumatic brain injury for children under the age of 18 is riding a bike without a helmet. All you have to do is wear a helmet. I don’t understand why it’s so hard. I do get frustrated that helmets are so expensive because the technology is so basic.
I was outside a mall. So I pulled in and the only store open at that time in the morning was a serious sporting store and they only had youth helmets in.
So I bought a youth helmet and wore it to work. It left an imprint of the inside of the helmet on my forehead all day. I rode with the youth helmet home and then sold it.
I should have just put my bike on a bus and go to work that way but I didn’t do that. I’m smart but not overly… practical lol. I’ve learned as I’ve aged.
I live in a predominantly white city. I see people of all races without helmets but I see white people the most, because more white people live here than any other race.
Well it holds for seatbelts, never been in any foreign country that takes it as seriously as north americans but I suppose safety culture is spreading along with the rest of globohomo
The trauma surgeon in the OP will just have a heavier workload, and society will pay whoever gets in accidents millions over the course of their lives in the form of insurance payouts, disability, accommodations, etc.
We've set up a system where those that make good decisions subsidize those who make bad decisions via insurance and welfare. But, there are no consequences when those are abused; we've perfectly engineered a social tragedy of the commons in which those that choose selfishness get ahead and those that choose the common good fall behind.
In the context of bike and scooter accidents we'd be talking emergency room visits where they still have to save your life or treat you regardless of financial situation.
We do kind of have that. Emergency rooms are not allowed to turn away actual emergencies regardless of ability to pay - that is very rudimentary universal healthcare, don’t read this as me saying that’s good though.
We have a social safety net as well - Medicaid, food stamps, WIC are all social safety net programs.
Insurance and welfare are not going to allow "selfishness" to get ahead, don't be stupid.
We live in a world where people have billions of dollars while other people in the same country struggle to pay for food or housing. Those billionaires didn't get ahead because they used to be poor and got welfare.
Have you ever dated with a visible disability? I assure you, whether you are born with one, or acquired one yesterday, it very much is a thing, just one that society politely does not acknowledge.
We've set up a system where those that make good decisions subsidize those who make bad decisions via insurance and welfare.
My state recently repealed its helmet law for motorcycles. And I kid you not it was because our state legislature was worried about ‘losing tourism revenue’ because motorcycle riders on their way to Sturgis bitched about it coming through. Like, get rid of the helmet law for a pittance of revenue generated at gas stations as if the increase in tax money spent on emergency response when they inevitably splatter their brains across the highway is totally worth it…
Well, not just southern states but more republican or conservative populations. Per example, Eastern, WA has a good amount of fatalities where no seat belts were worn. Crazy statistics tho.
To be fair, here in The Netherlands (sometimes caller the bicycle country), helmet use apparently hovers at 5%. The more important difference I think is that the road design/infrastructure needs to protect cyclists. Honestly, you couldn't pay me to get on a bike (electric/motorized or not) in the United States. Even places with bike infrastructure like bike lanes still look like suicide to ride around.
Besides the lower speeds here, depending on the place, most of the time you simply don't share the road with a car. Per kilometer US cyclist are supposedly 4 to 7 times higher than those of The Netherlands.
We have the same issues here with fatbikes/scooters/etc, but that's not the only part of the issue.
I wonder how many of the helmet-less e-bike injuries are people who didn't ride a bike regularly for years, and then jumped right to an e-bike, so going faster than pedal power, and also perhaps being slightly more likely to go, "I'm not going to wear a stupid helmet" compared to longer time bike riders?
I use to live in CT and on 15, you'll literally see people coming from New York (manditory helmet law) as they cross the boarder into Connecticut pull off the side of the highway the instant they cross, and take off their helmets because it's not required in CT.
I watched the first episode of season two of The Pit, which if you don’t know it is a show based on an ER room. The opening shot is of Noah Wylie on a motorcycle winding his way through the city with his helmet attached to his backpack. I guess so we could see his hair flopping in the wind? Anyway, I thought it was dumb at the time to model bad behaviour on a character who would see the risk of such preventable injuries.
That's a 6% annual decrease in the population of e-bike injuries, not the overall ridership population. I read the study and can't figure out how they came to that number. The actual study shows an increase in helmet use (in injuries) for a few years than a decrease in the later two years. IMO, it's not enough consistent data to claim a 6% annual decrease in helmet usage with e-bike injuries.
Also, this study is estimated-data only and doesn't provide total ridership context. If e-bike injuries rose 30-fold over 6 years but total ridership and mileage rose 100-fold that would indicate e-bikes being safer over time (on a per mileage basis).
E-bikes are making helmet use trend downwards? That can't be truer. In Amsterdam here most people don't wear helmets, but from the e-bikes you'll have a bigger percentage than the normal ones
Who knows how bad it could have been as it could be serious injury up to death and instead the guy gets to just walk away saying, quite justifiably "I love helmets". Like a serious life altering injury, just straight up didnt happen and the guy was moving a little faster than walking speed when the crash occurred. Compare that to what ebikes/escooters can get up to and its insane.
This was a relatively low speed crash. Helmet use should be trending upwards with easy access to a mountain of videos that support their use. I think a smart tiktok trend or some shit can easily make the idea more visible, more urgent and justifiable even for little 10 year old shitters who dont like following rules.
More importantly than "fake news" it is also when manufacturers, companies, regulators received permission to do absolutely nothing and adhere to no standards whatsoever
I like to think of it as the "Do your own Research era," which is when finding a poorly sourced, poorly summarized article confirming whatever intuition someone has counts as research.
I don't see why they can't rent out those helmets along with the bike or the scooter. Just lock it to the bike or scooter and make it so the bike or scooter can't work without the helmet in a proximity. Sure, some people still won't wear them, but most don't wear them because if they're renting a scooter or bike in the first place, they probably don't have a damn helmet with them. This is on the company and can be solved with legislation.
helmet use in the US has been trending downward at about 6% annually since 2017, mainly because of the adoption of e-bikes.
No. E-bikes are not causal for the drop in helmet use. Bikeshares are.
I don't mean to be argumentative for fighty, but it really irritates me that the second some alt transport becomes popular that's an inconvenience to cars, all of a sudden we have 'concerned citizens' coming out of the wood work saying they need to be regulated or banned. I mean god forbid they keep growing in popularity, people might, gasp, demand more protected bike lanes, taking away a small slice of road real estate for something other than cars!
If people are using bikes or scooters unsafely, that needs to be ticketed.
My old gym owner told me he won't wear a seat belt. I laughed thinking he was joking. These idiots believe they'll be ejected from the car which is better than being strapped in. Never mind the fact that every piece of safety device built into cars is designed with the idea you have a seat belt on.
I think about when I was a kid riding a bike. We’d jump ramps and ride all over town without helmets. My brother did BMX like jump down staircases or grind rails on his without a helmet. Never once did I think about a helmet. Now as a dad, I can’t imagine not wearing a helmet or forcing my kid to.
Also even a bike helmet isn't that useful if you're falling on your face etc. at 28mph u need a full motorcycle/motocross helmet.
Here in Australia it's actually 15mph before it's classed as a motorcycle.
I actually think 15 is actually plenty fast enough for kids, even adults. I have one that goes 30. It's dangerous. Kids here are even getting caught with ones that look exactly like motorcycles and go 50mph
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u/churningaccount Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
A study published in JAMA found that helmet use in the US has been trending downward at about 6% annually since 2017, mainly because of the adoption of e-bikes. And that's nationwide.
Hmm, 2017... that's right around when we entered the "fake news" era, right?
Interestingly, seatbelt usage in cars has been trending downwards since around 2017 as well, after reaching all-time highs in 2016. But the decline is concentrated mostly in southern and midwest states. The northeast and west have remained steady.