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Q: Why does no one wear helmets?
Are there no safety videos shown in schools here? Do parents not wrap their kids in bubble wrap? Why does no one, when they are riding a bike, e-bike or scooter wear a freakin helmet!!!???? The only people who do are the ones that want to look like expert cyclist and so get themselves kitted out in the full lycra ensemble.
10 years 12 weeks ago in Health & Safety - China
There are laws on this but as usual they are hardly enforced. Police are more concerned with impounding bikes, ebikes and the like for a more rewarding purpose. When the owners try to reclaim their bikes, they need to pay a processing and release "fee". I've seen this happened where I live. Furthermore, the lives of bikers appear to be expendable. Traffic police here couldn't care less.
I was shocked to see a bike with lights on the other night. I believe a first in 3 years in China
bill8899:
What?! Where?! You're right. I turned my ebike's lights on after dark and felt like a clown.
Scandinavian:
no no no, proper bikes with pedals and no sort of motor, e-Bikes I sometimes see with headlights, but most often just a bunch of "bling" in the form of lots of LEDs.
"Nobody where a helmet, so why wearing one". Reasoning about security, nope. You do something if others do it, else, you don't do it. A few videos showing how a cranium pops-up when hitting blunt objects at 100 km/h might do the trick ?
1) First scene : simulation of a cranium eating a metal bar at 100 km/h
2) Second scene : slideshow of real exploded craniums, complete with brains residues all over the place.
But that would requires actual balls, and trained police officers, etc.
I notice more and more people wearing helmets but many idiots still consider them too... "ma fan".
Of course, if you have no brains to protect, there is no point in wearing a helmet anyway.
some simple things would help
how about some reflectors on the spokes if your to cheap to run your lights, i tried to buy more reflectors for a bike here and gave up.
how about requiring bikes to be neon painted light colors, driving all the dark blue and black ebikes at night is really smart.
of course since a chinese brain only memorizes and never thinks perhaps helmets are unnecessary since all brains are the same, slightly used and interchangeable.
Scandinavian:
it is a good point, I think when you look out the front window of a car at night, in China, the soft road users are very difficult to spot. Up north in Scandinavia, where winter and summer are very different in terms of darkness, people know that during the dark season, reflectors on clothing and vehicles saves lives.
It is such a cheap and easy way of becoming more visible and lowering the risk of getting run over.
There is an easy way to get people to wear helmets...enforce the bloody law!
i was in Vietnam over spring festival and 98% of the bike/scooter riders wore helmets. Why? Because in 2007 the Vietnamese government got fed-up of the carnage on the roads and deaths through head injuries and changed to the law to make helmets mandatory....and made the police give on the spot fines. So now the majority wear them. Though some of the helmets are like the plastic workmen variety but better than nothing.
You know what really gets me? You seem someone riding a bike/ebike/motorbike here and the are wearing a helmet.....and their pride and joy only child is perched somewhere on the bike with NO helmet. Talk about being selfish! Or bloody stupid........
Robk:
LOL... so true... It's like they think because they are in the front with a helmet the kid or wife in the back won't fly 100 feet and land on their head.
The helmet is magical it protects everyone on the bike! LOL
Visco8:
Yes! and the same applies to cars. No baby capsules, or any restraints for toddlers!!? .Love their only child to death...
Uncomfortable....the same excuse I hear about not wearing seatbelts.
[wumao]You know, there's several states in the U.S. that don't have a mandatory helmet law. You can see motorcyclists with much faster and more powerful machines riding without a lid in states like Texas, Florida, and a few others[/wumao]
Scandinavian:
unlike the comfort of hitting the dashboard with, lets say just 20 km/h in a slow traffic accident.
cooter:
That's thinking waaaaay too far ahead....only the discomfort right frikkin now is what matters.
Are helmets compulsory for cyclists in other countries? I know they are in Australia, and have been for many years.
Scandinavian:
yes, many countries have laws put in place. But e.g. Denmark doesn't have, and as a very bicycle fanatic country, 75% wear helmets, whereas Sweden, a perhaps less bicycle fanatic, but very safety conscious country has a law, but only 70% wears a helmet. The problem is that a lot of bike users are kids and they are difficult to fine (e.g. biking around alone, no ID etc as you can in the free world)
Of course, the issue of getting run over is less as in both countries people would have plenty of reflectors and front and rear lights because they like to be alive.
DrMonkey:
In NZ, helmets are mandatory for cyclists, since 1996-ish. In 2 weeks in NZ, I never seen a cyclist without a helmet.
I rode my bike around town this afternoon and didn't wear a helmet for a couple of reasons...main reason; it wouldn't fit on my head over my wooly hat. Lessor reason; I'm stupid.
Wooly hat won out because it was minus 20. I thought for a while there my eyeballs were going to freeze.
I have an ebike and I don't wear a helmet, mainly because my head is HUGE and my hair is even bigger and it just physically impossible. See: curly MUFASA hair.
I have however seen the most atrocious examples of child neglect being committed by some parents. No helmets, no seatbelt, no seat for the child to even sit on so they stand on the parent's legs and lean over the handle bars...every time I always stop what I'm doing, stare at them with my mouth gaped open, shake my head and say a prayer for the poor child and I speed home to escape the insanity that is the public.
Because they're suicidally insane. A pavement-landing to the head solves everything.
My boyfriend who is a native of china told me that bikes are actually illegal in china but people ride them anyway so why would they choose to wear a helmet when theyre already breaking the law and no police cares so would they care about a helmet. stupid i know lol
I'd like to see manditory head lights. Helmets in China suck, they' never pass a safety standard in other countries. There is no shock absorbing foam in them, even in the full coverage helmets. They'd never prevent from a brain injury.O well, you'd have to have a brain to protect to start with.
