The Korean government plans to make it compulsory for all people riding a bicycle to wear helmets from September 2018. A helmet law has the intention to make cycling safer but the reality proves that it’s very counterproductive and a move into the wrong direction.
Mandatory Bicycle Helmet Law
The law is already passed and it will go into effect on 22 September 2018. There isn’t yet any information on how high the fine will be. Looking at motorcycles, the fine for not wearing a helmet is 20,000 KRW (around 18 USD). So it will be probably around that level as well.
Countries with Bicycle Helmet laws
Usually you would expect that you look at Let’s take a look at which countries have regulations on bicycle helmets for all cyclists:
Countries with fines are Australia, Israel, Namibia, New Zealand and parts of Canada/USA. You can see that countries, such as Netherlands and Denmark, which are often praised as the best bicycle countries, don’t have any legal restrictions.
Why mandatory helmet laws can be very counterproductive
Making a helmet a necessary item will, first of all, hinder people who don’t have an helmet to cycle. Second, it will make cycling less attractive for casual cyclists. People who use a bicycle to get to the subway on the way to work or school don’t want to carry a helmet around. Another issue are bikesharing systems: Spontaneous use of such services will decrease or each bicycle will have to provide a helmet. Seoul’s bikesharing service Ttareungyi is currently investigating their options to react to the bicycle helmet laws. Actually, on their website you can see that a use of helmets is recommended (picture on the right).
Instead of discussing arguments for and against mandatory bicycle helmet laws, I recommend you to take a look at the following video:
It summarizes very well the issue with compulsory bicycle helmet laws. Especially in a country like Korea, where cycling trips still account for a very small number of journeys.
What can be done against it?
You can sign this petition on the Goverment’s official petition portal to show that you are unsatisfied with this development. The petition ends on 23 July. The portal allows a quick and easy registration through Twitter, Facebook or Naver (no need for an ARC or anything else). Signing the petition will help to raise attention and can lead to a reassessment of the law. For further updates on this activity, you can join the Korean Facebook page “맨머리유니언 – No Compulsory Helmets”.
What has to be done instead in Korea
Korea records an increase in cycling. Articles describe the “cycling population” has passed 13 million. 6.01% of road traffic fatalities in 2016 (in 2012: 5.35%; in 2014: 5.94%) are people on bicycles. Articles about the mandatory bicycle law mention that 38.4% of bicycle accidents involve head injuries.
However, the articles don’t mention that 98.5% of all bicycle accidents and 98.8% of cycling fatalities in Korea happen on normal roads without any bicycle infrastructure. So clearly, we don’t need another victim-blaming policy that makes an efficient, sustainable way of moving around worse, we need adequate bicycle infrastructure for everyday bicycle use. In other words: Dedicated, physically separated and protected bicycle lanes and other infrastructure elements which make it safe and convenient for people of all ages, gender and physical ability to ride a bicycle anywhere they want.
Sorry to hear Korea’s going to force everyone to wear helmets at all times on bikes.
Thanks for this article – great to see somebody at least taking a sceptical look at bike helmets.
Agree with you guys 100%. Even if the intentions of this law a good, it’s ridiculous and will only lead to less adoption of bicycles as a viable means of transport.
My Korean city is a nightmare for cycling. Some brave souls do it, but ride right alongside cars travelling at full speed. There is essentially zero infrastructure for bikes, except for a very few spots where the sidewalk suddenly gets a little bit wider and the bricks change color, making a “bike lane” that goes nowhere and would actually be more dangerous to ride on considering all the trees, electric poles, potholes, trash, and pedestrians that fill it. Forget about even trying it at night.
I rarely ride a bike here, but when I have, I’ve never used a helmet. And frankly, I won’t. Neither will anybody in my office after a straw-poll I did via KakaoTalk haha. Maybe this law scores points for some politicians but it’s absurd for common people. It got me to come here and comment haha shows you how much I hate this idea.
If you haven’t seen what can happen to someone during a bike crash, you can’t possibly understand why this is important. My friend would have died last year if she hadn’t been wearing a helmet. A car turned into her lane and hit her head on. Tour de France riders have been killed, but more have lived after a crash because of helmets. This is a good law and fighting against it means you haven’t thought it through. This study shows that wearing a helmet will save lives in South Korea:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-bicycles-helmets/helmets-prevent-severe-head-injuries-in-bike-accidents-idUSKCN10U1LY
Korean Police do not enforce laws. So, such a law is meaningless, UNLESS, you are in an accident. In addition, please imagine a watermelon. Now, throw it out the window of your vehicle onto the cement. That is your head and brain sloshing out. Wear your helmet. -Peter
Yes, helmets do provide some protection at the individual level, and indeed people are free to wear helmets (or not) when riding just as they are when skiing, skateboarding, doing parkour, rollerblading, rock climbing, riding horses, etc. All activities with higher risk of head injury than cycling.
The issue is at the population health level, where they make it less likely people will ride and also make bike share schemes a lot less practical.
There’s a reason only 2 other countries have mandatory all-ages helmet laws.
The video and the arguments in the article above miss the point. Avoidance of cycling due to avoidance of a helmet, risk-taking behavior, and traffic patterns are not the immediate question. The proper study would be bicycle head-injuries and the impact of helmets (sorry!). I’m not a fan of compulsory helmet laws, but if you are riding faster than 25kmh then a helmet is a very very good idea. And yeah, in Korea such practices only occur through force of law. (Police do write tickets when it becomes a “drive.”)
If you are going argue about helmet laws, don’t attack it by telling us that people won’t ride bikes if they have to wear a helmet. Most people who actually riding for their health are not going to be bothered by wearing a helmet. Health and safety go hand in hand. If you are going to attach a helmet law, you should also be attacking all other laws pertaining to utilizing public road ways. They are all restrictions of freedom to help reduce impacts of accidents on the infrastructure. If you’re against helmet laws, why wouldn’t you be against speed limits? I could argue that since people cannot legally drive as fast as they want, they might be compelled to spend their time doing something else. This is a nonsense support for the argument, just as the argument made here against the helmet law is nonsense.
I don’t think anybody is arguing that it’s “safe” to not wear a helmet. The bottom line is that the absolute most deadly thing for a cyclist isn’t even wearing a helmet or not — it’s being hit by a car. Mandating helmets is like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound. Yes it could theoretically help, but what would drastically help more is exactly what Kojects argued: separating bike from car traffic. Cyclists simply should not be sharing the road with massive 2 ton hunks of metal.
Helmet laws for cyclists reduce the number of people who seriously consider biking a reliable and convenient means of getting around, while ignoring the hard work and expense of actually solving the problem. It’s free and easy, and even earns income for the gov (in fines). I’d rather they invest in safe separate lanes for biking. Then the dangers and injuries of bike accidents can be drastically reduced and safety improved, *and* more people will consider it as a convenient option.
Or of course we could just mandate that all pedestrians wear helmets too, if we *really* are so concerned about safety. Pedestrian accidents at crosswalks must surely be a higher number of incidents than bike accidents. If we want to save lives, mandate that all people wear a helmet when crossing the street. We don’t do this, because it’s ridiculously inconvenient despite what would definitely be improved safety stats. Sounds silly but to me it’s the same notion for bikes. I never ride above the same speed a jogger jogs at anyway. Make the jogger helmet up too. He can trip and fall and take a face plant to the concrete and wind up in hospital too.
It’s time we stop considering non-motorized bicycles as “vehicles” and consider them as simply extensions of pedestrians. We don’t allow pedestrians in the road but we make separate elevated sidewalks for them for their safety (in most places. My area still has plenty of no-sidewalk streets). Time we took the same consideration for cyclists. Everyone benefits. Just my two cents.
Dear Tasha and Michael,
I’m not writing about Tour de France-cyclists or people that ride their bicycle to exercise and for their health. I refer to people that use their bicycle for a 2-min ride to the local market, a subway station and so on. In such cases people will be very discouraged to use a bicycle due to strict helmet laws.
Ashley, thanks for the comment!
Dear Sam,
thank you for the comments and funny to read that you have done a poll among your colleagues. I agree with most of your points. But bicycles just have to be treated as bicycles. There has to be a clear distinction between people walking, people on bicycles, people driving cars. It can be also done by thinking about “dividing by speed” as a basic planning paradigm. If you see bicycles as an extension of pedestrians, urban planners will always end up with taking space away from pedestrians and giving it to cyclists (shared sidewalks and so on).
Cheers,
Nikola
Nikola, “dividing by speed” doesn’t make any sense in urban transit. Consider the case of the small-engine motorcycles & scooters in Korea (and even a fair number of 125cc motorcycles with older drivers). These seldom get beyond 45kmh. They typically cheat the red lights because they want to get going before cars (with faster acceleration) get moving.
Lock a helmet to a bike as easy as chaining the bike (to prevent theft), so long as you buy the right helmet. The “carry-around” argument carries no water.
On the other hand, regulations like this can give incentive to those who might like to wear a helmet but may otherwise feel it’s too unmanly [or some other idiotic notion;] to parents who will discuss it — it gets the word out — and may insist their kids start using helmets. Cars aren’t the only danger. Very minor accidents can turn deadly without a helmet. Yep, separated lanes would be great but in the meantime…
Hey Brian,
thank you for the comment. That’s true and I want to clarify that all my statements (and point of view) focus on adults. For children (esp. under 10 or even under 12) a helmet is a good idea because children have more difficulties in seeing cars and recognizing distance and driving speed of cars/other traffic participants.
Cheers,
Nikola
Thanks for a great post.
Of course, wearing a helmet can protect you but a mandatory helmet law is the wrong solution to the problem. It has been proven to reduce cycling and that’s bad for all cyclists. Better infrastructure, better driver education, and enforcement of existing laws would be much more effective. Prevent the accident in the first place!
Dear Jeff,
thank you for the comment. Yes, exactly! We need to prevent the crash in the first place ;-) (—> https://www.crashnotaccident.com/ )
Regards,
Nikola