Will helmet law kill Seattle's new bike-share program?

[TexasTowelie]

Last edited Wed Dec 28, 2016, 08:52 PM - Edit history (1)

There’s the rain. There are the hills. There’s the fact that the last, smaller system failed and the new contractor has never done a project anywhere near this size.

As the Seattle City Council ponders whether to spend $5 million upgrading the city’s foundering bike-share program, there are a lot of challenges to overcome. But bike shares have been hugely successful in cities both much larger and much smaller than Seattle. Why can’t it work here, in a city with a famously active and outdoorsy culture?

There is one challenge facing Seattle’s bike share that no other city in the world has so far overcome: a mandatory helmet law.

Somewhere around 1,000 cities worldwide have bike-share programs. Fewer than five of those cities also have a law requiring adults to wear a helmet when riding a bike. No American city with a bike-share program, save Seattle, has a helmet law for adults.

Read more: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/will-helmet-law-kill-seattles-new-bike-share-program/

[LisaM]

1. Please, something kill this bike plan.

Bring back the Metro ride-free zone instead.

[HassleCat]

2. Seattle may be too hilly.

[LisaM]

3. Not just the hills- the downtown area

doesn't really have anywhere to navigate a bike easily and few businesses have bike racks. They put one bike lane on Second Avenue, but there aren't many destinations along that route. I have never seen anyone actually riding one of those bikes.

[Ron Obvious]

4. Helmet laws are nanny-state bullshit anyway

Do away with them already. I, as an adult, am perfectly capable of deciding for myself whether or not to wear a limited-utility foam hat when I go out riding.

BTW, in many places where they claim an xyz% decrease in cycling fatalities after passing a helmet law, the commensurate decrease in cycling has always been at least as great as xyz%.

Helmet laws are antithetical to transportation cycling acceptance, and even many cycling advocate societies have backed away from them.