We were at the Department of Science and Technology – Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DOST-PCIEERD) this morning to help defend our proposal for a bike sharing system. UP Bike Share is an initiative coming out of a group of students from various programs in their respective colleges at the University of the Philippines Diliman.
One question that was raised among the technical panel to whom the proposal was presented for evaluation was concerning safety of people participating in the bike share. One panelist asked if cyclists were required to wear helmets. We replied that those participating in the bike share were not required to wear helmets and that despite helmets being available few, if any, borrowed the available helmets. I mentioned that there was an article I came upon before that stated the requiring people to wear helmets discourage biking. It seems a coincidence that as I browsed my Facebook just now, I found a link to that very same article I mentioned in a meeting earlier today:
To encourage biking, cities lose the helmets [by Elisabeth Rosenthal from The New York Times, Sunday Review, September 29, 2012]
The article makes a lot of sense especially the observation that requiring helmets seem to send the message that it is dangerous to bike. People associating danger with biking with helmets tend to opt out of biking. I recall that in Japan before, I didn’t have a problem biking in urban areas and helmets were not required. Of course, drivers of vehicles in are very admirable by the way they drive safely and respecting other road users’ right to the road. Instead of having a campaign to require helmets for bikers perhaps efforts should be focused on how to make our roads safer for all users including bikers and pedestrians.
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