So, why do they feel cycling is dangerous? Because their bike tells them so. Their bike’s owner’s manual tells them so. Their local bike shop tells them so. Their local media tells them so. Their politicians tell them so. Not in so many words, but the idea and the feeling given is that cycling is dangerous and you need helmets and reflective vests and lights brighter than car headlights in order to be safe.

All that says “cycling is not for me” to a huge portion of the population.

What the Dutch have done, is work to make cycling inherently safe in their cities and even in the country, by providing separated, convenient infrastructure, by limiting the freedom of automobile users, and by creating law that puts vulnerable road users ahead of automobile users; at which point, they don’t need to rant and rave about how you need to be safe while on a bicycle. And guess what? It’s worked. The Netherlands has the safest traffic in the world, for all modes of transportation, nobody feels that riding a bicycle is dangerous, and they are right.

I think most of the time, helmet laws and all of this ’safety’ propaganda is simply a cop-out, so that no real attention has to be given to the deeper issues of how to make traffic safer. They can just say “oh, he wasn’t wearing a helmet, stupid man,” even if they were in a collision that wasn’t their fault or didn’t involve head injuries (and this happens).