At the Mayor’s safety summit the other day, officials were bandying about a statistic that indicated 83 or 86% percent of all riders in bike accidents were not wearing helmets. Well we just did a quick count of the riders on the dotbike flickr site who weren’t at a sanctioned riding event and found 71% of the 240 riders captured were not wearing helmets. So instead of a 6 out of 7 chance wearing a helmut will help you, our informal survey suggests it is more like 1 out of 5. Still compelling, but not overwhelming. Why do we want to deconstruct that number? It’s probably because the real number is 71% of folks riding in Dorchester aren’t wearing helmets! If you believe that helmets are a necessary assessory then where’s the community effort to get my neighbors to wear their helmets?
