Yeah -6% annually is ridiculously fast in terms of societal norms changing. I had to double check that figure. Essentially that means that helmet use has fallen over 40% since a decade ago.
That's so fast that helmets are basically going to look out of place soon. In fact, they are already starting to...
Again, i think it depends a lot on the area. When i lived in the deep south even mopeds/ road going ebikes didnt have helmets half the time. Dont think i ever saw one on a scooter person. Now that i live in the PNW its so rare to see someone without one i feel out of place if i forget mine. As is tradition, the younger kids on ebikes are almost always the culprit. When we first moved here and didnt have helmets we had multiple people stop to ask/remind/offer us one haha.
When i lived in the deep south even mopeds/ road going ebikes didnt have helmets half the time.
I would estimate 80% of motorcycles flying down the highway at 80mph don't have helmets where I live. The 20% with helmets are almost all sport bike riders that like the look of cool gear (including me!), and essentially every Harley/cruiser has absolutely zero protective gear.
In Illinois there no law requiring you to wear a helmet so I would say that 85-90% of bikers I see don't wear one. Some of them ride with their spouses too...
My experience watching people show up on social VR games who were way too young to meet ToS is that the parent is just totally asleep at the wheel, the kids do what they want on their own and learn nobody is going to ask what they're even doing.
I would assume these kids think e-bikes are cool, badger their parents into getting them a Zymovo/Wheelfun/XDDCC drop ship bike because they're like $250 (coincidentally, also the price point where kids started swarming into VR) and, short term, that's all that matters.
They aren't going to look up whether support on these bikes is even possible unless you repair these things as a hobby or a living, they just want to go as fast as they can make it go (bonus points if the speed governor has an easily cuttable wire that says 'don't cut me (you'll go tooooo faaaaaast!)
And then, again, with lack of supervision, they are just going to start doing stuff. You don't need a helmet to twist a throttle so they won't wear a helmet. Nothing or nobody is physically stopping them from riding anywhere so they'll ride anywhere.
Not just kids. I got passed on the bike trail by a woman on an e-bike and caught up with her at the next trailhead. I asked her how fast her bike could go and she said she had passed me at 28 mph, then she immediately said something along the lines of "and I bet you're going to tell me I need to wear a helmet."
Unprompted she went into this speech about how she'd fallen off bikes before and was fine and didn't see any difference now.
I asked her if she'd ever fallen off a bike going 30 mph and she said no, and I just said that she'll notice a difference if/when it happens.
Given the number of people I see on motorcycles that are wearing a helmet as their only piece of safety gear, and only because it is required by law here, I'm not surprised to at all. People are dumb.
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u/churningaccount Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Yeah -6% annually is ridiculously fast in terms of societal norms changing. I had to double check that figure. Essentially that means that helmet use has fallen over 40% since a decade ago.
That's so fast that helmets are basically going to look out of place soon. In fact, they are already starting to...