Friday, March 1, 2013

City hire bikes (bike-share) and helmets

Throughout the world, towns and cities are competing with each other to introduce bike hire schemes in order to improve the quality of life by getting more people cycling. The outstanding success of the Vélib' scheme in Paris (Vélib), launched in 2007, has unleashed an envy and enthusiasm to follow suit, unprecedented in cycling history.

Countries with helmet laws are losing out on the benefits from the hire bike revolution. None of the successful schemes requires cyclists to use a helmet and none are provided. As well as the practical difficulties of offering helmets to users at each bike station in a sufficient range of sizes, there are health and hygiene issues that make sharing helmets unacceptable. Read more.

No comments: