What, No Helmets?!

The Editors, eBikesDaily.com

Hebei Province, China  -  May 14, 2008  12:00 CST

For now, we expect it to be a long time before seeing another protected head on an e-bike ... unfortunately for our Western sensibilities.

Yes, it’s true, the rule is no helmets on e-bikes here.

For locals, wearing a helmet on any bike would be like wearing a helmet while walking down the street.  Bikes are as much a part of a person, as common, as relied upon, as legs.

Fortunately, we see -- and our friends, including one connected with a nearby city hospital, report -- very few accidents, or none at all.

Whereas Western common sense requires us to protect ourselves against the worst thing we can imagine happening, a strain of local common sense -- truly sensible or not -- says that it is foolish to use limited cash on a helmet when the chance of needing it is small and so dependent on luck.

Why is there a perception, if not a reality, that the chance of needing a helmet is remote and not worth addressing with prevention?

Here's why ... and if you have lived and traveled in poor, developing, or third world countries, we think you will agree with the following points -- if not we would enjoy hearing your experiences:

In these countries riders and drivers cannot and do not rely on the traffic laws to which we are accustomed in the West.  To Western eyes, there appears to be an expectation, a mutual agreement among drivers, bike, e-bike, and motorcycle riders, pedestrians, and even the police, that people will use just enough common sense to keep things safe ... that the public will play nicely on the roads, without police watching every move and trying as hard as possible to punish every infraction.

The real traffic rules -- which everyone can and does count on rigorously -- are few and simple:  First, the bigger vehicle can do whatever it wants, and, second, if two vehicles are the same size, the vehicle in front, if even by only one centimeter, can do whatever it wants.

Drivers, riders and pedestrians learn at a young age to apply these traffic rules by instinct.  There is no need to remember a catalog of laws learned long ago from a book of regulations.

Of course, this common sense arrangement doesn't always work.  However, it does work surprisingly well. 

At first, road courtesy here is so hard to discern as to be invisible to Western eyes long accustomed to Western rules.  All the same, it is courtesy, together with vigilance and defensiveness that keep roads safe here.  Of course these are necessary also in the West, where there is the added burden of many more rules.

Courtesy is indeed hard to discern at first.  For example, visitors and new residents to Asia often bristle at the constant sounding of horns by drivers and riders.  What they do not yet realize is that drivers and riders are displaying great courtesy by sounding their horns.  They are thinking of other drivers in nearby vehicles and being sure to announce their presence, or rapid approach.

So, there is a faith in common sense and reasonable care to prevent an accident that would make a helmet necessary. 

In addition to common-sense traffic rules, an entirely different factor may also affect perceptions about the necessity of helmets -- personal circumstances.

In places where money is scarce, e-bike riders know that if they have a significant accident, they are seriously out-of-luck in life.  This knowledge increases their vigilance and makes more conservative their risk-management on the road ... just as a Westerner determined to arrive alive looks both ways two or three times before crossing a busy intersection.

With low incomes, people often have little savings, and often no savings that are uncommitted to important family plans, like a child’s school fees.  They have no credit cards to pay for the portion of medical treatment that insurance will not cover, or for a new e-bike, or for food for their families if they are unable to work.  There may be no internal-combustion vehicle -- neither motorcycle, nor automobile, nor SUV -- in a driveway at home as a backup if their e-bike is wrecked in an accident.  Their e-bike may be the only vehicle with a motor the family owns, after saving for some time.

So often these riders are careful, often sounding their horns at everything on the road that could possibly move, just to be sure. 

Further, it is useful to remember that people here carry fresh memories of tough lives ... real scarcity and hunger remains in the minds of all but the youngest generations.  We hear about it again and again.  For example, only in 1998 -- ten years ago! -- did it become possible for middle-class families in China to eat a plentiful and diverse diet.  Children grow markedly taller than their parents because adults here were raised with less to eat, and a very narrow range of foods.

The people know what it is to be subject to uncontrollable hardships in life.  Experience has taught them that difficulties in life may come at any time, in ways both imaginable and beyond imagination, if they are unlucky.

With problems on the horizon that are more likely, and perhaps certain, and more uncontrollable, than road accidents, there is less worry about less likely and controllable possibilities.  The instinct Westerners seem to have to identify and obsess over terrible things that might happen to us, however likely or unlikely -- the fear-management which makes us eager customers for insurance -- is mostly absent.

It seems that people here may be more concerned about courting general good luck in life in traditional ways ... rather than trying to eliminate, one by one, the likelihood of each type of possible vulnerability, such as a head injury, by wearing a helmet.

Added to the effects of personal circumstances and beliefs about luck, the pace of traffic also affects beliefs about the necessity of helmets.

Speeds are usually low.  This is because travel is mostly on small roads with much traffic or many obstacles.  Commonly there are lines or clusters of bikes and e-bikes on a road, a slow-moving zone that offers safety-in-numbers for riders and predictable behavior for drivers.

In the presence of, if not as a result of, all of these factors –- internalized traffic rules based on common sense, common personal circumstances, a belief in general good luck rather than trying to address every individual vulnerability, and low speeds -- e-bike riders successfully avoid accidents more than it seems they should, to Westerners who have observed traffic here.

Again and again, we have heard other foreigners in Asia say how amazed they are by the rarity of accidents, especially considering how much traffic there is.  We too are amazed.

It is this impression that accidents seldom happen that is shared by locals who believe that helmets are unnecessary on an e-bike ... all, it seems, except for the unusual, and hopefully, trend-setting woman we met today.

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