{"id":243916,"date":"2010-01-28T13:56:24","date_gmt":"2010-01-28T18:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/economics\/2010\/01\/28\/helmets-save-lives-but-discourage-biking\/"},"modified":"2010-01-28T13:56:24","modified_gmt":"2010-01-28T18:56:24","slug":"helmets-save-lives-but-discourage-biking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/243916","title":{"rendered":"Helmets Save Lives, but Discourage Biking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past couple decades, various U.S. states have made great strides toward getting more children to wear helmets when riding a bicycle — an effort that saves hundreds of lives each year. Only one problem, according to new research: Helmet laws are also turning kids off from riding bikes at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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A helmet didn’t slow down this little stunt rider. (Mirrorpix\/Courtesy Everett Collection)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

In a working paper<\/a> just published by the National Bureau of Economic Research<\/strong>, Christopher Carpenter<\/strong> of UC Irvine<\/strong> and Mark Stehr<\/strong> of Drexel University<\/strong> quantify the unintended consequence of helmet laws: In states that adopted such laws — a total of 21 states over the past 15 years — the kids affected became about 4% to 5% less likely to ride a bike.<\/p>\n

Messrs. Carpenter and Stehr offer a couple possible explanations for the decline. For one, the cost of a helmet, which can be as high as $40, might discourage some kids from becoming bike riders — particularly if they can ride a skateboard or scooter without one. Also, according to surveys, kids don\u0092t like wearing helmets because they\u0092re uncomfortable and make them look like \u0093geeks\u0094 or \u0093nerds\u0094.<\/p>\n

None of this, of course, means that helmet laws should be scrapped. The researchers found that the laws not only increase helmet use by 20% to 34%, but also reduce bicycling fatalities among the kids affected by about 19%. So keep those helmets on.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the past couple decades, various U.S. states have made great strides toward getting more children to wear helmets when riding a bicycle — an effort that saves hundreds of lives each year. Only one problem, according to new research: Helmet laws are also turning kids off from riding bikes at all. A helmet didn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}