Commuter races, bike helmets, and beauty

Posted on June 10, 2008. Filed under: Community, Feminism, Health, Transportation, Uncategorized | Tags: bike helmets, bikes, car, fashion, Feminism, transit |

The 7th annual NYC commuter race – a 3-way challenge between a cyclist, a transit commuter, and a car commuter! Guess who wins!!

The cyclist doesn’t wear a helmet – yikes – and in NYC no less! I wonder what the standard is there? Anyone know?  It also looks like they’ve got dedicated bike lanes there though – anyone know that either?

I was noticing recently in Vancouver a number of fashionably dressed young women without helmets on their commutes. Let’s hope fashion isn’t giving sway to safety (a beauty knows no pain and all that nonsense) but just a lack of knowledge – although that seems hard to believe. With the “beauty” industry so powerful in an area fraught with human emotional vulnerability it’s a hard one to fight but I usually think of cyclists as being a bit innured from that.

Maybe someone needs to come up with a fashionable looking helmet that doesn’t ruin hair-dos?