Didn't really expect much from DrivingUk but honestly the amount of downvotes shocked me. God forbid people go out at night dressed normally without full on high vis.
Reddit Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/drivingUK/comments/1r8fkfo/comment/o65j18p/
this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
243 points (84.8% liked)
Fuck Cars
15023 readers
478 users here now
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Being dark isn't a choice. People, dogs, cats, birds, etc are born that way.
Even clothing sometimes isn't a choice. It's pretty common in work attire to require black shoes and slacks. Formal attire also leans dark.
Formal wear doesn’t include helmets, yet we still expect people to put on a helmet if they get on a bike.
We are talking about walking, its the default method of moving. You are suggesting people need safety gear to be able to walk down the street. The police can give you a ticket for not wearing your safety walking gear? Is walking on the street a privellage not a right?
Don't worry, they will privatize the roads after elections are fixed, and they will make walking a crime.
We shouldn't though. The responsibility should fall on those who create the danger to manage it responsibly.
I do wear a helmet but if someone chooses not to that's their business and it's not their fault if someone else injures or kills them any more than it would be if you failed to wear body armor while walking in a dangerous neighborhood.
I wear a helmet while biking. It's saved me from a head injury once so far, in an accident that had nothing to do with being hit by a car.
I don't think it should be legally required, though, because avoiding discouraging people from cycling at all is more important for safety and health in aggregate.
(I was riding along at relatively low speed, looking up at some scenery, and hit the longitudinal edge of a cockeyed metal plate in the road in just the wrong way such that it pushed my wheel sideways and made me fall over.)
Yeah I support helmet wearing. I just don't think we should blame people for bad things that other people do to them just because they chose not to.
Comes down to if you want to assign blame or prevent it from happening to you.
Yes, if you’re riding without a helmet and hit by a car, the car is (probably) still at fault. But if your primary concern is avoiding brain damage, you wear a helmet.
You’ve chosen hyperbole in your hypothetical in a dangerous neighborhood. More to the point is wearing an expensive watch while in a dangerous neighborhood. If you’re rolled and the watch stolen, it’s the fault of the thief. But maybe a better idea to put the Rolex in your pocket when downtown after dark.
I think my analogy is way more similar than yours.
Make your own decisions about how you keep yourself safe. But once you start victim blaming, expect criticism.
Nope. We’re talking basic common sense precautions. Not “body armor.”
"Common sense" stems from the cultural context. Which in this case is carbrain.
Most other countries do not consider a helmet a necessity for riding a bike.
I ride exclusively on bike trails, away from any cars. Other countries are wrong on this one.
How wonderful for you that you have the privilege of doing so. Most of us don't.
I’m not going to edit my comment, but I shouldn’t have said exclusivity. I should have said that most of my mileage is ridden away from cars, and thus wearing a helmet isn’t due to proximity to cars. I wear a helmet when I’m riding in car traffic as well, but not because of the cars.
Riding a bike anywhere without a helmet is disregarding your safety. I’m not saying it needs to be legislated, but don’t pretend you’re enlightened because you rawdog your bike.
It's all about risk tolerance. Wearing a helmet on a bike keeps you a little safer. Wearing body armor keeps you a little safer. Those are facts. But the decision as to what actions to take to keep oneself safe is a personal decision. As such, it may be reasonable to advise people of that information so they can make a better decision. But insulting them for failing to take advice you personally consider common sense is just rude. And when you're insulting them and ignoring the person actually creating the danger... well that's why the term carbrain was invented.
I support people who choose not to wear a helmet; they’ve obviously already experienced brain damage.
Most places with functional, safe bike lanes will have most people riding without helmets because accidents are quite rare.
Riding a bike without a helmet is profoundly stupid.
Go on, oneguy the entire Netherlands.
As is driving a car without a helmet, given the number of head injuries that result. But here we are.
I'm sure you meant seatbelt. In which case I agree wholeheartedly.
Seatbelts are good, too, but they don't protect the head, and head injuries from mild to severe are still quite common. It's utter stupidity not to wear a helmet in the car.
Look up the car-crash head injury rates yourself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_reflector
Even if safety reflectors become widely adopted- let's suppose that workers leaving the office at 5pm put one on, clubbers at midnight have them, whatever - then won't motorists come to expect to see them? And if they hit someone, people might say, "Well, she wasn't wearing safety reflectors - what do you expect?"