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Wellness Wednesday for April 10, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I use a bike trailer to tow my children. I take them to and from a playground, which is around a 30 minute ride in each direction.

It is 90% greenway, with some sleepy 2-lane connector roads. While I am of course an incredible pedal pumping engine capable of incredible feats, I average only around 12 mph.

The bike trailer has a 5-point harness and an aluminum roll cage.

The problem: Putting helmets on my kids looks fucking miserable. Their heads are cast downward, they have nowhere to look around, and the youngest is clearly upset after around 15 minutes in the trailer. The oldest still has an OK time but is far quieter than when we rode together with a secondary saddle. FAQ says deal with it.

Assume you're a typical parent (I.E. your children are the most important thing in your life and you can't imagine causing them harm through negligence) but you also loathe the vapid stupidity of "better safe than sorry" in the face of all rationality, would you consider forgoing the helmet?

"Other Site" discussions:

From that FAQ:

If the trailer is being used in Bike Mode, YES, the child should always wear a helmet. A helmet will protect him or her and also help develop the habit of always riding with a bike helmet.

I consider this a point against the helmet. I want to inculcate a sense of reasonable decision making and risk assessment, not the pure safetyism of donning a helmet literally every time you're biking.

Personally, I wear a helmet when I'm road biking because I'm going to go fast enough and ride enough miles that there's a non-trivial chance of having a nasty wreck at some point. On the flip side, I never wear a helmet when I'm going a couple miles on a hybrid because I'm not going fast and there's very little chance of me just randomly falling down while tootling along a bike path at 13 MPH. I skip the helmet there for the same reason that I don't wear a helmet in the car or while running. I also just think helmets look incredibly dorky when worn with street clothes, but YMMV there. I have no real interest in encouraging other people to wear helmets more or less often than me, I think people should wear them in accordance with their own risk assessment and personal comfort.

I would want the same flexibility for a young cyclist rather than the obsessive safety of being scared to pedal a couple blocks without getting a helmet.