The newpaper story would a lot more amusing if its content wasn’t about foolish, dangerous behavior.
It seems, according to an article Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal, that even though the Netherlands has the highest per capita use of bicycles, the Dutch refuse to wear helmets while riding. The story’s headline and kicker are “Getting These Cyclists to Use Helmets is Like Tilting at Windmills: Bicycle-Loving Dutch Hate Headgear; ‘We Are Not in Germany.”’
The story starts out with an anecdote about a university doctor who had a bike accident, sans helmet, that left him unconscious and in the hospital. But he did not learn his lesson: When he got back on his bike after his recovery, he still refused to wear a helmet.
The Dutch are so averse to wearing bike helmets that kids typically taunt other kids for wearing them. So one of the country’s provinces, in an experimental program, handed out free helmets to children in 42 schools to encourage kids to wear them, according to The Journal’s Page One story. Those helmets were decorated with pictures of “Coolie,” a cute blue cartoon mascot who is wearing a helmet.
In the spring, the automaker Volvo also distributed free, stylish helmets to children.
The Dutch anti-helmet brigade argues that the headgear doesn’t really protect bicyclists involved in bad accidents. Even Dutch doctors came up with lame excuses for declining to wear helmets, saying that they didn’t look good and that no one else wears them in the Netherlands.
