Helmets and Safety
- for beginners

Helmets and Safety for beginners

Bicycling Safety for Drivers  
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5 Helmets and Safety

Drivers should make conservative assumptions about helmet effectiveness and not assume that, because a cyclist is wearing a helmet, any less care is needed on the part of drivers.

The ANSI and SNELL standards for helmets require that the helmet provide reasonable protection against a fall of 1 to 1.5 meters. This corresponds to a velocity of 10 to 12 mph and is illustrated in the following figure, where green indicates relative safety, red indicates high risk (almost certainty of a head injury at some level, and yellow indicates the transition region).

Illustration of risk versus speed

The ranges in the figure are meant to be suggestive only, and not represent hard boundaries. Drivers should be aware that

While helmets provide a useful additional margin of safety, helmets are not 100 percent effective, and you should not depend on helmets preventing serious injuries.

 
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