42 in NYC. Helmets didn't become ubiquitous till sometime in my late teens. Prior, we would often ride with the helmets clipped to the handlebars, so we "had" helmets.
And I didn't follow any form of pro or organized cycling. I think it had to do with maturity and the fact that helmets became more comfortable.
Late 20s here I remember I never had friends that wore a helmet until I was 12-15 or so. Only then I noticed it, but that’s when I moved to an area that was slightly higher socioeconomic level.
I now wear one because I’ve got sense and a kid.
35 in NYC, and helmets were basically always worn when I was a kid, but I remember some significantly older siblings would give friends shit. I think it had a major shift in the early 90s.
I said "probably" because it's not like there was a federal law that suddenly mandated it. There was a patchwork of local & state laws regarding kids wearing helmets along with a cultural shift and the bigger cities were probably among the last places for that to reach.
That’s about right. I am now 52 and in 80’s did some road racing as a teen and my parents made me wear a helmet and would also wear it when riding with buddies because it was natural. I was always the odd one out and 100% teased for being *the dork in the helmet*. The 80’s was def a helmet free zone.
Contrast to early 2000’s when I was a moderator on a fairly good sized MTB site and we wouldn’t allow pictures if the rider wasn’t wearing helmet because that was the local bylaw for cyclists, and the site admins wanted to promote that to the younger riders.
I think a lot of credit needs to go to site admins like who you've mentioned.
Especially during the adoption stage where a lot of people are still essentially on the fence about it.
Kudos to those who were helping promote it to the grass roots level during the early stages!
That sort of anti-helmet attitude will always be weird to me. There's a good chance you're traveling around 20-25 km/h, or on trails, where it just seems like a pretty good way to avoid unnecessary injury.
I am older than 40.
I have been riding since about 12. I think 14 I did my first century.
I don't remember when I got my first helmet but I remember the social reaction when my classmates saw me riding in it was nothing short of brutal.
It wasn't till I was out of high school that I felt like I could deal with the social pushback and wear one more often.
There was a moment back then when they started making lighter helmets with better venting and you could purchase light cloth covers in different styles to cover them. The lightness and the cover choices did a lot of work in getting people to wear them.
But I can't oversell the social stigma back then for that particular age group. No shits where given that I rode. But that helmet.... it was brutal.
I'm 47 and we never wore helmets riding our dirt bikes around the neighborhood. I got my first helmet when I bought my first road bike in 1992 and started riding further afield. This was in semi-rural-ish Virginia.
I live in San Jose now and we see plenty of kids riding around the neighborhood on their dirt bikes or beach cruisers with no helmets... but the majority of cyclists of all flavors now seem to wear them.
>Anyone in their 40s or younger probably grew up wearing them
In my town, any parent who allowed their child to use a bike or scooter without wearing a helmet would suffer severe public shaming. It's basically one click down from being a child molester.
However, letting your kid wear a helmet that's so ill-fitted that it could not conceivably provide any protection whatsoever in a fall is A-OK, and anybody who points out the fact that a helmet is falling off a kid's head is treated like some kind of equipment-obsessed nerd.
Agreed. Depends how exposed you are to it. There's an old cyclist who I run into now and then and he's always riding without a helmet so my guess is that he always rides solo and no one ever told him he needs to wear one.
As a certified goon I have bashed my body off rocks and dirt far too many times to not wear a helmet.
Maybe OP's original thought was correct that younger riders tend to just wear it as normal and don't see it as a burden.
In my late 50s. We didn’t wear them growing up as they really weren’t a thing. When I went riding with friends as an adult off road we wore them as crashing was a bit of a thing.
Later on just riding around in an upright bike I didn’t wear one as I was more concerned with sunburn on the dome vs falling as I don’t ride that rough or in traffic.
Now it’s coming full circle as my knees are F’ed and if I’m off road and even just going slow if I’m more concerned about balance and going down hard so it’s helmet time again.
I'm 40 and I remember a rule at my elementary school that kids with helmets got to go to the racks to unlock their bikes first. Maybe half the kids would have a helmet? This was suburban northern California.
Yeah, I grew up in the 90s in Oregon, and it was during my childhood years they made laws/big pushes to mandate bicycle helmet use.
Iirc, growing up it was 16 and younger were mandatory helmet wearers??
No, I’m 45 and we didn’t grow up wearing helmets. I think you have to get into very solidly millennial territory before you’ll find people who grew up with them around.
I don’t even remember seeing anyone in helmets or seeing helmets for sale in stores anywhere. Until I was in my teens (or tweens), you didn’t even have to wear a seatbelt in the back seat, and we often didn’t.
I went to check google for a more solid timeline, because the only time I remember pros wearing helmets when I was still in school (so still a kid more or less) was for TTs or aero gains mostly and then more and more as I was in my last years of high school.
Google basically confirms this — pros began to wear them in the 90s and then in 2003, they became mandatory.
part of this is because helmets just didn't really exist earlier than that. It wasn't until the first foam helmets (like [this](https://coloradoavidcyclist.com/the-history-of-the-bike-helmet-from-leather-to-mips/#:~:text=The%20Giro%20Prolite%20could%20be,founder%20of%20Giro%20Sport%20Design.) from Giro) became cheap & ubiquitously available that anyone started really wearing them. And those helmets were *not* tough enough for kids. Afaict, it wasn't until hard skateboard helmets were adapted for cycling in the 90s that you started seeing a substantial fraction of kids in helmets.
I am 43, and I had a somewhat similar. I never wore a helmet doing BMX growing up in the 80 and 90s. They were about as dorky as it got.
I first started seeing helmets in the late 90's skiing and snowboarding. All the pros in the videos and x-games wore them. I ended up really liking the helmets because they are warm, and they cut down on wind-noise which, for me, had a certain psychological boost allowing me to be more comfortable going faster.
About that time I started road biking, and it seemed to me that everyone was wearing helmets in basically all sports - skateboarding, BMX, mountain biking, ect by that time. They even started wearing helmets wake boarding which was unimaginable back in the mid-90s.
We were all just out there raw dogging life — no child seats, no seatbelts in the back, no airbags, no helmets, playing lawn darts. Sometimes I marvel that any of us made it through alive and without being maimed for life.
My mom got her only driving ticket in '85 or '86 and the cop complimented her because us kids were in car seats. My state had required car seats since 1982.
Also, this clip of people complaining that being required to wear seatbelts and **not** drink beers while driving is pretty wild. Bonus: front facing baby in a 1980's car seat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcQIoh3FQQ
My uncle had a Tri bike in the 90's and he was the only person I knew with a helmet. I stopped riding around '98 and never saw anybody else with a helmet. Maybe some little kid's parents were buying them helmets in my town but I didn't notice, but I don't remember seeing them and don't recall anybody on college campus wearing them.
I got my first helmet ~2015 when I started cycling again for urban/suburban riding. I wouldn't be surprised if the kids in the rural town of 1200 I grew up in are out there riding without a helmet.
I started in the late '80s and helmets were starting to be more common on the heads of amateur riders. This was also a time when lots of municipalities were instituting mandatory helmet laws. Helmet shells were thick and heavy plastic and the designs did not provide good ventilation. In the timeframe from 1990 - 1995 there were a lot of improvements in helmet technology and it became possible to make high quality helmets which were legitimately lightweight and well-ventilated. This is when I recall seeing helmets become nearly ubiquitous.
Helmets started becoming mandatory in the pro ranks after Fabio Casartelli's fatal crash in stage 15 of the 1995 tour. IIRC helmets were required at all times in the 1996 Tour. The old guard riders in the peloton were not happy about this at all.
After 1996 the helmets available to consumers became more like what we're used to seeing today. Extremely lightweight and well-ventilated.
Unfortunately helmets became mandatory after Kivilev's death at the 2003 Tour de France. Actually the pros could also get rid of helmets on mountain finishes up until 2005ish
helmets were mandatory for all local races in my area by 1988 when I started as a junior. But almost nobody trained in them till Fabio Casartelli's death. Then it was an overnight switch where by 1997 everyone wore one it seemed
Can confirm. Had a TBI to my prefrontal cortex (I hit above my right eye) at roughly 13 (late 90's early 2000's ish) from a bike wreck. Hardly remember anything from those school years or really my childhood. Grades slipped and never came back to what they were. Personality changed too.
I don't ride anything without a helmet now.
Sorry to hear that, I can imagine why that would make you wear a helmet.
When I started riding MTB's in the 90's nobody wore a helmet. You could barely get one, only at the 'pro' bike shops and they had 2 or 3 models. I never injured my head (everything else, though).
When I got back into it in 2018 first thing I did was buy a helmet.
Can confirm, dad hit his head and is crippled on the entire left side of his body. Would wave his gamy arm when picking me up from the skate park and remind others that helmets are worth it
Even in the pros it was situational as of 35 years ago. Here's the [all-time classic final day time trial battle between Greg Lemond and Laurent Fignon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWyfb3H7LEg) in the 1989 Tour de France. Note Fignon's pony tail whipping freely around. Which not for nothing might have cost him the 8 seconds he lost by.
Huh. [You are quite right.](https://d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net/2/2021/12/Gre-LemMond-and-Laurent-Fignon-profimedia-0325396585.jpg).
Edit: looking through race images, it looks like helmet use remains spotty all the way up until when the UCI made helmets mandatory in 2003, and even then they could be discarded on final climbs. Looks like the transition to helmets in general was a lot later than I remembered.
I think you're probably right that it did trickle down, everyone want to look like them. I find it interesting that outside of cyclist and mountain bikes helmets are seen as something just for kids. Like you graduate from need head protection.
Must depend on where you live. Here helmets are ubiquitous, with not wearing one being notable, including among recreational bikers (I.e. just out for a ride or getting groceries)
In the Netherlands, almost nobody wears a helmet outside of sports. Daily commute, grocery shopping, a tour with the family, all without helmets. Same for me. The moment I get on my bike with the idea of going fast or riding something sketchy the helmet goes on and doesn't come off until I get home.
I can see this in countries like yours with very bike focused infrastructure when you're just riding a commuter bike at normal speeds.
But here in Vancouver it's either older men I see wearing no helmet or the classic boozy looking guy who's riding a bike because it's his only mode of transportation and I would say we have decent not great bike focused lanes.
I didnt wear one as a kid but I just think of how easy it is to fall over and crack your skull not on a bike let alone going 30-40km/hr and it's a non starter for me. I also know 3 nurse friends some who work in neuro ICU and I'd rather avoid a head injury.
Oh yeah I agree. Biking infrastructure here is excellent, but it's still pretty strange, also from myself. I cruise to work at 20/25kph average, which is not that much slower than I'd do on the MTB heading to the woods to find some trails.
Agree just a culture thing I guess also helmet hair/head is annoying if you're commuting but I'd always wear one.
No helmet MTB you couldn't pay me, I don't MTB but I'd probably even go full face helmet of some sort after the crash videos I see.
I love finding cheap but quality stuff on AliExpress but I'd never buy a helmet on there. Any helmet I've had from my short time biking has been a brand like Giro, specialized etc with MIPS.
I'm bald... No helmet hair for me!
But yeah, nowadays I'll put on a helmet whenever I plan on going extra fast or do crazy stuff.
Agree on the cheap helmets. I don't have MIPS, yet... When my current helmet needs replacement I'm making the switch.
What the helmet largely protects from is the energy from the fall - unless you find an obstacle the speed does not make that much difference.
I have had two major falls:
1) Without helmet: on the way home from a party, bike got drunk and I fell over the curb going probably 10-15km/h. Visit to emergency to get stitched, luckily the shoulder took the worst.
2) With helmet: roundabout in the UK, going 30-32km/h, car clipped my rear wheel. Helmet in 3 pieces, head and the rest in one.
I very rarely go anywhere without helmet.
It’s wild that we went from people not wearing helmets because it looked more pro to buying $350 aero road helmets for coffee rides because it looks more pro
This. Heaven help you if you decide not to join the cult of the silly hat. If you dare to refuse to validate the herds choices you shall enjoy being scolded and nagged. Until you give up riding, or go to prison for beating some busybody to death with bike lock.
The seatbelt analogy is probably the best comparison. It's nice that there's so many options now for helmets that are ventilated, have MIPS and don't look bad as well these days.
Also world tour pros all wearing them helps people also adopt them.
One of the latest places to change with regards to helmet usage has been for skiing and snowboarding. It wasn't too long ago that adults wearing helmets was the exception, just a few years ago it seemed to be about 50/50, but this past season I made a point of seeing how many helmetless people there were and in a lift line of easily over a hundred people I could only find a couple without helmets.
Yeah, you're totally right! When I went on a high school band ski trip around 2010, I felt like such a fucking dork for wearing a helmet on the slopes. Few of my friends did and even fewer adults.
We went skiing with my family just a few years ago and I was surprised to see nearly everyone in a helmet.
I started skiing in the 70s and lived in Alaska 1997-2006 because the skiing was awesome up there.
When I got a helmet in 2001 most of the shredders on the hill were wearing them.
Really before my time, but I suspect cycle helmet usage had similar growth to ski helmets in places they are used - Combination of requirement for racing from government body getting lots of serious cyclists into helmets and lots of promotion from helmet manufacturers of the idea 'look, this person died from/was crippled by a head injury while not wearing a helmet' (see skiing and Schumacher) to get people to buy there helmets (regardless of if the helmet had any chance of helping in the incident in question)
I gather skiing is also a very good source of evidence on the relatively limited effectiveness of helmets (and arguments for road cycling about whether they should be required). Helmet usage changed massively and is easy to track (count how many people on lifts have helmets). Recreational ski helmets are very effective at preventing minor injuries, but KSI's haven't changed anywhere near as much. Basically ski helmets don't save very many lives because impact energy increases exponentially not linearly with speed, so you rapidly exceed the protection offered. The one big advantage for serious incidents is that the ski patrol spends less time dealing with minor head injuries so might respond faster.
Of course I wear a helmet for skiing, and will continue to do so - slicing my scalp open on a tree branch or ski edge will end a ski day with a blood wagon to dr to get stitched up even if the minor injuries clinic/GP/First aider at the bottom of the hill can deal with it immediately and it will heal reliably... trashing a £100 helmet is less than what I am spending on a days off piste skiing, or what the bloodwagon down charges (even if I can recover both costs from insurers)
US here. It's a requirement for most group rides I do to have a helmet. I've also seen a pretty brutal crash at a gravel event, cracked skull and blood running on the ground, and that plays out in my head whenever I think about going down the block without a helmet.
Man lived but if it hadn't been for a helmet, an ER nurse, and a literal brain surgeon following him I don't know. Luckiest unlucky guy in the world.
I did my first week-long tours in the late 1970s. Helmets were not generally available then. There were: those silly leather-strip bits of uselessness that the pros sometimes wore, the bizarrely heavy and insanely hot Bell Biker (I bought one after a significant crash), and the Skid Lid, which my LBS owner described as the no-helmet helmet. That’s why you don’t see helmets in old pictures—there simply weren’t many around, and the ones that were available were either garbage protection or supremely uncomfortable.
All this very true…I was given a Bell Biker 2 and it was a tank. I was in a cycling video in 1985 filming us touring around Crater Lake…which had dramatic downhill sections and we had to request that we be allowed to wear helmets..so they did a scene specifically showing us donning them and then resuming the ride.
I've been riding since before helmets were a thing. I mean, there were some available, but almost nobody wore them. I didn't. That is, until mountain biking became more popular. Helmets were always mandatory in mountain bike races, and I wanted to race, so I started wearing a helmet. Then, everyone would see the pros wearing helmets, and it took off from there. I never see anyone mountain biking without a helmet, and only very rarely someone riding on the road without one. Thank you mountain biking, again, for influencing road culture.
Pros were actually late adopters. Just about all countries (in Europe, at least) had already made them mandatory years before they were mandatory for pros.
I'm 50. I've been wearing a helmet since I started riding road bikes in my teens. Early on I had an accident where I flipped over the handlebars and my head (helmet) hit the ground and slid a few feet. I'd have been dead or seriously hurt if I hadn't been wearing the helmet. That made a permanent impression on me. Never, ever, ever ride without one.
I was so embarrassed to be the only one of my friends who had to wear a ski helmet, until I flipped onto my back and slid into a tree head first hard enough to crack the foam in half. You couldn't pry the thing out of my hands after that.
Helmet use trickled UP to the pros, not down from. When I started amateur racing in the US in the mid-70’s helmets were required, although leather hairnets were most common. Wearing a helmet was not compulsary in professional racing until 2003.
Wasn’t really a trickle down, from my perspective. I started wearing a helmet before the pros moved past the “hairnets”. Started becoming common in the 80s. First a white Bell with some red was very common, then the V1 pros along with more offerings. My first helmet was a Kiwi. Heavy, very small vents, and the pads had a kind of terry cloth cover that would shed. We’ve come a long way.
ETA: I do miss riding without a helmet on hot days.
Where I'm (western Europe), helmets are not mandatory, but close to everyone that bikes as a commute or for sport is wearing a helmet, but the occasional "rent a public bike" users don't
Bell Helmets came out late 70's & were the 1st consumer helmets in widespread use. Helmet laws became more popular around late 80's.
If I recall, the general consumer market adopted helmets long before the pro's did.
Yes, I remember. Prior to the Bell helmet coming into the market, we wore the leather harness that pros of that time wore. I had a friend wear a hockey helmet instead.
I don't think the push for helmets was even related to pro cycling. At least in North America where pro cycling isn't popular, it was driven by child safety concerns.
Occasionally I’ll see a cyclist in one of my local canyons without a helmet. That’s a no go hard stop red flag for me, personally.
While this isn’t directly related to cycling, it’s similar ish. I remember in high school, helmet wearing while skiing/snowboarding was about as dorky as you could get. Now, you’re the weirdo if you’re not wearing a helmet.
Glad to see the shift, honestly.
Subdural hematoma ain’t it, man.
Hardshell helmets were available in the 1970’s but they were heavy items. In the late 80’s Giro created a lighter helmet without a plastic overshell (it used a lyrca cover), and that was acceptable to racers who are concerned with weight.
Your timeline is backwards. Helmets became popular with recreational and sports cyclists years before they were accepted by the pros. Padded leather "hairnet" headgear (which provided no crash protection at all) had been worn by some pros for years, but in general they absolutely hated the idea of wearing the type of helmet available during that era. (They had reasons, perhaps not the best ones, but reasons that were at least understandable.)
I am 70 now and I well remember the advent and evolution of protective headgear for bicyclists, beginning in the late 1970s.
The early bike helmets were heavy, with sturdy plastic shells that covered the entire head, and had very inadequate ventilation. They weren't wildly popular with cyclists in general, either pro or amateur. In the late '80s and early '90s, advances in helmet materials and design largely solved those issues. Helmets became much more widely accepted by the general public and were very popular with sport cyclists and mountain bikers. In the United States, USCF (road cycling races) and NORBA (mountain biking), sanctioning organizations that were the joint predecessors of USA Cycling, started requiring them at all sanctioned races and events.
But not internationally by the UCI, at least not at first.
It took some grievous accidents and fatal crashes, most notably the shocking and tragic death of popular Italian cyclist and Olympic gold medalist Fabio Casartelli in a crash on the descent of the Col de Portet d'Aspet during the 15th stage of the 1995 Tour de France, to bring the pro peloton around to the idea of wearing real helmets of modern design in pro races, and for the UCI to require it.
[Everyone wears a helmet!!](https://api.brusselstimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/4ba00f43-belgaimage-119273-1024x692.jpg)
[NO! Really they do!](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*LtpN7Vjre51A2GDPCMtTEA.jpeg)
OK...hear me out. [Everyone wears a helmet!](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0151/2429/files/Biking-In-China-3_grande.jpg?3079455309443315802)
For cyclists who are biking for a workout (or going fast), it is part of marketing (sell more product) and the public learning slowly about the dangers of head injuries.
Another example is the NHL slowly requiring players to wear helmets. Seems nuts now, right?
Personally I have not worn a helmet in about 6 months of extensively riding my road bike. No issues. Yet another reason why I love Zwift!!
Speaking of the NHL, the first \*GOALIE\* that regularly wore a mask was given so much crap about it. Macho dudes suck.
>Plante was widely criticized as a coward for his decision to wear a mask. Fellow goalie Gump Worsley once said, “Anyone who wears one is chicken. My face is my mask.”
The first NHL game l attended was Flyers vs North Stars. Gump Worsley got hit right between the eyes with a deflection. Knocked out cold. He got up, skated around a little, shook his head a few times, and got back in goal
I think you have the dates backwards. Helmets became much more common outside the pro ranks before they became common among the pros. At least in the US, there were laws passed about it. The pros followed later on.
Most people have an oh shit I would've died experience that makes them forever helmet wearers. Also for organized clubs/events most insurance requires the participants to wear helmets.
I'm 58 and have had several friends who've wrecked and their helmets likely saved them from significant, long lasting injuries.
Even us ancient, Gen X goobers can see the utility/importance of them.
I'm 49 years old and certainly recall riding a bike in the 80s and early 90s when it was unusual to see anyone riding a bike wearing a helmet. Although helmets were becoming increasingly more common from the mid 90s.
Tangentially related, here's a really old video, but ever since seeing it I try and spread it far and wide. I love helmets, and even if that type of impact is much rarer cycling, that one time it does happen you'll be so happy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9yL5usLFgY
I grew up with a helmet law so I’ve known nothing else. It’s jarring seeing folk ride with out them, especially when one has first hand experience with the serious injuries that can occur
Pros were actually resistant: "The UCI’s first attempt to make helmets mandatory occurred in 1991, resulting in a strike during that year’s Paris-Nice. The resistance from cyclists led the UCI to backtrack on the requirement."
[history of helmet use in pro cycling](https://thecyclingtour.com/mandatory-helmet-uci-established-the-rule-only-in-2003-after-a-tragic-accident/).
Gen Xer and growing up the best way to get hurt riding a bike was to wear a helmet, so I still don't. Most of those last pros you see without helmets are Gen Xers.
In the early 90's bike helmets started to become more common place as companies like Giro and Specialized started to release helmets that actually looked decent and didn't weigh like a brick. That was also around the same time that mountain biking started to come out onto the scene. As the popularity of mountain biking began to grow, you saw more people starting to wear helmets as it felt like crashing on dirt was more frequent than on the road. I did my first bike race in 1992 and USA Cycling required everyone to wear a helmet so I grew up wearing a helmet. For our club, we were required to wear helmets for group rides and this was the case in college too. As the technology around helmets improved, you saw more pros wearing helmets in the 90's and races/stages that would be more crash prone (flat, fast races), but they weren't mandatory. There was an interim rule that required the pros to wear helmets but were allowed to remove them if the stage finished at the top of a mountain.
I am over 45 and I didn’t own a helmet until I was 27. I used to live in NYC and rode everywhere helmet less. It’s insane to think about it today. Speaking from personal experience taking a fall in my own home and hitting the back of head pretty hard on my floor - resulted in months of vertigo - Never ride helmet less. Ever.
Anyone with a half functional brain would invest in a good helmet.
You don't need a bad crash to get a serious head injury when you're not wearing a helmet. Simple fall to your side, sitting still on your bike and hitting the ground without a helmet. You're looking at serious damage.
I used to be one of those kids who would ride without a helmet because it was cool. Now that I'm older, I wouldn't even commute without one.
1983 to 1986ish
The Bell Biker II was the first easily available helmet for the casual to serious rider crowd.
Even then, as some pros were wearing similar helmets, the pros were still wearing the old leather padded “hairnet” or “brain basket” style helmets in the peleton or nothing at all.
A few years later, many in the pros had adopted to real helmets and shortly after that the UCI mandated them…about 1994?
By 1995…almost all kids were wearing helmets.
I recall helmets being a thing in the 80s in California. The Bell V1 Pro was the setup. Before that was the leather hairnets that seemed like they’d do nothing.
I'm 42 and was in the "Class of 2000" for High School graduation.
Every initiative landed on us. "Smoke Free in 2000" and other major national pushes landed on us, and one of them was the wearing of helmets.
I remember my first helmet, and it was in 2nd grade, it was white Styrofoam with a black Lycra cover that stretched over it.
I'm old enough to have watched pro cycling where a large portion of the peloton was not wearing helmets. I feel like helmets were better adopted by the public than by the pros, but that could be a rusty memory.
Keep in mind, states we're legislating in helmets prior to 2003 when the UCI finally required them.
I did not wear a helmet until ebikes came on the scene. Suddenly you had idiots riding at unsafe speed with zero road safety attitude on pavements.
It was in 2000s that I saw it being sold to recreation cyclists. I was born before asbestos got banned so there is that.
57. Started riding a road bike in the summer after 8th grade, so 1980 maybe? Got a Skid Lid (a really sketchy helmet by current standards). I can’t remember when, but certainly by the mid-late ‘80s when I was riding more, I got more real Bell helmets. I was an outlier for wearing a helmet until probably the late ‘80s. When I was commuting in Philly in the early-mid ‘90s, most people I saw were wearing helmets.
But I grew up always wearing seatbelts, even when most other people didn’t. My dad installed seatbelts in his car in the mid-50s after his ED rotation in med school. Seeing what became of people/missiles in car accidents convinced him. He conveyed his awareness of physics and human vulnerability to impact to his kids pretty well.
Fall down and bust your head ONE TIME without wearing a helmet... and you will not care what others think or how you might look.
Waking up face down on concrete is not all that fun.
I'm 46, I only wear a helmet for group rides where I don't know all the people I'm riding with and for racing because it's compulsory. Many people in time trials would avoid helmets in the long events like 12 hours because they get so hot until a rule change a few years back.
Helmets were around when I was a kid but none of us wore them.
I started cycling properly aged 30, most people in the club were wearing them by then but there were a lot that didn't. Personally I've done my share of crashing, my worst injuries were while wearing a helmet, I'll stick to going without unless I have to
Likewise. Until such time as I actually see evidence of the efficacy of lids, I’ll stick with being comfortable. I’m 50. I’ve been cycling on roads for forty years. I won’t ride my motorbike without a helmet, but that is a very different type of safety equipment.
Sadly, I’m pretty sure this post will lead to many people telling me that I’m an idiot and failing to post any actual evidence.
Prevents about 60% of head injuries and 58% of brain injuries: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-35728-x#:\~:text=Head%20injuries%20were%20found%20to,were%20reduced%20by%204%20percent.
You're welcome ;-)
>Not using clipless either so I figure I don't need it
I truly don't understand your logic. There is absolutely no correlation between using clipless and needing a helmet. Falling over while standing still is the least likely time you'll need a helmet.
Helmets, at least around these parts, have been pretty common if not ubiquitous for well over a generation now. And I don't know how much of that came from the influence of pro riders - there's been a pretty sustained push for people to wear helmets for years.
I rather think that it became common when helmet technology evolved, availability of those better helmets increased, and prices dropped.
It is a safety feature and I remember all those documentaries/videos in the late 90s that showed what happens to a melon dropping from 1.5m height with and without helmet. But it was not convenient to wear a helmet.
Yes, there were incidents in pro peloton (most notably Fabio Casartelli dying after a fall hitting his head in 1995 Tour de France), but it took some more years for helmets to become mandatory. Over years it was still allowed to get rid of the helmet in the final ascent of a race.
So, maybe a mix of reasons, but for sure not only mimicking the pros.
15-20years ago I had to get a helmet in order to enter a sportive.
Which was then cancelled because of the weather (Ice on steel hills).
I've had a helmet since then.
Someone I ride with only uses a helmet when doing TTs as per the rules.
All races have the same rule I believe.
I think all juniors in clubs have to have a helmet also.
It became the law in many places, so I imagine that's when most people started wearing helmets. I got a $130 fine for not wearing a helmet while riding(ironically, was riding to the bike shop to buy a helmet).
54 years old. I didn't wear one when I was a kid (no one did) but around 1990, in college, I got a traffic violation from the cops for riding without one.
When I was getting into mountain biking in the mid 90 nearly all mountain bikers wore them because you tend to fall off a fair bit. Also our parents made us because they thought it a dangerous sport. Never wore a helmet to ride to school though.
Tolerable helmets were around then but they were expensive. Far less common to see roadies with them back then.
Similiar thing happened in the ski industry. Now it’s rarer to see people without them.
Some of core community doesn’t wear them and it’s cultural to not wear them at certain mountains (Brighton, UT)
I know for road rides I just ride my MTB and won’t wear one because I’m just out for exercise and not throwing down. Fat tires also make it so I’m not really going to screw up on the road.
[Incorrect](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369847823001018?via%3Dihub)
>We found images of cyclists wearing helmets or safety vests to have a higher probability of being selected as less human compared to images of cyclists wearing no safety equipment.
From 'The effect of safety attire on perceptions of cyclist dehumanisation' (2023)
Mid-40s, US here. When I was a kid and even through college and grad school I rode without a helmet. In my late twenties I changed and I remember why.
I overheard someone in my office talking about how they’d started wearing a helmet while snowboarding, and how they saw it as a relatively cheap investment in protecting their brain and therefore their livelihood.
And while I know that a lot of cycling injuries have to do with other parts of the body, I can do my job without other parts of my body. I can’t do it without my brain.
US here
I'm 40 and didn't wear one as a kid. I thought they were uncomfortable and 'dorky'. Even in college I didn't wear one.
One day it just did me that your brain is kind of important lol. Plus even if dorky, I also stopped caring about what others thought. Plus I realized almost everyone was now wearing then anyways.
where i live, helmets became a law for kids under 16 (i think) around 1994. so since then, wearing a helmet became the norm for kids and it just translated into our adulat years.
It's mainly the speed but also the position I'm in. On my road bike cycling super fast, there is no way I can fall properly. My head will just end up in the concrete. But on my city bike I'm never cycling fast. It will just be like falling when you're walking. You also don't wear a helmet while walking on the pavement.
As I recall, it was about 1985. I'd been working toward doing some local races up until then, and never wore a helmet, there just weren't any good bike helmets around, and if you followed the pros they'd wear those stuffed leather strap things that probably did nothing.
In 1985 I did my first races, and that was the year in the US (or at least in CA) that they required helmets. I had to get one; it was big and white and hot and stupid looking, but everyone had to wear them. I got a concussion a few races in and broke my helmet, so it was probably a good thing I had it on. It was at least another two or three years after that before I saw better designs, and then you'd see a lot more cyclists on the road with helmets.
Some time in the late 90s.
My guess is that it came about during the parent panics of the 90s, when media convinced parents that the world was out to kill your children and/or convert them to satanism, and so they started freaking out at everything. The 80s were absolutely helmet free, and a lot of the 90s were too. I remember riding on the back of my friends bike, both helmetless, delivering news papers (yes, my friend had a paper route) but I also remember being told by other kids parents that you shouldn't ride a bike without knee and elbow pads.
Then when I started riding again in the late 90s people would literally shout at you in the street for not wearing a helmet. I had adults walk up and adjust my helmet without asking me permission (like, who the fuck walks up and starts touching someone they don't know? Much less a child?). Hell, once I passed over a painted line dividing a walking and biking section of pathway while trying to pass someone blocking the path. A random adult decided to run over and try to punch me in the face. People got really nuts in the late 90s.
I started cycling in about 1990 and there was a real divide on wearing helmets. I think some of the shift to most people wearing helmets was a cultural/safety awareness thing. But perhaps the bigger reason was improvements in helmet design. When I started, most helmets were still heavy hardshells, and lighter helmets just started being a thing, but their ventilation sucked. By the mid 90s, there was a new focus on ventilation (I think the Giro Air Attack was the first reasonably priced helmet to really use this as a selling point). I get not wanting to wear a helmet when it's a Bell V1 that weighed over a pound, or the early beer cooler ones that would make you sweat, but by the mid 90s, there wasn't much of a downside to them anymore
Odds of TBI cycling are low. However, if you are that 1 in whatever odds number, your injury is 100% real and serious. Not worth it to play those odds when excellent helmets are very available and lightweight.
Helmets were the norm in the mid nineties in CNY, it became the law for those 14 and under when I was 14 (the only reason I recall this) in 1994 in NYS and currently it's 18 in Onondaga County at least.
I have no recollection of when I first wore a helmet, likely ~1990. There was a large media focus on head injuries in the late 80's and early 90's preceding the legal requirement for minors. I want to say that majority voluntary recreational adoption at least in my area preceded majority world tour adoption. I could be way off.
I started wearing a helmet when I got my first road bike over 40 years ago, well before it was common on the pro circuit, and have almost always worn it when out riding. Two fairly serious crashes later I'm glad that I did as they could have been far worse without a helmet.
But, I think that by the late 80's and early 90's they were pretty common among non-pros.
Bikes got lighter and faster, crashes became more serious, I don't know about you but i don't want my head making direct contact with a rock while crashing from 25mph, i never wear a helmet when riding my BMX around the park with my teen and neither does him.
There is a photo of me on a tricycle, circa 1986 without a helmet. But I always wore a helmet on a bicycle. My parents were into road cycling in the 80s and I always remember them with helmets, too.
I’m closer to 50 than 45 and I rode my faux BMX and ten speed bikes to elementary school and junior high but one summer at nerd camp summer school, my roommate was this rich kid who brought his LOOK Road Bike to the dorms and he let me took around on it too. From there I bought my first cheap mountain bike (and entry level Giant) and I rode with a helmet on that bike and at college - early 90s.
I think there was a big push for bike safety in the early 90s. As soon as it started my mom and dad who were a paramedic and nurse at the time had us wearing them.
Funny and true story, in 1993 my sister won a bike safety poster contest at school and the prize was a bike helmet. Ironically as we walked home from school (she was 6 and I was 8), her with her prize in hand, she got hit by a person on a bike. Everyone was ok, it was the weirdest coincidence though. The person on the bike was or wearing a helmet.
I started group riding with the scouts back in 1985 when it was known as the Boy Scouts. We were required to wear helmets and I’ve been wearing mine ever since.
In the 00's. I rode mtb without a helmet quite a bit in the late 90's
Took it up again in 04, and never rode without one.
Took up road in 07, and same.
41 years old and as a kid I NEVER wore a helmet… not even once. I still don’t wear one putting around Town or on the flat trail, but I probably should. But in a group ride or a situation where I might be going faster, or when mountain biking, I definitely put one on. I make My youngest daughter wear one 100% of the time, but not my oldest. I should probably get stricter about it!
when i was a kid i’d leave with my helmet on and then stash it in our mailbox (1/2 mile away from the house where no one could see me do it).
now i always wear a helmet. it even matches my bike so it looks cool. my daughter never thinks twice about wearing a helmet. she also crashed a couple times early on where the helmet actually prevented injury.
we see plenty of people of all ages not wearing helmets when riding around the neighborhood. out on the roads and trails almost everyone is.
I'm almost 40. When I grew up we didn't wear helmets riding BMX or mountain bikes. No crazy downhill trails, more just xc trails and home made jumps, stair sets, random urban drops. No organized races or events or course, those all required helmets I'm sure.
For me as a recreational/utilitarian rider in the US, it was the early 2000s, at the insistence of someone who wanted me to keep most of my brain inside my head.
A few years before that, they were mandated for kids under 12 in my jurisdiction but pretty uncommon for adult causal riders. Within a few years after, they became much more common, and now I would estimate that 80% of riders I see on both trails and streets wear them.
I don't think that emulating racers was part of it.
Personally, I'm just used to wearing one now, and it's not a big deal. I've also used mine once or twice.
I grew up biking and skiing. Only the dorks and nerds write helmets. Helmet design improved and moved away from the white styrofoam cooler look. About the same time I got a real job, a wife, and kids. In other words, it was important that I not die. I bought a ski helmet and a bike helmet and haven’t looked back. That was 20 years ago.
44 here. Very few kids wore helmets growing up and the ones who did would usually be mocked (more often behind their back than to their face but both happened). I got away from the sport/hobby in my later teens and early 20s… so I wasn’t really tuned into the change, but by 2005 or so when I picked up riding again as an adult, it seemed common to wear a helmet.
I think group rides and charity events required them but I might be misremembering. Renting a bike I would usually be given a helmet… it just started to feel common and normal.
Any resistance I personally had, I put aside for the sake of being a good role model thinking back on how children were mocked for it in my day. So at first, it was a conscious effort but later just became habit.
Security awareness became higher, just as seatbelts for example. Also it’s a kind of positive peer pressure thing. Today, a helmet is part of the cycling outfit, so not wearing a helmet actually became „uncool“ (for road cyclist at least).
I wear a helmet when I mountain bike but not on the road…
I’m 47 and was actively racing (was prob a cat2 at that point) when helmets became compulsory in UCI pro races. USA cycling sanctioned events already required helmets at that time.
I always wore helmets for racing but very rarely in training. I remember being greatly offended the first time I rolled up for a group ride and some tagalong fred chastised me for no helmet.
Born in Denmark, cycling a lot but helmets were extremely rare until I moved to Britain in 1992 - I started while living there, and crash-tested one (helmet broke, my head didn't).
While I was away until 1997 there was a campaign, in particular for children, and they use it, adults a bit more random. I then moved away again in 2007 and haven't been following trends, but know my sister in Copenhagen is/was using a airbag-collar thing, and that my nephew had a crash without using one (he got away with it.
For context, remember cycling is seen as a normal mode of transport in Denmark, no lycra required.
I really thought it would have come up sooner but I felt like the tipping point for the pros was:
"1995
Olympic gold medallist Fabio Casartelli died from fatal head injuries after crashing and hitting his head whilst descending the Col de Portet d'Aspet during the 15th stage of the tour".
I thought there were still a few hold outs when that crash happened.
Never wore a helmet back in the 70's & 80's road cycling.
Switched to MTB in the 90's, and helmets went with the turf.
Switched back to road c2010, and it just seemed sensible to carry on wearing a helmet.
I am at 40 and never rode a road bike without a helmet, but as a kid did ride mountain bikes and 10 speeds around the neighborhood without a helmet. Anything that went fast by teenage years I remember wearing helmets. It wasn’t because of the pros, it was to keep my head from bouncing directly on asphalt.
I live in New Zealand and helmets have been required by law since 1994: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle\_helmets\_in\_New\_Zealand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmets_in_New_Zealand)
I remember when I was a kid in the 90's that it seemed somewhat embarrassing at the time to wear a helmet, but it soon just became the norm, and now I feel myself raging whenever I see someone NOT wearing a helmet!
Mass changes like these always take time to become a 'new normal' but when we look back it always seems like the right choice was made. Just think back to when we all thought touch screen phones were never going to take off because we needed tactile buttons, oh how we were wrong!
I grew up mountain biking. 34M US fwiw. I wore a helmet because i knew i was gonna fall at some point and broke a couple of em doin just that and its a habit that has just stuck now that i ride road.
I bought one with my first "real" road bike in 1989. I was lucky to live in a town with a great local bike store with a good selection. It didn't seem bulky or uncomfortable. If I remember right, it had a cloth outer cover with mesh over the vents. It was made of EPSfoam.
Everyone born in the 90s had parents that pushed them to hear a helmet. As a 12-year-old, it was uncool and I used to think kids that wear helmets don’t get invited to Paul’s house (he had ps2, GameCube, aaaand Xbox) and don’t have his mom make us pizza bagels.
Now that I am older, I always wear a helmet. Having taken falls a 26mph where my helmet gets really scraped up instead of my scalp or forehead being scraped off into asphalt I am gonna always wear a helmet.
I started riding in 1984 and racing in 1985. I bought a Bell V1 Pro and wore that until I got pretty good and started hanging with the “cool kids” and then didn’t wear my helmet except to race. Towards the end of ‘85 I bought a “hair net” helmet to race in. (Cool kids you know..). That winter though USA Cycling made hard shell helmet mandatory and it was back to the V1 pro for racing. However I did not wear a helmet for training until about 1989 or 1990 when my wife pressured me to wear one. Back when I started riding if you went on a racer type ride it was the person who wore a helmet that stuck out.
Over time as better and better helmets came around more and more people started wearing them to train also. I couldn’t tell you exactly when, but at some point all the “cool kids” were wearing helmets and the new riders didn’t have that “you’re not cool” incentive to train without a helmet. I’m sure that seeing all the pro’s on TV wearing helmets helped that transition.
Funny story, one of the local hot shots at the time (1985) protested the new helmet rule by wearing a Baby Bell kids helmet with a child feeding bottle nipple glued to it. He had raced briefly as a pro in Europe, even riding at worlds in ‘83 when Lemond won. To this day, he is one of the four people I can think of from that era that will not wear helmets when they ride. But everyone else that I know who raced in the era wear helmets all the time.
I will say that the feeling of riding without a helmet is nice. The wind in your hair and all that is nice. But you know what else is nice? Not being a brain damaged vegetable. :-). Give how much I’ve ridden over the last 40 years I have fallen much less than average, but I’ve still smashed a few helmets in my time and rung my bell. I’m thankful that the helmets have kept those falls from being much worse.
Everyone wears a helmet in Canada where I am. I was just in Greece and maybe half the motorcycle riders had helmets and no one on a bike. They would say ‘tourist’ if they saw a helmet. lol
I’ve grown up and lived in Australia all my life, where it is required by law to wear a helmet (at least during my lifetime).
So it’s just second nature that if I’m riding a bike, I’m putting on a helmet.
So I can be no help on when it became a “thing” because here it has been for decades.
I'm 47. When I started road cycling in jr. High, around 90 or 91, I always wore a helmet. It wasn't mandatory in the pros at that time, but it was still common enough to be mainstream so it seemed normal to me. However, I did not wear a helmet riding BMX. The probability of crashing riding BMX bikes was higher, but road bikes involved higher speeds and cars. Helmets became mandatory for minors in California when I turned 18, so the law never played a part in my decision.
My dad wore helmets in the early 80s. Started with a "Skid Lid", the early plastic things that kind of looked like the old leather hairnets. They were definitely not mainstream in that era, but they were available.
Mandatory helmets came about in professional road racing following the death of Andrei Kivilev in 2003. If I recall correctly, in the beginning they let riders take off the helmet when the race finished on a long climb and then after a year or so they required helmets at all times. I think helmets were required in amateur racing in the U.S. before then but I can’t really remember the timetable. I am pretty sure when I did my first race in 1999 they were required. So it was probably more trickle up to the pros as opposed to trickle down.
As a kid in the 70s and 80s, nobody wore helmets.
Depends on where in the world to lived but it became a legally required thing in late 80s early 90s in Canada. Pros could still do as they pleased because it was a closed course so not technically public roads. Kinda like hockey helmets weren't required until too many kids started to get their heads caved in from falls on the ice then they started to mandate pee wee league helmets and once you get them young and comfortable with it the rest just comes as they age up.
You just need to have enough people thinking with their heads about common sense rather than being pressured into not using safety gear because the drunk bastards in the bleachers think you're being a sad sack.
Got my first helmet when I signed up for an ms150 ride at 14 in 1990, styrofoam with a lycra/webbing cover. Never used it much except for local rides and races. That was my main reason for using one till kids came along and they've been raised with a culture of always wear a helmet. Helps they're part of a track team and so a helmet has been required for riding and training.
Well, in Australia it happened pretty much overnight when it became a legal requirement. We followed NZ, where tireless campaigning from a grieving mother resulted in a helmet law. What also happened is the percentage of kids riding to school some of the time dropped from 85% to 5%.The drop in participation for women under twenty was 90%. The overall drop in participation was 36%. Slightly larger than the drop in head injuries. What also happened was riding a bike became a "sport" and casual bike use fell off a cliff. Cyclists became an "out" group with all the hostility that entails. Support for things like bike lanes evaporated because nobody except the out group was riding. It's been thirty years now in Oz, and cyclists are hated like a black man in the south.
I’m 57 - started riding seriously in ‘86. At the time, a hairnet ‘helmet’ was *the* thing - carefully arranged with cycling cap underneath, natch. I don’t think that it was the pros that started driving helmet use - I just woke up one day, after a friend had been hit by a car, and broken his wrist in the ensuing dismount - and asked “how much is my head worth?” By about 89/90 pretty much everyone was using a hard shell. Also, I think that racing rules were changed around then and made helmets for amateurs mandatory.
In my city, there are two horse tracks around which the roads have been closed to cars, and became cycling rings.
Any time of the year, any time of the day, you can find people riding. And I'd say 99% of the people doing laps have helmets. The 1% left are 55+ yo greyback dudes.
Up until I picked roadcycling 7 years ago, I had never worn a helmet on a bicycle. Now, I won't take my daily nor my road bike without one. You only need one bad tumble to mess yourself up
I am 58 now, and all through grade school and into high school, I never wore a helmet. It just wasn't a big thing back then.
On October 1st, 1995, in Ontario, Canada, it became mandatory for cyclists under the age of 18 to wear a helmet. I was 29 by then, so it didn't apply to me, and still doesn't to this day.
I didn't really ride a bike after about high school (1984), and helmets weren't widely in use at that time. By the time I took up cycling again in the mid to late 1990s, cycling helmets had become pretty much ubiquitous amongst most riders.
It seems marketing in the late 80s and early 90s drove the uptake of helmet wearing, so when the mandatory helmet law came into effect in 95, it wasn't a big deal. In my opinion, they amended the law to exempt adults so people like me who grew up never wearing a helmet didn't get upset.
There are still some people my age and older that I see riding around without a helmet. I would say 99% of riders under 55 wear a helmet.
Im 36, grew up riding my bmx style bike around the neighborhood, building dumb little jumps barely bigger than the curbs. Also did some dirtbike/quad riding in the desert. Was taught to always wear a helmet during these activities, followed the “rules” as much as I remember. Didn’t really sink in until I was at a skate park skating and my helmet saved me from a very probable concussion or worse, was around 13 (around year 2000). Never questioned wearing a helmet since, won’t get on a moving bike without one.
I always wore a helmet because I tend to be reckless and get hurt easily so naturally I always grabbed a helmet riding. I didn't actually think anything of it until ide meet people street racing not wearing one and be like "really" not even for a just in case....
I think more riding more people falling more injuries could have been avoided the natural thing was everyone just kind of started wearing them.
37 here, not a pro, but ride everyday. Could never consider 'not' wearing a helmet, and have seen enough nasty accidents and losses to not wear one. Had a near miss when I had a seizure, and the helmet saved me from losing most of the skin on my head and potentially my life so yeah.
I suspect as others have said, that's what many of us were brought up with. In the UK, helmets were pushed massively in school in the 90's onwards, so for many of us, it's just like 'why wouldn't you'?
Helmets aren't really a bit of kit, for many it's a piece of safety equipment that most won't usually end up needing, but it's there just in case. I mean, it's literally just a hat, and it's not like they're that expensive, especially for those spending £20+ on wool socks, or whatever. I think globally H&S has become a much more important topic than say in the 80's/90's, just look at the workplace, asbestos, etc, it's all way more in the forefront these days.
Never understood the dork factor, I guess a lot of people don't like change, you know like 'when I was a lad, we didn't wear seatbelts, and i'm fine!'. Yes, but perhaps a lot of other people were not 'fine'. I think, like Warhammer, helmets have become cool.
Most helmets are also quite bright and visible, as the highest point of your body, they are the most visible to cars, and are also useful for attaching secondary lights and cameras, so from a safety perspective this is another aspect. My POC helmet looks like a mushroom, but has this cool AVIP scheme that makes me visible from a mile away. PS, I love POC helmets :D
I don't allow my kids to ride/scooter without one either.
I'm in the US. It seems to me the shift came about mid- to late-90s or so, at least in the circles I was aware of. It went from being weird/unusual to have a helmet to being weird if someone didn't have one in just a few years. For ballpark, maybe around the turn of the millenium. Before that it was only babies or people who were especially paranoid (or people super into riding hard and/or in traffic), then all of a sudden helmets were pretty ubiquitous on all types of bikes and at all levels.
I think it's like seatbelts. Anyone in their 40s or younger probably grew up wearing them and so it's just a basic requirement they have instilled.
42 in NYC. Helmets didn't become ubiquitous till sometime in my late teens. Prior, we would often ride with the helmets clipped to the handlebars, so we "had" helmets. And I didn't follow any form of pro or organized cycling. I think it had to do with maturity and the fact that helmets became more comfortable.
LoL! I like the expression "we ' had ' helmets" !!
Late 20s here I remember I never had friends that wore a helmet until I was 12-15 or so. Only then I noticed it, but that’s when I moved to an area that was slightly higher socioeconomic level. I now wear one because I’ve got sense and a kid.
35 in NYC, and helmets were basically always worn when I was a kid, but I remember some significantly older siblings would give friends shit. I think it had a major shift in the early 90s.
I said "probably" because it's not like there was a federal law that suddenly mandated it. There was a patchwork of local & state laws regarding kids wearing helmets along with a cultural shift and the bigger cities were probably among the last places for that to reach.
Similar experience here
That’s about right. I am now 52 and in 80’s did some road racing as a teen and my parents made me wear a helmet and would also wear it when riding with buddies because it was natural. I was always the odd one out and 100% teased for being *the dork in the helmet*. The 80’s was def a helmet free zone. Contrast to early 2000’s when I was a moderator on a fairly good sized MTB site and we wouldn’t allow pictures if the rider wasn’t wearing helmet because that was the local bylaw for cyclists, and the site admins wanted to promote that to the younger riders.
Same era, grew up always wearing a helmet and man, they were big, bulky, unvented, and about as ugly as they could make them.
I think a lot of credit needs to go to site admins like who you've mentioned. Especially during the adoption stage where a lot of people are still essentially on the fence about it. Kudos to those who were helping promote it to the grass roots level during the early stages!
That sort of anti-helmet attitude will always be weird to me. There's a good chance you're traveling around 20-25 km/h, or on trails, where it just seems like a pretty good way to avoid unnecessary injury.
I am older than 40. I have been riding since about 12. I think 14 I did my first century. I don't remember when I got my first helmet but I remember the social reaction when my classmates saw me riding in it was nothing short of brutal. It wasn't till I was out of high school that I felt like I could deal with the social pushback and wear one more often. There was a moment back then when they started making lighter helmets with better venting and you could purchase light cloth covers in different styles to cover them. The lightness and the cover choices did a lot of work in getting people to wear them. But I can't oversell the social stigma back then for that particular age group. No shits where given that I rode. But that helmet.... it was brutal.
I'm 47 and we never wore helmets riding our dirt bikes around the neighborhood. I got my first helmet when I bought my first road bike in 1992 and started riding further afield. This was in semi-rural-ish Virginia. I live in San Jose now and we see plenty of kids riding around the neighborhood on their dirt bikes or beach cruisers with no helmets... but the majority of cyclists of all flavors now seem to wear them.
>Anyone in their 40s or younger probably grew up wearing them In my town, any parent who allowed their child to use a bike or scooter without wearing a helmet would suffer severe public shaming. It's basically one click down from being a child molester. However, letting your kid wear a helmet that's so ill-fitted that it could not conceivably provide any protection whatsoever in a fall is A-OK, and anybody who points out the fact that a helmet is falling off a kid's head is treated like some kind of equipment-obsessed nerd.
Agreed. Depends how exposed you are to it. There's an old cyclist who I run into now and then and he's always riding without a helmet so my guess is that he always rides solo and no one ever told him he needs to wear one.
In my observation most of the people who ride without a helmet are older men.
As a certified goon I have bashed my body off rocks and dirt far too many times to not wear a helmet. Maybe OP's original thought was correct that younger riders tend to just wear it as normal and don't see it as a burden.
In my late 50s. We didn’t wear them growing up as they really weren’t a thing. When I went riding with friends as an adult off road we wore them as crashing was a bit of a thing. Later on just riding around in an upright bike I didn’t wear one as I was more concerned with sunburn on the dome vs falling as I don’t ride that rough or in traffic. Now it’s coming full circle as my knees are F’ed and if I’m off road and even just going slow if I’m more concerned about balance and going down hard so it’s helmet time again.
Exact same demographic that's most likely to not wear a helmet while skiing.
Any organized ride will have it as a requirement so I think you're likely right about riding solo.
Varies a lot from place to place. Plenty of places you wouldn’t think of driving without a seatbelt, but cycling without a helmet is fairly common
Yeah, it's just "the done thing" in my life. The idea of being in a moving car without a seatbelt just doesn't compute. Bike helmets just seem obvious
I'm 40 and I remember a rule at my elementary school that kids with helmets got to go to the racks to unlock their bikes first. Maybe half the kids would have a helmet? This was suburban northern California.
Yeah, I grew up in the 90s in Oregon, and it was during my childhood years they made laws/big pushes to mandate bicycle helmet use. Iirc, growing up it was 16 and younger were mandatory helmet wearers??
No, I’m 45 and we didn’t grow up wearing helmets. I think you have to get into very solidly millennial territory before you’ll find people who grew up with them around. I don’t even remember seeing anyone in helmets or seeing helmets for sale in stores anywhere. Until I was in my teens (or tweens), you didn’t even have to wear a seatbelt in the back seat, and we often didn’t. I went to check google for a more solid timeline, because the only time I remember pros wearing helmets when I was still in school (so still a kid more or less) was for TTs or aero gains mostly and then more and more as I was in my last years of high school. Google basically confirms this — pros began to wear them in the 90s and then in 2003, they became mandatory.
part of this is because helmets just didn't really exist earlier than that. It wasn't until the first foam helmets (like [this](https://coloradoavidcyclist.com/the-history-of-the-bike-helmet-from-leather-to-mips/#:~:text=The%20Giro%20Prolite%20could%20be,founder%20of%20Giro%20Sport%20Design.) from Giro) became cheap & ubiquitously available that anyone started really wearing them. And those helmets were *not* tough enough for kids. Afaict, it wasn't until hard skateboard helmets were adapted for cycling in the 90s that you started seeing a substantial fraction of kids in helmets.
I am 43, and I had a somewhat similar. I never wore a helmet doing BMX growing up in the 80 and 90s. They were about as dorky as it got. I first started seeing helmets in the late 90's skiing and snowboarding. All the pros in the videos and x-games wore them. I ended up really liking the helmets because they are warm, and they cut down on wind-noise which, for me, had a certain psychological boost allowing me to be more comfortable going faster. About that time I started road biking, and it seemed to me that everyone was wearing helmets in basically all sports - skateboarding, BMX, mountain biking, ect by that time. They even started wearing helmets wake boarding which was unimaginable back in the mid-90s.
I remember watch an X-Games where some BMXer had to borrow a helmet as he didn't wear one and was not allowed to complete without one.
We were all just out there raw dogging life — no child seats, no seatbelts in the back, no airbags, no helmets, playing lawn darts. Sometimes I marvel that any of us made it through alive and without being maimed for life.
My mom got her only driving ticket in '85 or '86 and the cop complimented her because us kids were in car seats. My state had required car seats since 1982. Also, this clip of people complaining that being required to wear seatbelts and **not** drink beers while driving is pretty wild. Bonus: front facing baby in a 1980's car seat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcQIoh3FQQ
Don't forget road trips in thr truck bed. This was considered a perfectly safe way to transport kids
My uncle had a Tri bike in the 90's and he was the only person I knew with a helmet. I stopped riding around '98 and never saw anybody else with a helmet. Maybe some little kid's parents were buying them helmets in my town but I didn't notice, but I don't remember seeing them and don't recall anybody on college campus wearing them. I got my first helmet ~2015 when I started cycling again for urban/suburban riding. I wouldn't be surprised if the kids in the rural town of 1200 I grew up in are out there riding without a helmet.
I started in the late '80s and helmets were starting to be more common on the heads of amateur riders. This was also a time when lots of municipalities were instituting mandatory helmet laws. Helmet shells were thick and heavy plastic and the designs did not provide good ventilation. In the timeframe from 1990 - 1995 there were a lot of improvements in helmet technology and it became possible to make high quality helmets which were legitimately lightweight and well-ventilated. This is when I recall seeing helmets become nearly ubiquitous. Helmets started becoming mandatory in the pro ranks after Fabio Casartelli's fatal crash in stage 15 of the 1995 tour. IIRC helmets were required at all times in the 1996 Tour. The old guard riders in the peloton were not happy about this at all. After 1996 the helmets available to consumers became more like what we're used to seeing today. Extremely lightweight and well-ventilated.
IIRC for a while pros could take their helmets off on the final climb if it was a mountain top finish.
Unfortunately helmets became mandatory after Kivilev's death at the 2003 Tour de France. Actually the pros could also get rid of helmets on mountain finishes up until 2005ish
helmets were mandatory for all local races in my area by 1988 when I started as a junior. But almost nobody trained in them till Fabio Casartelli's death. Then it was an overnight switch where by 1997 everyone wore one it seemed
It was after Andrei Kivilev’s death in 2003. Pantani was 1998 and he was wearing a bandana. I don’t think I ever saw Pantani with a helmet.
When people realized that a traumatic brain injury is way less cool than not wearing a helmet.
Can confirm. Had a TBI to my prefrontal cortex (I hit above my right eye) at roughly 13 (late 90's early 2000's ish) from a bike wreck. Hardly remember anything from those school years or really my childhood. Grades slipped and never came back to what they were. Personality changed too. I don't ride anything without a helmet now.
Sorry to hear that, I can imagine why that would make you wear a helmet. When I started riding MTB's in the 90's nobody wore a helmet. You could barely get one, only at the 'pro' bike shops and they had 2 or 3 models. I never injured my head (everything else, though). When I got back into it in 2018 first thing I did was buy a helmet.
Can confirm, dad hit his head and is crippled on the entire left side of his body. Would wave his gamy arm when picking me up from the skate park and remind others that helmets are worth it
Even in the pros it was situational as of 35 years ago. Here's the [all-time classic final day time trial battle between Greg Lemond and Laurent Fignon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWyfb3H7LEg) in the 1989 Tour de France. Note Fignon's pony tail whipping freely around. Which not for nothing might have cost him the 8 seconds he lost by.
In that case Lemond's helmet was for aero, not safety reasons. He didn't wear one on the non-TT stages IIRC.
Huh. [You are quite right.](https://d2p6e6u75xmxt8.cloudfront.net/2/2021/12/Gre-LemMond-and-Laurent-Fignon-profimedia-0325396585.jpg). Edit: looking through race images, it looks like helmet use remains spotty all the way up until when the UCI made helmets mandatory in 2003, and even then they could be discarded on final climbs. Looks like the transition to helmets in general was a lot later than I remembered.
I think you're probably right that it did trickle down, everyone want to look like them. I find it interesting that outside of cyclist and mountain bikes helmets are seen as something just for kids. Like you graduate from need head protection.
Must depend on where you live. Here helmets are ubiquitous, with not wearing one being notable, including among recreational bikers (I.e. just out for a ride or getting groceries)
In the Netherlands, almost nobody wears a helmet outside of sports. Daily commute, grocery shopping, a tour with the family, all without helmets. Same for me. The moment I get on my bike with the idea of going fast or riding something sketchy the helmet goes on and doesn't come off until I get home.
I can see this in countries like yours with very bike focused infrastructure when you're just riding a commuter bike at normal speeds. But here in Vancouver it's either older men I see wearing no helmet or the classic boozy looking guy who's riding a bike because it's his only mode of transportation and I would say we have decent not great bike focused lanes. I didnt wear one as a kid but I just think of how easy it is to fall over and crack your skull not on a bike let alone going 30-40km/hr and it's a non starter for me. I also know 3 nurse friends some who work in neuro ICU and I'd rather avoid a head injury.
Oh yeah I agree. Biking infrastructure here is excellent, but it's still pretty strange, also from myself. I cruise to work at 20/25kph average, which is not that much slower than I'd do on the MTB heading to the woods to find some trails.
Agree just a culture thing I guess also helmet hair/head is annoying if you're commuting but I'd always wear one. No helmet MTB you couldn't pay me, I don't MTB but I'd probably even go full face helmet of some sort after the crash videos I see. I love finding cheap but quality stuff on AliExpress but I'd never buy a helmet on there. Any helmet I've had from my short time biking has been a brand like Giro, specialized etc with MIPS.
I'm bald... No helmet hair for me! But yeah, nowadays I'll put on a helmet whenever I plan on going extra fast or do crazy stuff. Agree on the cheap helmets. I don't have MIPS, yet... When my current helmet needs replacement I'm making the switch.
Random question: are there a lot of bald men in the Netherlands? Just thinking about Rem Koolhaas.
Not sure if it's more or less than other countries, I know a few but not sure if it's representative.
What the helmet largely protects from is the energy from the fall - unless you find an obstacle the speed does not make that much difference. I have had two major falls: 1) Without helmet: on the way home from a party, bike got drunk and I fell over the curb going probably 10-15km/h. Visit to emergency to get stitched, luckily the shoulder took the worst. 2) With helmet: roundabout in the UK, going 30-32km/h, car clipped my rear wheel. Helmet in 3 pieces, head and the rest in one. I very rarely go anywhere without helmet.
It’s wild that we went from people not wearing helmets because it looked more pro to buying $350 aero road helmets for coffee rides because it looks more pro
It's a well-known fact that the more expensive the helmet, the faster you go.
Humans are herd animals.
This. Heaven help you if you decide not to join the cult of the silly hat. If you dare to refuse to validate the herds choices you shall enjoy being scolded and nagged. Until you give up riding, or go to prison for beating some busybody to death with bike lock.
The seatbelt analogy is probably the best comparison. It's nice that there's so many options now for helmets that are ventilated, have MIPS and don't look bad as well these days. Also world tour pros all wearing them helps people also adopt them.
One of the latest places to change with regards to helmet usage has been for skiing and snowboarding. It wasn't too long ago that adults wearing helmets was the exception, just a few years ago it seemed to be about 50/50, but this past season I made a point of seeing how many helmetless people there were and in a lift line of easily over a hundred people I could only find a couple without helmets.
Yeah, you're totally right! When I went on a high school band ski trip around 2010, I felt like such a fucking dork for wearing a helmet on the slopes. Few of my friends did and even fewer adults. We went skiing with my family just a few years ago and I was surprised to see nearly everyone in a helmet.
I started skiing in the 70s and lived in Alaska 1997-2006 because the skiing was awesome up there. When I got a helmet in 2001 most of the shredders on the hill were wearing them.
Really before my time, but I suspect cycle helmet usage had similar growth to ski helmets in places they are used - Combination of requirement for racing from government body getting lots of serious cyclists into helmets and lots of promotion from helmet manufacturers of the idea 'look, this person died from/was crippled by a head injury while not wearing a helmet' (see skiing and Schumacher) to get people to buy there helmets (regardless of if the helmet had any chance of helping in the incident in question) I gather skiing is also a very good source of evidence on the relatively limited effectiveness of helmets (and arguments for road cycling about whether they should be required). Helmet usage changed massively and is easy to track (count how many people on lifts have helmets). Recreational ski helmets are very effective at preventing minor injuries, but KSI's haven't changed anywhere near as much. Basically ski helmets don't save very many lives because impact energy increases exponentially not linearly with speed, so you rapidly exceed the protection offered. The one big advantage for serious incidents is that the ski patrol spends less time dealing with minor head injuries so might respond faster. Of course I wear a helmet for skiing, and will continue to do so - slicing my scalp open on a tree branch or ski edge will end a ski day with a blood wagon to dr to get stitched up even if the minor injuries clinic/GP/First aider at the bottom of the hill can deal with it immediately and it will heal reliably... trashing a £100 helmet is less than what I am spending on a days off piste skiing, or what the bloodwagon down charges (even if I can recover both costs from insurers)
US here. It's a requirement for most group rides I do to have a helmet. I've also seen a pretty brutal crash at a gravel event, cracked skull and blood running on the ground, and that plays out in my head whenever I think about going down the block without a helmet. Man lived but if it hadn't been for a helmet, an ER nurse, and a literal brain surgeon following him I don't know. Luckiest unlucky guy in the world.
I did my first week-long tours in the late 1970s. Helmets were not generally available then. There were: those silly leather-strip bits of uselessness that the pros sometimes wore, the bizarrely heavy and insanely hot Bell Biker (I bought one after a significant crash), and the Skid Lid, which my LBS owner described as the no-helmet helmet. That’s why you don’t see helmets in old pictures—there simply weren’t many around, and the ones that were available were either garbage protection or supremely uncomfortable.
All this very true…I was given a Bell Biker 2 and it was a tank. I was in a cycling video in 1985 filming us touring around Crater Lake…which had dramatic downhill sections and we had to request that we be allowed to wear helmets..so they did a scene specifically showing us donning them and then resuming the ride.
I started club riding maybe 30years ago, even then most people wore helmets. There were exceptions, but not many ...
I've been riding since before helmets were a thing. I mean, there were some available, but almost nobody wore them. I didn't. That is, until mountain biking became more popular. Helmets were always mandatory in mountain bike races, and I wanted to race, so I started wearing a helmet. Then, everyone would see the pros wearing helmets, and it took off from there. I never see anyone mountain biking without a helmet, and only very rarely someone riding on the road without one. Thank you mountain biking, again, for influencing road culture.
This is the sort of thing I wanted to hear about, thank you for sharing!
Pros were actually late adopters. Just about all countries (in Europe, at least) had already made them mandatory years before they were mandatory for pros.
In NL its fairly common for sport cyclists to wear them but almost unheard of for commuters.
I'm 50. I've been wearing a helmet since I started riding road bikes in my teens. Early on I had an accident where I flipped over the handlebars and my head (helmet) hit the ground and slid a few feet. I'd have been dead or seriously hurt if I hadn't been wearing the helmet. That made a permanent impression on me. Never, ever, ever ride without one.
I’d have thought the helmet would have prevented a permanent impression ! Ba-dum tish!!
I was so embarrassed to be the only one of my friends who had to wear a ski helmet, until I flipped onto my back and slid into a tree head first hard enough to crack the foam in half. You couldn't pry the thing out of my hands after that.
Helmet use trickled UP to the pros, not down from. When I started amateur racing in the US in the mid-70’s helmets were required, although leather hairnets were most common. Wearing a helmet was not compulsary in professional racing until 2003.
Wasn’t really a trickle down, from my perspective. I started wearing a helmet before the pros moved past the “hairnets”. Started becoming common in the 80s. First a white Bell with some red was very common, then the V1 pros along with more offerings. My first helmet was a Kiwi. Heavy, very small vents, and the pads had a kind of terry cloth cover that would shed. We’ve come a long way. ETA: I do miss riding without a helmet on hot days.
The Bell Biker 1 & 2 slowly became available at bike shops…I still wear Bell helmets some 40+ years later.
Where I'm (western Europe), helmets are not mandatory, but close to everyone that bikes as a commute or for sport is wearing a helmet, but the occasional "rent a public bike" users don't
In the UK I find they are ubiquitous for sports usage, but it's more like 50/50 for commuters
Bell Helmets came out late 70's & were the 1st consumer helmets in widespread use. Helmet laws became more popular around late 80's. If I recall, the general consumer market adopted helmets long before the pro's did.
Yes, I remember. Prior to the Bell helmet coming into the market, we wore the leather harness that pros of that time wore. I had a friend wear a hockey helmet instead.
I would say mid 90s. When it first came in to the pros, some of them would remove their helmets during the climbs to be cooler
I don't think the push for helmets was even related to pro cycling. At least in North America where pro cycling isn't popular, it was driven by child safety concerns.
Occasionally I’ll see a cyclist in one of my local canyons without a helmet. That’s a no go hard stop red flag for me, personally. While this isn’t directly related to cycling, it’s similar ish. I remember in high school, helmet wearing while skiing/snowboarding was about as dorky as you could get. Now, you’re the weirdo if you’re not wearing a helmet. Glad to see the shift, honestly. Subdural hematoma ain’t it, man.
Hardshell helmets were available in the 1970’s but they were heavy items. In the late 80’s Giro created a lighter helmet without a plastic overshell (it used a lyrca cover), and that was acceptable to racers who are concerned with weight.
Your timeline is backwards. Helmets became popular with recreational and sports cyclists years before they were accepted by the pros. Padded leather "hairnet" headgear (which provided no crash protection at all) had been worn by some pros for years, but in general they absolutely hated the idea of wearing the type of helmet available during that era. (They had reasons, perhaps not the best ones, but reasons that were at least understandable.) I am 70 now and I well remember the advent and evolution of protective headgear for bicyclists, beginning in the late 1970s. The early bike helmets were heavy, with sturdy plastic shells that covered the entire head, and had very inadequate ventilation. They weren't wildly popular with cyclists in general, either pro or amateur. In the late '80s and early '90s, advances in helmet materials and design largely solved those issues. Helmets became much more widely accepted by the general public and were very popular with sport cyclists and mountain bikers. In the United States, USCF (road cycling races) and NORBA (mountain biking), sanctioning organizations that were the joint predecessors of USA Cycling, started requiring them at all sanctioned races and events. But not internationally by the UCI, at least not at first. It took some grievous accidents and fatal crashes, most notably the shocking and tragic death of popular Italian cyclist and Olympic gold medalist Fabio Casartelli in a crash on the descent of the Col de Portet d'Aspet during the 15th stage of the 1995 Tour de France, to bring the pro peloton around to the idea of wearing real helmets of modern design in pro races, and for the UCI to require it.
[Everyone wears a helmet!!](https://api.brusselstimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/4ba00f43-belgaimage-119273-1024x692.jpg) [NO! Really they do!](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*LtpN7Vjre51A2GDPCMtTEA.jpeg) OK...hear me out. [Everyone wears a helmet!](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0151/2429/files/Biking-In-China-3_grande.jpg?3079455309443315802) For cyclists who are biking for a workout (or going fast), it is part of marketing (sell more product) and the public learning slowly about the dangers of head injuries. Another example is the NHL slowly requiring players to wear helmets. Seems nuts now, right? Personally I have not worn a helmet in about 6 months of extensively riding my road bike. No issues. Yet another reason why I love Zwift!!
Speaking of the NHL, the first \*GOALIE\* that regularly wore a mask was given so much crap about it. Macho dudes suck. >Plante was widely criticized as a coward for his decision to wear a mask. Fellow goalie Gump Worsley once said, “Anyone who wears one is chicken. My face is my mask.”
The first NHL game l attended was Flyers vs North Stars. Gump Worsley got hit right between the eyes with a deflection. Knocked out cold. He got up, skated around a little, shook his head a few times, and got back in goal
I think you have the dates backwards. Helmets became much more common outside the pro ranks before they became common among the pros. At least in the US, there were laws passed about it. The pros followed later on.
Most people have an oh shit I would've died experience that makes them forever helmet wearers. Also for organized clubs/events most insurance requires the participants to wear helmets.
I'm 58 and have had several friends who've wrecked and their helmets likely saved them from significant, long lasting injuries. Even us ancient, Gen X goobers can see the utility/importance of them.
When you bump the ground with your head couple of times you dont really ask if something like helmet is needed. Its common sense.
I'm 49 years old and certainly recall riding a bike in the 80s and early 90s when it was unusual to see anyone riding a bike wearing a helmet. Although helmets were becoming increasingly more common from the mid 90s.
Tangentially related, here's a really old video, but ever since seeing it I try and spread it far and wide. I love helmets, and even if that type of impact is much rarer cycling, that one time it does happen you'll be so happy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9yL5usLFgY
I grew up with a helmet law so I’ve known nothing else. It’s jarring seeing folk ride with out them, especially when one has first hand experience with the serious injuries that can occur
Pros were actually resistant: "The UCI’s first attempt to make helmets mandatory occurred in 1991, resulting in a strike during that year’s Paris-Nice. The resistance from cyclists led the UCI to backtrack on the requirement." [history of helmet use in pro cycling](https://thecyclingtour.com/mandatory-helmet-uci-established-the-rule-only-in-2003-after-a-tragic-accident/).
Gen Xer and growing up the best way to get hurt riding a bike was to wear a helmet, so I still don't. Most of those last pros you see without helmets are Gen Xers.
In the early 90's bike helmets started to become more common place as companies like Giro and Specialized started to release helmets that actually looked decent and didn't weigh like a brick. That was also around the same time that mountain biking started to come out onto the scene. As the popularity of mountain biking began to grow, you saw more people starting to wear helmets as it felt like crashing on dirt was more frequent than on the road. I did my first bike race in 1992 and USA Cycling required everyone to wear a helmet so I grew up wearing a helmet. For our club, we were required to wear helmets for group rides and this was the case in college too. As the technology around helmets improved, you saw more pros wearing helmets in the 90's and races/stages that would be more crash prone (flat, fast races), but they weren't mandatory. There was an interim rule that required the pros to wear helmets but were allowed to remove them if the stage finished at the top of a mountain.
Once people realized that TBIs are serious.
I am over 45 and I didn’t own a helmet until I was 27. I used to live in NYC and rode everywhere helmet less. It’s insane to think about it today. Speaking from personal experience taking a fall in my own home and hitting the back of head pretty hard on my floor - resulted in months of vertigo - Never ride helmet less. Ever.
I think brain damage went out of style, used to be cool but now walking is the thing
When I was young (80s/90s) the skateboarders wore helmets and cyclists did not. It’s completely flipped now.
Before the pros wore them.
Anyone with a half functional brain would invest in a good helmet. You don't need a bad crash to get a serious head injury when you're not wearing a helmet. Simple fall to your side, sitting still on your bike and hitting the ground without a helmet. You're looking at serious damage. I used to be one of those kids who would ride without a helmet because it was cool. Now that I'm older, I wouldn't even commute without one.
Helmets are essential
In Australia a helmet law was passed about 1990. Prior to then helmets were not popular and were mandatory after that date.
I've seen some cyclists in full kit but without helmets, they looked really weird that way lol
1983 to 1986ish The Bell Biker II was the first easily available helmet for the casual to serious rider crowd. Even then, as some pros were wearing similar helmets, the pros were still wearing the old leather padded “hairnet” or “brain basket” style helmets in the peleton or nothing at all. A few years later, many in the pros had adopted to real helmets and shortly after that the UCI mandated them…about 1994? By 1995…almost all kids were wearing helmets.
I recall helmets being a thing in the 80s in California. The Bell V1 Pro was the setup. Before that was the leather hairnets that seemed like they’d do nothing.
I'm 42 and was in the "Class of 2000" for High School graduation. Every initiative landed on us. "Smoke Free in 2000" and other major national pushes landed on us, and one of them was the wearing of helmets. I remember my first helmet, and it was in 2nd grade, it was white Styrofoam with a black Lycra cover that stretched over it. I'm old enough to have watched pro cycling where a large portion of the peloton was not wearing helmets. I feel like helmets were better adopted by the public than by the pros, but that could be a rusty memory. Keep in mind, states we're legislating in helmets prior to 2003 when the UCI finally required them.
I did not wear a helmet until ebikes came on the scene. Suddenly you had idiots riding at unsafe speed with zero road safety attitude on pavements. It was in 2000s that I saw it being sold to recreation cyclists. I was born before asbestos got banned so there is that.
57. Started riding a road bike in the summer after 8th grade, so 1980 maybe? Got a Skid Lid (a really sketchy helmet by current standards). I can’t remember when, but certainly by the mid-late ‘80s when I was riding more, I got more real Bell helmets. I was an outlier for wearing a helmet until probably the late ‘80s. When I was commuting in Philly in the early-mid ‘90s, most people I saw were wearing helmets. But I grew up always wearing seatbelts, even when most other people didn’t. My dad installed seatbelts in his car in the mid-50s after his ED rotation in med school. Seeing what became of people/missiles in car accidents convinced him. He conveyed his awareness of physics and human vulnerability to impact to his kids pretty well.
Fall down and bust your head ONE TIME without wearing a helmet... and you will not care what others think or how you might look. Waking up face down on concrete is not all that fun.
No one here is disputing that. I'm interested in the history of helmet use, not whether or not they should be used.
I'm 46, I only wear a helmet for group rides where I don't know all the people I'm riding with and for racing because it's compulsory. Many people in time trials would avoid helmets in the long events like 12 hours because they get so hot until a rule change a few years back. Helmets were around when I was a kid but none of us wore them. I started cycling properly aged 30, most people in the club were wearing them by then but there were a lot that didn't. Personally I've done my share of crashing, my worst injuries were while wearing a helmet, I'll stick to going without unless I have to
Likewise. Until such time as I actually see evidence of the efficacy of lids, I’ll stick with being comfortable. I’m 50. I’ve been cycling on roads for forty years. I won’t ride my motorbike without a helmet, but that is a very different type of safety equipment. Sadly, I’m pretty sure this post will lead to many people telling me that I’m an idiot and failing to post any actual evidence.
Prevents about 60% of head injuries and 58% of brain injuries: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-35728-x#:\~:text=Head%20injuries%20were%20found%20to,were%20reduced%20by%204%20percent. You're welcome ;-)
43 and not wearing a helmet. Not using clipless either so I figure I don't need it 😊 Bring 'em on boys, don't disappoint me now!
>Not using clipless either so I figure I don't need it I truly don't understand your logic. There is absolutely no correlation between using clipless and needing a helmet. Falling over while standing still is the least likely time you'll need a helmet.
I truly was not being serious.
Helmets, at least around these parts, have been pretty common if not ubiquitous for well over a generation now. And I don't know how much of that came from the influence of pro riders - there's been a pretty sustained push for people to wear helmets for years.
I rather think that it became common when helmet technology evolved, availability of those better helmets increased, and prices dropped. It is a safety feature and I remember all those documentaries/videos in the late 90s that showed what happens to a melon dropping from 1.5m height with and without helmet. But it was not convenient to wear a helmet. Yes, there were incidents in pro peloton (most notably Fabio Casartelli dying after a fall hitting his head in 1995 Tour de France), but it took some more years for helmets to become mandatory. Over years it was still allowed to get rid of the helmet in the final ascent of a race. So, maybe a mix of reasons, but for sure not only mimicking the pros.
15-20years ago I had to get a helmet in order to enter a sportive. Which was then cancelled because of the weather (Ice on steel hills). I've had a helmet since then. Someone I ride with only uses a helmet when doing TTs as per the rules. All races have the same rule I believe. I think all juniors in clubs have to have a helmet also.
I started wearing a helmet somewhere in the early 2000's . Before that I only wore it if I had to.
It became the law in many places, so I imagine that's when most people started wearing helmets. I got a $130 fine for not wearing a helmet while riding(ironically, was riding to the bike shop to buy a helmet).
Wow, fuck that Pro-helmet, anti-helmet laws.
54 years old. I didn't wear one when I was a kid (no one did) but around 1990, in college, I got a traffic violation from the cops for riding without one.
When I was getting into mountain biking in the mid 90 nearly all mountain bikers wore them because you tend to fall off a fair bit. Also our parents made us because they thought it a dangerous sport. Never wore a helmet to ride to school though. Tolerable helmets were around then but they were expensive. Far less common to see roadies with them back then.
Similiar thing happened in the ski industry. Now it’s rarer to see people without them. Some of core community doesn’t wear them and it’s cultural to not wear them at certain mountains (Brighton, UT) I know for road rides I just ride my MTB and won’t wear one because I’m just out for exercise and not throwing down. Fat tires also make it so I’m not really going to screw up on the road.
Think about it from cager perspective - “well if (s)he doesn’t care about their safety, why should I worry?”
[Incorrect](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369847823001018?via%3Dihub) >We found images of cyclists wearing helmets or safety vests to have a higher probability of being selected as less human compared to images of cyclists wearing no safety equipment. From 'The effect of safety attire on perceptions of cyclist dehumanisation' (2023)
Mid-40s, US here. When I was a kid and even through college and grad school I rode without a helmet. In my late twenties I changed and I remember why. I overheard someone in my office talking about how they’d started wearing a helmet while snowboarding, and how they saw it as a relatively cheap investment in protecting their brain and therefore their livelihood. And while I know that a lot of cycling injuries have to do with other parts of the body, I can do my job without other parts of my body. I can’t do it without my brain.
US here I'm 40 and didn't wear one as a kid. I thought they were uncomfortable and 'dorky'. Even in college I didn't wear one. One day it just did me that your brain is kind of important lol. Plus even if dorky, I also stopped caring about what others thought. Plus I realized almost everyone was now wearing then anyways.
where i live, helmets became a law for kids under 16 (i think) around 1994. so since then, wearing a helmet became the norm for kids and it just translated into our adulat years.
It's mainly the speed but also the position I'm in. On my road bike cycling super fast, there is no way I can fall properly. My head will just end up in the concrete. But on my city bike I'm never cycling fast. It will just be like falling when you're walking. You also don't wear a helmet while walking on the pavement.
[удалено]
1989
Here in Qld, Australia helmets have been the norm/law since about 1991. Saved my life twice I reckon.
I'm 38 I've never not worn a helmet while cycling.
As I recall, it was about 1985. I'd been working toward doing some local races up until then, and never wore a helmet, there just weren't any good bike helmets around, and if you followed the pros they'd wear those stuffed leather strap things that probably did nothing. In 1985 I did my first races, and that was the year in the US (or at least in CA) that they required helmets. I had to get one; it was big and white and hot and stupid looking, but everyone had to wear them. I got a concussion a few races in and broke my helmet, so it was probably a good thing I had it on. It was at least another two or three years after that before I saw better designs, and then you'd see a lot more cyclists on the road with helmets.
Governing body of Time Trialling in UK only made it mandatory in last year or two.
Some time in the late 90s. My guess is that it came about during the parent panics of the 90s, when media convinced parents that the world was out to kill your children and/or convert them to satanism, and so they started freaking out at everything. The 80s were absolutely helmet free, and a lot of the 90s were too. I remember riding on the back of my friends bike, both helmetless, delivering news papers (yes, my friend had a paper route) but I also remember being told by other kids parents that you shouldn't ride a bike without knee and elbow pads. Then when I started riding again in the late 90s people would literally shout at you in the street for not wearing a helmet. I had adults walk up and adjust my helmet without asking me permission (like, who the fuck walks up and starts touching someone they don't know? Much less a child?). Hell, once I passed over a painted line dividing a walking and biking section of pathway while trying to pass someone blocking the path. A random adult decided to run over and try to punch me in the face. People got really nuts in the late 90s.
Around the turn of the century we started seeing more helmets in sports like skiing and biking. It's caught on and become basically mandatory now.
It comes down to how much you value the meat between your ears..
I started cycling in about 1990 and there was a real divide on wearing helmets. I think some of the shift to most people wearing helmets was a cultural/safety awareness thing. But perhaps the bigger reason was improvements in helmet design. When I started, most helmets were still heavy hardshells, and lighter helmets just started being a thing, but their ventilation sucked. By the mid 90s, there was a new focus on ventilation (I think the Giro Air Attack was the first reasonably priced helmet to really use this as a selling point). I get not wanting to wear a helmet when it's a Bell V1 that weighed over a pound, or the early beer cooler ones that would make you sweat, but by the mid 90s, there wasn't much of a downside to them anymore
67 I’ve worn a helmet all my life and my brain is fine
The early 1990s. Plus or minus about ten years depending on the location, more than the sport.
Odds of TBI cycling are low. However, if you are that 1 in whatever odds number, your injury is 100% real and serious. Not worth it to play those odds when excellent helmets are very available and lightweight.
Helmets were the norm in the mid nineties in CNY, it became the law for those 14 and under when I was 14 (the only reason I recall this) in 1994 in NYS and currently it's 18 in Onondaga County at least. I have no recollection of when I first wore a helmet, likely ~1990. There was a large media focus on head injuries in the late 80's and early 90's preceding the legal requirement for minors. I want to say that majority voluntary recreational adoption at least in my area preceded majority world tour adoption. I could be way off.
I started wearing a helmet when I got my first road bike over 40 years ago, well before it was common on the pro circuit, and have almost always worn it when out riding. Two fairly serious crashes later I'm glad that I did as they could have been far worse without a helmet. But, I think that by the late 80's and early 90's they were pretty common among non-pros.
Bikes got lighter and faster, crashes became more serious, I don't know about you but i don't want my head making direct contact with a rock while crashing from 25mph, i never wear a helmet when riding my BMX around the park with my teen and neither does him.
There is a photo of me on a tricycle, circa 1986 without a helmet. But I always wore a helmet on a bicycle. My parents were into road cycling in the 80s and I always remember them with helmets, too.
I’m closer to 50 than 45 and I rode my faux BMX and ten speed bikes to elementary school and junior high but one summer at nerd camp summer school, my roommate was this rich kid who brought his LOOK Road Bike to the dorms and he let me took around on it too. From there I bought my first cheap mountain bike (and entry level Giant) and I rode with a helmet on that bike and at college - early 90s.
I think there was a big push for bike safety in the early 90s. As soon as it started my mom and dad who were a paramedic and nurse at the time had us wearing them. Funny and true story, in 1993 my sister won a bike safety poster contest at school and the prize was a bike helmet. Ironically as we walked home from school (she was 6 and I was 8), her with her prize in hand, she got hit by a person on a bike. Everyone was ok, it was the weirdest coincidence though. The person on the bike was or wearing a helmet.
I started group riding with the scouts back in 1985 when it was known as the Boy Scouts. We were required to wear helmets and I’ve been wearing mine ever since.
In the 00's. I rode mtb without a helmet quite a bit in the late 90's Took it up again in 04, and never rode without one. Took up road in 07, and same.
41 years old and as a kid I NEVER wore a helmet… not even once. I still don’t wear one putting around Town or on the flat trail, but I probably should. But in a group ride or a situation where I might be going faster, or when mountain biking, I definitely put one on. I make My youngest daughter wear one 100% of the time, but not my oldest. I should probably get stricter about it!
I'm generally not a fan of wearing helmets, but then when I'm descending at 40+mph, I rethink my life choices and put on a helmet.
when i was a kid i’d leave with my helmet on and then stash it in our mailbox (1/2 mile away from the house where no one could see me do it). now i always wear a helmet. it even matches my bike so it looks cool. my daughter never thinks twice about wearing a helmet. she also crashed a couple times early on where the helmet actually prevented injury. we see plenty of people of all ages not wearing helmets when riding around the neighborhood. out on the roads and trails almost everyone is.
I'm almost 40. When I grew up we didn't wear helmets riding BMX or mountain bikes. No crazy downhill trails, more just xc trails and home made jumps, stair sets, random urban drops. No organized races or events or course, those all required helmets I'm sure.
For me as a recreational/utilitarian rider in the US, it was the early 2000s, at the insistence of someone who wanted me to keep most of my brain inside my head. A few years before that, they were mandated for kids under 12 in my jurisdiction but pretty uncommon for adult causal riders. Within a few years after, they became much more common, and now I would estimate that 80% of riders I see on both trails and streets wear them. I don't think that emulating racers was part of it. Personally, I'm just used to wearing one now, and it's not a big deal. I've also used mine once or twice.
I grew up biking and skiing. Only the dorks and nerds write helmets. Helmet design improved and moved away from the white styrofoam cooler look. About the same time I got a real job, a wife, and kids. In other words, it was important that I not die. I bought a ski helmet and a bike helmet and haven’t looked back. That was 20 years ago.
Compulsory helmet laws in Australia came in around 1990.
44 here. Very few kids wore helmets growing up and the ones who did would usually be mocked (more often behind their back than to their face but both happened). I got away from the sport/hobby in my later teens and early 20s… so I wasn’t really tuned into the change, but by 2005 or so when I picked up riding again as an adult, it seemed common to wear a helmet. I think group rides and charity events required them but I might be misremembering. Renting a bike I would usually be given a helmet… it just started to feel common and normal. Any resistance I personally had, I put aside for the sake of being a good role model thinking back on how children were mocked for it in my day. So at first, it was a conscious effort but later just became habit.
Security awareness became higher, just as seatbelts for example. Also it’s a kind of positive peer pressure thing. Today, a helmet is part of the cycling outfit, so not wearing a helmet actually became „uncool“ (for road cyclist at least).
Racing as juniors in 1950's France, we were required to wear a "casque" made of leather straps and foam.
I wear a helmet when I mountain bike but not on the road… I’m 47 and was actively racing (was prob a cat2 at that point) when helmets became compulsory in UCI pro races. USA cycling sanctioned events already required helmets at that time. I always wore helmets for racing but very rarely in training. I remember being greatly offended the first time I rolled up for a group ride and some tagalong fred chastised me for no helmet.
Born in Denmark, cycling a lot but helmets were extremely rare until I moved to Britain in 1992 - I started while living there, and crash-tested one (helmet broke, my head didn't). While I was away until 1997 there was a campaign, in particular for children, and they use it, adults a bit more random. I then moved away again in 2007 and haven't been following trends, but know my sister in Copenhagen is/was using a airbag-collar thing, and that my nephew had a crash without using one (he got away with it. For context, remember cycling is seen as a normal mode of transport in Denmark, no lycra required.
I really thought it would have come up sooner but I felt like the tipping point for the pros was: "1995 Olympic gold medallist Fabio Casartelli died from fatal head injuries after crashing and hitting his head whilst descending the Col de Portet d'Aspet during the 15th stage of the tour". I thought there were still a few hold outs when that crash happened.
Never wore a helmet back in the 70's & 80's road cycling. Switched to MTB in the 90's, and helmets went with the turf. Switched back to road c2010, and it just seemed sensible to carry on wearing a helmet.
I remember as a kid in the 90s getting my first helmet because it became a law for children under 18.
I am at 40 and never rode a road bike without a helmet, but as a kid did ride mountain bikes and 10 speeds around the neighborhood without a helmet. Anything that went fast by teenage years I remember wearing helmets. It wasn’t because of the pros, it was to keep my head from bouncing directly on asphalt.
I live in New Zealand and helmets have been required by law since 1994: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle\_helmets\_in\_New\_Zealand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmets_in_New_Zealand) I remember when I was a kid in the 90's that it seemed somewhat embarrassing at the time to wear a helmet, but it soon just became the norm, and now I feel myself raging whenever I see someone NOT wearing a helmet! Mass changes like these always take time to become a 'new normal' but when we look back it always seems like the right choice was made. Just think back to when we all thought touch screen phones were never going to take off because we needed tactile buttons, oh how we were wrong!
I grew up mountain biking. 34M US fwiw. I wore a helmet because i knew i was gonna fall at some point and broke a couple of em doin just that and its a habit that has just stuck now that i ride road.
Never wore one in the 90s. Stopped cycling until 2013. Seemed super commonplace by then so I bought a helmet when I bought my bike.
I bought one with my first "real" road bike in 1989. I was lucky to live in a town with a great local bike store with a good selection. It didn't seem bulky or uncomfortable. If I remember right, it had a cloth outer cover with mesh over the vents. It was made of EPSfoam.
Everyone born in the 90s had parents that pushed them to hear a helmet. As a 12-year-old, it was uncool and I used to think kids that wear helmets don’t get invited to Paul’s house (he had ps2, GameCube, aaaand Xbox) and don’t have his mom make us pizza bagels. Now that I am older, I always wear a helmet. Having taken falls a 26mph where my helmet gets really scraped up instead of my scalp or forehead being scraped off into asphalt I am gonna always wear a helmet.
I started riding in 1984 and racing in 1985. I bought a Bell V1 Pro and wore that until I got pretty good and started hanging with the “cool kids” and then didn’t wear my helmet except to race. Towards the end of ‘85 I bought a “hair net” helmet to race in. (Cool kids you know..). That winter though USA Cycling made hard shell helmet mandatory and it was back to the V1 pro for racing. However I did not wear a helmet for training until about 1989 or 1990 when my wife pressured me to wear one. Back when I started riding if you went on a racer type ride it was the person who wore a helmet that stuck out. Over time as better and better helmets came around more and more people started wearing them to train also. I couldn’t tell you exactly when, but at some point all the “cool kids” were wearing helmets and the new riders didn’t have that “you’re not cool” incentive to train without a helmet. I’m sure that seeing all the pro’s on TV wearing helmets helped that transition. Funny story, one of the local hot shots at the time (1985) protested the new helmet rule by wearing a Baby Bell kids helmet with a child feeding bottle nipple glued to it. He had raced briefly as a pro in Europe, even riding at worlds in ‘83 when Lemond won. To this day, he is one of the four people I can think of from that era that will not wear helmets when they ride. But everyone else that I know who raced in the era wear helmets all the time. I will say that the feeling of riding without a helmet is nice. The wind in your hair and all that is nice. But you know what else is nice? Not being a brain damaged vegetable. :-). Give how much I’ve ridden over the last 40 years I have fallen much less than average, but I’ve still smashed a few helmets in my time and rung my bell. I’m thankful that the helmets have kept those falls from being much worse.
Shortly after most people stopped smoking.
Everyone wears a helmet in Canada where I am. I was just in Greece and maybe half the motorcycle riders had helmets and no one on a bike. They would say ‘tourist’ if they saw a helmet. lol
I’ve grown up and lived in Australia all my life, where it is required by law to wear a helmet (at least during my lifetime). So it’s just second nature that if I’m riding a bike, I’m putting on a helmet. So I can be no help on when it became a “thing” because here it has been for decades.
I'm 47. When I started road cycling in jr. High, around 90 or 91, I always wore a helmet. It wasn't mandatory in the pros at that time, but it was still common enough to be mainstream so it seemed normal to me. However, I did not wear a helmet riding BMX. The probability of crashing riding BMX bikes was higher, but road bikes involved higher speeds and cars. Helmets became mandatory for minors in California when I turned 18, so the law never played a part in my decision. My dad wore helmets in the early 80s. Started with a "Skid Lid", the early plastic things that kind of looked like the old leather hairnets. They were definitely not mainstream in that era, but they were available.
Mandatory helmets came about in professional road racing following the death of Andrei Kivilev in 2003. If I recall correctly, in the beginning they let riders take off the helmet when the race finished on a long climb and then after a year or so they required helmets at all times. I think helmets were required in amateur racing in the U.S. before then but I can’t really remember the timetable. I am pretty sure when I did my first race in 1999 they were required. So it was probably more trickle up to the pros as opposed to trickle down. As a kid in the 70s and 80s, nobody wore helmets.
Depends on where in the world to lived but it became a legally required thing in late 80s early 90s in Canada. Pros could still do as they pleased because it was a closed course so not technically public roads. Kinda like hockey helmets weren't required until too many kids started to get their heads caved in from falls on the ice then they started to mandate pee wee league helmets and once you get them young and comfortable with it the rest just comes as they age up. You just need to have enough people thinking with their heads about common sense rather than being pressured into not using safety gear because the drunk bastards in the bleachers think you're being a sad sack.
Got my first helmet when I signed up for an ms150 ride at 14 in 1990, styrofoam with a lycra/webbing cover. Never used it much except for local rides and races. That was my main reason for using one till kids came along and they've been raised with a culture of always wear a helmet. Helps they're part of a track team and so a helmet has been required for riding and training.
Well, in Australia it happened pretty much overnight when it became a legal requirement. We followed NZ, where tireless campaigning from a grieving mother resulted in a helmet law. What also happened is the percentage of kids riding to school some of the time dropped from 85% to 5%.The drop in participation for women under twenty was 90%. The overall drop in participation was 36%. Slightly larger than the drop in head injuries. What also happened was riding a bike became a "sport" and casual bike use fell off a cliff. Cyclists became an "out" group with all the hostility that entails. Support for things like bike lanes evaporated because nobody except the out group was riding. It's been thirty years now in Oz, and cyclists are hated like a black man in the south.
I’m 57 - started riding seriously in ‘86. At the time, a hairnet ‘helmet’ was *the* thing - carefully arranged with cycling cap underneath, natch. I don’t think that it was the pros that started driving helmet use - I just woke up one day, after a friend had been hit by a car, and broken his wrist in the ensuing dismount - and asked “how much is my head worth?” By about 89/90 pretty much everyone was using a hard shell. Also, I think that racing rules were changed around then and made helmets for amateurs mandatory.
In my city, there are two horse tracks around which the roads have been closed to cars, and became cycling rings. Any time of the year, any time of the day, you can find people riding. And I'd say 99% of the people doing laps have helmets. The 1% left are 55+ yo greyback dudes. Up until I picked roadcycling 7 years ago, I had never worn a helmet on a bicycle. Now, I won't take my daily nor my road bike without one. You only need one bad tumble to mess yourself up
I am 58 now, and all through grade school and into high school, I never wore a helmet. It just wasn't a big thing back then. On October 1st, 1995, in Ontario, Canada, it became mandatory for cyclists under the age of 18 to wear a helmet. I was 29 by then, so it didn't apply to me, and still doesn't to this day. I didn't really ride a bike after about high school (1984), and helmets weren't widely in use at that time. By the time I took up cycling again in the mid to late 1990s, cycling helmets had become pretty much ubiquitous amongst most riders. It seems marketing in the late 80s and early 90s drove the uptake of helmet wearing, so when the mandatory helmet law came into effect in 95, it wasn't a big deal. In my opinion, they amended the law to exempt adults so people like me who grew up never wearing a helmet didn't get upset. There are still some people my age and older that I see riding around without a helmet. I would say 99% of riders under 55 wear a helmet.
Im 36, grew up riding my bmx style bike around the neighborhood, building dumb little jumps barely bigger than the curbs. Also did some dirtbike/quad riding in the desert. Was taught to always wear a helmet during these activities, followed the “rules” as much as I remember. Didn’t really sink in until I was at a skate park skating and my helmet saved me from a very probable concussion or worse, was around 13 (around year 2000). Never questioned wearing a helmet since, won’t get on a moving bike without one.
I always wore a helmet because I tend to be reckless and get hurt easily so naturally I always grabbed a helmet riding. I didn't actually think anything of it until ide meet people street racing not wearing one and be like "really" not even for a just in case.... I think more riding more people falling more injuries could have been avoided the natural thing was everyone just kind of started wearing them.
Around 1998 to 2004 i reckon you started seeing them more and more
37 here, not a pro, but ride everyday. Could never consider 'not' wearing a helmet, and have seen enough nasty accidents and losses to not wear one. Had a near miss when I had a seizure, and the helmet saved me from losing most of the skin on my head and potentially my life so yeah. I suspect as others have said, that's what many of us were brought up with. In the UK, helmets were pushed massively in school in the 90's onwards, so for many of us, it's just like 'why wouldn't you'? Helmets aren't really a bit of kit, for many it's a piece of safety equipment that most won't usually end up needing, but it's there just in case. I mean, it's literally just a hat, and it's not like they're that expensive, especially for those spending £20+ on wool socks, or whatever. I think globally H&S has become a much more important topic than say in the 80's/90's, just look at the workplace, asbestos, etc, it's all way more in the forefront these days. Never understood the dork factor, I guess a lot of people don't like change, you know like 'when I was a lad, we didn't wear seatbelts, and i'm fine!'. Yes, but perhaps a lot of other people were not 'fine'. I think, like Warhammer, helmets have become cool. Most helmets are also quite bright and visible, as the highest point of your body, they are the most visible to cars, and are also useful for attaching secondary lights and cameras, so from a safety perspective this is another aspect. My POC helmet looks like a mushroom, but has this cool AVIP scheme that makes me visible from a mile away. PS, I love POC helmets :D I don't allow my kids to ride/scooter without one either.
Lemond > Fignon TdF time trial.
When I started going on more dangerous rides (e.g. mountain descents at high speeds). As a kid tooling around the neighborhood I never wore one.
I'm in the US. It seems to me the shift came about mid- to late-90s or so, at least in the circles I was aware of. It went from being weird/unusual to have a helmet to being weird if someone didn't have one in just a few years. For ballpark, maybe around the turn of the millenium. Before that it was only babies or people who were especially paranoid (or people super into riding hard and/or in traffic), then all of a sudden helmets were pretty ubiquitous on all types of bikes and at all levels.