On Wearing Helmets and Inviting people In
So you want people to wear Helmets? You might want them to ride a bike first…I am reading this fascinating book called “How cycling can save the World” by Peter Walker. It goes in depth about what health, environmental and societal positives there are in communities that become cycle friendly in various ways. Netherlands and Denmark over great sample cases to study when it comes to this subject and Walker goes into stats from this country extensively. I won’t bore you with the numbers but sufficient to say the health, social cohesion and even economic benefits of cycling in these countries and other places that ventured into building proper bicycle lanes is mind boggling.
There seem to be an increasing political will in especially big cities to cater for and enhance cycling and that is a good thing. London and Vancouver are of the cities he mentioned that went this way and is already showing promising return on investment.As a cyclist this is obviously exciting news to me. People between 80 and 100 in the Netherlands do as much as 20 percent of all their trips on a bicycle. It is fascinating to think the bicycle as we know it has remained largely unchanged for the past hundred years and now holds great promise to solve problems such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, pollution, congestion and isolation. The recent advent of e-bikes makes biking even more accessible to a greater percentage of the population.
One of Walker’s chapters deals with bicycle helmets. It goes without saying that to wear a bicycle helmet when riding your bike is a good thing. It obviously increase your chances of survival when being struck by a car. Which makes it all the more interesting that Walker says making wearing bicycle helmets is detrimental to the cause of cycling. See, what you are after when you want to promote cycling in a community is not more MAMILS (middle aged men in lycra). The sign that bicycling is taking off in a community is people with ordinary clothes riding ordinary bicycles. When the only cyclist around are athletic types in full gear, the message that goes out that cycling is a specialist sport that requires extraordinary skill and dedication. It deters people from cycling (sorry my fellow MAMILS). This is why when compulsory wearing of helmets has the same effect. In Australia it is the case. When you rent a bicycle like you can do in inner city Vancouver, you will be pulled over and fined by a officer if you don’t wear a helmet. Hence rentals (which is often the first step toward obtaining a bicycle of your own) didn’t quite take of in Sydney Australia as it have in Vancouver and London (where people are encouraged yet not obliged to wear helmets). Most people that get into daily or regular cycling eventually do decide to wear a helmet whenever they mount a bicycle but enforced by law it prevents people from ever getting into cycling. Also in an interesting experiment Walker mentions, it was found that motorists actually stay further away from cyclist without helmets and ordinary clothes than from cyclist with helmets and gear! Interesting isn’t it?
Which brings me to the non-cycling point I want to make from all this. Let’s summarize as simply as possible what the helmet issue described by walker teaches us. Simply this: That people who understand cycling from own experience have no problem embracing a simple tenant of cycling as a habit, the one that states a helmet protects you from injury on a bicycle. And the opposite, that a simply no brainer for a seasoned cyclist could be a deterrent to an aspiring one. Also that in promoting cycling as a main course one should cautiously keep the main mission…well…main. One could waste a lot of energy on convincing people not to ride without a helmet and in the process sabotage them getting into cycling at all. Quite a no-brainer right?And yet Australia still doesn’t change its ways. And yes, even there cycling facilities and cyclist increase but probably way slower as could have been the case. If this is true and upon hearing this we all shake our heads at thinking how dumb the helmet warriors we should be weary not to repeat a similar version of their actions when it comes to our faith. And we do. We tend to expect Christian behavior from non-Christians. We tell ourselves forcing this on them will make them love God and his ways just like helmet advocates reason enforcing helmet laws will make people love cycling. We do that and then look down on some Muslims that want to enforce Syria law on everybody. How are we any different than them?
I don’t want to end this on what we should not do and who we shouldn’t be like. What should we do? We should invite people to participate in parts of Jesus’s call they do feel ready for. We should point out to people how they are already ready and participating and encourage them to focus and get at the things they understand as core to Jesus’s life and mission.
Maybe be Psalm 34:8 is the call we should eco before we call for obedience and adherence and discipline:
“Taste and see that the Lord is good…”Gabriel J Snyman
December 15th 2020