Seattle's Bike Helmet Law Is a Racist Failure
“Bicycle helmets are racist now” — this is the headline you’re about to see on Fox, or wherever gullible chumps get their news these days.
Tomorrow evening, Seattle’s Bike Advisory council will discuss possible reforms to our bike helmet laws in an attempt to address racial disparities, and I can already see the conservative faux-outrage: “Now the woke PC mob is coming for bike helmets,” Republicans will complain, shaking their heads and declaring that from now on they’re going to wear bike helmets EVERYWHERE they go, just to make the liberals quiver. That’ll show us.
But here’s the thing … bike helmet law enforcement is racist.
The numbers have been crunched, repeatedly, by Crosscut and the University of Washington and Central Seattle Greenways and so on, and so on, and so on. The results are always the same: Mandatory bike helmet requirements are hurting people, because they're disproportionately used to discriminate against people of color and people experiencing homelessness.
Police are four times more likely to cite Black cyclists than white cyclists, according to research by UW doctoral student Ethan C. Campbell. Cops are twice as likely to cite Indigenous people, and one-tenth as likely to cite Asian cyclists. If you can think of a word for this other than “racist,” I’d love to hear it.
Read more: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2021/04/06/56408419/seattles-bike-helmet-law-is-a-racist-failure
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