Karl Largerfeld for Les Ateliers Ruby motocycle helmets. Photo: Bike Exif

I can’t ride a bike, but that doesn’t stop me from having opinions about them. Even though I had trouble with balancing on one as a kid (even now, sometimes I have trouble balancing when walking), I think cycling is a great thing for exercise, a great thing for the environment, and a great thing for the city. Toronto is obviously going through growing pains as more and more people take to the pedals, and we’re still far off from bike-embracing Amsterdam, where beautiful blondes glide around with determined immunity– but we’re getting there. Certain mayors will only be able to wage the ‘War on the Bike’ for so long.

I have a message to Toronto’s cyclists, and it comes from a sympathetic supporter: you people need to wear your helmets. I know they look goofy. I know they’re awkward to walk around with. You want to have the effortless cool of hopping on your bike and pedaling away, men with their shirts flapping open, women with their hair dancing in the wind. I get it. But you also want to get home alive.

Of the 129 people killed in bike accidents between 2006 and 2010, only 27% were wearing helmets. Clearly, they don’t protect you from all accidents, and drivers must also be vigilant about safety, but helmets greatly reduce the risk of you being seriously hurt if an accident occurs.

I lost a friend in a bike accident, so I don’t take this lightly. The fact that many young people also use their cell phones while cycling, don’t drive cars (so they have trouble understanding how drivers react to things), and bike home late at night after drinking only adds to my worry.

I can yell and scream and pull out my hair, but I can only do so much. If my stylish friends don’t like their helmets, they’re not going to wear them. There’s a solution so obvious it’s staring at us in the headlights: make helmets nicer. Make them stylish. Turn them into a cool accessory. Put the Louis Vuitton logo all over them if you have to!

In my quest for more information, I ventured to virgin territory (for me): a bike shop. Cycle Couture on College Street stocks cycling accessories as well as bikes. Adam Hendrik fixes them in the back of the shop. I asked him why some people don’t wear helmets.

“They’re pretty ugly,” he admits, confirming my suspicion. “That’s probably the biggest thing. Another thing is hair…pretty important to most people. They don’t want to mess that up. And they’re kind of expensive. And…it’s nice to feel the wind in your hair.”

He walks me through the two major helmet companies: Bern, that has a modern, streamlined look, and Nutcase, which specializes in bright, colourful patterns like polka dots, plaid and tie dye. Bern comes in three different shell sizes, compared with Nutcase’s two, so they fit better along with looking better. According to Hendrik, Nutcase is selling really well due to the fun patterns. I point out a silver helmet embedded with sparkles, reminding me of a My Little Pony figure I had as a kid.

“I guess that’s the one that brought you here, didn’t it?” Hendrik asks. And while I didn’t admit to him that I don’t ride, if I did, I would wear a sparkly helmet.

Neither company has the intense athletic look of a mountain bike helmet that can look embarrassing when cycling in a city. Interestingly, Hendrik tells me that there are lighter, more technologically advanced materials that Bern uses for their skateboarding and snowboarding helmets, but the current, outdated requirements prevent them from being used for bike helmets.

He also apologizes for not having a larger selection of colourful helmets for me to look at. It’s the end of the season and the companies have had some trouble keeping up with demand, but there’s another reason: this past summer, when there was talk of making bike helmets mandatory in Ontario, sales skyrocketed.

“But then it didn’t happen,” Hendrik continues, “so it kind of trailed off…”

You could debate whether ‘forcing’ cyclists to wear helmets by making them mandatory is the best solution, but we can definitely make them cooler. Trendsetting celebrities should always be shown with their bike helmets in TV shows and movies: it sounds silly, but it helps people visualize themselves wearing them. While we’re waiting for the ‘invisible’ Hövding helmet (that creates an airbag-like hood around the cyclist’s head when in an accident) to become more affordable, we should work with the technology that’s readily available. Websites on which you can design your own helmet are a step in the right direction.

There’s no reason why protecting your person can’t be part of personal style. 

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Max Mosher writes about style for Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @max_mosher_. 

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