Why women do not use the helmet when riding a bicycle

摘要

Women seem to use the helmet when riding a bicycle less frequently than men. Two possible explanationsfor this behavior are that 1) it is less appalling to them because of lack of comfort or other reasons, or 2)they use bicycles in a more cautious way than men so they feel that they do not need the helmet as much.The present paper explores these two explanations in 5,691 cyclists that responded to an online surveyconducted in 17 countries as part of an EU COST project. Answers to questions related to the twoaforementioned explanations were analyzed graphically and three questions that showed the mostconspicuous differences between males and females were identified. These were: ‘Helmets are a problembecause they disturb your hair’, ‘I am a fast rider’, and ‘I am a skilled rider’. The responses to these threequestions plus their interactions with the gender of the respondent were used as predictors of the proportionof helmet wear. The results showed that: 1) the three questions predicted the use of the helmet, 2) theinteraction between gender and hair disturbance was not significant, and 3) the interactions between genderand being a fast cyclist and being a skilled rider were both statistically significant showing that women thatregard themselves as slow riders or skillful riders use relatively less the helmet than men in similarconditions.