Po Bike Route 2 - headgear

Riding on the pavement - anything to avoid those cobbles - and nothing seems to be against the rules

Are we getting soft in the head? These days we hardly push the bike out of the shed without putting on a helmet.

Spend a couple of days in the north Italian city of Ferrara and you will see bikes buzzing in all directions like swarming bees. There are no rules. No bike lanes. And you won’t see a single helmet among them.

The ancient town with is huge castle and classic piazzas has some terrible cobbled streets. Stones are spread out but without any attempt at smoothing them to a single height. It’s like riding a bike on a pebble beach.

So the bikes whizzing about the town aren’t only buzzing but they are rattling. Most are old boneshakers and if they aren’t already they soon will be.

Aboard is every variant of mankind. Young, old and ancient, fat, thin, tall and short. Businessmen in suits and ties, furled umbrellas attached to the crossbar, women speeding about their daily tasks with aplomb with a basket attached to the handlebars, mothers with a child in front and another behind, police patrolling on official cycles, teenage girls in cut off cut-offs chatting on their phones as they weave among the crowds, students, schoolchildren, young dudes withe reversed baseball caps...and not a helmet to be seen.

Sweltering along in 30C heat we had already removed ours. It was like riding in the days when even the Tour de France racers wore nothing more than a cap. Wind in the hair. What a difference! Feel the freedom.

Pundits say wearing a helmet encourages risk taking, discourages bike use, makes car drivers give less clearance when passing.  

So what is the death rate among cyclists in Ferrara compared with, say, Sydney where helmets are compulsory? And how does the use of bikes for short journeys compare? It isn’t easy to find comparable results but according to Forbes Business, the more cyclists there are, the fewer the proportional number of fatalities. As Australia has demonstrated, helmet wearing discourages cycling. So…work it out from there.

One thing for sure is that everyone in the Italian town uses a bike for every local trip. Hop on in everyday clothes, high heels, evening dress, whatever, hop off at the destination. No parking worries. No unnecessary protective clothing. Just the simplest, most convenient method of transport.

It’s not surprising there aren't many cars about.