Wednesday’s Headlines: More Helmet Discourse Edition
Streetsblog set off a small social media firestorm last month when we respectfully directed nuanced criticism at a video Mayor Mamdani posted to announce his purchase of a bicycle helmet. Our argument was that we’d rather the man responsible for the safety of cyclists on city streets focus his messaging on systemic solutions rather than elevating a perspective that “assigns responsibility for road safety to individual cyclists.”
Our story explicitly acknowledged the value of wearing a helmet, but that wasn’t enough to preempt claims that, in the words of one mayoral spokesman, we “wrote over 1,500 words to tell their readers that helmets are essentially pointless.”
Now our friends at the War on Cars Podcast have weighed in with a spirited — and thorough — defense of both our article and the bike advocacy community’s longstanding criticism of helmet-focused messaging. In their latest episode, hosts Doug Gordon and Sarah Goodyear praised the mayor and his decision to wear a helmet, shared their “mixed feelings” about his video and bemoaned the social media chattering class for misinterpreting criticisms of helmet-forward messaging as criticisms of helmets writ large. Gordon wisely suggested that the mayor’s video should have also highlighted his commitment to systemic solutions like street redesigns.
“I think the opportunity of just focusing on the helmet opened up this [response of] ‘Yeah, I see cyclists not wearing helmets all the time!'” Gordon said. “What I worry about with stuff like this is — Mamdani has the best of intentions. He’s doing the work to make cycling safer. He’s taking parking … He’s dusting off all these old projects that were delayed for totally horrible reasons. So he’s doing the stuff we want him to do. But there are elected officials — anti-bike elected officials — in this city who have and who will in the future try to pass a mandatory helmet law. And one of the things they’re now going to be able to say is, “See! Even the mayor thinks you should wear a helmet!”
Gordon is spot-on: Earlier this year, one prominent opponent of bike lanes in the city responded to calls for lower speed limits with, “Get a grip. Wear a helmet” — as if a helmet is all a cyclist needs to avoid death or injury on city streets. Nevermind the many, many cyclists killed wearing helmets — including on the very day Mamdani posted his video.
Listen to the entire War on Cars episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. And be sure to check out Doug and Sarah’s just-announced Nov. 6 live show with former city Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.
In other news:
- City officials should take a cue from the idle rich and install fully grown trees instead of little nubs that will take decades to reach their full potential. (NY Times)
- The City Council will pass new mandates for dog poop enforcement this week. (Ben Max via X)
- Streetfilms’ Clarence Eckerson appeared on Bike Talk.
- Endless signal upgrade delays are dragging out the MTA’s G train shutdowns, which have gobbled up 15 of 34 weekends so far in 2026. (Tal Roded via Substack)
- A fire caused by exploding e-bike battery killed a teenager, his dog and two cats in a NYCHA complex in Crown Heights. (Daily News)
- Mark Chuisano went deep on the MTA’s whack-a-mole quest to stop subway floods. (NYT Magazine)
- A 77-year-old an what cops described as an e-bike died in a crash in downtown Brooklyn over the weekend. (News 12)
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