this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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micromobility - Bikes, scooters, boards: Whatever floats your goat, this is micromobility
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Ebikes, bicycles, scooters, skateboards, longboards, eboards, motorcycles, skates, unicycles, heelies, or an office chair: Whatever floats your goat, this is all things micromobility!
"Transportation using lightweight vehicles such as bicycles or scooters, especially electric ones that may be borrowed as part of a self-service rental program in which people rent vehicles for short-term use within a town or city.
micromobility is seen as a potential solution to moving people more efficiently around cities"
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I'm pretty sure that's part of the general design intent yes, but you'd have to know the exact angle of my impact. Chin first, left side, dragging upwards, from about 6 feet in the air, tire level, which means my head started off about 9 feet in the air. It also jammed my glasses into my forehead, which is how I know the angle I hit. It only takes about 7 pounds of force to snap a neck, and I impacted chin first with all ~150 pounds of my body weight from pretty high up.
I could have largely avoided the chin/face impact if I had put my arms and hands out in front of me, but I would have ended up with broken arms and my handlebars stuck through my gut instead.
Yes things would have went differently if I had been wearing a helmet, perhaps could have been better, perhaps could have been worse. No way to truly know, and I'm damn skippy not about to try it again.
The reason that happened was because the ramp wasn't secured to any sort of frame, it was just a sheet of plywood laid on a ~4 foot high dirt mound. There were 4 of us taking turns ramping, and as my front wheel came off the ramp, the next friend was just hitting the ramp behind me. That caused the plywood to flex, pushing my back wheel upwards as I was leaving the ramp.
I had a whole second or so to say "OH SHIT!" and decide whether to keep hold of the straight handlebars or not. I didn't want my handlebars stuck through my gut, so I held the bars.
Anyways, from that sort of height, chin/face first, I don't think a helmet would have made all too much of a difference. But if I had been wearing a helmet with a visor, my glasses probably wouldn't have been jammed into my forehead, which would have meant that my head would have been pushed back at more of an angle. Even the ER doctors noticed that.
Not saying it's right, but in my 42 years of life, I've never met a bicycle rider that even owns a helmet. To even obtain a helmet, you gotta ride to another city to even get one. And the intersection at that Walmart is one of the absolute most dangerous intersections out there for bike riders. So oddly enough, its safer to avoid the only place we can even get helmets.
TL;DR - I was 16, doing stupid shit and ramping a rigged up ramp with 3 other friends, and nobody out there wore or even had helmets. What did I learn? Don't do stupid shit, don't ramp, keep the wheels on the ground. So I switched to flatland.