I would never have believed it.

I’m interested in the point you raise too: will pedelecs result in people with less experience getting into high-speed crashes? Maybe. If so then motorcycle helmets (which are constructed to completely different specifications and can actually reduce rotational injuries) might be useful for them. On the other hand anyone can easily get up to 40mph on a steep descent on a regular bicycle.

Most cyclist fatalities and serious injuries result from motor vehicle collisions. These tend to decrease the more of us there are out there hauling loads, commuting and having fun on our bikes. In any event the risks of cycling are low and the benefits huge both personally and societally ( *preaches to choir*).

The site you mentioned was very informative. I especially liked the introductory article that shows a huge disparity between helmet research studies and real-world data.

There is still a big question that probably won’t be known for awhile: does electric assistance change head injury/severity rates, and do helmets help or hurt in that arena? While we wait for more definitive data on that question, I ride my electric bike cautiously, relying on the motor mostly for hills (as opposed to whipping along flat terrain at unnatural speeds).

Injury rates on bicycles are low: in the same general ballpark as walking or driving. Yet we don’t worry when we see unhelmeted people risking their lives on the sidewalk or in cars. More importantly this obsession with removing a very improbable accident is creating a false impression that bicycling is dangerous and lowering ridership levels.

1. Bicycle helmets are designed to reduce cuts and scrapes obtained in low speed (e.g. an impact velocity of 12 mph similar to that experienced when an adult tumbles from a stationary bicycle) falls. They are explicitly not designed for speeds of up to 30 mph.

2. Bicycle helmets may exacerbate rotational injuries. These are the ones to worry about. Injuries which lead to concussion and other neurological disorders through the mechanism of diffuse axonal injury.

3. The only proven effect of bicycle helmet use is to lower the numbers of people cycling.

http://cyclehelmets.org is one of the canonical resources for information on this subject. It’s worth a read before making your mind up about whether helmets are useful enough to be worth using or are actually a negative both for the individual and for any overall societal goal of increasing cycling.

Thanks for the great blog.

Unfortunately, I don’t have specific recommendations on modifying the Ute to make it a great kid carrier. As you might have seen in my Ute review video, I put my kids on the back and rode around the parking lot. It worked, but they felt awkward without a place to rest their feet and handlebars to hold onto, so I agree that these are important additions.

In my opinion, the Ute isn’t the best bike for transporting more than one kid (plus kid stuff that you’re likely to be carrying). The Ute is kind of a mid-step between a traditional bike and heavy-duty cargo bikes like the Yuba Mundo and the Rans Hammer Truck. As your kids grow, you may find yourself approaching the limits of what the Ute can comfortably carry. My main concerns are the brakes and the aluminum frame. I love the light weight of the Ute’s frame, but aluminum can fail catastrophically under stress, where heavier steel frames tend to bend without breaking. I haven’t heard of any cases where the Ute has failed, but I wouldn’t want to be the first to discover where these limits are, especially with kids on the back.

Anyway, these are some things to keep in mind as you consider the options. Hope it helps!

I just found your website and find it quite interesting. I’m looking to buy myself a Kona Ute to roll arround with my 2 kids but I was wondering if you had any tips/experiences/links on how to add floor boards at the back for them to climb on the back rack and any recommandation on front seats that goes on the handle bars for small kids…?

I would like to be able to modify a 2008 UTE, something that may look like the Trek Transporter 2011.

Cheers, Marc from Quebec, Canada

Thanks for the tips… Anxious to read your comments..