A helmet is a must if you are doing a halfway serious run – even though NYC has made huge strides with bike lane infrastructure, we do not live in Chairman Mamdani’s Titoist cycling utopia just yet. The people who voluntarily drive in New York City are often NY Post-addled reactionaries who treat driving like the movie Death Race 2000 and face no consequences for it because killing a cyclist is functionally legal if you say “I’m sowwyyyy.” On top of this, cops are huge babies who don’t wanna do traffic enforcement since COVID lockdown, which makes sense because they park sideways on the sidewalk and often commute in from Long Island and the really racist part of Staten Island that doesn’t have good Sri Lankan food. To put it more bluntly, watch your ass on the road.