[HN Gopher] Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for ...
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Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons
Author : tejohnso
Score : 271 points
Date : 2022-05-22 12:30 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bikebiz.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bikebiz.com)
| dawnerd wrote:
| I can't real the article, the page keeps reloading itself but
| please please wear a helmet. It's so incredibly irresponsible not
| to.
| Gravyness wrote:
| Here is a excerpt from the article titled "Pedal Me bans staff
| riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons" by Rebecca
| Morley (no idea who she is or how to find her on
| google/linkedin) on 08/02/2022 at https://bikebiz.com/pedal-me-
| bans-staff-riders-from-wearing-...:
|
| > Pedal Me has explained the reasons why it has banned staff
| riders from wearing helmets.
|
| > In a Twitter thread, the pedal-powered passenger and cargo
| service said people that are taking risks that are sufficient
| that they feel they need to wear helmets are 'not welcome to
| work for us' - because its vehicles are heavy and could cause
| harm, and because they carry small children on the bikes.
|
| > Instead, it said it systematically works to reduce risk at
| the source- by thorough risk assessment, a high level of
| training, and near-miss reporting.
|
| > "We know that increasing helmet wearing rates make cycling
| more dangerous per mile - although there are confounding
| factors here, this indicates that overall they do not provide a
| strong protective effect in the round - otherwise the opposite
| effect," said the company. "Extensive reading of the literature
| suggests that this is because while helmets definitely help in
| the event of a crash, that risk compensation results in more
| collisions. So riders wearing helmets take greater risks, and
| those driving around them take greater risks too.
|
| > "A major cause of head injuries is going over the handlebars,
| which is not possible with a 3 metre long bike. Another thing
| that makes us unique is our training systems, maintenance
| systems, and ability to track poor rider behaviour."
|
| > [photo of twitter thread, the official place where all
| important things are said and done]
|
| > Pedal me: People that are taking risks that are sufficient
| that they feel they need to wear helmets are not welcome to
| work for us - because our vehicles are heavy and could cause
| harm, and because we carry small children on our bikes.
|
| > Clive Andrews: That would indeed be interesting to know.
| Compulsion is a bad idea - in either direction. What's the
| score, @pedalmeapp?
|
| Instead - we systematically work to reduce risk.(1/n)
|
| > Pedal Me said it observes that companies that use helmets
| while wearing cargo bikes seem to be 'much more likely' to jump
| red lights and take greater risks. The company said the
| majority of injuries to its riders occur off the bike, which it
| knows because of its near miss and incident reporting, and
| that's its focus for tackling danger.
|
| Not sure if sharing articles here is against the rules, please
| let me know.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| I personally ride without a helmet because the added weight and
| reduction invisibility reduces my awareness.
|
| That said, id never force someone else to eschew wearing a
| helmet. You have zero guarantee that what applies for one person
| applies to another rider in this context
| whimsicalism wrote:
| IIRC it is studied that cars behave more dangerously around
| bikers with helmets while they give a wide berth to unhelmeted
| bikers.
| tomphoolery wrote:
| "it is studied" Source please? This sounds like absolute
| bullshit. I've known so many people who have been killed or
| permanently disfigured because they didn't wear a helmet while
| biking in a large city. Cars don't give a fuck about us.
| andrenotgiant wrote:
| https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/publications/bicycle-
| he...
| gus_massa wrote:
| From the abstract:
|
| > _The distribution of overtaking events shifted just over
| one-fifth of a standard deviation closer to the rider - a
| potentially important behaviour if, as theoretical
| frameworks suggest, near-misses and collisions lie on a
| continuum._
|
| Looking at the graph in figure 1, " _one-fifth of a
| standard_ " looks as unimpressive as expected. The distance
| from the kerb looks much more relevant.
|
| IIUC all the analysis is based on 2355 data gathered by
| Walker riding a bike himself a few years ago between two
| cities. It's not a mix of data from different persons or a
| mix of city and countryside rides. The most interesting
| part is that Walker published 5 articles about the same
| data, and he got a different result in each one.
| analog31 wrote:
| Indeed the researcher was his own test subject.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yes, but you're missing that overtaking events is just
| one of the metrics in question.
|
| You're right that perhaps it is a big difference between
| cyclists, my guess would be the number of cars matters
| more than the number of cyclists. The study has been
| replicated elsewhere.
|
| > Walker published 5 articles about the same data, and he
| got a different result in each one.
|
| Uh, no? The 8.5 cm result has been consistent.
|
| At the margin, these things make a difference, especially
| given that collisions are rare as a fraction for rides
| taken.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Wikipedia links to this study[1] which found a difference of
| about 8,5cm in average, which sounds far from significant
| from a safety perspective (and again according to Wikipedia
| this study has been disputed).
|
| [1] https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.aap.2006.08.010
| whimsicalism wrote:
| As a biker who understands marginal thinking, 8.5 cm could
| absolutely be significant from a safety perspective.
|
| The study is disputed by one researcher, the paper I linked
| contains a rebuttal and I think it is convincing.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| https://psyarxiv.com/nxw2k
|
| To be clear, I am _not_ saying that it is safer to ride
| without a helmet, just an interesting study of behavior.
|
| I get that you know people who are harmed by cars (as do I),
| but your appeal to pathos & anecdote should not have a
| bearing here.
| logifail wrote:
| > This sounds like absolute bullshit. I've known so many
| people who have been killed or permanently disfigured because
| they didn't wear a helmet while biking in a large city.
|
| When I was at uni and was cycling to a 10am lecture, a small
| van pulled out of a side road across my path. I was in a
| cycle lane and had right of way. He simply didn't look in my
| direction until he had already started to pull out. I was
| unable to stop or avoid him, so hit the front of his van head
| on, was briefly airborne, and landed on the road on the other
| side. Miraculously only scuffs and bruises, although my bike
| was a write-off. At that point I started wearing a
| helmet(!!!)
|
| The next year, one of my friends went over the handlebars of
| her bike during a collision, except she landed head-first on
| the road, thankfully she _was_ wearing a helmet. The helmet
| was split, she walked away with nothing other than mild
| concussion. Another friend and I walked out to rescue her
| bike later from the accident location, it also was a write-
| off.
|
| Once you've seen a bike accident up-close there is simply no
| justification for not wearing a helmet. Even if you haven't
| seen an accident, wear a helmet!
| perlgeek wrote:
| There was one study about that, which was... not very robust
| science. It relied on self-report of the biker (and if I
| remember correctly, it was just a single one, so not enough
| data).
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Fair enough, although it relied on video data, not self
| report, and included over 2300 cars. Perhaps it would have
| been different for different cyclists.
|
| Here is a study investigating this methodology of studying
| car behavior and ultimately concluding it is useful: https://
| www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...
| perlgeek wrote:
| ... or in different cities, or even different countries, or
| at different times of day, or in different seasons.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| You're right, although I think you would find that it is
| very common for people to incorrectly generalize all
| sorts of studies beyond their geographic purview given
| that most psychological studies are conducted in regions
| close to major research unis. See also the "WEIRD"
| phenomenon.
|
| Not sure about the time or season though.
| sampo wrote:
| > There was one study about that, which was... not very
| robust science. It relied on self-report of the biker
|
| Here is another study, where they measured the distance to
| overtaking cars with a distance sensor:
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014.
| ..
|
| "A Trek hybrid bicycle was fitted with a Massa M-5000/95
| temperature-compensated ultrasonic distance sensor with its
| centre 0.77 m from the ground, facing perpendicularly to the
| direction of travel and feeding into a laptop computer
| running MultiLab software via a MultiLog Pro data-logger
| sampling from the sensor at 50 Hz."
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| This study is done by the same researcher as the first. I
| applaud Walker for studying this, but both his studies have
| a sample size of one cyclist - himself, riding in one area
| of one country. [He did put a wig on sometimes, so maybe
| you could say the sample size is 2? ]
| saghm wrote:
| > It relied on self-report of the biker (and if I remember
| correctly, it was just a single one, so not enough data).
|
| Unless I'm misunderstanding what's meant by "self-reporting",
| it sounds like regardless of how many riders they got data
| from, it would say that there are 0 fatalities to bikers
| because people who are dead don't respond to surveys.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| This is not a study of biker fatalities and my intuitive
| guess is they would be significantly higher for bikers
| without helmets for a number of reasons.
| saghm wrote:
| I agree that they would likely be higher for bikers
| without helments; I guess I misunderstood what the study
| was about, but my point was that if you relied on self-
| reporting for the number of fatalities, nobody would be
| able to report that they died for obvious reasons.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| The study was performed by Ian Walker. Self reporting means
| he was both the researcher and the cyclist - he rode his
| bike, reported the data, then analyzed it. There were no
| surveys or other riders. Unless you count "female Walker",
| when he wore a wig.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Yeah, there is always a study made somewhere by somebody
| supporting whatever you want to believe in.
|
| Individual studies are on average fairly useless.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Could you reply with the study showing the opposite using
| new data? It should be pretty easy given that there is
| always a study showing you what you want.
|
| I'll be waiting :)
| BurningFrog wrote:
| There is a big asymmetry of effort in these kinds of
| requests, that are easily mistaken for winning the
| argument.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| It's pretty easy to win the argument when the opposing
| side is "studies are meaningless."
| fian wrote:
| The problems is that cars passing cyclists isn't the only time
| adverse car-cyclist interactions occur.
|
| I have been T-boned by a driver approaching from the opposite
| direction, in full daylight with no visual disruptions, when
| they failed to "look bike" and turned across my lane. They
| totally did not see me - so they fact I was wearing a helmet
| did not factor at all into the situation.
|
| I was flipped through the air and landed 10m down the side road
| on my back. My backpack took the brunt of of the impact but my
| head still snapped back and hit the ground. The helmet
| protected my head and prevented what would have at least been a
| concussion and possibly a fractured skull.
|
| In my 30+ years of regularly cycling on roads, I'd say the
| majority of close calls I've had have happened in with cars
| turning out of side streets of with cars turning across my lane
| from the opposite direction. Those are due to a combination of
| the following in my perceived order of likelihood:
|
| - the driver checking for cars/buses/trucks and not looking for
| motorcycles or bicycles - the driver seeing the cyclist but
| totally misjudging their speed and assuming they have time to
| complete their turn in front of the bike - the driver being as
| asshole and cutting off the cyclist.
|
| _Maybe_ the cyclist wearing helmet could affect the second
| scenario. It doesn't affect the first scenario and assholes are
| assholes regardless of helmet wearing.
|
| I've had less trouble with close/reckless overtaking. It does
| happen, but it is highly unlike the car driver completely fails
| to see a cyclist they are overtaking.
|
| Saying helmets reduce rider safety due to one scenario, where
| the car driver has to see the helmet and thus the cyclist in
| order to make a more risky overtaking gap judgement call, seems
| like a massive stretch to me.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Absolutely agree, just thought it was interesting piece of
| evidence.
|
| As a regular biker, close passes are also a smaller of my
| concerns compared to most of the other hazards on the road.
| andrew_ wrote:
| Seems unreachable using Brave. Continually redirects.
| bragr wrote:
| I'm getting this as well
| dundarious wrote:
| Same on iOS Safari. Forcibly redirects to an /amp/ suffix.
| Thankfully, Archive.ph could swallow that AMP garbage:
| https://archive.ph/I6XGG
| perlgeek wrote:
| This assumes that the risk primarily originates from the riders,
| not from other traffic participants.
|
| Is there any data to substantiate this?
| scotty79 wrote:
| Other participants take less risk with riders not wearing
| helmets. There's data on this. For example they leave more room
| between the bicycle and a car when they are passing.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| Is the data you're talking about the data from Ian Walker's
| study in Bath, England? The sample size was one rider -
| himself. Other folks have analyzed his raw data and disputed
| the statistical power of the effect described. That rebuttal
| has also been re-rebutted. So that's three published studies
| about this, and three sets of headlines, but as far as I can
| tell, there's only ever been one actual study that collected
| data, and it was based on one dude in one area of one
| country.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| There's an easy fix for that; drive in the middle of the
| lane. At least where I live it's impossible to legally
| overtake a cyclist without switching lanes so for anyone
| driving correctly it doesn't make a difference anyway. Of
| course that's not a hard rule for every situation, but after
| a couple situations that almost killed me I just try to
| reduce risks. Car drivers hate us either way.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| As long as they see me I don't worry. They might do stupid
| stuff like honk at me or pass with small distance, but it's
| unlikely they'll kill me.
|
| The thing I'm afraid of is a car hitting me at high speed
| cause they didn't see me, that would probably kill me.
| sswaner wrote:
| As an active cyclist that was my first thought. Auto drivers
| texting while driving is my bigger concern. I wear a helmet to
| hopefully survive that encounter.
| sampo wrote:
| > Is there any data to substantiate this?
|
| Risk compensation is a known _theory_ in psychology. But as is
| normal for psychology, arguments fly back and forth, and there
| is no settled consensus.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation#Bicycle_helm...
| littlestymaar wrote:
| There is none, the "risk compensation" theory is a myth
| invented by Sam Peltzman without any evidence for the
| phenomenon (but as a good member of the Chicago school of
| Economics, his goal wasn't to make scientific discovery backed
| by facts, but to create a narrative against state regulations
| of any kind)
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Wearing a helmet is a low-cost no-brainer and it provides
| increased protection. It does NOT turn riders into daredevils,
| fairly certain any statistics that say so don't distinguish
| between single riders and those riding with cargo or passengers
| which are not idiots and know to adjust their riding accordingly.
|
| I'm fine with riders being able to choose whether to wear a
| helmet based on their skill, confidence and situation. But saying
| "wearing a helmet turns you into a psycho so don't, or we'll fire
| you" is really nonsensical and irresponsible.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > Wearing a helmet is a low-cost no-brainer
|
| Or in this case, a low-cost keep-your-brainer.
| shrimpx wrote:
| A low-cost brainer.
| itronitron wrote:
| Pedal Me should instead mandate that all staff riders wear
| helmets, but that those helmets must be 'high-visibility'
| (painted neon yellow, green, or pink, and with reflective
| stickers.)
|
| They can then tell customers that the helmets are there to
| improve visibility and therefore safety of their passengers.
| kijin wrote:
| Even better, put their own logo on the helmets and treat it as
| a kind of uniform, just like the pink mustache that Lyft used
| to have. That would double as free advertising, too.
| holoduke wrote:
| It's interesting that in the country where you have most bikes,
| the Netherlands, nobody is wearing helmets. Probably because it
| has the safest bike road network in the world. but still. Couple
| of deadly incidents every year occur because of no helmet.
| Something similar you see in France with skiing. While in Austria
| everybody is wearing a helmet in France is less than half of the
| skiers. Something cultural i guess.
| timbaboon wrote:
| End of 2020 I had a serious bike accident. I was specifically
| riding slowly and carefully because I did not want to fall and
| end up in hospital - in the middle of the second wave in SA and a
| shortage of hospital space. Even so, I had the most ridiculous
| and embarrassing crash, whilst hardly moving, and ended up in the
| ER. I was wearing a helmet and I still got a concussion. My
| helmet was broken and certainly saved me from a much more serious
| head injury. Additionally, the peak on the front managed to
| prevent my nose from smashing into the ground too (it was a weird
| angle). I would never cycle without a helmet ever.
| kuroguro wrote:
| Reminds me of when I first learned that most snowboarding
| injuries are at low speed or standing still and slipping. Not
| sure if it's true, but could be. Slipped on ice a few times -
| my tail bone didn't appreciate it.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, not sure how more careful a rider you can be when you
| have your own toddler in a child-seat behind you -- and yet my
| bike went down on an unexpectedly slick part of the pavement. I
| had a helmet on, as did my toddler.
|
| I don't buy the argument that because someone has a helmet on
| they're intentionally (or even subconsciously) reckless. Shit
| can happen.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Yeah, not sure how more careful a rider you can be when you
| have your own toddler in a child-seat behind you -- and yet
| my bike went down on an unexpectedly slick part of the
| pavement. I had a helmet on, as did my toddler.
|
| How does one safely transport a toddler? I am not asking
| incredulously, but curiously. I am an experienced cyclist; I
| don't know if I'd feel safe doing it, but I haven't looked
| into it either. Maybe a helmet is sufficient? And cars aren't
| perfectly safe either.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| _" riders wearing helmets take greater risks"_
|
| That's why I've glued 3-inch shards of broken glass to my
| steering wheel.
| Qub3d wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Tullock#Tullock's_spike (I
| think this was mentioned earlier but I can't find the comment,
| so I'll just link it again)
| mrraj wrote:
| I'd assume their dataset are professional couriers, <30, skewing
| male, which would be a high risk-taking pool. If that's the case
| wouldn't that make their conclusion conditional on being in that
| demographic? What if you're not?
|
| Despite that, there are actually a few good examples of safety
| equipment causing more injury. Off the top of my head, striking
| combat sports have a similar opinion of headgear in sparring, it
| causes the participants to throw harder resulting in more head
| trauma. Similar sentiments with helmets & padding in football.
|
| A bit apples and oranges with cycling as these are more example
| of mutually assured self destruction vs a car pulling out in
| front of you.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| Helmets are trying to reduce an already tiny risk.
|
| We live in a world of safety fanaticism.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Unlikely in the average but catastrophic to the individuals who
| lose the bet. Often society has to pay for the consequence to
| the victim.
|
| Which reminds me I need to get a helmet for my youngest, even
| though she's only a rider.
| realtomhanks wrote:
| It's political correctness gone mad!
| sva_ wrote:
| If you fall on asphalt without a helmet, you can very easily
| get seriously injured
| _Wintermute wrote:
| And this is why you always wear a helmet when walking or
| going for a jog?
| II2II wrote:
| Many walkers and joggers wear a lit up harness (or even
| bicycle lights) to improve their visibility while walking
| after dark in my area. So yes, some wear safety gear.
| sva_ wrote:
| If you cycle a lot, you're almost guaranteed to crash at
| some point. Falling from walking or jogging is extremely
| unlikely. You also have much better chance of blocking the
| fall with your arms, as they're not on a handlebar, but
| rather already balancing your body.
| nkingsy wrote:
| It's very hard to fall on your head at 10 mph or greater
| when jogging
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| When did anyone fall off a walk or a jog?
| MafellUser wrote:
| When was the last time you've been outside?
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| How often do people fall off of bicycles?
| Jensson wrote:
| Every single winter lots of people fall when walking or
| jogging.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Unless you're Usain Bolt, you probably ain't jogging or
| walking at bicycle speeds.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| At bicycle speeds?
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| 15-35 kmph for recreational usage. It's sprinting speeds
| for people who walk.
| harvey9 wrote:
| I used to be an EMT. There was one week when I went to two
| different calls that illustrated this perfectly. Both riders
| middle aged, both at low speed. One wearing a helmet hit a
| pothole and had minor facial injuries despite going over the
| handlebars. The other no helmet and out of practice fell
| sideways and the first thing to hit the kerb was her head.
| She's permanently disabled and living in a care facility.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| Anecdotal fear inducing internet story.
|
| Statistically 'in real life' extremely rare for this to
| happen.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > Statistically 'in real life' extremely rare for this to
| happen.
|
| Just like most forms of harm; most of the time that you
| take some form of insurance against a negative event,
| it's not necessarily because of the likelihood of that
| event, but the sheer totality of the harm that will occur
| if that extremely rare event comes to pass.
| harvey9 wrote:
| Yeah. But the family of the rider probably wishes she
| wasn't a statistic.
| II2II wrote:
| The "tiny risk" and potentially large consequences is why
| people should choose to wear helmets, regardless of experience.
| You never quite know when an accident is going to happen and it
| is difficult to account for that. The big risks are easier to
| account for, to be alert and modify your behaviour accordingly.
|
| I have seen experienced ice skaters go from not wearing a
| helmet to being fanatical about wearing one, simply because
| they had an accident and had to deal with the consequences. I
| have also seen experienced cyclists who would have likely lost
| their life if they weren't wearing a helmet.
|
| As for the company in question, which (incidently) was
| insisting that employees _not_ wear helmets, it sounds more
| like a decision based upon the perceptions of customers. If
| they were truly interested in hiring people who are safety
| conscious, they would hire people who are safety conscious
| rather than those who are willing to ride without a helmet.
| There are more than a few people who don 't wear helmets who
| have an astronomically high tollerance of risk.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Out of all the people who are vehemently arguing that it is
| pure idiocy not to wear a helmet, how many of them wear a
| helmet when driving? I can pretty safely guess that the
| answer is a big fat zero.
|
| Driving is high risk activity that can lead to severe head
| injuries. It is even easier to keep a helmet with your car
| than with your bike. The cost to risk profile here is
| extremely similar but the resultant behavior is quite
| different.
|
| People rarely approach risks rationally and risk avoidance
| behavior is highly influenced by social acceptability.
|
| During my lifetime of skiing, I have seen the shift from
| nobody wearing helmets to most people wearing them. The ski
| patrols worked hard to make helmet wearing first socially
| acceptable and then socially expected (at least in some
| groups.) The risks didn't changed, there was some rise in
| awareness, but the biggest change (from my perspective) is
| social.
|
| This I see the vehement support for helmet wearing as
| predominantly cultural alignment enforcement rather than
| reasoned risk avoidance analysis.
|
| Personally, I always wear a helmet skiing because it is more
| comfortable, plus I ski FAST sometimes. I rarely wear a
| helmet on a bicycle because I bike slow and strongly try to
| avoid situations where my safety is in the hands of other
| drivers. Instead I stick to mostly quiet residential streets,
| bike paths, or separated bike lines. The helmet has a much
| larger impact on my risk profile when skiing than biking
| because of my behaviors.
|
| All that said, I don't think that the company should ban
| standard safety gear for their riders. Especially since they
| claim to have good incident tracking, they should be able to
| find and let go any riders who act recklessly with a helmet.
| II2II wrote:
| Is there even a need for a helmet in most motor vehicles?
| Many safety features are already incorporated into the
| vehicle and the vehicle itself must meet safety standards.
| Contrast that to bicycles, which are often sold without
| legally mandated safety features and it is very much
| possible to purchase a new bicycle which should be
| considered criminally unsafe.[1]
|
| The only reason why we are asking these questions is
| because things that are legally required for automakers is
| left, at best, as a responsibility to the consumer when it
| comes to bicycles.
|
| [1] To be specific, any department store should be regarded
| as a death trap prior to a knowledgeable person verifying
| that it has been assembled properly. Even then one has to
| be careful since the components are typically intended for
| very light use.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > Driving is high risk activity that can lead to severe
| head injuries. It is even easier to keep a helmet with your
| car than with your bike. The cost to risk profile here is
| extremely similar but the resultant behavior is quite
| different.
|
| Just FTR, don't wear a helmet while driving a car. It will
| massively increase the strain on your spine in the case of
| a crash and your airbags are not built with helmets in
| mind. Additionally, car helmets are usually of the full-
| size kind and reduce your field of vision quite a bit.
| There's a reason helmets are not recommended for normal
| driving.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| Sorry, but this is a bad, dumb comment. Your point is valid
| generally, but not here.
|
| What is the COST of wearing a helmet? $60 purchase and 5
| seconds every time you ride. Essentially nothing.
|
| Compare to, e.g. TSA, which has a cost of billions of dollars
| and millions of person-hours. Unlike helmets, which are known
| to actually prevent some injuries, TSA is also effectively
| useless at its intended goal.
| ginko wrote:
| >What is the COST of wearing a helmet? $60 purchase and 5
| seconds every time you ride. Essentially nothing.
|
| For me the main cost is having to carry around a bulky helmet
| when I'm off the bike and ugly indentations on my hair and
| forehead.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| It's hypocritical of you to not be wearing full body chain
| mail to protect yourself from bullets and stabbings.
|
| There's more gunshots and stabbings than people injuring
| their head on bicycles.
|
| You can buy a suit of chainmail for the same price as a
| modern bicycle.
|
| Its minimal cost.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > It's hypocritical of you to not be wearing full body
| chain mail to protect yourself from bullets and stabbings.
|
| In most countries, the risk of shootings or stabbings are
| orders of magnitude lower than having a fall or accident on
| a bike on the road with other types of vehicles.
|
| In certain parts of the US, though? Yeah, wearing body
| armor would probably be a good idea. I think people just
| generally try to avoid going to those places as their
| strategy of risk avoidance, which negates the need for any
| body armor.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| I bet if you looked up just about any region in the world
| shootings and stabbings have been way more frequently
| than bicycle head injuries.
|
| to be absolutely safe you should wear both full body
| chainmail and a bicycle helmet.
| nkingsy wrote:
| A minor fall on a bike that results in a blow to the head can
| kill you or give you major brain damage. I am not a social
| person and I know as in we would hug if we saw each other 2
| people who had life altering brain damage not wearing a helmet.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| Is this true?
|
| Anecdotally I bought a very fast electric scooter last year, but
| initially I didn't have a helmet. It took about two weeks to
| finally receive a helmet that fit me, and I didn't take it at top
| speed until then. I definitely feel much more secure riding with
| the helmet on...and take more risks than I would without it.
| jacknews wrote:
| Is this the same argument as 'we should ban condoms, because
| people have more sex when they think they have some protection'
| ...
| gumby wrote:
| This is extremely context specific. It calls to mind another
| counter-intuitive Dutch effort, in which stop signs and speed
| limits were removed, which slowed traffic down and made a village
| safer. Traffic engineers know that too many stop signs increase
| the speed of driving as impatient drivers speed up between stop
| signs.
|
| http://www.godutch.com/newspaper/index.php?id=1557
| bigcat12345678 wrote:
| This whole idea of wearing helmet results riskier behavior is
| about bullshit as the WMD theory of Iraq invasion.
|
| If pedal me indeed is spending resources on education and
| training of their employees, which they claimed allow them to
| maintain high standard of safety. Then, it's self evident that
| wearing helmet will be better, as the same training can help them
| overcome the tendance to be riskier wearing helmet.
|
| There is no reason to claim that training for wearing helmet and
| not wearing helmet would not result into equally effective
| results.
| [deleted]
| polote wrote:
| At my scale, I know that when I go mountain biking, when I have
| an helmet, I go faster and take much more risk than when I don't
| have an helmet. I don't have any data point about road biking,
| because I never wear a helmet. But thinking about it, I would
| also take more risks with more protective equipments
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| But what is your overall safety. Like can you still get
| seriously injured being careful not wearing a helmet
| jtbayly wrote:
| Can you still get seriously injured being careful wearing a
| helmet?
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| kzrdude wrote:
| I know me, I was already going as fast as possible on a city
| bike. With a helmet I'm safer when actually having an accident.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| How dare those guys drive on roads with cars!
|
| This seems insane. _Even if_ the data supported this, anyone from
| the PR department should have seen how much bad press this
| generates from a mile away.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| From their point of view, it's like if a delivery company
| banned drivers from installing roll-cages and racing harnesses
| - the initial question should be, why on earth do you think you
| need that?
| ericbarrett wrote:
| A fall from bicycle height onto concrete can _kill you_ if
| you hit your head--even if the bicycle is completely
| stationary. This rule is BS and I expect the company will be
| pressured to reverse their decision immediately.
|
| Sincerely, a guy who's probably alive because of a bicycle
| helmet.
| jstanley wrote:
| It's more like banning drivers from wearing seatbelts.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| It's more like if a delivery company banned their drivers
| from installing seat belts and airbags. Even if you are a
| perfect driver, other people aren't and on a bike, your will
| be the one hurting after a crash.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| Not at all. Seatbelts are a legal requirement, helmets are
| not. This is employees wearing body amour, which is seen as
| either encouraging risk-taking, or giving the illusion that
| the activity is risky.
| indymike wrote:
| I'm pretty sure a professional looking branded helmet
| would be better for business. This is just a classic case
| of putting the employee at risk of injury to scire some
| tiny marketing points. This is an easy decision. Endanger
| employees or make a tiny bit more money. Factor in one
| lawsuit and all the profit will be gone.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| In Germany it's actually discussed quite heavily whether
| to make helmets a legal requirement. I also don't see how
| you don't think of bikes driving on roads as risky. Even
| with a helmet, you can get very seriously injured; a
| helmet will just help you to not die and (hopefully)
| still walk again afterwards. Feel free to look up images
| from serious bike accidents; I can't imagine anyone sane
| risking that, helmet or not.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| I cycle 10,000km+ a year in London, so I think I have a
| better idea about this than the vast majority of HN
| commenters. I generally wear a helmet, but encouraging
| and definitely enforcing helmet use is the least
| effective thing we can do to protect people [0].
|
| https://lmb.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/01/FJKHORIVUAI799Z.j...
| yellowapple wrote:
| Nobody's even "encouraging" (let alone "enforcing")
| helmet use in this case. This is purely staff riders
| choosing on their own whether or not they should wear a
| helmet, and Pedal Me throwing a fit over it over some
| patently absurd "safety reasons".
| jstanley wrote:
| If you generally wear a helmet, aren't you either
| encouraging risk-taking, or giving the illusion that the
| activity is risky?
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Well, if you think wearing a helmet increases risk, why
| do you wear one?
|
| Don't get me wrong, I don't want to force anyone to wear
| a helmet. It's completely fine if one wants to take that
| risk. But forbidding them is just insane.
|
| Also, helmets are not a get-out-of-jail-free-card. They
| increase your chances of survival in case of a crash, you
| will still get injured. Protecting people might be the
| least effective thing compared to eliminating the hazard,
| but splitting cars and bikes is simply not always an
| option.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| I never said _I_ think wearing a helmet increases risk. I
| was pointing out their reasoning which many people here
| seem to be missing.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Fair enough, I did indeed miss that!
|
| But I stand by my original comment, even if they do think
| forbidding helmets avoids a few accidents, they should
| have smelled the shitstorm from a mile away (and people
| running a bike company should really be more empathetic
| towards bikers).
| anonymousab wrote:
| > or giving the illusion that the activity is risky.
|
| Urban biking is inherently risky, especially in
| countries/states/cities with lackluster or nonexistent
| safe cycling infrastructure.
|
| Wearing a helmet is just trying to reduce the potential
| damage from unforeseen and unexpected accidents - things
| that may likely be 100% outside of control of the biker
| once they are on the road. It's not a matter of "I want
| to wear a helmet so that I can take more risks" and it's
| ridiculous that Pedal Me is peddling such an excuse.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Not at all, the other analogy was better
|
| Yours seems to be based on the assumption that if it is
| not mandated by law, it is not a good idea that can save
| lives, which is the criteria by which others are
| evaluating this
|
| It's also worth noting that biking in a city around cars
| and bikes and other people IS objectively risky, to the
| point where it is completely reasonable for someone to
| choose to wear a single piece of safety equipment over
| their single most important human organ
| slackfan wrote:
| renewiltord wrote:
| HN is the average person forming an uneducated Wikipedia search
| on the subject. Therefore has a massive status quo bias. They'd
| believe a study that said they're holding a cube over the fact
| that they can't find any corners.
|
| There's no reason to hate that, though. It's just not an
| experts forum. It's just a place for average people to chat on
| tech-adjacent stuff. And there's no harm in that.
| nkozyra wrote:
| In these casual conversations non-experts weigh in and give
| their opinions on subjects of all varieties all the time.
|
| I'm assuming from the snark that you have some expertise in
| this area and if so it would probably be good to see some of it
| here because all I've seen from the company and commentary is
| anecdata.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> seem to be 'much more likely'_
|
| I'd expect something more solid than "seem to be" as evidence
| from someone demanding I not wear a cycle helmet.
|
| There is evidence that some drivers are less careful around
| cyclists wearing helmets meaning there are more accidents, but if
| you look deeper into to those stats most of the extra incidents
| are relatively minor and on the major ones significant head
| injuries are more common. So more a few more incidents, but the
| survivability rate is still better overall with a helmet.
| wzdd wrote:
| This is a pedicab service. A cynic would assume that Pedal Me is
| mandating this (and thus putting their drivers at risk) because
| passengers are more nervous about taking a service where the
| driver wears a helmet and they do not.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Those people aren't riding bikes 8-10 hours a day, 5-6 days a
| week. If they can't see the difference then maybe they're
| better off without a pedicab, I would be afraid to deal with
| customers who were that smooth brained.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| So why not do the reasonable thing and provide passengers with
| helmets, like they do with motorbike taxi?
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Who decided that was reasonable? I certainly did not.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| You dont think its reasonable to offer passengers the
| option to wear a helmet?
|
| I suppose it's also not reasonable to provide seatbelts to
| passengers as well as the driver of a taxi?
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| "You dont think its reasonable to offer passengers the
| option to wear a helmet?"
|
| No. Which means it's not automatically "the reasonable
| thing", just an opinion.
| mcherm wrote:
| Just because one person disagrees doesn't mean it isn't
| reasonable. I've met people who (claim to) believe the
| earth is flat, but surely no one would consider that
| belief "reasonable".
|
| So I'm curious what the REASONING is behind your feeling
| that offering passengers the option to wear a helmet is
| unreasonable. Personally, I would AGREE that offering
| passengers on a pedicab the option of a pineapple would
| be unreasonable. There just isn't any practical
| correlation between pineapples and pedicabs. But helmets
| are different: there are large numbers of people who
| campaign vigorously to persuade others to wear helmets
| when on a bike; many places even have laws mandating
| helmets on bikes, at least for some ages. So it is a
| plausible thing for passengers to want. Given that, why
| would it be unreasonable to offer it?
| ModernMech wrote:
| > Given that, why would it be unreasonable to offer it?
|
| I'd worry about lice.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| pessimizer wrote:
| Declaring things "reasonable" based on nothing is like
| declaring things "common sense" based on nothing. The
| only way to disagree is to be unreasonable and stupid.
| It's the kind of thing you say when you're demanding
| people agree with you, not convincing them to.
| mint2 wrote:
| One of the hackers news guidelines is to take the
| generous view of comments rather than reply based on the
| most negative readings. Often the negative readings can
| turn out to be an uncommon, Nonstandard interpretation.
|
| Yes The context of the scope of the word "the" in the
| comment that you're replying to is not specifically
| written out, but most people and the poster will infer it
| to be the context of the binary choice being discussed,
| either offer or not offer helmets to passengers, and not
| the global choice of offering them hover boards, bags of
| octopus, or helmets or etc
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I don't understand why I'm not allowed to point out that
| the comment presumes.
|
| Someon's feelings do not define that which is reasonable
| for anyone else but theirself. But the comment presumes
| it is. The comment skips past the arguability of that
| position as though it were not arguable, and all I said
| was that this is in fact arguable.
|
| Whatever your problem with that is, isn't valid.
| watwut wrote:
| It makes the activity look dangerous. I do perceive motorbike
| taxi as more dangerous then, say, car.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| It should not be a reasonable basis for denying their
| employees right to wear PPE.
| dymk wrote:
| Lice
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is a consideration, but there are solutions, like
| disposable caps. There are also sanitizing sprays. It
| wouldn't be the first time people share helmets.
|
| Also, the idea is to offer an option. Not to make it
| mandatory unless legislation require it. If your passengers
| are more comfortable not wearing them, their choice.
| searchableguy wrote:
| Exactly what I think as well.
|
| This might lower risk for the customers because driver may take
| less risk without a helmet in some situation but the risk for
| driver is only increased.
|
| This is optimizing for customers at the cost of drivers.
|
| I don't see any supportive extensive research linked from them
| .
| shrimpx wrote:
| How is it optimizing for customers, when customers don't wear
| helmets either?
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Because the crashes are less likely when the driver is not
| wearing a helmet. This is sort of the point of the article.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Sorry I wasn't clear. How is it optimizing for customers
| _at the cost of drivers_ , which is what the post I was
| replying to said?
| nielsole wrote:
| While number of crashes are likely getting reduced, head
| injuries to drivers may increase or be fatal.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Correct, and publicly banning helmets is a publicity move (see:
| we're talking about the company).
| shrimpx wrote:
| The obvious solution is to require passengers to wear helmets,
| as well as the drivers. But this brings us to the core of the
| endless helmet debate, which is that lots of people are deeply
| repulsed by wearing a goofy ass helmet and getting nasty helmet
| hair while out on the town. And the data shows that if you
| require helmets, lots of people stop cycling -- in this case,
| people would stop using bike taxis.
| ck2 wrote:
| Is their insurance aware of the "no helmet" requirement?
|
| Because if not, they might have another problem.
|
| Like motorcycles, you never see a "just a scratch" collision bike
| vs car.
|
| Maybe solves the cost of hospitalization if they are dead
| instead.
| alexggordon wrote:
| Note, these are not normal bikes. From the article:
|
| > A major cause of head injuries is going over the handlebars,
| which is not possible with a 3 metre long bike. Another thing
| that makes us unique is our training systems, maintenance
| systems, and ability to track poor rider behaviour.
|
| Made me curious what they actually look like[0].
|
| Seeing that, I'd tend to reset my presumptions about wearing
| helmets with these. There's definitely going to be a different
| injury profile with these bikes than the bikes you rode as a kid.
| Without seeing those injury profiles I'd probably say you can't
| really deduce anything from this announcement.
|
| [0] https://www.positive.news/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/02/Pedal-M...
| freedomben wrote:
| I wish more people would see this! Judging by 95% of the
| comments on here, people think it's just "helmets in general"
| that they're talking about. The don't seem to realize that
| these are not normal bikes.
| cush wrote:
| It's irrelevant how much data and training they have. Accidents
| happen and an accident with a car and no helmet is a bad time.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I changed my mind; I don't think any of the people, the
| driver/pedaller nor the passengers should have to wear helmets
| because that would make them look stupid!
| krab wrote:
| I'd like to wear helmet as a passenger as well as a driver on
| such bike. The helmet doesn't add almost any inconvenience, is
| reasonably cheap and light. Why not wear it?
|
| I use shared bikes one-way quite often and I usually carry my
| helmet around, strapped to a backpack. In colder weather I
| would cycle in a business shirt. No issue with a helmet.
| rsanek wrote:
| >Why not wear it?
|
| The argument that is mentioned in the article -- "increasing
| helmet wearing rates make cycling more dangerous per mile...
| because while helmets definitely help in the event of a
| crash, that risk compensation results in more collisions. So
| riders wearing helmets take greater risks, and those driving
| around them take greater risks too."
| InCityDreams wrote:
| My friend has given me permission to freely use the video of
| them falling and cracking their helmet. I won't use
| it....because the internet is a cunt..but, things do go
| sideways, too.
| Matthias247 wrote:
| Sure. It makes the profile slightly different. But is it enough
| different to eg say the risk of head injury is 99% reduced? I
| doubt it.
|
| Theres plenty of scenarios left. What about and impact from the
| side and the rider falling in an arbitrary direction? A car
| rear ending it? And while a front-flip due to heavy breaking is
| unlikely, I'm sure if the front tire hits a high enough
| obstacle at enough speed it would still do it
| charles_f wrote:
| > A major cause of head injuries is going over the handlebars,
| which is not possible with a 3 metre long bike.
|
| Disregards that going over the handlebars happens in case if
| frontal collision, which can definitely happen with a 15m bike.
| Would you hurt your head? Who knows, because they're not
| looking at that statistics.
|
| > makes us unique is our training systems, maintenance systems,
| and ability to track poor rider behaviour
|
| Victim blaming. Assumes that accidents can be prevented by
| having a safer behaviour. They're lowered, sure, but
| anecdotally in all the bike accidents of people I know, the car
| involved did something stupid, and there's no prevention from
| that, whatever you train people for, short of not going on the
| road, they're at the mercy of people driving 2 tons of steel
| whilst texting. Multiply by the extended time they spend out,
| and it becomes statistics
| aniforprez wrote:
| This assumes that it's completely impossible to not hit your
| head when you fall on your side. Which is blatantly not true.
| This isn't a three-wheeler bike which is much harder to tip
| over. It's just a two wheeler that's longer. I can attest from
| personal experience that if you fall sideways, chances are
| you'll crack the side of your skull open. I got into a bike
| accident where someone T-boned me and if I hadn't had the
| helmet on, at the very least I'd have a concussion
|
| The idea that you don't need to wear a helmet cause you won't
| fall over the handlebars is nonsense
| kiba wrote:
| Is there a way to fight risk compensation?
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| Self control?
| [deleted]
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| Had an accident a few years back, not my fault. If it wasn't for
| the helmet I would sit on a wheelchair.
| calibas wrote:
| "If you're driving so dangerously that you feel the need to wear
| a seat belt, you shouldn't be driving a car."
| watwut wrote:
| That is actually true. If your driving style involves you
| feeling those seat belts or situations in which you think you
| might crash, the your driving style is too dangerous. Once in a
| few years close call? ok. Regularly feeling like you need
| seatbelts? You should not be driving and should take safety
| focused additional lessons.
| calibas wrote:
| It's not even remotely true for a car seat belt or a bike
| helmet. You can be extremely cautious, and still through no
| fault of your own have someone crash into you.
| watwut wrote:
| Yes accidents happen to innocent people.
|
| But no. If your driving style is such that you feel the
| need of seatbelt or helmet, then it is too aggressive.
| Otherwise said, if your biking story is "helmet saved my
| life 5 times" then your crash rate is super high and the
| common determinant is you.
|
| Likewise, safe driving style never ends with anyone saying
| "I am so glad I has seatbelts". It ends with people
| unbuckling without thinking about seatbelts at all.
| hcrean wrote:
| There is an equation governing fatality along the lines of:
|
| D% = A% * F%
|
| A% = Chance of getting into an accident
|
| F% = Chance of a given accident being fatal
|
| D% = Chance of cyclist dying in a given time period
|
| There is a possibility that the increase in A% caused by wearing
| a helmet is greater than the corresponding decrease in F%, in
| this case it is indeed safer not to wear helmets. To justify this
| there would have to be some _VERY_ conclusive statistical
| evidence support both sides of the calculation, or the company
| will open itself up to a massive lawsuit the first time someone
| has an accident.
| bowsamic wrote:
| That's the most London-based startup thing I've heard of
| EveryCrownFall wrote:
| Survivorship bias ?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
| qgin wrote:
| I'm really looking forward to following this line of thinking to
| it's eventual replacement of car airbags with nuclear bombs. How
| much more careful would drivers be if they knew a collision would
| kill everyone in a 100 mile radius?
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| One good head injury and a lawsuit, and this company will be out
| of business. And rightfully.
| [deleted]
| mabbo wrote:
| This feels a bit like the narrator in "Fight Club" explaining
| "the formula" car manufacturers use.
|
| > Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the
| probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court
| settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the
| cost of a recall, we don't do one.
|
| Pedal Me has done the math on what the average settlement for a
| traumatic brain injury to it's staff is going to be, multiplied
| by the probability of such an event, and has decided that they'll
| make more money without helmets.
|
| It ignores that much of the risk comes from outside of the
| drivers control. It ignores that driver behavior could otherwise
| be monitored to ensure safety.
|
| It would just be nice if it was honest- a driver with a helmet on
| doesn't match the sexy appeal they're going for. That people
| might say "if the driver needs a helmet why don't I, the rider?".
| Rygian wrote:
| I didn't remember that the real-life Ford Pinto case [1] was
| mentioned in _Fight Club_. Time to watch it again.
|
| [1] https://philosophia.uncg.edu/phi361-matteson/module-1-why-
| do...
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Let's see how that works out for them. Being clever.
|
| Edit: this was a tongue in cheek reference to the follow-up
| line in Fight Club (after the scene alluded to by OP).
| _Wintermute wrote:
| They're hugely successful in London, so pretty well I guess?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Are they? First time I'm hearing about those. Is there
| actual demand for this?
|
| I live in their target area and I can't ever recall a time
| where I wanted to combine the risks & downsides of biking
| _and_ ordering a cab.
|
| If I want to bike (note: I wouldn't recommend it in Central
| London), I'd get the Santander bikes or the various bike-
| for-hire ones littering the streets and just do it myself.
|
| If I wanted to spend time fiddling with my phone, I may as
| well just order an Uber instead of this thing? The prices
| would be similar considering they both have to pay drivers
| and driver wages represent a significant chunk of the
| sticker price of any manned transport-for-hire service so I
| really don't see why anyone would get this thing instead of
| a good old Uber.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| I see at least one or two of them every time I commute
| across London, they seem predominantly used for
| transporting items rather than people.
| polote wrote:
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Comments like this do not make HN a better place. If you
| think helmets are a safety hazard, please make your case
| rather than mocking the OP.
| moonbug wrote:
| HN is not a good place.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| Hm. Pretty jaded towards here and everything, and I
| hadn't made my way to that, yet.
|
| I'm sure one can make a case for it -- but do you really
| feel that way as a default?
|
| Why do you remain, if so?
| scotty79 wrote:
| I think the point is that you'll have less traumatic brain
| injuries without helmets than with helmets because you'll have
| less accidents over all and less severe ones.
|
| If a cyclist have a helmet he and everyone around him behaves
| dumber. This was researched.
| mabbo wrote:
| > less traumatic brain injuries without helmets than with
| helmets because you'll have less accidents over all and less
| severe ones.
|
| Less accidents overall? I can believe that, maybe. But you'll
| need to back up "less severe ones".
|
| If a new driver who's phone distracted them for a split
| second is going to hit me on my bike, I feel like it's going
| to be more severe if I don't have a helmet on.
| Tao332 wrote:
| > I feel like it's going to be more severe if I don't have
| a helmet on.
|
| Without the helmet you die on the road. With the helmet you
| die at the hospital.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > If a cyclist have a helmet he and everyone around him
| behaves dumber. This was researched.
|
| This seems like an extraordinary claim, given that safety
| systems in all other places have no such effects (or at
| least, not as significant). I would very much like to see
| this research, and even then I would be very wary of it.
|
| Either way, it's irrelevant given the levels of training that
| they are claiming they demand of their drivers. Given those
| claims, it's obvious that they helmets + training would be
| safer than just the training, if the training is good enough
| to protect the drivers at all.
| davidcbc wrote:
| > This seems like an extraordinary claim, given that safety
| systems in all other places have no such effects (or at
| least, not as significant).
|
| There are examples where safety systems cause increased
| risk.
|
| Football helmets are one. The helmet doesn't protect very
| well against concussions and the presence of the helmet
| makes it more likely for players to use their heads as a
| weapon.
|
| I don't know about this bike helmet example since the
| actual data isn't available, but there are definitely times
| when counterintuitively having a safety feature is riskier.
| nbernard wrote:
| > It ignores that much of the risk comes from outside of the
| drivers control.
|
| True; on the other hand I remember (I don't have a handy
| reference, sorry) a study showing that car drivers were leaving
| less space around cyclists wearing a helmet (hence increasing
| the probability of a collision) than around those without...
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I haven't seen anyone mentioning the Ian Walker study on drivers'
| responses to cyclists with and without helmets.
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| I don't have access to the study, but wasn't it the one where:
|
| - the author was the only person studied
|
| - the difference wasn't that big
|
| ?
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| That's the one. Due to its small size, it's more indicative
| of an effect - it would be interesting to see if it could be
| replicated. There's some bike cams (Garmin?) that include a
| radar to measure closeness of vehicles passing, so it would
| be relatively easy to conduct a much larger scale.
| edw519 wrote:
| Translation: If you're an organ transplant candidate on a waiting
| list, move to an area with more Pedal Me riders.
| davidg109 wrote:
| Do drivers take greater risks from wearing a seatbelt? Where's
| the data to substantiate their claims?
| sampo wrote:
| > Do drivers take greater risks from wearing a seatbelt?
|
| Some people have suggested even that:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation#Seat_belts
| stephen_g wrote:
| It seems completely debunked in that case at least.
|
| I can imagine how somebody could have thought risk
| compensation might be a thing in the short term - such as
| when seatbelts were a new invention. I've seen the kind of
| thing like people demonstrating how their active cruise
| control won't let their new car crash into the car in front,
| which is a pretty dumb idea (even if it will almost certainly
| work). But that seems to wear off pretty quickly, and then
| having it just becomes the default and you don't think of it
| anymore, so I imagine any risk compensation would quickly
| evaporate.
|
| With bicycle helmets, they're mandatory here for riding out
| on the street, so it was just always the default.
| Anecdotally, putting on a helmet was and is just something we
| always did, and never changed the perception of risk because
| it was just the normal default. I don't even think about it,
| just like how I always put on the seatbelt and then don't
| think about it anymore.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > I've seen the kind of thing like people demonstrating how
| their active cruise control won't let their new car crash
| into the car in front, which is a pretty dumb idea (even if
| it will almost certainly work)
|
| Guilty as charged lol (though in my case it's to better
| understand how ACC behaved in various situations, given my
| unfamiliarity with it.
| eropple wrote:
| Followed immediately in the same section by a wider, more
| comprehensive, more recent study roundly asserting the exact
| opposite.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| The risk compensation myth was crafted in the 70s as an
| argument against _guardrails_! And it was indeed reused as an
| argument again seatbelts a few years later. And of course,
| there has never been any data to substantiate these arguments.
| op00to wrote:
| I worked with traumatic brain injury patients as part of my job
| in a neuroimaging research lab. Holy shit, wear a god damned
| helmet!
| avgcorrection wrote:
| The title is weird.
|
| 1. [...] wearing helmets because it is less safe to wear helmets
|
| 2. [...] wearing helmets if such helmet-wearing is motivated by
| safety concerns
|
| I'm guessing that only the first one makes sense now that I think
| about it. But I first thought that the riders had said, hey we
| want to wear helmets because we have safety concerns. And then
| the management said no.
| cratermoon wrote:
| "increasing helmet wearing rates make cycling more dangerous per
| mile - although there are confounding factors"
|
| WTAF kind of statistics-twisting garbage is that?
| heikkilevanto wrote:
| Must be a cultural thing. If someone tried this here in Denmark,
| they would get such a shitstorm. Helmets are generally understood
| to increase cyclist safety.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Interesting!
|
| AFAIK, in the Netherlands helmets are considered to slightly
| reduce safety in the general case (but this is not a strong
| effect).
|
| The general objective is to make infrastructure sufficiently
| safe so that helmets become redundant.
| shlant wrote:
| relevant article:
| https://dutchreview.com/culture/cycling/5-reasons-why-the-
| du...
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| No amount of infrastructure safety will help if you take a
| tumble and hit your head - a helmet would totally help.
|
| Even experienced cyclists take the occasional fall :)
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Technically you are correct that wearing a helmet does
| reduce risk of head injury somewhat. However -when
| infrastructure for cycling is already very safe- you start
| seeing all sorts of strange statistical effects; and it is
| not immediately obvious that helmets are a net benefit.
|
| As an example of one of the more funny&misleading
| statistics: People who wear bicycle helmets in the
| Netherlands actually end up in hospital more often.
| https://waronthemotorist.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/who-are-
| al...
|
| I looked around a bit to see if I could find a paper that
| takes a balanced view. This particular paper seems to be a
| bit more from your perspective where wearing helmets might
| be of some utility. However it does leave the impression
| that it is would actually be somewhat hard to break even on
| wearing helmets in the Netherlands. https://bmcpublichealth
| .biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...
| bombcar wrote:
| I assume the paper checked that the non-helmet wearers
| were not appearing in the morgue?
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| The first document explains that people who take risks
| (like riding at high speeds or on a mountain bike) DO
| wear helmets in the Netherlands. Which is the reason why
| helmet wearers show up in hospital more often.
|
| The second is a recent paper that applies evenly to
| people who ride a bike "normally", [From experience: at
| low speeds on segregated infrastructure at around 15 km/h
| or so]. My interpretation is that it concludes that
| wearing a helmet _would_ improve safety for cyclists
| somewhat; however it would not (currently) be risk-cost-
| effective according to their measure; and would require
| intervention to break even.
| grumple wrote:
| There's a couple takeaways from the first article. The
| cyclists with helmets are the serious ones riding for
| sport. I'd also guess commuters who are going long
| distances wear helmets. These cyclists are putting in far
| more miles than unhelmeted cyclists. I see the same thing
| in my city; very casual bikers don't wear helmets.
| Commuters and sport cyclists do. And those groups are
| putting in the most miles by far.
|
| If zero people rode bikes without helmets, you'd see 0
| cyclists without helmets in the hospital. All those
| injured will be wearing helmets. It's a terrible measure.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| You've got the gist of it. I'm trying to point out how
| .nl statistics come out funny because the infrastructure
| has been made so safe.
|
| Commuters actually make up the majority of cyclists in
| the Netherlands, there are a _lot_ of them (cycle
| commuting is heavily encouraged for all kinds of people
| at all ages), and they don 't wear helmets. Despite the
| large number of commuters on bicycles, commuting is
| (apparently) so safe that the commuters are heavily
| outnumbered by the sports cyclists in the hospital
| statistics.
|
| It is still a somewhat misleading measure of course. You
| probably should not conclude that wearing a helmet is
| highly unsafe. ;-)
|
| And... that's the point I'm making. Take measures from
| the Netherlands with a few grains of salt, because the
| situation is atypical. On the one hand it's really cool
| that it's atypical, but then you do need to watch out.
| The numbers don't line up with the intuition of someone
| from a typical cars-are-more-important-than-safety
| country at all; so it's easy to make funny assumptions
| and draw wrong conclusions.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD-uImSUlPo <- eg.
| arbitrary busy cycle crossing(s?) in Utrecht. Seems to be
| mostly commuters and university students.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAKMNr0P5r4 <- or eg here
| on dedicated paths, Nieuwegein. A lot of school children
| at that particular point in time by the look of it.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Yeah, my dad almost died like that. On a separated bike
| path in very good condition, he would have only been going
| about 30 km/h given where it was (he can't actually
| remember what happened due to TBI but managed to make a
| full recovery after four months of hospital and rehab).
| Comparing the size of the foam on the impact side of the
| helmet vs. the other side was amazing, it was squashed to a
| fraction of the size. If that had been skull straight onto
| the concrete it would have been lights out pretty much
| instantly.
| mrpopo wrote:
| Which they mentioned in the article:
|
| "A major cause of head injuries is going over the
| handlebars, which is not possible with a 3 metre long bike.
|
| Helmets protect against falls. They don't protect against
| cars.
| anonymousab wrote:
| When a biker gets in a car accident, falling is generally
| going to be a part of that process.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Unless the bike is made of rubber, you can totally hit
| your head somewhere on the bike.
|
| Also look at the amount of car vs. bike accidents where
| the cyclists head smashes against the windshield. A
| helmet protects in that case too.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Probably should wear a hocky mask then.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| And body armour, why not.
| cheshire137 wrote:
| Oof, this page just keeps reloading on mobile, article is
| unreadable.
| locallost wrote:
| 196 points and 513 comments at the moment... obviously a very
| controversial topic. But would it be a very controversial topic
| if a taxi company announced the same thing, that taxi drivers
| should not wear helmets? Formula 1 drivers wear helmets, so maybe
| car drivers should too. People that insist on bike helmets
| because of their bad experience have as much to say to overall
| safety as people that got a head injury while driving in a car.
| How many injuries would a car helmet prevent and why is there no
| push for this, since the answer is a lot.
|
| I guess this is my roundabout way of saying that I don't think
| this discussion is very rational. We accept a ton of risk in
| everyday life, but people get up in arms over this one thing. I
| guess one reason for this is that it's not viewed as a normal
| activity, which is a shame. And personally I view it as an
| instrument in preventing it ever becoming one.
| carapace wrote:
| Car drivers and passengers should wear helmets. Car travel is
| the most dangerous thing most people do regularly. It's only
| normalized due to a deliberate campaign of domestic propaganda:
| "The Real Reason Jaywalking Is A Crime (Adam Ruins Everything)"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM
| PufPufPuf wrote:
| Cars have other safety mechanisms that provide the same safety
| as helmets, most notably seatbelts and airbags. A better
| comparison would be a taxi company asking drivers to drive
| without those.
| locallost wrote:
| Then why do so many people end up with head injuries after a
| car crash? Falling down, especially among the elderly, is
| another one of the top reasons.
|
| Quote: "People most commonly get TBIs from a fall, firearm-
| related injury, motor vehicle crash, or an assault"
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/get_the_facts.html#.
| ..
| littlestymaar wrote:
| That reminds me this hilarious french ad for bicycle helmets
| inspired by anti-mask's arguments :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FwSqfOUAM0&t=64s
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This website just reloads in a loop and is impossible to read on
| iOS.
| adamvalve wrote:
| Are we getting dumber as a nation? This feel like the mask thing.
| throwawayhelmet wrote:
| Okay, true story. Years ago I struggled with this exact logic
| regarding skiing with helmet. After serious consideration I
| decided to start skiing so carefully that I do not need a helmet.
| As you may guess at this point, _The very first day_ I left my
| helmet home, I got into an accident and got a skull fracture.
|
| I started using my helmet again after that.
|
| (But another safety related thing I have started to really doubt.
| Skiing alone is supposed to be risky. I do ski alone, quite a lot
| actually. I have gotten into my share of accidents of various
| seriousness. And not a _single_ of them has been when I have been
| alone.)
| aphroz wrote:
| Michael Schumacher would disagree.
| dralley wrote:
| Michael Schumacher had a GoPro on his helmet that punched
| through.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| Are you one of the guys who doesn't wear a seat belt due to 1
| in a million chance that it might actually not help you?
| cameronh90 wrote:
| My old boss was an experienced skier on an organised cross
| country ski tour and got killed by an avalanche. It was in a
| low avalanche risk area with no avalanches forecast, and he was
| wearing all safety equipment, including one of those balloons.
| Medical help was almost immediate and nobody else on the tour
| was seriously injured.
|
| Sometimes the universe just wants you dead.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I've never skied with a helmet. Ridiculous. The only thing you
| can do about the risk of hitting or being hit, is stay home.
| darkerside wrote:
| I have never had a serious accident but started wearing a
| helmet. I don't think there's a large risk either way because
| I don't do a lot of tree skiing. But I wouldn't call it
| ridiculous. No more so than wearing a bike helmet.
| Loic wrote:
| In German speaking countries we went from 15% to 3% of the
| ski accidents with hospitalization being related to head
| injuries, this within the past 15/20 years.
|
| This correlates very well with the increase of helmet usage.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Do you happen to know the overall change in accidents?
| That's the big question behind the motivation for this
| change. There's no doubt that helmets would reduce the
| percent of all accidents that are head related, but does
| some reduced concern about safety result in more accidents
| overall?
| Loic wrote:
| From the biggest Ski insurance/interest group in Germany
| (the ones from the Ski federation), the stats show a 50%
| decrease since the 80's.[0]
|
| The trend is stable/slight increase in the past 5 years.
|
| For the head injuries, it reduced from 2/1000 skier to
| about 1/1000 skier/year. It follows the general trend of
| the number of accidents per skier/year.
|
| Looking at the material and the quality of the slopes in
| the past 40 years, they are definitely a big driver of
| this change, they improved a lot!
|
| [0]: https://www.stiftung.ski/sis-lab/asu-unfallanalyse/
| nerdponx wrote:
| Imagine applying this same non-logic to car seat belts,
| motorcycle helmets, rock climbing harnesses, et multa alia.
| If you don't want to wear a helmet, that's fine, but don't
| bother trying to justify it with anything other than "I don't
| want to", because you really can't.
|
| Even strong and careful skiers wipe out occasionally. A
| helmet is the difference between shaking it off and brain
| injury.
| DeBraid wrote:
| I have the exact opposite experience.
|
| My first time ever wearing a helmet on the slopes I slammed
| head-first into a tree. Got up, laughed it off, and rode away.
| Better lucky than good.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| I suspect skiing was invented to cull the clumsy (and the
| simply unlucky) from the ranks of the rich.
| speed_spread wrote:
| There was already Polo for that.
| qzw wrote:
| Well, you would need something when it's too cold for polo.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I had this exact talk with my rich buddy in high school once
| 15 years ago :) . He was heading for a ski trip that my
| family couldn't have afforded in my wildest dreams.
| analog31 wrote:
| I have a ski helmet at home with a big crack in it. My daughter
| was wearing it. She's a cautious skier with a lot of training.
| dhersz wrote:
| They justify their decision basically saying that helmets
| increase the driver's (and the people in its surroundings)
| willingness to take risks, while mentioning that their training
| system is so good that it minimizes risks, so drivers won't be in
| danger because of the lack of helmets.
|
| It's funny that could assume a totally different posture here: if
| helmets increase risks, we will use our great training system to
| make sure our drivers won't put themselves in dangerous
| situations even when wearing helmets. That would reduce dangerous
| driving and keep drivers' heads safer, instead of just reducing
| dangerous driving (which allegedly is the reason behind this
| decision).
| dusted wrote:
| I've often thought about how it'd affect traffic accidennts if we
| kept airbags and seatbelts but also placed a huge metal spike in
| the middle of the steering wheel.
| ionwake wrote:
| I'm annoyed so many HNers have trouble getting their head round
| this.
|
| Before commenting understand that :
|
| Research studies show bike helmets increase number of injuries,
| due to complex reasons NOT attributed to the vehicle type or
| whether it was the riders fault.
|
| It is why they are not legally required in bike heavy countries
| like the Netherlands.
|
| I recommend you DONT comment unless you've done your research.
| cowtools wrote:
| What studies? Also, the purpose of helmets is not to reduce the
| number of injuries, but the severity.
| ionwake wrote:
| You're most probably another American as there is less bike
| use there.
|
| Google the studies.
|
| They create more accidents with varying severities including
| death while wearing said helmet hence they are more dangerous
| and so aren't made mandatory.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| It's on you to prove the claim. Post the full text of
| studies.
| mslate wrote:
| This thread is plagued with anecdotes. Very unproductive
| ionwake wrote:
| Realising I'm surrounded by HNers giving a confident opinions
| when they are ignorant of the subject really rattles me makes
| me realise I take this place far too seriously. Look at the
| guy who replied to my comment above he just repeated another
| anecdote.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| So now that they track risky behavior at the source, logically
| they can all wear helmets for increased safety.
| kylecordes wrote:
| It is interesting to see the various categories of
| reactions/objections, which point in different or conflicting
| directions.
|
| 1) The theory that this change reduces overall injury rate is
| true, therefore this is a good change.
|
| 2) The theory is false because of some mistake, or intentionally
| false, therefor this is a bad change.
|
| 3) The theory is true, but nonetheless this is a bad change
| because there are other factors more important than the injury
| rate.
| moonbug wrote:
| sounds like a scummy company, with a bullshit business model.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Wouldn't it be so much easier to just slow these things down,
| considering they're electric?
|
| I always wondered why I'm such a slow cyclist. Turns out it was
| because I was riding shared bikes, which have a total of three
| gears, all of them relatively low.
|
| To reach 16km/h or 10mph in such a vehicle one would have to
| pedal like a maniac.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I personally am skeptical of some of the lines of reasoning that
| the idea of "risk compensation" leads people to. Like saying
| masks are bad because it leads people to isolate less, etc. (this
| was something some authorities were saying early in the pandemic,
| and it damaged their credibility later on.) Like yes, there is
| SOME compensation, in other words it allows risk/reward for some
| activities to rebalance a bit, but to use this as an argument
| against a pretty straightforward precaution is foolishness.
|
| I'm also super skeptical of studies that aren't, like, randomized
| and carefully done. Correlative studies can easily end up with
| the authors drawing conclusions of causation in the opposite
| direction of reality.
|
| "Good things are bad because of convoluted logic" is always
| something I'll be skeptical of.
| yellowapple wrote:
| I'm sorry, and pardonner mou Francais, but what in the actual
| fuck?
|
| Should delivery drivers not wear seatbelts because they might not
| be as afriad that they'll fly through the windshield? Should
| linemen not wear harnesses because they might be more confident
| working on power lines? Should warehouse workers not wear hi-vis
| jackets because they might be more confident working around
| forklifts? Should construction workers not wear helmets because
| they might be more confident working in areas with falling
| objects?
|
| And I love the "if something bad happens, it's obviously the
| rider's fault" mentality here. I guess cars never hit bikes,
| right? Or bikes hitting other bikes? Or other accidents that, you
| know, are entirely unavoidable or otherwise have nothing to do
| with the rider being at fault?
|
| If I was a staff rider, I'd be putting that helmet on and telling
| Pedal Me to eat an OSHA-sized bag of dicks if they have a problem
| with it. Banning helmets "for safety reasons" might not be the
| absolute dumbest thing I've read this year, but it's up there.
| [deleted]
| chrisshroba wrote:
| I understand where you're coming from, but I'd like to see some
| data rather than "what the actual fuck". I believe there are
| some cases where safety protections make people act dumber -
| and now I'm curious if this is or is not one them. I don't take
| a position either way, but I don't feel like shouting that
| you'd tell your employer to eat a bag of dicks really
| contributes much here.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| This would make sense for situations where the main risk was
| the driver/operator of the machine, but when it comes to
| cycling on the road (especially in crazy Central London
| traffic) I would expect the risk to primarily come from cars.
| mbrookes wrote:
| For which there is some evidence [1] that you are less
| likely to be involved in an accident doe to external causes
| when not wearing a helmet than when wearing one - in
| essence the same effect that helmet wearing has on the
| cyclist (taking greater risks) it also has on drivers
| passing cyclists.
|
| [1] https://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/1365/is-it-safer-to-
| wear-...
| masto wrote:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136984781.
| ..
|
| "In sum, this systematic review found little to no support
| for the hypothesis bicycle helmet use is associated with
| engaging in risky behaviour."
| darkerside wrote:
| Maybe the problem set they are looking at, commercial
| riders on a schedule, is very different from the wide
| ranging meta study that you linked.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > I believe there are some cases where safety protections
| make people act dumber
|
| And I don't believe that to be a justification for removing
| those safety protections entirely. This ain't some data
| science problem to be solved; this is ethics and morality,
| and there is precisely nothing ethical or moral about
| demanding that your employees make themselves less safe and
| then having the gall to pretend that this somehow makes them
| safer.
|
| > I don't feel like shouting that you'd tell your employer to
| eat a bag of dicks really contributes much here.
|
| You're right: _all_ employees telling their employers to eat
| an OSHA-sized bag of dicks if they try prohibiting basic
| safety equipment would contribute far more greatly to society
| than just one. But we gotta start somewhere.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| You believe that if the evidence indicates more people
| would die with the helmets, it would still be morally
| verboten even though it would be a statistical certainty
| your omission of action is basically causing people's
| deaths when we are talking about large numbers of people?
|
| Crazy. I suspect you are actually reasoning from your
| thought that people are more likely to die without helmets
| and ignoring the premise of the question, or at least I
| hope that is what you are doing.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| if even 1 incident occurs which was unavoidable by an
| unhelmeted cyclist which harms them more than they would
| have been harmed wearing a helmet, then the policy is
| unconscionable
|
| claiming you're removing safety equipment to reduce risky
| behavior is the tail wagging the dog. there are other
| ways to reduce risky behavior which do not have such
| tragic consequences as side effects to them.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > then the policy is unconscionable
|
| Let's say you do an A/B test on this policy and find 15
| more people die with the helmet allowed policy, but in
| the other side, one person died who if they had chosen a
| helmet they likely wouldn't have. You're saying it is
| unconscionable to pick the policy where the 15 wouldn't
| have died?
|
| Do the other things to reduce risky behavior, certainly,
| but if this is an uncorrelated improvement I don't see
| why that wouldn't be worth taking.
|
| Note, I doubt that this is actually true, but I wanted to
| highlight your moral apriori claims as ridiculous.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| I pretty clearly articulated exactly what was
| unconscionable:
|
| > if even 1 incident occurs which was unavoidable by an
| unhelmeted cyclist which harms them more than they would
| have been harmed wearing a helmet, then the policy is
| unconscionable
|
| if you can think of a scenario in which what I described
| as unconscionable happens, then I would find that
| scenario unconscionable.
|
| > Do the other things to reduce risky behavior,
| certainly, but if this is an uncorrelated improvement I
| don't see why that wouldn't be worth taking.
|
| whereas I DO see why such a helmet ban would be a risk
| not worth taking, it is at the top of this post.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| > Note, I doubt that this is actually true, but I wanted
| to highlight your moral apriori claims as ridiculous.
|
| You failed to do that:
|
| You didn't address the agency problem where the 15
| _chose_ to engage in risky behavior while that 1 was
| _coerced_ into dying -- and ignoring the role of agency
| in the Trolley Problem is amateur hour. The helmets
| didn't kill anyone, their following choices while wearing
| helmets did; which is in contrast to mandating no helmet,
| that is directly responsible for a death.
|
| What you did was make a ridiculous argument that ignored
| the crux of the issue and pretend that the other person
| was wrong.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| They were not coerced into dying. I prefer fewer people
| dying personally, your mileage might vary.
|
| All I can say is I am glad that the actual people making
| decisions seem to also prefer fewer people dying over
| non-coercion.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| >They were not coerced into dying
|
| Despite this bare denial, I believe "coerced into dying"
| to be an accurate description of someone coerced into not
| wearing a helmet dying of head injuries from an
| unavoidable accident
|
| sorry, that's not a coercion I'm willing to make. First,
| do no harm. Come back when you've tried safer ways to
| reduce risky behavior.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > You believe that if the evidence indicates more people
| would die with the helmets
|
| That ain't what was argued. The commenter above argued
| that helmets encourage people to take more risks. Even
| assuming that to be true, the sane answer is to train
| people to ride safely even when wearing helmets, not to
| ban helmets.
|
| > it would be a statistical certainty your omission of
| action is basically causing people's deaths
|
| 1. "statistical certainty" is an oxymoron.
|
| 2. correlation != causation
| whimsicalism wrote:
| 1. It's may be an oxymoron but also there is no such
| thing as any other form of certainty.
|
| 2. Yes, this is why we have RCTs.
| seoaeu wrote:
| I think there has to be substantial if not overwhelming
| evidence of increased risk before it would be moral to
| _ban_ employees from using a given piece of safety
| equipment. And given the long history of companies not
| caring for the welfare of their workers, the evidence
| should be peer reviewed and coming from independent
| researchers rather than clearly biased sources
| watwut wrote:
| I think that even bigger effect is that casual riders won't
| opt out cycling when helmets are mandatory. That is where
| helmets add least safety and comparably most unpracticality.
| When you are going to buy milk and some sausage in leisure
| pace or when you are going to work in speed guaranteed to not
| make you sweaty.
|
| Those are safest rides, they are good for your health and the
| ones that drop first.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The problem is that as another commenter points out, passengers
| wouldn't feel safe next to a helmet-wearing driver while not
| wearing one themselves.
|
| The proper solution here is to provide helmets for passengers
| as well, but that raises more problems - they needs to be a way
| to sanitize them, multiple sizes might need to be available (I
| assume they need to be sized properly for adequate
| protection?), etc.
|
| The aforementioned problems are hard (read: expensive) or
| impossible to solve, so while the ethical idea might be to just
| not offer this service at all, the objective here is to make
| money whatever-it-takes (or most likely, _raise_ money, as I
| doubt this thing is profitable) as opposed to providing a good
| transport service (maybe because there 's no actual demand for
| this?).
| hammock wrote:
| >passengers wouldn't feel safe next to a helmet-wearing
| driver while not wearing one themselves.
|
| Wouldn't the same apply to mask wearing? Yet we consistently
| see service employees wearing them and customers not.
| mcherm wrote:
| > Wouldn't the same apply to mask wearing?
|
| No, for a ton of reasons. Off the top of my head:
|
| (1) Masks are more effective at preventing transmission
| than reception.
|
| (2) Different individuals have different levels of concern,
| which might lead one to choose a mask and another to choose
| not to wear one.
|
| (3) Different individuals face different levels of risk.
| The person who is immunocompromised may wear a mask even
| when it would make no sense for other people.
|
| (4) The customer may encounter 2-3 service employees in a
| day; the service employee may encounter hundreds of
| customers in the same time.
|
| And that's without even getting into political issues (in
| the US, where mask-wearing has become politicized).
| PebblesRox wrote:
| An acquaintance of mine worked in a casino that banned
| mask wearing by employees early on during the pandemic
| out of concern for worrying customers. Unfortunately
| several of his coworkers died of COVID before the
| lockdowns shut everything down.
| lostgame wrote:
| >> The problem is that as another commenter points out,
| passengers wouldn't feel safe next to a helmet-wearing driver
| while not wearing one themselves.
|
| I actually laughed out loud reading this.
|
| So what? It's the company's job to ensure safety for the
| riders and the staff. There are many places in the world
| where it's actually _illegal_ not to wear a helmet.
|
| If you get into a business like this; and you didn't factor
| this in, you're a plain and simple idiot and your business
| deserves to fail if you make it the staff's problem.
|
| Shame on these idiots. I'd never heard of these guys before,
| and my first impression is one of the worst I could have. How
| is this even worth it for them from a PR side?
| guerrilla wrote:
| > The problem is that as another commenter points out,
| passengers wouldn't feel safe next to a helmet-wearing driver
| while not wearing one themselves.
|
| Too bad? If your business model depends on this then you just
| have to suck it up and deal with it, not compromise worker
| safety.
|
| > The proper solution here is to provide helmets for
| passengers as well, but that raises more problems - they
| needs to be a way to sanitize them, multiple sizes might need
| to be available (I assume they need to be sized properly for
| adequate protection?), etc.
|
| Too bad? Cost of doing business.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Just FYI, I'm not defending them by any means. I take a
| very dim view of this company.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| If customer safety conflicts with worker safety, and the
| company cares about neither, even by contemporary
| standard it's a particularly callous corporation with a
| particularly unsound business plan.
| ChoGGi wrote:
| I forget the name of them, but there's those expensive air
| bag helmets, I think those are a one size fits all.
| anotherboffin wrote:
| Hovding?
|
| I thought they had two sizes, but maybe not the new ones.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| > the objective here is to make money whatever-it-takes..
|
| This. Definitely. However if it came to court, as indeed it
| might, and they tried to argue helmets cause risky behavior,
| it wouldn't take Johnny Cochrane to get them slapped with a
| massive fine and laughed out of court.
|
| They're gambling that the cost of safely resolving the issue
| will be more than any legal costs. Talk about preventing
| risky behavior!
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I very much doubt this service is sustainable so most
| likely this is just a stop-gap/desperate hack until they
| reach their "exit", whether yet another round of VC money,
| a buy-out by a bigger idiot or quietly shutting down.
|
| I bet they all know this isn't viable and just hope this
| problem disappears before an accident actually happens and
| brings this in front of a court.
| indymike wrote:
| This is what my lawyer would tell me is willful. And high
| risk.
| ntoskrnl wrote:
| "We're sorry your husband got a concussion, but at least his
| passenger felt safe!"
|
| This isn't the 70s. Just give everyone helmets. Passengers
| included. And yes you should clean them. If you're running a
| business I'm sure you can afford some little bottles of
| alcohol spray.
| kqr wrote:
| But if it's about safety, why don't actual car taxi cab
| companies provide helmets for their passengers? It's easier
| to get a serious head injury in a car than on a bicycle.
| staindk wrote:
| Cars have padded headrests, safety belts and airbags... I
| don't think helmets would help much inside cars?
| [deleted]
| yellowapple wrote:
| Passengers could always bring their own helmets if they feel
| they're safer wearing one.
|
| EDIT: also, this doesn't explain prohibiting helmets for
| cargo bikes, too.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > EDIT: also, this doesn't explain prohibiting helmets for
| cargo bikes, too.
|
| I think it's a PR thing. They don't want prospective
| passengers seeing their branded bikes as dangerous enough
| to justify wearing a helmet, regardless of whether _that
| particular bike_ is currently transporting passengers.
| grapeskin wrote:
| Even in Vietnam the scooter-taxi services provide helmets for
| passengers.
|
| A first world country has zero excuse.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| >The problem is that as another commenter points out,
| passengers wouldn't feel safe next to a helmet-wearing driver
| while not wearing one themselves.
|
| By this logic, no one would feel safe riding a bus when the
| driver has a seatbelt and you don't.
| b3morales wrote:
| In all seriousness, this does actually bother me every time
| I ride the bus. Particularly if I end up in the open row of
| seats right along the back.
| progman32 wrote:
| I happen to subscribe to this logic. I will often
| specifically choose bus seats that I think will fare better
| in a crash, as I feel at risk without belts. I'm surprised
| others don't feel the same. I'm also worried those vertical
| grab poles for standing passengers will become effective
| skull crushers in a crash.
| [deleted]
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Don't take the job. Every occupation has risk. Nobody wants the
| nanny.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > I'm sorry, and pardonner mou Francais, but what in the actual
| fuck?
|
| Do you wear a helmet when you drive inside your car? If not,
| why not? It might make you much safer in case of a crash,
| according to your reasoning.
|
| Wearing a helmet can itself become a leading factor to cause an
| incident, and it's clearly what they are hinting at in the
| linked article: that data seems to indicate that riders wearing
| helmets may be getting more incidents on average. Then it's a
| simple equation: number of incidents x gravity of the incident
| in both A/B scenarios, and compare which one is the most
| favorable. It's not a question you answer with a "what the
| actual fuck" kind of reasoning.
| dvzk wrote:
| As a frequent mountain biker, I can attest that wearing
| additional safety gear results in me taking more risks. I
| ride downhill faster, I take corners more aggressively, I
| take more jumps and I am less cautious over dangerous
| terrain. When wearing only shorts, a jersey, and a standard
| helmet, without pads or a full-face helmet, I ride subdued.
|
| Some of this difference is due to the innate and insidious
| sense of invulnerability with protective gear. It comes
| naturally even the first time you don it. It's a common
| source of accidents and something that must be trained out of
| you.
|
| Being able to get back up unscathed from bad falls also
| reinforces your future confidence, or lack thereof, which I
| can also attest from having fallen many times both with and
| without protective gear.
|
| I'd still never ride without (at least) a standard helmet. If
| helmets do factually cause more accidents, which is plausible
| for the reasons I just mentioned, I'd support making helmets
| mandatory for employees through legislation. It doesn't
| matter if the numbers support the opposite conclusion:
| maximizing individual safety in the eventuality of a crash is
| paramount. If you have ever had a head impact while wearing a
| helmet, you will understand why.
| CaptainHardcore wrote:
| > Do you wear a helmet when you drive inside your car? If
| not, why not?
|
| Because I have a seatbelt, an airbag, and a reinforced shock
| absorbing shell around me.
| stefan_ wrote:
| So you wear a helmet as a pedestrian then? You are so
| unprotected!
| Tade0 wrote:
| > So you wear a helmet as a pedestrian then?
|
| I'm not going multiples of walking speed on something
| standing upright only thanks to gyroscopic forces, so no.
|
| Also even when running I have way better maneuverability
| than as a cyclist.
|
| Generally limbs > wheels when it comes to getting out of
| trouble.
|
| I wear a helmet when skiing though.
| CaptainHardcore wrote:
| I guess if I was going to walk in the road with traffic.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > Do you wear a helmet when you drive inside your car? If
| not, why not?
|
| My car has other safety measures in place to protect me from
| head injuries. A bicycle does not.
| samatman wrote:
| I know this will astonish you, but when I ride a bike, I
| don't always put a helmet on.
|
| Whether I do or not has a lot to do with how likely it is
| that I might get in an accident. Wild right? Why would I opt
| for more safety gear in a more dangerous situation.
| woeirua wrote:
| Here's the contrarian viewpoint just for the sake of being a
| contrarian, in spite of decades of evidence that helmets
| improve cyclist safety.
| treesprite82 wrote:
| > Do you wear a helmet when you drive inside your car? If
| not, why not?
|
| Cars already have airbags and seatbelts which help a lot for
| the kind of collisions that would otherwise result in head
| injuries.
|
| > It might make you much safer in case of a crash, according
| to your reasoning.
|
| I don't see what in their comment could be construed to say
| that helmets make you _much_ safer regardless of vehicle.
|
| > Wearing a helmet can itself become a leading factor to
| cause an incident
|
| Is there a source for this? Should be a randomized A/B test
| as you mentioned, not just a correlation - wearing a hi-vis
| jacket or other precautions taken more often in dangerous
| situations probably also correlate with accidents.
|
| Even if helmets do cause accidents through increased
| carelessness, some may still take issue to intentionally
| making a scenario more dangerous such that people are more
| careful. It's kind of settling for a local minimum, rather
| than aiming to reduce inherent risk alongside aligning
| people's risk estimates to not overestimate the precautions.
| stefan_ wrote:
| But a helmet will help even more. It costs nothing, what is
| there to reject?
| treesprite82 wrote:
| I don't perceive the benefit from risk reduction of
| helmets in cars to overcome the hassle hurdle. But I
| wouldn't advocate banning others from wearing helmets in
| cars if they so wished.
| darkerside wrote:
| Helmets reduce peripheral vision. I would absolutely be
| comfortable banning helmets in cars if people started
| wearing them and causing more accidents.
| allears wrote:
| My bicycle helmet sits on top of my head, and has nothing
| to do with peripheral vision. Do you wear yours pulled
| down low over your forehead? If so you're doing it wrong.
| darkerside wrote:
| The strap makes it more difficult to turn your head if
| it's properly tight. Probably also will hit your head on
| the ceiling if you're in a sedan.
| dvzk wrote:
| toast0 wrote:
| A competent bike helmet costs little, but not nothing;
| maybe $20 to start, and a little extra weight, and it
| messes up your hair a bit, takes seconds to put on if
| already adjusted and maybe a minute otherwise. May remove
| a bit of vision, but only vertically up.
|
| A competent car helmet is probably a motorcycle helmet,
| which is more like $100 to start, but it impacts hearing,
| reduces vision in all directions, is a significant
| weight, usually doesn't adjust much for sizing, takes
| longer to put on (especially if you wear eyeglasses).
|
| A bike helmet in a car would likely be more trouble than
| anything, it would interfere with the headrests and
| probably increase neck injuries.
| oliwarner wrote:
| No, it rightfully illicits that response. Wearing a safety
| device shouldn't make an activity less safe.
|
| Your "simple equation" relies on your variables being solid.
| And they aren't.
|
| It's important to stress that the behavioural studies from
| Bath (that show helmeted riders take more risks in
| simulations, that cars give them less space) are not data
| about whether helmeted users are at greater risk. Or that
| comparisons between US and NZ riders and outcomes are
| comparable because of vastly different road and rider
| profiles.
|
| It's also hard to show how much helmets are helping because
| zero-harm accidents are rarely reported, so if we assume that
| they function correctly, and do reduce harm in impacts, we
| simply don't know how many near-misses there are.
|
| You can look at hospital admission data two studies show 75
| and 78% of cyclists admitted with serious-enough head/neck
| injuries hadn't worn a helmet. That still needs adjusting for
| total accidents, and proportion of helmeted riders on the
| road in the first place. Again, poor reporting makes this
| tough.
|
| You also have to be aware that some studies and stats are
| polished up by people fervently for and against mandatory
| helmet laws. Biased reporting doesn't help anyone. There's a
| good selection here: https://www.helmets.org/stats.htm
| (domain suggests a strong bias, but I'm not sure).
|
| Pedal Me doesn't provide a good argument here. It seems more
| like they're worried what their customers will _think_ (do
| they need helmets too?) and nothing to do with actual safety
| outcomes.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| > No, it rightfully illicits that response. Wearing a
| safety device shouldn't make an activity less safe.
|
| American Football vs Rugby and the difference in CTE is
| often cited as the prime example of where this is true.
| Helmets and shoulder pads encourage riskier hits.
| oliwarner wrote:
| Often cited, sure, but I don't see cyclists (myself
| included) put a helmet on and start taking on
| 18-wheelers. What I'm trying to say is it matters _how
| true_ these studies are. Say we accept there 's an
| increased risk of having an accident, the data also shows
| that if you have an accident you're much more likely to
| die without a helmet.
|
| I think a lot of people --including experienced
| cyclists-- would be surprised how easily a silly little
| fall, a knock against a car, can just kill you.
|
| So even if a helmet makes you marginally more likely to
| be involved in an accident, being a _professional_
| vulnerable road user, all day is no joke. I 'd like to
| have safety equipment when my number comes up.
| davisoneee wrote:
| I don't think that example is quite so obvious.
|
| American Football is all about set plays. You line up and
| then charge at each other, meaning you have two lines
| effectively charging at each other and can focus all your
| effort on this one effort.
|
| Rugby is much more fluid, so the amount of direct head-
| on-head collisions is much lower, and the distance
| someone typically runs before tackling someone is much
| lower as the 'engagements' are more frequent.
|
| American Football is like going from 0-60mph every 10
| minutes, whereas rugby is about sitting at 30mph
| constantly.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| I don't want to be rude, but wide receivers and running
| backs get CTE as much as other positions and their
| movement patterns are nearly identical to rugby.
|
| I agree linemen are a novel concept, but they're not the
| only victims.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I once organized a workshop on reasoning about uncertainty
| and in it a woman attended who was in charge of cycling
| safety for a large government organization of some EU
| country. She confirmed that, statistically speaking, cycling
| without a helmet is safer than with but mentioned this as a
| good example of likely confounding factors and a case where
| you cannot take the statistics itself for policy making.
|
| But besides that, even if the average nation-wide number of
| accidents can be taken as a basis for nation-wide policy
| making because confounders can be ignored (a huge
| assumption), you can still not use this data reliably for
| individual decision making or policy making for smaller
| groups without further analysis. You need to account the
| variance, where the confounders occur, and what these
| confounding factors are. For example, regarding individual
| decision making, it could be the case that _certain people_
| who cycle with helmets on the average cycle more recklessly,
| but you cycle even more carefully with a helmet _and_ are
| better protected. If so, you cannot take the average to
| inform _your_ cycling. The same holds for other groups, such
| as professional cyclists for a company like in this article.
|
| To give another example, consider accident statistics of
| self-driving cars versus human drivers nationwide. The human
| driver statistics include each and every reckless and drunk
| driver in the country, including many people with whom you'd
| never share a car ride. At the same time, you might have been
| driving accident-free for more than 40 years. For _you
| personally_ , or a specific group you belong to, self-driving
| cars could thus be way more dangerous than driving yourself.
| nathan_f77 wrote:
| > Do you wear a helmet when you drive inside your car? If
| not, why not? It might make you much safer in case of a
| crash, according to your reasoning.
|
| Would it? I've never heard anyone recommend this, but if this
| did actually reduce the likelihood of a serious head injury
| in the event of a car crash, then I would seriously consider
| wearing a helmet while I drive a car. I have no problem
| wearing one while I ride a bicycle or motorbike.
| dropofwill wrote:
| If you take your car to a track day it's generally required
| that you wear a helmet (and a bicycle helmet wouldn't
| qualify).
| happysadpanda2 wrote:
| Not that it correlates much to every day driving, since
| both speeds and driving patterns differ, but e.g. NASCAR
| drivers wear helmets (along with that whole neck protection
| setup that latches to the helmet).
|
| I don't know, however, if a helmet may work worse in
| conjuction with an airbag though. So personally I think I'd
| stay away from helmets in cars (but I really have too
| little data to make an informed decision).
|
| Having said that, in the case of this company, perhaps they
| could offer their passengers a "Hovding" device? (Hovding
| being the swedish word for a chieftain, but "hovve" is also
| slang for head, and in the case of this product it is a...
| "backpack/necklace thingy" that is a wearable airbag.
| Supposedly works really well, but probably comes with a
| price tag matching this function.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Motor vehicle accidents are a leading cause of traumatic
| brain injury related deaths. If you are under 55 the obly
| higher cause is suicide. (If you qre older than 55, your
| chances of a TBI related death from an accidental fall
| start to skyrocket with age.) There is a reason why race
| car drivers wear helmets, and it isn't just to have another
| place to plaster sponsor logos.
|
| I am not aware of any studies looking specifically at the
| effects of helmet wearing on TBI rates of regular drivers,
| but then good data on that for bicycles is also hard to
| come by but that doesn't stop people from pushing for
| bicycle helmets.
| toast0 wrote:
| Race car drivers are at a lot higher risk of a collision,
| spin, vehicle fire, or rapid disassembly in general than
| general traffic. And in many forms of racing, they
| usually go significantly faster than general traffic too.
| Helmets, neck restraints, five point harnesses, and flame
| retardant suits all reduce risk of injuries, and would
| likely reduce risk in general traffic as well, but the
| risks seem low enough that the expense (including time to
| equip) of that additional equipment is too much to
| justify its general use. Although, if there were an
| easier intervention to help with neck injuries, it might
| likely be adopted.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > And in many forms of racing, they usually go
| significantly faster than general traffic too.
|
| Yet, lethal TBIs are more likely to come from motor
| vehicle accidents than from bicycle accidents.
|
| > the risks seem low enough that the expense (including
| time to equip) of that additional equipment is too much
| to justify its general use.
|
| Yet, somehow this argument is deemed irrelevant when
| helmets for bicycles are discussed.
|
| There really is not a compelling reason why helmet usage
| in a car is different from on a bicycle. The main
| difference is social acceptability, not any objective
| risk analysis.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Yet, lethal TBIs are more likely to come from motor
| vehicle accidents than from bicycle accidents.
|
| Is that per mile, per minute, or per lethal TBI? Also, is
| a collision between a bicycle and a motor vehicle a motor
| vehicle accident or a bicycle accident?
|
| Of course, bike helmets protect against more than just
| brain injury. They also protect against road abrasion of
| some portion of the head, which is not usually a factor
| for car occupants, except if they're ejected or they're
| in a car that rolls over and doesn't have an roof or an
| effective roll bar.
|
| Bike helmets are much lower expense and hassle than car
| helmets (which are mostly motorcycle helmets) and neck
| restraints, etc. If it's a public use bike system,
| especially the leave anywhere bikes, the expense and
| hassle gets overwelming, and helmets for customers of a
| pedal cab would be similar.
|
| I've got a bike helmet with integrated lighting, which
| adds functionality and is kind of neat, although it was
| much more expensive than a good enough helmet.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > per lethal TBI?
|
| Per lethal TBI, I don't think the data exists for per
| mile or per minute.
|
| > Also, is a collision between a bicycle and a motor
| vehicle a motor vehicle accident or a bicycle accident?
|
| Good catch, looking at their methods, they do include
| IDC-10 codes for pedestrian and bicyclist injuries due to
| motor vehicles in that number so I am not sure how many
| of those are actual vehicle occupants and I can't find
| any data at the moment that breaks those numbers down per
| IDC code group.
|
| > Bike helmets are much lower expense and hassle than car
| helmets (which are mostly motorcycle helmets) and neck
| restraints,
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| I've seen research stating adjacent car drivers will give
| less space to a cyclist wearing a helmet due to implied added
| safety.
| [deleted]
| enkid wrote:
| This sounds like one of those papers that got published
| with just barely "significant statistical evidence" but
| never had follow-up to verify, meaning you can't really
| draw conclusions for it.
| analog31 wrote:
| The study was barely scientific. The researcher was his own
| test subject, and the result has never been replicated.
| Also, most crashes probably occur under conditions where
| the driver can't be aware of whether the cyclist is wearing
| a helmet or not. "The cyclist suddenly came out of nowhere"
| is a common defense.
| arjvik wrote:
| Correlation vs causation much?
|
| In order to show that helmets *cause* accidents, they need to
| create a randomized study where they force employees to flip
| a coin to decide whether to wear a helmet or not.
|
| Otherwise, here's one plausible scenario: Employees who work
| in tiny suburbs with small roads and very little traffic feel
| safer, and this are less likely to wear a helmet. They get in
| less crashes because their town has fewer and safer drivers.
| Employees working in the city have more crashes simply
| because of being in a busy city, so they are more likely to
| wear helmets.
|
| Right now, you cannot prove that helmets cause crashes and
| not the above.
| indymike wrote:
| I can prove that helmets reduce head injuries both in
| quantity and severity.
| xdennis wrote:
| You can do so in lab environments, not in real world
| situations.
| shkkmo wrote:
| You have the exact same causal issue to untangle. Do
| safer riders wear helmets or does wear a helmet make you
| safer as a rider?
|
| In reality there are confounds both directions. The
| effects of helmet wearing are higly contingent based on
| the geography and demographics.
| mcherm wrote:
| Yes, but it IS possible to do research that untangles
| these effects.
|
| Here is a review (from just 3 years ago) of such studies:
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136984
| 781...
| shkkmo wrote:
| I have some issues with that study. One major one is they
| basically rule out half the effects of helmets as a
| "logical fallacy":
|
| > Risk compensation, as it is typically defined and
| understood, is only one of six possible scenarios, namely
| a usual non-helmet wearer puts on a helmet and increases
| their risk taking. Importantly, evidence in the opposite
| direction, i.e., taking a helmet off leads to less risky
| behaviour, is not evidence in support of risk
| compensation as it is a type of logical fallacy
|
| After reviewing that article none of the studies are
| convincing either way. The only studies that actually
| look for causality are the ones which only measure speed
| to asses risk. Those are also the one that I would
| qualify as positive results but were listed as negative
| results because of that above mentioned logical fallacy.
|
| So while is is possible to untangle these effects, it has
| yet to be done properly to show a clear result either
| way.
| indymike wrote:
| No, I really don't untangle anything. Safer riders ride
| safer, but they can and do sometimes have accidents and
| the road will not check your safety record before impact
| to see if it should hurt your more or less.
|
| Research on helmets has been ongoing for 40 years, and
| has even led to ANSI standards for helmet design and
| protection. The UCI requires hemets in amateur and
| professional events. This isn't about risk taking
| behavior, it is simply about if you do have an accident,
| you won't be killed, turned into a vegetable or concussed
| when you hit your head.
|
| > The effects of helmet wearing are higly contingent
| based on the geography and demographics.
|
| I'm pretty sure that hitting your head on Ugandan cement
| will damage your head roughly the same as American Cement
| or European cement. S
|
| Additionally, I've never seen any research showing any
| kind of demographic relationship to severity of head
| injuries in bicycle accidents. Nor have I once saw
| research that did anything other than present some
| statistical noise about distance cars give you based on
| helmet or not. Close shaves are not accidents or
| injuries, so even the basis of the research is
| questionable.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > Additionally, I've never seen any research showing any
| kind of demographic relationship to severity of head
| injuries in bicycle accidents.
|
| The effects of a helmet on overall safety when ridden at
| low speed on dedicated bike paths is very different from
| when ridden at high speeds in traffic with no bike lane.
|
| Thus the the design of the city and streets (geography is
| perhaps not the perfect term for this) and the what/how
| of the local culture's bike riding behavior (perhaps
| demographics is a bad term for this, not sure of a better
| one.) have huge impacts on how much a helmet affects your
| safety simply because the risk profiles are very
| different.
|
| The data is messy due to regional variability plus the
| difficulty of reliably removing the confounds mentioned
| above. I would never discourage someone from wearing and
| will actively encourage it when riding in bicycle hostile
| areas. At the same time, I think the push for helmet laws
| and helmet education is often a cop out to avoid talking
| about how we need to redesign cities to support safe
| bicycling. If we did the later, we would see much larger
| safety gains and the former would be much less necessary.
| tragictrash wrote:
| The devil doesn't need an advocate, please stop.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >Correlation vs causation much?
|
| Oh I'm so tired of this meme!
|
| Plenty of times causation is found through correlation.
| Plenty. Of. Times.
| polote wrote:
| > If I was a staff rider, I'd be putting that helmet on and
| telling Pedal Me to eat an OSHA-sized bag of dicks if they have
| a problem with it.
|
| And then they would fire you and you will have to find a
| company that allow helmets and everyone will be happy
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > And then they would fire you, hand you a substantial
| financial settlement for your wrongful termination, and you
| will be able to collect unemployment benefits while you take
| your sweet time to find a company that's not garbage.
|
| FTFY
| moonbug wrote:
| ah, but you see, they don't actually _employ_ you
| GuB-42 wrote:
| In the case of pedal.me, they do.
|
| > At pedal me, we believe in looking after our people
| properly. That's why our team are employees, not
| contractors.
| indymike wrote:
| We can downgrade from OSHA to class action lawyers with this
| kind of thinking. Seriously why not require helmets and hire
| for safety, too?
| isitmadeofglass wrote:
| The first person fired for wearing a helmet is going to be so
| damn lucky. That settlement money will end up being equivalent of
| several lifetimes with of work. There is absolutely no way that
| their logic holds up in court.
| prepend wrote:
| Almost everywhere in the US is at will so there's likely no
| successful lawsuit in the situation you describe.
|
| Sadly, it's likely the first driver who dies without a helmet
| will result in their family filing a giant lawsuit. But that
| payout will be paid by insurance that is probably already
| factoring in the probability of such a payout.
| dawnerd wrote:
| OSHA might have some thoughts on firing someone over
| protective equipment.
| prepend wrote:
| They might if a bicycle helmet was an osha recognized
| protective equipment. But it seems like the company did
| their homework and said it's not. If there's some
| regulation for helmets then it's a different story.
|
| My work doesn't require a helmet, even though it would
| protect me. If I wore a helmet and my employer fired me,
| OSHA wouldn't give a shit.
| MrBump_ wrote:
| Pedal Me is a British company. Not sure how the situation
| might differ there c.f. the USA.
| tejohnso wrote:
| From [the tweet], "People that are taking risks that are
| sufficient that they feel they need to wear helmets are not
| welcome to work for us"
|
| [the tweet]:
| https://twitter.com/pedalmeapp/status/1489594692857647113?s=...
| [deleted]
| wl wrote:
| Riding on roads isn't like mountain biking where you mostly
| control the amount of risk you take on. Riding on roads puts
| you at the mercy of other people's choices. I feel the need to
| wear a helmet anytime I'm riding on a road for that reason.
| scotty79 wrote:
| The point is the risk on the road is smaller when you don't
| wear a helmet because drivers take less risk with you.
|
| Even better if you are a woman in summer dress. Then the
| drivers give you way more space and are super careful around
| you. It was researched.
| bombcar wrote:
| An attractive woman in a bikini on a bike probably elicits
| the slowest and carefullest passing by many of the drivers.
| Fiahil wrote:
| > It was researched.
|
| It doesn't mean the research wasn't bullshit nor correctly
| understood what happened there.
| wl wrote:
| I think you're referring to Ian Walker's study. Yes,
| motorists on average passed helmeted cyclists closer than
| non-helmeted ones. The difference in average passing
| distance wasn't huge (1.3 m vs. 1.2 m) and was still a safe
| distance.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| The amount of difference isn't as interesting as the fact
| of it. It indicates attention, which is worth a lot more
| than the inches.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I have not read the study, but I would hope that they had
| the cyclists wearing the same clothes and riding on the
| same stretch of road in all tests. Otherwise you will end
| up with the situation where helmeted riders are more
| likely to be riding fast on roads that aren't as safe for
| cycling, Which would naturally lead to differences in
| driver behavior around them.
| judofyr wrote:
| > It was researched.
|
| Citation needed please.
| glenngillen wrote:
| I don't know any mountain biker that doesn't wear a helmet.
| Most I ride with wear full face.
|
| I don't think there's any riding situation where you can
| think you're in complete control of the risk.
| wl wrote:
| I wear a full-face helmet on a mountain bike, too.
|
| My point is that when mountain biking, you encounter varied
| terrain and obstacles and you decide how to approach that
| based on your skill and experience. Some approaches are
| riskier than others. And sometimes you decide the best
| thing to do is just nope out and ride or walk around
| whatever it is.
| mrpopo wrote:
| Helmets protect against falls. They don't protect against
| cars.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| they aren't intended to protect against cars, only falls,
| which are more likely to happen around cars
|
| glad I could help out here
| grumple wrote:
| I got doored while biking once. I fell head first into a
| van. Got away with nothing but scrapes.
|
| Helmets absolutely protect against cars. If I'd been hit,
| I'd have fallen. Head hits ground, you're fucked.
| stordoff wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree. I have a family member that had a car
| turn in front of the without warning (they were in a cycle
| lane, the car turned across the flow of traffic without
| looking or indicating), and they hit the side of the car
| and landed on the other side head first. They were left
| without any significant injuries - I'm not sure the outcome
| would have been as favourable without a helmet.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| When you get side-swept by a car you're going to fall.
| Getting rammed from the side or behind is not the only
| collision scenario, and getting side-swept seems like an
| extremely more likely scenario in London out of all places,
| where traffic in general is slow.
| scatters wrote:
| Getting side swept will not happen if you don't undertake
| motor vehicles and don't allow motor vehicles to overtake
| you.
| darkerside wrote:
| This is sarcasm, right?
| [deleted]
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Yet another example of the terrible and lasting impact the so
| called _risk compensation_ myth has had on society. Another great
| contribution of the Chicago school of Economics to the misery of
| the world.
|
| About the story behind this harmful myth
| https://slate.com/technology/2021/11/risk-compensation-debun...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I wonder what the largest negative impact from this kind of
| thought has been.
|
| My guess is it is going to be related to PrEP and HIV rates.
| PrEP is extremely effective and yet stigmatized due to the
| worry that it will decrease condom wearing.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| So if a staff rider is hit by a car and they die from their head
| slapping against the ground, is this not a mega risk to this
| business that they didn't have a policy to mitigate a simple
| risk.
| devwastaken wrote:
| They'll change their position once a catastrophic injury lawsuit
| really changes their mind. Unfortunately it's going to take death
| and injury for that to happen.
|
| If you're a worker that is injured on the job there are plenty of
| laws and torts in place to receive compensation. My favorite
| catastrophic injury attorney, Attorney Tom has a YouTube channel
| that goes into details.
| drdec wrote:
| This kind of analysis - that safety gear inspires reckless
| behavior - is used over and over again to argue against safety
| measures. The automobile industry used it to fight against seat
| belts. More recently, some people used it to argue against
| vaccines and/or masks.
|
| I've never bought into it.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| Common sense suggests that forbidding the use of safety equipment
| for frivolous reasons should be ridiculously illegal. Is it not
| so in the third world countries where Pedal Me operates?
| y7 wrote:
| Maybe relevant: the Netherlands is probably the country with the
| highest use of bicycles for transport, yet no one, except for
| cyclists on racing bikes/MTBs or foreign tourists, ever wears a
| bike helmet. This is because they're only marginally effective at
| preventing injury, and the disadvantage of reduced cycling use if
| helmets are mandated results in far worse public health outcomes.
| See also https://dutchreview.com/culture/cycling/5-reasons-why-
| the-du...
| alpaca128 wrote:
| The Netherlands probably also have some of the safest roads for
| cyclists.
|
| Nonetheless I recommend to always wear gloves when riding a
| bike. They weigh nothing, fit in every bag/pocket and if you
| ever crash you'll be glad you wore them. Hands are very likely
| to get injured in an accident and it's not fun to not use them
| for a couple of days.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Hey now, don't bring reason here. We reject effective
| technology to stop speeding, phone use, distracted driving and
| regulations to make cars and trucks have no more than necessary
| power, weight and effective sightlines but since cyclists wear
| a styrofoam hat they are safe. Except those pedestrians are
| dying at an accelerated rate, I think they should get a helmet
| too.
|
| The response here are hilarious, like "they also have better
| infrastructure" - wow, you are soo close to getting it!
| breakfastduck wrote:
| It's not reasonable and it's not relevant to point that lack
| of helmet use out.
|
| 1. The road infra is entirely structured around making it
| safer for cyclists in NE
|
| 2. They don't BAN the use of helmets. That study is NOT a
| justification to BAN them.
|
| 3. No one is suggesting that they be mandated either.
| cush wrote:
| I'd bet a Dutch cyclist would wear a helmet when riding on
| American roads, with American drivers in American cars.
| jules wrote:
| As a Dutch cyclist I would certainly use a helmet on American
| roads (or not use a bicycle at all). Furthermore, in the
| Netherlands the delivery drivers that use bicycles are asked
| to wear a helmet by their employer. Riders of E-bikes that
| are able to accelerate without pedalling and those that are
| able to accelerate above 25 km/h are required to wear a
| helmet by law. I'm certain that the majority of the Dutch
| would think it is completely insane that a delivery company
| is prohibiting the use of helmets on their E-bikes, even if
| it was in the Netherlands.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| The Dutch don't actively prohibt you from wearing a helmet
| though...
| DeWilde wrote:
| The Dutch have separate lanes for bicycles and a lot bicycle
| traffic goes through areas where cars don't even go.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| Read what the Dutch cycling union has to say about helmets.
|
| https://www.fietsersbond.nl/de-fiets/accessoires/fietshelmen...
|
| https://www-fietsersbond-nl.translate.goog/de-fiets/accessoi...
|
| I live here and I'll say that almost all bicycle delivery
| drivers where helmets in NL. Lost of riders wear helmets here,
| but I agree that most people just riding to work or going
| shopping do not.
|
| I will also note that probably the largest bicycle delivery
| service in NL has helmets for sale for its riders.
|
| https://shop.thuisbezorgd.nl/nl/helmen
| amscanne wrote:
| That page is about the idea of helmet _mandates_ , not about
| the safety of an individual decision to wear one.
|
| I think people most on the thread understand that there are
| negative consequences to mandates. The question is about
| whether you as a rational individual should choose to wear
| one.
|
| I think the answer to that is an irrefutable yes, if you want
| to reduce your risk of catastrophic head injury. But that
| doesn't mean it should be mandated. We take calculated risks
| all the time, and the law can't know all the variables and
| circumstances for each person at each moment. The mandate is
| ineffective because the most important safety factor for
| bicycles is frequency of cycling -- the more bikes there are
| on the road, the more everyone is aware of them. But if you
| still had all those cyclists and put helmets on them, they
| would be slightly safer.
| staticman2 wrote:
| If you ever visit Amsterdam you'll see there are hardly any
| cars on the road and those that are have to drive at something
| like 5 miles an hour to avoid all the pedestrians and bicycles.
|
| It's nothing like riding a bike in the U. S.
| kevinpet wrote:
| Helmets, even the light helmets bicyclist wear, are very
| effective at reducing the severity of head injuries.
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24686160/
|
| That isn't to say that a policy of requiring helmets is good on
| net (because people may ride less), but in any accident that
| you hit your head, you would greatly benefit from wean a
| helmet.
| Drunk_Engineer wrote:
| This is junk science. The authors simply did the ANSI drop-
| test in a lab test. In the real-world, 99% of bike crashes
| with death/severe injury are the result of car-crashes --
| which the ANSI drop-test does not model correctly at all.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It's usually a junk comment to call something junk science.
| Drunk_Engineer wrote:
| They are claiming 90% risk reduction based on a
| laboratory model. That model obviously does not track
| with reality (show me any country where bike helmets
| reduced death/injury by that amount). If a model does not
| correlate with the real world, then it is by
| definition...junk.
| jdr23bc wrote:
| No doubt Pedal Me contractors operating in Dutch cities might
| choose to not wear a helmet. That'd be fine. But that choice
| should be left to the contractor, not the company.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| It's worse, they are not contractors but employees. The
| company should have a book thrown at them.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| There is a HUGE difference between NOT REQUIRING helmets and
| PROHIBITING helmets.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| To me, that seems like a clear difference in infrastructure. If
| a biker shares a stretch of asphalt with a car, that's a risk
| for the biker and they need a helmet. In the Netherlands, this
| is widely understood and bikes get their own infrastructure
| everywhere. Only then you don't need helmets anymore at all.
| stfp wrote:
| One flaw in this logic: helmets don't protect against cars
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| anonymousab wrote:
| They don't protect from the part where the car directly
| hits the rest of your body straight on, or the bike itself.
| Every single part that happens immediately after that -
| such as the fall, flying through the air, or what have you,
| the parts that always come afterwards - is where the helmet
| can provide life-saving protection.
| alephxyz wrote:
| Maybe not if a car hits you head on, but if a car cuts you
| off or clips one of your wheels a helmet will be useful.
| nerdponx wrote:
| A bike helmet has literally saved my life in multiple
| such occasions.
| watwut wrote:
| nerdponx wrote:
| Yes, riding a bike in New York City traffic is generally
| dangerous. I fixed it by moving out of New York City.
|
| Except for the time on a quiet suburban street when my
| drivetrain inexplicably locked up (never figured out what
| actually happened) and threw me over the handlebars, or
| the time when there wasn't much traffic around but there
| was some slippery garbage truck sludge exudate that I
| didn't see, which I wiped out on. My helmet saved me in
| both of those situations too.
|
| It turns out that shit happens in general no matter who
| or where you are, and that dressing for safety actually
| does keep you safe. An inflated sense of ability to
| protect oneself does not amount to protection in the
| event of a crash.
| watwut wrote:
| It is still oddly too much and each time on head. Most
| bike falls don't end up hitting head either. You seem to
| be crashing more often then ordinary and the amount of
| times you hit the head is higher then ordinary.
|
| And yes I use bike fairly often. I know multiple people
| who use bike fairly often. The only people actually
| hitting protective gear that often are the ones doing
| mountain biking. (Which seems to be genuinly dangerous
| even with the gear.)
| mc32 wrote:
| You swerve to miss a car, dog, obstacle, person and take a
| spill...
|
| You T-bone a car.
|
| It helps.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| while there is a lot, bikes do not get their own
| infrastructure everywhere. most likely the street you live on
| has no bike path. many city streets have bike lanes but not
| separated from the road
|
| i bet the more useful metrics are length of trip, average
| speed of the cars around you, and if you need to cross stop
| signs/intersections. dutch bike trips are often very short
| and the speed limits are low. you do not share the road with
| 35mph+ traffic as is common in america. intersections are the
| place where people get hurt on bikes the most and it's more
| likely in american biking you will cross them. this one is
| where the separate infrastructure really comes in to play
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| They're marginally effective _on Dutch roads_ , which were
| overhauled to be cyclist-safe decades ago, with new roads being
| safe by default. The Dutch approach unfortunately does not
| reflect even remotely on North American cities. You need a
| helmet, because stroads[1] _guarantee_ accidents.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
| Etheryte wrote:
| This completely misses the forest for the trees and
| misattributes causality. The Dutch don't wear helmets because
| the traffic culture and infrastructure are completely
| different, not because of some questionable statistic no one
| has heard of. In the Netherlands you feel safe as a cyclist.
| Drivers look out for you because they're also all cyclists at
| other times. Cycling is so prevalent that it's hard to explain
| to anyone who hasn't experienced it.
| sokoloff wrote:
| There are also significant legal penalties for being at-fault
| and injuring/killing a cyclist in the Netherlands as compared
| to the US.
| ascar wrote:
| Can you elaborate? The US has such a high incarceration
| rate for in European eyes often benign offenses that I find
| that statement hard to believe even though I don't know the
| Dutch laws (I'm German). E.g. I can't imagine a Dutch
| person being incarcerated for injuring a cyclist unless
| it's on alcohol/drugs. I can totally imagine that for the
| US though. But I might be totally wrong. Would be really
| curious for some details.
|
| My opinion on this might also be heavily and incorrectly
| influenced by popular media sprinkled with a few factual
| statistics that reinforce the bias.
| akjssdk wrote:
| Cyclists are protected by law, such that even if an
| accident is the fault of the cyclist, the car driver is
| still 50% liable. This in combination with the
| infrastructure, which separates cyclists and cars as much
| as possible, makes the Netherlands very safe for
| cyclists.
|
| Note that younger children still usually wear a helmet,
| since they are more likely to have an accident on their
| own (i.e. falling over).
| ornornor wrote:
| My experience in NA was that killing a pedestrian or a
| cyclist with your car is actually the easiest way to get
| away with murder. At worst you'll get away with a 500$
| fine, at best nothing. And "wooops didn't see them, the
| sun was in my eyes" is a valid defense.
| blamazon wrote:
| Some folks call it the SMIDSY defense - as in, " Sorry
| Mate I Didn't See You"
| uoaei wrote:
| Cases of potential death do not count as "benign", at
| least in my book.
|
| Shoplifting and really any property crime that doesn't
| result in imminent grave harm can be safely considered
| "benign". Ditto for victimless crimes like drug
| possession.
| porknubbins wrote:
| As a general rule US public policy is enormously biased
| towards being pro automobile. Putting drivers in jail (ie
| for less than extreme recklessness) impedes that goal. It
| was very eye opening when I lived abroad and the law was
| actually biased against the "stronger" party in a traffic
| accident (ie truck > car > motorbike > bicycle >
| pedestrian ). It makes sense to me to essentially require
| more responsibility in proportion to the damage you are
| able to cause.
| Etheryte wrote:
| When we lived in the Netherlands, my wife rode her bike
| infront of a car at an unmarked crossing where the car
| had every right of way. The car driver sued for repair
| fees, but in the end, the car driver had to pay her
| compensation instead. It doesn't matter that he had right
| of way, he was the "stronger" side and hurt someone
| weaker by not being cautious enough. There's obviously
| more nuance to the laws there, but this is a good example
| of the common mentality.
| trgn wrote:
| I love the distinction between stronger and weaker road
| users.
|
| With more power comes more responsibility, put into
| practice.
| supertrope wrote:
| Operators of heavier vehicles have a duty of care toward
| smaller vehicle rider.
|
| Compare this with New York City where if you negligently
| kill someone with your car, the police won't even issue a
| ticket unless you're drunk. Then comes the civil lawsuit
| in which the surviving family will probably settle for
| your car insurance policy limits (e.g. $100,000, far
| lower than German limits that are in the millions of
| Euros).
| louracryft wrote:
| The US is enormous, with almost no public transit outside
| of dense metro areas. As a result, cars hold a sacred
| place in society and jurisprudence. It is simply
| impossible to live without a car when your driveway is 10
| miles long and the nearest "town" is 30 miles away.
|
| You can get a neverending stream of OUIs and keep your
| license after paying fines in most cases. We often joke
| that the best way to get away with murder is to run
| someone down and tell the judge that "they came out of
| nowhere".
|
| But lord help you if you get caught walking down the
| street with a joint in your bag.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > You can get a neverending stream of OUIs and keep your
| license after paying fines in most cases.
|
| What is that based on? People I know who have had DUIs
| had a lot of trouble and cost, their driving was highly
| restricted, and a second DUI would have stopped them from
| driving and maybe put them in jail (IIRC).
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I think part of the problem in the USA and Canada is that
| our road laws are exceedingly motorist-centric. Things
| that don't seem to make sense, like drivers getting a
| slap on the wrist for killing cyclists, do make sense if
| you consider that the laws don't expressly promote and
| prioritize the safety of cyclist on all road ways.
| prepend wrote:
| Aren't the at fault vehicular manslaughter laws in the US
| the same for drivers who hit cars, cyclists, and
| pedestrians? If you kill a cyclist in the US and you're at
| fault, that's likely jail time (same for hitting a car or
| pedestrian).
|
| What's missing in US laws vs Netherlands?
| sokoloff wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/transcripts/245475107?storyId=2454751
| 07
|
| _If_ you are convicted of vehicular manslaughter, you
| are very likely going to serve time.
|
| However, if you hit and kill and cyclist in the US, you
| are not likely to be charged with vehicular manslaughter,
| so long as you were sober and weren't actively _trying_
| to hit them.
| anonymousab wrote:
| In the Netherlands and several other European countries,
| there is presumed/strict liability on the part of the
| automobile driver. Regardless of fault, a car driver has
| responsibility for any accident between their car and a
| bicycle. There is of course more nuance to this, but
| that's the basic overlying principle.
|
| A joke I heard a few times was "If a bike fell out of the
| air onto a parked car, the car owner is going to court."
| 988747 wrote:
| Which sounds terrible, and goes against "innocent until
| proven guilty" rule. Also, in some situations it gives
| the driver perverse incentive to finish the cyclist off
| (and therefore get rid of the only witness), instead of,
| say, calling an ambulance.
| jules wrote:
| No. The maximum prison sentence in such a case would be
| 8, 6, or 2 months in the Netherlands, depending on how
| reckless the driver was (and up to 4 years if drunk). If
| you then kill the cyclist you're looking at a maximum of
| 25 years.
| supertrope wrote:
| There a lot of cultural bias against bicyclists already.
| While leaving the scene of an injury accident is a crime,
| murder is an extreme escalation.
| macintux wrote:
| There's a morbid joke in the U.S.: if you want to kill
| someone, do it while they're riding a bicycle.
|
| Certainly the perception is that drivers don't face jail
| time in such a situation.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > that's likely jail time
|
| No. It will be slap on the wrist time if there are any
| consequences at all. All it requires is a driver to lie
| about some mitigating cause they weren't responsible for.
| umanwizard wrote:
| It's not a matter of what's actually written in the laws
| but of police/prosecutorial discretion.
|
| Whatever laws are on the books are virtually never
| actually enforced against motorists, because motorism
| (and disdain/resentment against cyclists) is deeply
| embedded in the culture.
|
| The default reaction of the median American (or at least,
| the median law enforcer) to any accident involving a
| motorist and a cyclist, regardless of actual fault, is
| "fucking bikers always breaking laws, running red lights
| and stop signs, if they want to take our lanes and slow
| us down, why don't they think they have to follow rules
| like a REAL vehicle," etc.
| supertrope wrote:
| The last time I did jury duty the judge and staff made
| sure everyone knew how to use the free parking. A jury of
| motorists isn't going to judge a fellow motorist harshly.
| watwut wrote:
| The "must wear helmets" advocacy is never focused on
| conditions or nuanced ideas about when it is OK not to wear
| helmets.
|
| Instead, it is focused on make people feel as afraid of
| biking as possible. Literally all these debates are focused
| on making people afraid no matter of what conditions, speed.
| Whether you go mountain bike competition or whether you are
| 50 years old manager slowly commuting in skirt and business
| hairstyle.
| golemiprague wrote:
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I roughly agree with you but this hypothesis would suggest:
|
| - more helmet wearing in less cycling-friendly cities like
| Rotterdam which, IIRC, is an example of such a place in the
| Netherlands
|
| - more helmet wearing (in the sense that the ratio between
| Dutch helmet wearing and helmet wearing in other Western
| European countries is higher) at points in the past when
| bicycle infrastructure was less protected. Though this is
| confounded by lots of things.
| jimmyswimmy wrote:
| I've wondered about this phenomenon in general, that safety
| equipment could cause people to take more risks because it makes
| them feel safer. Many years ago on Monday night football John
| Madden remarked that some of the hits during games seemed to
| occur because players felt safe using their body as a missile.
| The protective gear allowed them to do that, while the old
| leather helmets of his era did not.
|
| I know I've done incredibly risky things with equipment like wood
| chippers because I felt like their designs would let me stop them
| fast enough. I've hung off the back of boats at high speed
| because I had a GPS tracking radio collar on and felt confident
| if I fell off they'd find me. These things seemed to make sense
| at the time.
|
| I've thought for a while that the best safety gear is training.
| Rail yards to this day show some unbelievably gory videos to
| inculcate people to the inherent risks present there. High vis
| gear, helmets, etc all are important but actually knowing the
| risks and owning them personally is essential.
|
| Little of that seems applicable to this case though. I think
| wzdd's thinking is most accurate, unhelmeted passengers probably
| don't feel great looking ahead and seeing their driver's helmeted
| head.
| [deleted]
| ryantgtg wrote:
| I had a traumatic brain injury as a kid from a fairly-low speed*
| fall where my skull cracked on a sewer manhole. If someone told
| me I couldn't wear a helmet I would tell them to eff off.
|
| *I have no memory of it.
| soheil wrote:
| Why are these monstrous things allowed in bike lanes anyway?
| Simple understanding of high school physics shows these things
| can have massive momentum not remotely comparable to that of a
| normal bike. KE = 1/2 m v^2
|
| A pedestrian impact could be absolutely devastating. A fast
| moving heavy bike is lethal.
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| They argue that helmets are bad because they encourage riskier
| behavior, but also that they are unique in being able to track
| the behavior of their bikers. Shouldn't they be able to allow
| helmets and fire the people who behave in a riskier way due to
| wearing them?
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| It seems like the correct approach is to penalize their staff
| that does risky stuff instead of this proxy metric that presumes
| people who ride with helmets are going to take bigger risks
| because of it.
| nchudleigh wrote:
| Have friends that have been saved multiple times from serious
| head injury by their helmet. Cases of streetcar tracks and car
| doors opening on them unexpectedly, no extra risk taking
| happening there.
|
| This approach is not right, the fact the bike is larger helps a
| bit but does not stop the driver or riders from being thrown from
| the bike.
|
| The additional risk taking factor should be curbed through other
| means. Removing the helmet is not the right approach.
| nayuki wrote:
| This is very much like:
|
| > The name "Tullock's spike" refers to a thought experiment in
| which Tullock suggested that if governments were serious about
| reducing road casualties, they should mandate that a sharp spike
| be installed in the center of each car's steering wheel, to
| increase the probability that an accident would be fatal to the
| driver. Tullock's idea was that the normal process of risk
| compensation would then lead to safer driving by the affected
| drivers, thereby actually reducing driving fatalities.
|
| -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Tullock#Tullock's_spike
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| It's a good thought experiment but assumes that everyone has
| the same ability to assess risk, which isn't true. Not only
| does the ability to correctly assess risk vary greatly between
| individuals, it varies greatly over the lifetime of an
| individual and sometimes even over the course of a day for the
| same individual.
| bagels wrote:
| It has the effect of stopping the driving of those with poor
| risk assessment and judgement too though.
| [deleted]
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >but assumes that everyone has the same ability to assess
| risk
|
| It does not make, nor need, that assumption. If only a few
| people drove better from understanding increased risk, then
| that may be enough to lower bad outcome rates.
|
| Why did you claim Tullock "assumes that everyone has the same
| ability to assess risk"? I can find no such reference or
| claim online - except yours. Have some info about it?
| mslate wrote:
| So the takeaway here is that some people should not be issued
| drivers licenses.
| supertrope wrote:
| Well now we go down a rabbit hole of a complex social
| problem. People don't drive just to joyride. They so
| because many areas are zoned into car dependency. When
| faced with no legal way to drive:
|
| (1) Keep driving anyway without a license or with a
| suspended license.
|
| (2) Use public transit that takes two or three hours one
| way. When the bus is late again one day they get fired
| possibly setting off a downward spiral and that's another
| person on public assistance.
|
| (3) Vote for politicians who allow ridiculous policies like
| Arizona's lifetime driver licenses.
| usrusr wrote:
| (4) Zoning would change for less car dependency, and more
| demand would allow better transit (lines served more
| frequently and a wider selection of lines leading to less
| changes)
| supertrope wrote:
| That's my wish too. People will not use low quality
| public transit. It will remain low quality as long as
| it's starved of funding relative to the free* roads,
| free* parking, and restrictive zoning iron triangle.
| Funding will remain a trickle until a critical mass of
| voters demand it. People think because it's low quality
| now it's not worth spending more taxes on.
|
| *Free to motorists, not the taxpayers and real estate
| consumers.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| That's certainly the case for people with eyesight problems
| and conditions such as epilepsy.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Setting aside whether reverse risk compensation _actually
| works_ (and it would be absolutely bizarre to have >100% risk
| compensation), Tullock's spike has the problem that it makes
| driving _less effective_ , i.e. people get from point A to
| point B more slowly. If your policy goal is for people to
| _drive less_ then sure. If your goal is for people to be safer
| in the course of achieving their actual objective of getting
| from point A to point B, though, the policy is _spectacularly
| bad_.
| 988747 wrote:
| Can't that be seen as an argument against seatbelts and airbags
| as well?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Not really, because people perceive the threat differently. A
| spike in the steering wheel is very obviously extremely
| dangerous. Not having a functioning airbag is invisible. If
| you are trying to change people's behavior, the perception of
| risk is more important than the actual statistical risk.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| People will get used to that spike. People get used to a
| lot of dangerous and scary things. Going faster than
| walking speed and operating heavy machinery is dangerous
| and scary if you are not used to it, and yet, people do it
| every day without a giving second thought.
|
| People will need constant reminders that that spike is
| dangerous, like seeing people they know die from it. So it
| is essentially advocating that in order to make less people
| die from car accidents, we have to make more people die
| from car accidents, which make no sense.
|
| Protective equipment, and the absence of spikes on the
| steering wheel work. For example, machine tools today are
| much safer than they once where, resulting in much less
| workplace accidents. By the Tullock's spike standards,
| removing the cover between you and that blade loudly
| spinning at high speed should improve safety by making
| people more careful, it doesn't, and there are few more
| obvious threats than that.
| jgeada wrote:
| Risk compensation or risk homeostasis is one of those
| hypothesis that sound good to economists and the moralizing
| class, but has never been proven.
|
| https://slate.com/technology/2021/11/risk-compensation-debun...
|
| https://www.mdpi.com/2313-576X/2/3/16/htm
|
| Edit: added another reference
| itronitron wrote:
| Now I'm sort of curious how they died, and whether their
| personal automobile had any modifications to the interior.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Doesn't it only work if everyone has one? If only one or a
| few do, they can be as cautious as possible and still be the
| victim of another reckless driver who doesn't have one. It
| reminds me a bit of the trend where parents buy larger
| vehicles for their teenaged children because of their
| perceived safety. It ends up having the opposite overall
| effect because less experienced drivers are getting into
| accidents with larger and more deadly (to those around them)
| vehicles.
| itronitron wrote:
| I think it would work for anyone that had one, even if they
| were the only one, as they would be a much more defensive
| driver. They would probably save money on gas as well :)
| schroeding wrote:
| Oof. Most bicycle accidents I was in were not caused by me, and
| you can only reduce the risk so much by defensive cycling.
|
| Bicycle helmets are the kind of thing that you don't need 99,9%
| of the time, but you will die (or be reduced to a vegetable) if
| you don't have it in the few cases you do need it. While they
| should not be mandated, they also should not be banned, IMO.
|
| Reads a bit like "We don't want our car drivers to use airbags,
| as the vehicles are heavy and dangerous and as such we require
| them to feel confident without such a safety device, so they
| don't drive recklessly", IMO.
| cush wrote:
| What a pointless hill to die on for a business. Do they not have
| more important things to be worrying about?
| michaelmrose wrote:
| It is insane to presuppose that a particular employee will take
| additional risk load if you allow them to take appropriate safety
| measures.
|
| It tries to maximize expected utility based on dubious analysis
| while denying people the privilege of making the vastly simpler
| and actually maximum choice of riding safely and wearing a
| helmet.
|
| Privileging complicated nonsense over straightforward analysis
| and the companies analysis of net utility over individual freedom
| to protect themselves is nuts.
|
| This is important to all but likely more so to people who would
| experience a larger than average risk and thus likely to be
| denied the ability to work in a profession they could do
| sufficient safety if not denied safety gear.
|
| It is thus inherently biased against many riders who have a
| higher risk of injury than average but not unacceptably so.
|
| It also keeps users from responding to increased risk driven by
| changing road conditions by substituting the companies policy for
| individuals judgement.
|
| For example riders cannot respond to icy road conditions or known
| dangerous areas.
|
| I see this as ripe for inevitable claims as far as bias against
| classes of individuals and injury claims.
|
| People are going to be injured in situations where they can
| trivially argue that a helmet would have mitigated the damage.
| With the rate of injury everyone who would prefer to wear a
| helmet ought to send a certified letter to that effect to the
| company.
|
| The ones that have the misfortune to be seriously injured will at
| least have the comfort of owning whatever is left of the company
| in 2023/24
| callamdelaney wrote:
| In amateur boxing (olympic & certainly in the UK) headguards have
| been banned because fighters are likely to take more blows to the
| head if they're wearing a headguard, causing more trauma and more
| eventual damage to the brain - not sure the analogy holds up for
| cycles or motorcycles though.
|
| Interestingly, bare handed boxing often results in far less head
| trauma - and while it tends to result in more cuts it has far
| less of an effect on fighters long term health.
| spankalee wrote:
| I once saw an accident where a cyclist going straight through an
| intersection was hit by an oncoming truck turning left that was
| impatient, didn't see the cyclist and gunned it between cars. The
| cyclist was launched headfirst into the bumper of a car stopped
| at the light and her helmet loudly cracked in two. She was still
| hurt, but I'm sure she would have died without that helmet.
|
| If some riders choose to not wear a helmet, that may be fine, but
| prohibiting helmets is irresponsible. Riders have a much higher
| cumulative risk of accidents that are not their fault than
| customers. It's a workplace safety issue.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| It concerns me that there's so many stories of bike helmets
| cracking in two and allegedly having saved someone's life. Bike
| helmets are designed to compress under impact and as such, they
| are very weak under tension, so when you see a helmet split
| into two, it indicates that it wasn't working as designed.
| Compressed polystyrene in the helmet would indicate that it was
| doing its job.
| altcognito wrote:
| Basically, crumple zones for heads.
|
| If you could demonstrate that the helmet was splitting and
| taking energy with it maybe you could make an argument for
| splitting, but it seems unlikely that this is a mode of
| operation.
| hgomersall wrote:
| Why not? Given every helmet I've seen in a significant
| crash was split somehow, my assumption is that splitting is
| an important part of the energy absorption.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Polystyrene is very weak in tension (can be broken by
| hand) so won't be deflecting much energy. The principle
| is to slow the deceleration of the head by the
| polystyrene compressing and thus reducing the g-forces to
| the skull (not so much the brain which tends to slosh in
| the skull and cause concussion). Some motorbike helmets
| use materials such as polycarbonate which are intended to
| provide protection by breaking - quite different to
| bicycle helmets.
| taeric wrote:
| Could be both? Usually it is the outer shell that is cracked
| and described as split. I could see that happening more on
| the road style helmets, due to their shapes.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| The pictures that I've seen of the various "saved my life"
| destroyed helmets have the polystyrene split apart - it's
| usually quite easy to split polystyrene if the force is
| applied the right (wrong) way.
| taeric wrote:
| Interesting and scary. Curious what could cause the wrong
| behavior.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I'd guess impacts at different angles. AFAIK bike helmets
| are tested for direct impacts via drop tests, so
| manufacturers may not care so much about how the helmet
| performs under different conditions - it may even be a
| good marketing gimmick to have helmets destroy themselves
| dramatically as people are more likely to share a picture
| along with a "saved my life" anecdote.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Well, when I was hit by a car and hitting the asphalt head
| first as a teenager, I found it adequate, that the helmet was
| cracked to pieces afterward. Did it save my life? I don't
| know, but with the helmet I only had a light concussion (and
| broken leg) compared to very possible skull crack.
|
| Compressed polystyrene I know only from light accidents, but
| it has been a while and I suppose todays helmets are a bit
| more durable. (But luckily never had to find out, if they
| fare better nowdays. Also I learned to fall and only rarely
| wear a helmet nowdays)
| msie wrote:
| Famous last words: "Well, that wasn't supposed to happen!"
| 323 wrote:
| It's not the polystyrene which cracks, but the plastic shell
| holding it in place. The separation will happen after the
| compression force is removed, because the compression will
| keep the split parts close together. Meaning that the helmet
| falls apart after it's done the job.
|
| Also, there are various degrees of helmets, from a simple
| polystyrene to a mountain bike one to a motorcycle helmet.
|
| You can always go to the next level if you want more
| protection. The polystyrene one is not supposed to be the end
| all of protection, just to be better than nothing with
| minimal inconvenience.
| dharmab wrote:
| Motorcycle helmets are typically also polystyrene, although
| with multiple densities for handling both light and heavy
| impacts.
|
| Motorcycle helmets also have degrees of protection, from
| the useless DOT standard to the less bad Snell standards to
| the quite good ECE and FIM standards.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > It's not the polystyrene which cracks, but the plastic
| shell holding it in place. The separation will happen after
| the compression force is removed, because the compression
| will keep the split parts close together. Meaning that the
| helmet falls apart after it's done the job.
|
| Nope. As a cyclist, I've seen numerous people in social
| media groups, friends, etc post pictures of their helmets
| that "saved their lives." Every single time, it's cracked
| to pieces, with no visible denting to the polystyrene foam.
|
| Deformation of that foam is how a helmet absorbs impact
| force, and cracking apart is a failure of the helmet.
|
| Bike helmets in the US are required to pass one test - a
| weight being dropped directly on top of the helmet that
| simulates a _detached_ adult male head falling onto the
| ground from about the height of an average adult male. The
| test makes absolutely no sense, because the whole thing is
| a sham.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| The pictures that I've seen of the various "saved my life"
| destroyed helmets have the polystyrene split apart - it's
| usually quite easy to split polystyrene if the force is
| applied the right (wrong) way.
|
| I don't like the concept of requiring PPE for a relatively
| safe activity as cycling as it makes cycling seem like a
| far more risky activity than it is and there's also the
| problem of "helmet hair" which can dissuade commuters. It's
| telling that countries where bike helmets were mandated had
| a sharp downturn in the numbers of cyclists.
| 323 wrote:
| Cycling is risky. I've stopped cycling on roads with cars
| because I realized it's just a matter of time until I get
| in a serious accident.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2016/05/12/how-
| saf...
|
| I'm with you on the mandatory helmet issue, I don't like
| it either, but mostly because I don't like needlessly
| restricting ones freedoms, if you want to risk your life,
| that's fine with me as long as you don't risk others
| lives too.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| Cycling is only risky due to the shared infrastructure
| with cars. The thing that raises the risk is cars. We
| should all be demanding that our streets are made safe
| for all users. We already have sidewalks in many places
| for this reason, we just need to extend similar safe
| infrastructure to bicycles and other road users too.
|
| Just throwing your hands up and not asking for change is
| a sure way to not improve things.
| stevejb wrote:
| I used to live next to a popular bike trail, that had 0
| sharing with cars. Not a road within 50 meters. There
| were plenty of injuries. Bike vs bike, bike vs
| pedestrian, bike vs stationary object, distracted cyclist
| injures themselves. Etc. If you're going 30 km/hr in thin
| lycra, you can certainly injure yourself with no help
| from anyone or anything else.
| u801e wrote:
| The problem is that pedestrians treat those trails like
| sidewalks and cyclists treat it like a road.
|
| Mutual yielding (where two pedestrians approach each
| other on a sidewalk) works perfectly fine at walking
| speed. It doesn't work at vehicular speeds, which is why
| the rules of the road exist that determine positioning
| and right of way. In order to travel at faster speeds,
| one must follow a set of rules. Relying on mutual
| yielding results in the collisions you mention.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| This is a common issue in this discussion. People using
| bikes for sport is a different category for cyclist than
| an urban and/or casual rider.
|
| When cycling for sport you should always wear a helmet.
| usrusr wrote:
| If you put on special dress for an activity, don't skip
| the helmet. Same as driving, actually: people who don
| special driving kit wear a helmet with that, everybody
| else drives without.
|
| When I spent time in a French hospital after bike helmet
| use (not involving a car by the way, except for the
| ambulance that called the helicopter), I was really
| curious if I would continue that pattern or become of of
| those "helmet even on civilian clothes rides" people. Was
| expecting the latter, but nope, would still feel as alien
| as putting on a helmet to drive.
| u801e wrote:
| There are many people who cycle for transportation. In
| order to utilize cycling for transportation, people need
| to maintain higher speeds, or spend a lot more time
| commuting each way. Just dismissing their needs by
| calling them sports cyclists because they ride at faster
| speeds doesn't do anyone any favors.
| threeseed wrote:
| > We should all be demanding that our streets are made
| safe for all users
|
| We should also be demanding that there is no crime as
| well.
|
| But outside of this fantasy land you need to accept that
| cyclists will be interacting with cars at multiple points
| in their journey from A to B. There are just too many
| practical issues building an entirely seperate cycling
| network.
|
| So until this magical day cycling should be considered
| risky.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Some very dense cities are building biking infrastructure
| right now, it's not a logistical impossibility... it's
| mostly a political problem
| hgomersall wrote:
| There are many cities that manage to make cyclists feel
| completely safe from cars. Nothing magical, just
| consistent policy and good design standards.
| jskrablin wrote:
| People fall with their bikes when there's no cars around.
| And there are plenty obstacles available around the city
| to help you fall. Hitting your head against a road
| surface after falling with a bike will generally ruin
| your day if you are not wearing a helmet. Simple physics,
| really.
| seoaeu wrote:
| Whereas being hit by a truck can end your life, end if
| you are wearing a helmet
| u801e wrote:
| > Cycling is only risky due to the shared infrastructure
| with cars.
|
| Use of shared infrastructure for all vehicles is risky
| when the rules of movement (position and right of way)
| rules are not followed. Some cyclists do not follow those
| rules and end up in collisions. Other times, authorities
| paint lines that guide cyclists to ride in unsafe areas
| (too close to the edge of the roadway, or too close to
| parked vehicles), or designate areas for cyclists to ride
| where they're hidden from the motorists' view until both
| enter the intersection.
|
| When one follows the rules of movement and rides in a
| predictable manner, that risk is largely eliminated.
|
| > We already have sidewalks in many places for this
| reason
|
| Sidewalks or side paths that have cyclists follow
| pedestrian right of way rules on approach and through
| intersections simply doesn't work. The reason is that
| cyclists move much faster than a walking pedestrian.
| Pedestrians walk between 2 to 4 mph, while cyclists ride
| between 10 to 20 mph. A pedestrian that's within a few
| feet of entering the roadway can be seen by a motorist in
| time for the motorist to stop and yield to them. On the
| other hand, a cyclist can be 50 feet away and not seen by
| the motorist before the enter the intersection. So,
| instead of yielding, a collision happens instead.
|
| Cyclists move closer to vehicular speeds as opposed to
| pedestrian speeds (you can't ride in a straight line when
| going at walking pace). It makes sense for them to be
| treated like vehicles and follow the same rules. The
| rules are designed in a way to accommodate vehicles
| moving at different speeds.
| op00to wrote:
| No one has ever been injured cycling on a trail! It's
| amazing how the laws of physics no longer apply once you
| stop sharing infrastructure with motor vehicles.
|
| More seriously, you can easily hit a rock or something
| and go over the handlebars on a bike path.
| confidantlake wrote:
| It isn't a binary thing but a rate.
| seoaeu wrote:
| There's worlds of difference between crashing your bike
| versus being hit by a car while riding your bike. Yeah,
| it'll hurt either way, but the former is substantially
| less likely to be fatal
| u801e wrote:
| Bike paths also tend to have more surface hazards because
| they're not designed following stringent standards that
| designers of roads have to follow.
| grey_earthling wrote:
| Sounds more like it's the cars that are risky, not the
| cycling.
| threeseed wrote:
| Well done. You've figured out that cars are in fact
| incredibly dangerous objects.
|
| Now you just need to figure out how to cycle from A to B
| that doesn't interact with them.
| pengaru wrote:
| Cycling has a pretty high probability of
| crashing/falling, and in such an event there's a good
| chance your face/head will impact something.
|
| Not that I'm in favor of _requiring_ wearing any safety
| gear, I 'm totally in favor of weeding out morons from
| the gene pool.
|
| But to act like helmets aren't a good idea for cyclists
| is asinine. Personally I try always rock a full-face MTB
| helmet when I'm cycling.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| The full-face helmets provide much better protection, but
| they have the trade-offs of being more uncomfortable and
| hotter.
|
| I'm not convinced that cycling is especially dangerous
| and my experience is that I've inevitably put my hands
| out when falling, so I think that gloves should be the
| first part of PPE recommended for cyclists. Luckily, I've
| never hit my helmet/head when coming off so I've found
| that a bike helmet is most useful for stopping low
| branches etc from hitting me. I'd recommend
| cycling/protective glasses too - very good for protecting
| against insects hitting your eyes.
|
| I find it interesting that people seem to have a skewed
| attitude towards head protection and cycling. If head
| protection is that important, then why are helmets not
| recommended for car passengers, people showering,
| changing a lightbulb etc.?
| pengaru wrote:
| > then why are helmets not recommended for car
| passengers, people showering, changing a lightbulb etc
|
| Strawman much?
|
| car passengers: airbags and seatbelts are in direct
| conflict with and superior to helmets.
|
| people showering and changing lightbulbs are not
| traveling at speeds exceeding a walking pace in an
| orientation predisposing them for a head/facial impact
| for _hours_ at a time.
|
| The full-face helmet I wear is heavily vented like any
| other bicycling helmet, there is practically no worse
| comfort than any other cycling helmet worth wearing. And
| considering how much I appreciate my teeth and not
| potentially needing to drink hamburgers through a straw
| while my broken jaw heals due to a cycling mishap, even
| if it were less comfortable I'm totally on board.
|
| I've written this up with details in previous comments on
| this subject, but I have multiple friends/friends' family
| members who have suffered substantial facial/dental
| injuries in seemingly totally benign cycling activities
| gone awry. All of them would likely have been non-events
| had they been wearing a full-face MTB helmet.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| People do still receive head injuries from car collisions
| even with airbags and seatbelts, so it's reasonable to
| think that wearing a car helmet would provide additional
| head protection - it's certainly common in motorsport.
|
| I'm trying to compare activities that have a significant
| risk of head injuries (and deaths) with cycling and yet
| PPE is very rarely mentioned for them.
| progman32 wrote:
| Perhaps those activities _should_ be discussing helmets.
| ghaff wrote:
| Most sports where participants could materially benefit
| from helmet use absolutely _do_ discuss helmets though
| usage varies from common (e.g. recreational downhill
| skiing) to almost universal--whitewater kayaking.
|
| Downhill skiing in particular has transition from
| essential no non-racers wearing a helmet to quite a high
| percentage in maybe a couple of decades.
| MandieD wrote:
| In 2009, a German state governor caused a terrible skiing
| accident, which he survived but the victim didn't. He was
| wearing a helmet, she wasn't, and after that point,
| helmet sales in Germany and Austria shot through the roof
| and use has remained high. Before that, it was pretty
| much only racers and children.
| ghaff wrote:
| Natasha Richardson (reasonably well-known actress) also
| died the same year from a skiing-related brain bleed. And
| yeah, while I haven't had a lot of visibility into ski
| area helmet usage over the past decade, that does seem to
| be around the time when it really shot up.
| pengaru wrote:
| Motorsport doesn't use airbags and has a steel tubular
| cage exposed directly to the occupants, the helmet is
| mostly for protecting from impact with the cage AIUI.
|
| All those grease monkeys driving around with aftermarket
| cages in their cars and not wearing helmets are actually
| less safe for it. The last drag strip I was at wouldn't
| even let you run if you had a cage and no helmet to
| accompany it.
|
| Airbags and no steel tubes next to your head change the
| calculus completely.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I mean, basically any adventurous activity where you're
| moving [quickly] with equipment gives rise to use of
| helmets - kayaking, rock climbing, roller blading,
| skateboarding, skiing, skydiving, horse riding, ...
|
| Can I ask, is it only safety equipment for cycling you're
| against?
|
| It looks like you're trying to argue that people
| shouldn't wear helmets when cycling because people in
| cars; that have protection from a steel cage with crumple
| zones, and airbags, and seatbelts, and cushioned seats;
| don't wear helmets.
|
| Like, sit in your car and get someone to launch a paving
| slab towards you; then sit on your push bike and do the
| same thing ... I'd do the first without a helmet, I
| definitely wouldn't do the second without a helmet (or at
| all). I can't see how you can find these situations
| comparable wrt indication of benefit from a protective
| helmet.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I'm not "against" cycle helmets, but think that their
| benefits are over-sold. The big issue is when people
| think that bike helmets are an important safety aspect of
| cycling, when they're probably not even in the top ten.
| It's interesting to see different countries' attitudes
| towards road safety and cycle helmets.
|
| For the record, I always wear a bike helmet here in the
| UK, but I am not convinced that they really provide much
| benefit. There's plenty of different studies on bike
| helmets and a lot of them are very flawed (quite often
| ones that are sponsored by helmet manufacturers), which
| is worrying as it should be easy to demonstrate if they
| are having a big effect on road safety. My opinion is
| that population wide, they do provide a small benefit,
| but they can also act as a barrier to cycling for some
| people, so it's best to not over-emphasise them.
|
| The health benefits from active travel are undeniable, so
| I'd prefer cycling to be promoted as much as possible and
| talking about helmets is missing the point.
| [deleted]
| raegis wrote:
| > I'm not convinced that cycling is especially dangerous
| and my experience is that I've inevitably put my hands
| out when falling, so I think that gloves should be the
| first part of PPE recommended for cyclists.
|
| Around 15 years ago I fractured my right arm doing the
| same. There were no scratches on my hands--I used my
| right hand to stop the fall primarily and the force was
| just too much. However, if I had hit my head, which was
| not unlikely in that particular fall, a fractured skull
| would have been much worse.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| Also, the average person likely drives much more than
| rides a bicycle, so they're much more likely to be
| injured in a car accident. But no one would suggest
| mandatory helmet use for drivers, even though that would
| likely prevent many times more deaths and injuries than
| mandatory bicycle helmets.
| seunosewa wrote:
| Seatbelts and airbags provide very good protection for
| drivers' heads. If cars didn't have those, drivers would
| need helmets.
| u801e wrote:
| Many motorists do suffer head injuries in crashes.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Cycling in a vacuum is safe-ish and not a particularly
| risky affair. Cycling on a shared road with automobiles
| going eight times your speed and weighing some 250 times
| your bipedal vehicle's weight is not so safe.
| u801e wrote:
| Differences in speed and mass are largely irrelevant if
| collisions don't occur. You can minimize the risk of a
| collision by following the rules of movement on the road
| (right of way and positioning) and anticipate if someone
| isn't following those rules and take appropriate action
| to avoid a collision before it's imminent.
|
| If passenger cars, large trucks and buses. and
| motorcycles can share the road, so can pedalcyclists.
| sirsinsalot wrote:
| Yes, but humans being humans, this isn't the case and
| isn't going to be. Let's deal with reality, not
| reductionist fantasy.
|
| If we take death of out of the equation we all live
| forever. It isn't a useful "if".
| seoaeu wrote:
| > If passenger cars, large trucks and buses. and
| motorcycles can share the road, so can pedalcyclists.
|
| Separated bike infrastructure empirically reduces cyclist
| fatalities. And it isn't hard to guess why.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I'd recommend reducing your tyre pressure and definitely
| remember some oxygen.
| vkou wrote:
| Cycling on roadways is not a relatively safe activity.
|
| I don't know a single cyclist commuter that has not been
| involved in a car crash - and I'm in my early 30s.
| tbihl wrote:
| I admittedly only commuted by bike for 3 years,
| 2018-2020, but I was never involved in a crash. I ride in
| some ways contrary to common advice, but that may
| contribute.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| I have worn a bike helmet without fail starting in the early
| 80s. I have _always_ understood that they are disposable
| after any hard hit. Visible or not, polystyrene compresses,
| cracks, crumbles, etc. The shell or skin of the helmet never
| seemed to matter much, so whether it splits or shreds, doesn
| 't matter. Maybe I'll have a look for a source on this.
| usrusr wrote:
| Yeah, it's a crumble zone that might add a few precious
| millimeters to the very short deceleration path of the
| brain if limbs and reflexes fail to do that job completely.
| Disintegration means that it's doing its job.
|
| That's a completely different story from the primary task
| of the helmets for rock climbers, construction workers or
| soldiers, which is distributing a small, concentrated
| impact (a rock or a dropped tool or random debris) to a
| wider area.
| hgomersall wrote:
| Rock climbing helmets differ in design substantially.
| Loads of modern ones are more like bike helmets -
| recognising, I suggest, that most head injuries climbing
| are head hitting the crag rather than rocks falling,
| making it more like cycle impacts. That said, I've no
| real insight into what makes one design better over
| another.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I had a helmet damaged by a roommate who knocked down a bike
| on a stand. The polystyrene was cracked completely through
| but remained bonded to the shell. They are supposed to break
| like that. Older styles of construction are going to be less
| durable but if it keeps the structure constrained to your
| head it will to a better job than nothing.
| Drunk_Engineer wrote:
| LOL...they are not supposed to break like that.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| With that level of violence it is the same scenario and the
| same outcome for a car.
|
| If we insist that cyclists protect themselves against multiple
| tonnes of kinetic energy impact, we should insist on the same
| protection for car drivers.
| GVIrish wrote:
| We already do. Crash safety standards, seatbelts, and
| mandatory air bags dramatically decrease injury and death in
| crashes, and numerous other safety mandates reduce the chance
| of a crash in the first place.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Thanks for the reply. I hadn't thought of airbags-as-
| helmet-substitutes in that way.
|
| Are helmets the bicycle equivalent of air bags then? Isn't
| that quite a third rate equivalent?
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| Should drivers also be required to wear helmets? Driving a car
| is itself unsafe, motor vehicle accidents are one of the
| leading causes of TBIs.
| profile53 wrote:
| I don't think helmets would mitigate that risk. For
| comparison, should bicyclists be required to wear seatbelts?
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| Race car drivers wear helmets, so clearly they help.
| krab wrote:
| At racetracks, they're usually mandatory. It's all a matter
| of risk vs. inconvenience.
| bagels wrote:
| That's what airbags are supposed to help with, thankfully.
| BrianHenryIE wrote:
| Yet 53,000 people a year in the US suffer traumatic brain
| injuries from motor vehicle crashes.
|
| If we are to believe a helmet will help a cyclist, it must
| be true that helmets would have helped those drivers and
| passengers too.
|
| The airbag argument is just distracting. "Let's not use
| antivirus because we already have a firewall".
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7048a3.htm#T2_down
| [deleted]
| aasasd wrote:
| Another such example is drivers or passengers opening cars'
| doors without looking in the mirrors. A car's doors are
| reinforced plenty while having relatively sharp-ish metal 'lip'
| on the butt end, and you really don't want to run into one from
| that angle.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| That's why it's a good idea to not cycle in the "door-zone"
| on roads. Annoyingly, some bike "infrastructure" (i.e. bit of
| paint) is put directly into the door-zone of parked vehicles
| which typically makes it worse than useless and best avoided
| (which then of course risks getting ire from drivers who
| don't understand why you choose to cycle where you do).
|
| One interesting way of reducing doorings is to teach drivers
| and passengers the Dutch reach. Basically you should always
| use your furthest hand to open the door as that involves
| twisting your body and encourages you to see a nearby
| pedestrian/scooter/cyclist.
| aasasd wrote:
| Yeah, in regard to bike lanes between the road and the
| sidewalk, some note that passengers are even less likely
| than the drivers to look in the mirrors or just back out
| the window when getting out, since they expect mostly
| walking people on that side. Thankfully, some lanes are
| separated from the parked cars, usually with some flowebeds
| or just bollards in that space: e.g.
| https://i2.wp.com/www.theurbanist.org/wp-
| content/uploads/201...
|
| I suspect that a side-effect of the popularity of electric
| scooters will be that passengers will habituate a bit to
| seeing faster things on the sidewalks.
| u801e wrote:
| > I suspect that a side-effect of the popularity of
| electric scooters will be that passengers will habituate
| a bit to seeing faster things on the sidewalks.
|
| That's unlikely. Even if 95% of people did, there's still
| 5% who won't. The real problem is bad design that places
| preferential use lanes for cyclists too close to parked
| cars and expects cyclists and occupants of motor vehicles
| to figure it out. This results in serious injuries and
| deaths of cyclists.
|
| Authorities should be encouraging cyclists to ride at
| least 6 feet away from parked vehicles. One way is to
| paint shared lane markings to guide cyclists to ride in
| the safest position in the general purpose lane far
| enough away from parked vehicles.
| u801e wrote:
| > One interesting way of reducing doorings is to teach
| drivers and passengers the Dutch reach.
|
| That really doesn't work. First, a cyclist is moving at
| least 15 feet per second, which is the average length of a
| passenger vehicle, so by the time they're besides you,
| they're already past you. Second, your view is blocked[1]
| by the B and C pillars of the vehicle as well as the
| headrest, so you won't be able to see a cyclist
| approaching.
|
| The second best approach is to check the outside mirror
| before opening the door, but that doesn't work for
| passengers in the vehicle. The absolute best approach is to
| never, ever, ride in the door zone, regardless of whether
| or not door zone bike lanes are present.
|
| [1] https://i.imgur.com/MuvTxOz.jpeg
| Nexxxeh wrote:
| It's a significant issue.
|
| The British Highway Code now includes the "Dutch Reach" car
| door open (where you grab the door handle with the hand
| furthest from the door to force your body to turn, hopefully
| seeing inbound cyclists).
|
| A LOT of the updates to the highway code are for the sake of
| road users that aren't in cars.
|
| https://www.highwaycodeuk.co.uk/changes-and-
| answers/category...
|
| >239 ...
|
| >where you are able to do so, you should open the door using
| your hand on the opposite side to the door you are opening;
| for example, use your left hand to open a door on your right-
| hand side. This will make you turn your head to look over
| your shoulder. You are then more likely to avoid causing
| injury to cyclists or motorcyclists passing you on the road,
| or to people on the pavement
| u801e wrote:
| > The British Highway Code now includes the "Dutch Reach"
| car door open (where you grab the door handle with the hand
| furthest from the door to force your body to turn,
| hopefully seeing inbound cyclists).
|
| Unfortunately, it doesn't work unless you're in a
| convertible type vehicle. Otherwise, the B and C pillars as
| well as the headrest will block[1] your view of an
| approaching cyclist. Checking the outside/wing mirror is
| sufficient. The British highway code also includes a
| provision that says that cyclists can ride in the primary
| position given the situation. Riding far enough away from
| parked vehicles to avoid a potential dooring collision is
| one of them.
|
| [1] https://i.imgur.com/MuvTxOz.jpeg
| u801e wrote:
| Doorings can be prevented by riding far enough away from
| parked vehicles (at least 6 feet away).
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > The cyclist was launched headfirst into the bumper of a car
| stopped at the light and her helmet loudly cracked in two
|
| Bicycle helmets "work" by deformation of the hard polystyrene
| foam. If it cracked in two, it failed. If the foam did not
| _deform_ , no energy was absorbed.
|
| It is an extremely common misconception, especially among
| cyclists, that a cracked/disintegrated helmet "worked" and
| "saved their life."
|
| Bicycle helmets crack and fall apart in many of these crashes
| because they're not designed to take anywhere near the typical
| forces involved in actual crash. They're only designed to
| "work" for a stationary fall from about the height of an
| average adult male, falling straight upside-down on top of
| their head.
|
| > I'm sure she would have died without that helmet.
|
| That's not how that works.
|
| "I saw someone wearing a bunch of ring of flowers around their
| head and they got hit by a car. The flowers exploded in a poof
| of pedals. I'm sure she would have died without the ring of
| flowers around her head."
|
| "I wear a ring of garlic around my neck. I haven't been
| attacked by vampires. Garlic repels vampires!"
|
| Etc.
| buildingsramen wrote:
| Did you read the article? These bikes are 2-3 meters long.
| There is no chance of this type of injury occurring with them.
| practice9 wrote:
| Unless Pedal Me provide open-source data on which they based
| this decision, I don't believe it is based on safety.
|
| It's seems like marketing and cost-cutting issue for them.
|
| Customer: "Driver is wearing a helmet, and nobody provided
| helmets for us.. Are we in danger?"
|
| Pedal Me: "Say no more.. "
|
| Plus it seems they only bought caps & jackets for their
| drivers previously, no safety gear. Drivers are replaceable,
| aren't they? (\s)
|
| And other thing, why is a 3 meters long bike road-legal?
| bluejekyll wrote:
| "And other thing, why is a 3 meters long bike road-legal?"
|
| Because there's nothing unsafe about it.
|
| Better questions are: why are cars that exceed 90 mph
| street legal? Why are trucks with lift kits street legal?
| Shouldn't we be preventing things from being on the street
| that are actually killing people?
| aoeusnth1 wrote:
| Why is a 5 meter long motorized bike with an enclosed cabin
| street legal?
| anamexis wrote:
| 2 bicycles with a little house in the middle??
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzReEcDjmlY
| op00to wrote:
| There are laws authorizing their use, they are registered
| with licensing required for use. That's why.
| buildingsramen wrote:
| I don't think it's based on safety, either. It's almost
| certainly a safety perception / marketing thing.
|
| However, the type of bike they are using is much safer than
| a normal bicycle because of its size.
| b3morales wrote:
| > And other thing, why is a 3 meters long bike road-legal?
|
| Huh? Why shouldn't it be?
|
| A normal road bike gets close to 2 meters at the tips of
| the wheels. Add a trailer and that's easily 3.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| That wouldn't surprise me at all. But as for a 3m bike,
| that's still shorter than most cars? Broadly speaking,
| bikes of any size are classed as vehicles in the US, with
| the same rights and duties (though that may vary a bit
| state by state).
| anamexis wrote:
| > And other thing, why is a 3 meters long bike road-legal?
|
| Why shouldn't it be?
| Cerium wrote:
| I'm not sure about that. If the bike gets stuck either you go
| over the front or you wish you did.
|
| I have had my bike's wheel get physically jammed into a train
| track and went over the front. I was wearing a helmet, though
| I didn't hit my head. I was practicing Aikido back then and
| did a nice roll resulting in no injury. There is no way I
| could do that today.
| lyschoening wrote:
| Of course going over the handlebars is possible with a cargo
| bike. The cyclist will hit the cargo area before they hit the
| pavement, which makes these situations no less dangerous.
| buildingsramen wrote:
| The physics don't work that way. With a normal bicycle, you
| go over the handlebars because the whole bike tips forward
| - it's just gravity + momentum. Then you faceplant.
|
| With a wheelbase of 2-3m, there's just no way the bike tips
| forward like this, especially with the rider positioned
| towards the back. Couple that with the fact that cargo
| bikes travel at lower average speeds and it's not clear to
| me how this injury occurs.
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's inevitable, inattentive other drivers will eventually
| hit one of these cargo bikes no matter how safely their
| operators are riding.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| hHe article is full of BS, you don't hurt yourself "going
| over the handlebars" you hurt yourself with sudden impact to
| your head. This might happen after you go over the bars, hit
| your head on the bars, get t-boned or something hits you from
| behind. The logic that "helmets make risky people take bigger
| risks" is criminally false. It's like saying wearing a seat
| belt makes you drive aggressively because you feel your now
| invincible.
| eloff wrote:
| I had a near miss like this that really scared me in Vancouver.
| I was going straight, and the light went yellow just before I
| got to the intersection. Thinking like a car, I speed up to
| clear the intersection before the red light. An oncoming car in
| the left lane also sped up to make a left turn. I don't
| remember if he indicated, certainly I didn't see it. We both
| slammed on the brakes and narrowly missed each other. He honked
| at me and was pissed. I was too scared and shaken for a while
| to realize I had the right of way. My next realization was that
| it doesn't matter if I have the right of way and am dead. Since
| then I always look carefully for left turners, even if they're
| not indicating, and I stop for yellow lights whenever possible
| (which to be fair, is what one is supposed to do.) Cycling on
| roads with cars is dangerous, even when there is a dedicated
| bike lane.
| dougmsmith wrote:
| dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp wrote:
| >And now you know why riding with body armor is pointless.
|
| I can confidently say I am among the elite in terms of
| urban riding competency, having logged at least 15,000
| miles riding around Los Angeles.
|
| I've crashed three times. Two of those were were the result
| of a combination of bad luck and me taking unnecessary
| risks. The other one was entirely unavoidable, and totally
| the result of a negligent driver. In that case I slammed my
| head hard on the pavement, broke my helmet, and managed to
| ride away shaken but not seriously injured.
|
| The point is I have skills too, I've avoided countless
| accidents by employing them. I also wear a helmet to
| further reduce that risk.
| raegis wrote:
| Ironically, I used to ride without a helmet, but only
| started when I moved to Los Angeles and had a few near-
| misses. Drivers here have a different idea about sharing
| the road than elsewhere. Biking fast through an
| intersection when a car traveling in the opposite
| direction is waiting to turn left is a recipe for
| disaster--they never want to wait, so I like to yield
| even when I have the right of way.
| MrMan wrote:
| nonsense what has kept you safe is blind luck
| progman32 wrote:
| I don't follow why your anecdote suggests that body armor
| is useless. You're just saying that good awareness is also
| a good idea. All it takes is one momentary lapse of reason.
| I say this as a motorcyclist who adopts a similar head on a
| swivel approach. Assume everyone's out to kill you and make
| it look like an accident. I don't assume I'm perfect,
| though.
| tezza wrote:
| Seriously dangerous advice. Well done being lucky on
| repeat, but luck is all it is.
|
| I was cycling safely from Coogee to the City in Sydney.
|
| A lady driving her kids to school rear ended me at a round
| about.
|
| My head smashed straight into the asphalt. Fortunately
| helmets are more or less legal requirements in Australia or
| else I would have been dead or brain-damaged.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Cycling on roads with cars is dangerous, even when there is
| a dedicated bike lane.
|
| My brother in law passed just two weeks ago when a sanitation
| truck entered his bike lane. 35 years old, left a pregnant
| wife (my sister) behind.
|
| Don't trust the motor vehicles to keep you safe. That's your
| job.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's so sad, it breaks me up just reading it. Much
| strength to you and your sister.
|
| One thing I've noticed is that it doesn't really matter
| whether cars indicate or not, you should just treat them as
| hostile whether they are going to intersect with you or
| whether it _seems_ like they won 't.
| eloff wrote:
| That's horrible, my heart goes out to your sister and your
| family.
| Nexxxeh wrote:
| I'm so sorry for your family's loss.
| rollcat wrote:
| Background: I do downhill longboarding as a hobby.
|
| > If some riders choose to not wear a helmet [...]
|
| ...we take their board from them, until they show up with one.
|
| This sport is almost completely unregulated (outside of
| official events), but somehow the community has developed an
| incredibly strong culture of keeping both yourself and the
| others around you safe. I guess something about being a niche
| sport, perhaps a bit of natural selection.
|
| If e.g. a sponsor (hypothetically - I'm nowhere near good
| enough to get sponsorship) told me not to wear any particular
| piece of safety gear, I'd laugh them out of the room, and
| likely the entire local crew would join in the laughing. It's a
| small sport, once the word gets out, that company would also
| likely no longer be getting many sales either.
|
| The only correct move for the Pedal Me riders is to go pedal
| for someone else.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9yL5usLFgY
| aeternum wrote:
| Don't you think it's a little hypocritical to force everyone
| to draw their acceptable risk line at exactly where you
| happen to draw it?
|
| Longboarding is risky, downhill longboarding is riskier,
| doing it without a helmet slightly moreso, doing it naked
| probably slightly moreso.
|
| Why is it okay for you to set the acceptable risk bar and
| steal boards from anyone that doesn't agree? Should people
| that think that downhill longboarding with a helmet is risky
| steal your board?
| hklgny wrote:
| Unregulated sports like this are a delicate thing. It's up
| to the participants to self regulate and avoid catching the
| public eye so they don't lose access to the areas they get
| to enjoy. This is a huge thing in FAR 103 sports
| (ultralight flying). Unregulated doesn't mean "do whatever
| you want" it means "we've given you some leeway here don't
| mess it up".
|
| In this example, If people start getting hurt on a hill -
| sooner or later using that hill gets banned.
| bad_alloc wrote:
| > Why is it okay for you to set the acceptable risk bar and
| steal boards from anyone that doesn't agree?
|
| For the same reason we enforce seatbelts in cars: Enough
| people died. Then those who saw them die decided on these
| rules so we don't need to go through the same pain. The
| fact that you don't get this shows that the rules work.
| aeternum wrote:
| The seatbelt thing is somewhat illogical. Like if that's
| the level of risk we deem acceptable for society then
| things like wingsuit diving and probably even
| motorcycles, longboarding and bicycling on city streets
| should also be illegal.
|
| Especially if measured by any objective metric like
| fatality risk per passenger mile.
| kelnos wrote:
| This is an imperfect process, and there's a balance to be
| made. Sure, we can be too paternalistic, and putting too
| many onerous restrictions on things (or on banning things
| outright that people have a reasonable desire to do). I
| think banning motorcycles would fall under that. Sure,
| riding a motorcycles is far more likely to get you
| injured or killed than riding in a car, but I think most
| people would consider banning motorcycles to be too
| extreme.
|
| It's not fully objective. We're emotional humans, and
| that's ok. We're going to do things that are risky, and
| some people are going to get hurt or killed doing them.
| But that doesn't mean we should just throw up our hands
| and give up. We can still make it less likely people will
| get hurt doing those activities by requiring some safety
| measures must be taken.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's certainly a slippery slope. You will find people who
| object to "their taxes" being used to do search and
| rescue, provide wilderness medical treatment, etc. for
| activities that they consider unreasonably dangerous,
| e.g. winter hiking up even fairly moderate mountains.
| blfr wrote:
| OK but longboarding is not essential like general
| transportation. Why ban helmet-less longboarding instead
| of the whole thing?
| aspenmayer wrote:
| You ruin the roadway for responsible users by maligning
| the good name and reputation of your fellow riders when
| you do so.
|
| I mean to say, riders overwhelmingly want to be safe and
| it seems to be both self-selecting and self-reinforcing.
| Outlaw riders are free to ride alone.
| celticninja wrote:
| Cars aren't essential by that measure.
| thayne wrote:
| That really depends on where you live. In many parts of
| the US, public transit is non-existent, and there isn't
| much within walking distance.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think most people in the world -- even outside car-
| heavy US -- would disagree with that, even if they are
| not drivers or car owners themselves.
| thayne wrote:
| Interesting you should bring that up. That was used as an
| example of unintended side effects of policy in my
| economics class, because when people started wearing seat
| belts, they drove faster and more recklessly, so while
| the seatbelts protected people inside the cars, the
| number of pedestrians hit by cars went up.
|
| See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation
| mcguire wrote:
| Hmm.
|
| Most states brought on mandatory seat belt laws in the
| mid-1980s--mid-1990s. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat
| _belt_laws_in_the_United_S...)
|
| 1981 was the last year with motor vehicle fatalities over
| 3.0 per billion miles. By 2000 it was 1.53 and 2019 it
| was 1.10. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fa
| tality_rate_in...)
|
| I can only find pedestrian fatality numbers from 1994.
| (https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/road-
| users/pedestr...) It decreased from 5584 in 1995 to 4109
| in 2009 and increased to 6272 in 2019.
|
| In 1995, there were 2,423 billion vehicle miles traveled;
| in 2009, 2,957; in 2019, 3,248. Doing the division, that
| works out to 2.3 pedestrian deaths / BVMT in 1995; 1.4 in
| 2009, and 1.9 in 2019.
|
| Interesting.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Why is it okay for you to set the acceptable risk bar
| and steal boards from anyone that doesn 't agree?_
|
| If it is a group activity the group sets the acceptable
| behaviour. Don't like it? Demand your board back and go
| play with another group, rather than expecting this group
| to accept your risk assessment which doesn't agree with
| their's.
|
| This is especially true if the group is in any way more
| formal than a bunch of people arbitrarily meeting up.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Don 't you think it's a little hypocritical to force
| everyone to draw their acceptable risk line at exactly
| where you happen to draw it?_
|
| I always find takes like this a little weird. This is
| something we do _all the time_ in society. Seat belt laws.
| Bicycle and motorcycle helmet laws. All sorts of safety
| regulations and laws around sports, transportation, health,
| etc.
|
| We as a society often decide to "protect people from
| themselves". Some of it is out of an understanding that
| humans are notoriously bad at risk assessment and will do
| unsafe things. Sure, that's a bit paternalistic, but...
| that's life. But some of it is also because severe injury
| and death don't just hurt the person injured or killed. The
| emotional toll of those effects are felt widely. The
| _economic_ effects are felt widely too.
|
| Certainly there are lines to be drawn, and there's plenty
| of reasonable debate as to where those lines should be
| drawn. Some possible safety measures might be very
| difficult, burdensome, or expensive; sometimes in those
| cases we can't require things like those without causing
| other types of harm. But others... not so much.
|
| > _Why is it okay for you to set the acceptable risk bar
| and steal boards from anyone that doesn 't agree?_
|
| Because it's not just about the individual in question.
| It's about the entire community. The community of
| longboarders don't want severe injury and death on their
| hands, so they develop social norms that include requiring
| helmets. That's entirely within their right to do so, as it
| is their right to ostracize those who do not conform. (For
| the record, I think "steal their boards" was hyperbole. I
| doubt people's boards actually get taken. I expect it's
| more likely that they get shunned and ejected from the
| community.)
|
| > _Should people that think that downhill longboarding with
| a helmet is risky steal your board?_
|
| If the community consensus is there, then maybe that's
| reasonable. (In the "eject from community" sense, that is,
| not necessarily the literal "steal their board" sense.)
|
| Certainly all of these sorts of decisions should be based
| on research as to what actually makes people safer. Humans
| are imperfect and don't always follow the science, but the
| hope is that, on a long enough time scale, with enough
| people weighing in, we'll get it right most of the time.
| tengwar2 wrote:
| Ok, so what you are saying appears to _support_ Pedal Me 's
| position as reported in the article. They say: (a) wearing
| helmets encourages risky behaviour; (b) the added risk of
| accidents outweighs the increase in safety during an
| accident. You are giving an example of a community who only
| engage in a dangerous activity if they wear helmets,
| supporting (a). And I imagine you would agree that you are
| less safe wearing a helmet and going downhill longboarding
| than not wearing a helmet and not going downhill
| longboarding? If so, that supports (b).
|
| It's not a conclusive argument, of course, and I have no axe
| to grind on this issue. It's just that I think that you might
| not have taken in to account what they are saying.
| [deleted]
| dharmab wrote:
| I'm sure one serious injury can ruin an entire day for
| everyone at an event. It makes sense that the community would
| expect consideration from boarders of the consequences on an
| accident on others.
| capableweb wrote:
| I'm sure some think like that too, but people are also
| selfless enough to want others to be safe, no matter if it
| ruins the event for them or not.
| jasonkester wrote:
| What do you suppose happened to the rest of skateboarding
| that pushed it in the opposite direction?
|
| Watching the olympics this summer, it was amazing to watch
| the street skating events with none of the competitors
| wearing any sort of protective gear. And it's not like they
| didn't need it either. They were getting wrecked in falls to
| the point where some of the couldn't even finish the
| competition.
|
| It was nuts watching it, since my last exposure to the sport
| was from the 90s where Tony Hawk would be padded out to the
| nines while standing around giving an interview by the side
| of the park.
|
| What is going on that made helmets so uncool that you
| wouldn't even wear one if you knew you were going to fall on
| your head?
| rollcat wrote:
| > What do you suppose happened to the rest of skateboarding
| that pushed it in the opposite direction?
|
| Widdershin's response is excellent, but I'll add a bit more
| context: the physical similarities between a skateboard and
| a longboard are very superficial (we can barely trade any
| hardware at all); that extends to the respective
| communities, which also have disjoint histories.
|
| Longboarders trace their roots to surfers; likely someone
| bored of waiting for a good wave has put skateboard trucks
| on their surfboard. Some niche longboarding
| cultures/disciplines were inspired by surfing/SUP
| (surfskate, pumptrack, land paddle), and one major
| longboarding discipline is a lot about moving on and around
| the board ("dancing" on it).
|
| In these other longboarding communities (perhaps except
| pumptrack), you will see people using helmets and other
| safety gear much less often, and it's probably fair. But
| I've never, ever been dissed by any of these people for
| wearing a helmet, even if just cruising.
| _proofs wrote:
| short answer: branding
|
| long answer: branding
|
| anecdotally, am a daily skateboarder and long time
| snowboarder who is guilty of having an ego, and even wear
| pads to protect a couple massive contusions (swellbos) but
| i never wear a helmet, so ill frame it like this: 95% of
| the time i am not that much at risk for serious head injury
| when skating, and even though i take it for granted, there
| is an element of knowing how to fall/bail early and skating
| just within my means.
|
| however on a snowboard, i am much more acutely aware of the
| consequence -- my casual and super comfort "resting" level
| is like 25-35+ mph, which is a car accident, which is
| almost always a threat for serious head injury.
|
| there is a huge difference between tripping at about
| walking/jogging speed and hitting your head versus at
| 35mph, and this realization happened after 15 winters of
| safe riding without a helmet.
|
| the reality is, i am just not that worried about it -- ego
| or no ego, except when i snowboard, which i will not do
| without a helmet anymore.
|
| ./shrug
| runamok wrote:
| Not to mention the risk of getting hit by another
| snowboarder or skier.
| MandieD wrote:
| Before 2009: very few adult skiers in Austria and Germany
| wore helmets, pretty much only the racers and children
| who were legally required to. I felt like a dork wearing
| mine, but I experienced a scary near-miss my first season
| on these relatively crowded slopes.
|
| After 2009: at least 80% of adult skiers in Austria and
| Germany wear helmets, from the looks of things. Most
| frequent non-wearers are very old, permanently tanned
| Austrian men who literally have 5000+ ski days behind
| them or young ladies with nicely-done hair and make-up
| much more interested in getting good pictures for
| Instagram than actually skiing.
|
| What happened in 2009? The Ministerprasident (think US
| state governor) of Thuringia, Dieter Althaus, was flying
| down a black (expert) slope, turned onto a blue
| (beginner) slope with enough momentum behind him to go up
| it and crash into a lady from Slovakia.
|
| He was in the hospital for weeks, living to earn a
| criminal judgment for negligent homicide, paying tens of
| thousands of Euro.
|
| She died on the way to the hospital.
|
| He was wearing a helmet.
|
| She wasn't.
|
| The absolute crush of helmet sales then and continued
| rates since are sometimes called the "Althaus-Effekt".
| sharkweek wrote:
| It's a style thing (as dumb as that is in practice).
|
| You just don't look "cool" switch back smithing down
| hollywoood 16 wearing a helmet.
|
| I skated a ton growing up and it was beaten into you at
| skateparks how dumb you looked wearing a helmet. No major
| head injuries but definitely had some close calls. I look
| back and cringe and how stupid that was.
| comprev wrote:
| The "style" thing also applies to BMX - brakeless, no
| helmet and no knee/elbow pads.
|
| Natural selection is rife.
| kzrdude wrote:
| The women's winner did wear a helmet - 13-year-old NISHIYA
| Momiji. I think because she was underage, the rules forced
| her to wear helmet.
| Widdershin wrote:
| You wouldn't generally exceed 15mph street skating.
| Competent downhill skaters can reach 50mph+, with world
| record speeds exceeding 80mph.
|
| That alone makes safety gear much more essential for
| downhill.
|
| In addition, if someone shows up to a spot without adequate
| gear, crashes and badly hurts themselves, it can cause the
| spot to be blown for other riders. Downhill skateboarding
| is much easier when you're on the good side of local
| residents and police.
|
| Also, since DH communities tend to be very small and tight-
| knit, if someone gets hurt you hear about it. I've
| personally witnessed multiple incidents leading to broken
| spines, countless minor injuries, and have had one friend
| die while skating. Either you take safety seriously or pay
| the piper.
|
| There are more factors than this, would probably make for
| an interesting sociology dissertation.
| serf wrote:
| > You wouldn't generally exceed 15mph street skating.
| Competent downhill skaters can reach 50mph+, with world
| record speeds exceeding 80mph.
|
| it's all context, no?
|
| You wouldn't try to trick over a 17ft drop on a
| longboard, either. [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/kzn58e/the-leap-of-
| faith-was...
| harph wrote:
| Protective gear was always uncool in street skateboarding.
| Vert (Tony Hawk's main discipline) was the exception. From
| what I understand it's about being counterculture, punk
| etc. Today even bowl riders mostly don't wear helmets or
| pads, and crashing in a concrete bowl is arguably even
| worse than on a wooden ramp.
| maccard wrote:
| There's a big difference between the speeds you travel at
| in a bowl and in very skating.
| comprev wrote:
| The distance from 1M air out of the bowl to the bottom is
| a very long way!
| falcolas wrote:
| Speed doesn't matter when you hit your head.
|
| I had a friend who fell while ice skating at the speed of
| a slow stroll, and hit the back of his head. He was dead
| a week later.
|
| And just getting a concussion can result in measurably
| decreased mental capabilities for months.
|
| Dad time: you've got one brain for your entire life. Stop
| relying on luck to keep it in working order.
| gernb wrote:
| I''m not defending Pedal Me but you could try to design the
| city so biking is safer
|
| https://www.treehugger.com/why-dutch-dont-wear-
| helmets-48581...
|
| Sure you can still get in an accident. That's true of
| everything though. I don't go for a walk in a plastic bubble
| just in case a car hits me
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=cars+hitting+pedestrians&tbm.
| ..
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Design won't do anything for the millions of ignorati that
| are handed drivers licenses without demonstrating driving
| competence.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| You could have the best designed city in the world and you
| will still be at a high risk of your fragile brain case
| impacting the ground or something worse at speed. Whether
| you're pedaling down a country road or the busiest NYC
| intersection not wearing a helmet on a bike is stupid, full
| stop.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| In the Netherlands we're doing fine without them though.
| Nobody wears one on a regular bike.
|
| I've had a few times where I slipped so fast I didn't
| even remember what happened but every time my arm was
| there protecting my head. Reflexes are awesome.
|
| Accidents can happen sure but the added hassle doesn't
| seem worth it. Of course things are different when you do
| high speed cycling or mountain biking.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _In absolute terms, more people were killed in a car
| accident (237) than in a bicycle accident (203) last
| year, but this is different per kilometre travelled.
| Traffic mortality per billion vehicle-km was much higher
| among cyclists than among passenger car occupants (11
| versus 1.6 deaths)._ " (https://www.cbs.nl/en-
| gb/news/2020/31/decline-in-road-fatali...)
| petre wrote:
| In the Netherlands normal cycle commuters almost never
| exceed 15 km/h. But I keep watching some Dutch road
| cycling youtube channel and they all wear helmets.
| ghaff wrote:
| And cycle commuting is part of the culture which probably
| makes it safer as well. Would wearing helmets make it
| even safer? Possibly. But one can always argue for
| incremental safety gear and processes.
| dd82 wrote:
| >I've had a few times where I slipped so fast I didn't
| even remember what happened but every time my arm was
| there protecting my head. Reflexes are awesome.
|
| isn't this a good example of confirmation bias? it worked
| for you, so it must work for everyone the same as it did
| for you each time they require it.
|
| its your brain, I guess. and you do have that social
| health network to cover you when medical issues arise.
| guess it doesn't matter your quality of life post-brain
| injury :-)
| nemetroid wrote:
| Isn't the Netherlands very flat? I would probably feel
| safe without a helmet if it weren't for the hills. My
| usual ten minute ride has an elevation difference of 35
| m.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yes very flat.
|
| 35m isn't an awful lot though. You can pick up a lot of
| speed from a bridge in the Netherlands too.
| raegis wrote:
| Even well-maintained streets can get potholes, especially
| after huge weather swings. I once hit a pothole while
| biking and somersaulted over the handlebars. I landed on my
| back, but a slightly smaller rotation would have me in the
| hospital, or worse.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| > ...we take their board from them, until they show up with
| one.
|
| Reminds me of a blessedly terse reminder on the entry to a
| building site: "No hat no boots no job"
| d00k wrote:
| > ...we take their board from them, until they show up with
| one.
|
| No you don't, thieves aren't tolerated in our community.
| rollcat wrote:
| Why did you choose to purposefully misinterpret a metaphor?
| serf wrote:
| >...we take their board from them, until they show up with
| one.
|
| > I'd laugh them out of the room, and likely the entire local
| crew would join in the laughing.
|
| wow your group sounds pretty inviting.
|
| sounds like a group of people that want to keep a niche sport
| niche -- that's fine, until you realize that your in-group is
| cultivating habits and characteristics that are totally
| incompatible with the rest of human society.
|
| I'm by no means a candidate as a participant in such a sport,
| but I guarantee that kind of behavior is going to fragment
| the fan-base way before the virtue signaling becomes more
| effective than simply asking people to wear safety equipment
| like a normal human being.
|
| There are plenty of more dangerous activities where that kind
| of behavior would be considered intolerable. Take some
| lessons from the rest of the dangerous activities around the
| world, foster good behavior through those methods.
|
| As an ex-surfer this kind of behavior strikes me as the same
| kind of shit that 'locals' would do to 'bennies' (non-
| locals); throwing their clothes in the trash or fire-pit and
| otherwise just being a shit-head because they didn't want
| them there.
|
| #1 rule in any human endeavor : be nice. Ask them to wear a
| helmet, explain the importance. If they refuse, disassociate
| from that individual. Resorting to ham-fisted assault/theft
| in order to teach a point is beyond immature and will serve
| to do nothing but fragment the fan-base, make enemies, and
| eventually invite legal trouble.
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| Freedom in an unregulated space requires less freedom for the
| individual, I suppose.
| Covzire wrote:
| Doesn't have to be a zero sum game, they may be free but
| have a strong safety culture for another reason.
| mhmmbt wrote:
| rollcat wrote:
| The safety gear __is__ the freedom. You have minor crashes,
| bails, small accidents every day, sometimes almost every
| run. It's normal, it's a part of the sport: you're pushing
| to improve yourself, you're racing other people
| competitively. The helmet is an "extra life", but the
| sliding gloves (think velcro hockey pucks) are about as
| essential as the wheels themselves; you wear them even in
| "no paws down" (standup slides only) races, they're what's
| keeping your palms from becoming meat crayons.
|
| The safety gear allows you to just walk away from some
| otherwise life-ending accidents like nothing happened.
| hatsunearu wrote:
| Somewhat unrelated but in car culture aftermarket safety gear
| like roll cages, bucket seats, racing harnesses, HANS and
| helmets are seen as cool and badass. It's a good sight.
|
| Though there are some problems, like if you start running the
| race safety gear, you need to go all out--you can't have a
| bucket seat and a race harness without also using a helmet
| and HANS, your head is vulnerable, and if you run a roll cage
| without a helmet your head is vulnerable. But in race events
| a lot of people run "cool" safety gear and people have a good
| attitude towards it.
| yucky wrote:
| >...we take their board from them, until they show up with
| one.
|
| I'm confused what this means. So you steal their board? Or
| are they borrowing/using someone else's board and they
| forfeit the right to use it?
| progman32 wrote:
| Presumably, like stealing someone's car keys if they're
| trying to drive drunk, or taking someone's stick on the
| city streets if you're one of Louis Rossman's crew in NYC
| and the perp is going around smashing stuff ;)
| yucky wrote:
| I think your presumption is illogical, since you take
| someone's car keys to stop them from committing a crime
| and harming/killing others.
| rollcat wrote:
| TL;DR It probably wouldn't happen literally, but any local
| community is too small and interdependent.
|
| I've never actually seen this threat "executed": the rules
| are all unwritten, but most people get a clue when reminded
| or lectured. My friend once wanted to skate in a broken
| helmet - it literally saved his life a few days before. We
| had a cute argument, he said it's not really broken if he
| only hit his head very lightly (so "lightly", he actually
| had a slight neck pain). I told him I'd buy that broken
| helmet from him at a full price, just so he doesn't use it,
| he wouldn't believe me until I took EUR150 out of my
| pocket. Eventually he agreed to not be an idiot ;)
|
| If you'd insist on not wearing a helmet? On an official
| event, you'd probably get removed, possibly banned from
| future events. You need a sticker with your number on the
| helmet, so you wouldn't make it as far as the start line. I
| guess on an unofficial freeride, you just wouldn't get
| invited again - it's all invite only to begin with, and
| doesn't make much sense unless you have at least 3-4 people
| participating; someone needs to shuttle, you split the gas
| cost, sometimes you need spotters, etc. Randoms on a local
| spot? You either already know them (so you are allowed to
| yell at them), or they're new, so you make friends and they
| get a mentor.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| ekanes wrote:
| When I was 13 I was hit by a car on my bike. Same thing. Helmet
| cracked, and my head didn't.
| prepend wrote:
| This is one of those situations where there is a lot of fear
| and anecdotes but data shows that more accidents and injuries
| occur with helmets than without.
|
| A company should design their safety protocol well and it
| includes what equipment workers should and should not wear to
| protect them best.
|
| So prohibiting helmets is very responsible. Criticizing them
| seems to be taking an irrational stance that it's better to
| address your feelings than the actual reality of what happens.
| lelandfe wrote:
| https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/46/1/278/2617198
|
| > _Bicycle helmet use was associated with reduced odds of
| head injury, serious head injury, facial injury and fatal
| head injury. The reduction was greater for serious or fatal
| head injury. Neck injury was rare and not associated with
| helmet use. These results support the use of strategies to
| increase the uptake of bicycle helmets as part of a
| comprehensive cycling safety plan._
|
| OK, let's see your data!
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| Can you cite any of those studies? Is this one of those
| things where studies count the accidents reported for each
| group without controlling for population size?
|
| I ask because there are "studies" that show there are more
| skiing accidents with helmets than without, but anyone who
| has spent a day at a ski hill can tell why that is: the vast,
| vast majority of people are wearing helmets. Throw a rock
| into a crowd of skiers and you'll probably hit someone with a
| helmet. Does that mean helmets attract rocks?
|
| Assuming their accident rates are anywhere in the same
| ballpark, accidents will involve more helmet wearers by a
| significant margin just because they outnumber non-helmet
| wearers.
| msrenee wrote:
| It's been over a decade since I last stepped foot in a ski
| area. I don't remember anyone wearing a helmet that wasn't
| on a snowboard. Are they more common now? It makes a lot of
| sense with how bad things go when they go bad plus all the
| trees.
| usrusr wrote:
| It's almost ten years for me and the last thing I
| remember was a landslide shift from "hardly anybody" to
| "almost everybody" within only a few seasons (Austrian
| alps).
|
| Never read any triumphant reports about how this has
| saved ten thousands of lives though, so I suspect that
| numbers aren't _that_ impressive.
| ghaff wrote:
| Though I do very little downhill skiing these days,
| they're extremely common at US ski areas now whereas they
| used to be almost unheard of except for racers. (I don't
| wear one but I do wear a hat that has ribs of deformable
| material.)
|
| I don't remember a big campaign or anything but probably
| some combination of snowboarders normalizing, it becoming
| seen as negligent not to make kids wear them, and
| probably a general increase in safety culture--especially
| among the sort of people who can afford to downhill ski.
|
| There are only around 40 downhill skiing deaths in US
| annually--although the majority of those are brain
| injuries.
| MandieD wrote:
| The landslide was 2009/2010, after the Ministerprasident
| of Thuringia caused a really bad accident, which he
| survived but the woman he crashed into didn't. He was
| wearing a helmet, she wasn't.
| troupe wrote:
| Very common now. There has been a huge shift in the last
| decade.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> but data shows that more accidents and injuries occur with
| helmets than without.
|
| It's total BS to try and combine accidents with injuries and
| I'm aware of no reputable study that claims both of your
| statements.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Even with a causal effect, it's important to consider the
| effectiveness as an intervention for a specific group (riders
| for this company).
|
| There's a reasonable causal story to tell wherein helmet-
| wearing leads people t take make riskier maneuvers on trips
| they'd be on, which leads to helmet wearing being associated
| with injury.
|
| There's another reasonable causal story wherein helmet-
| wearing leads people to chose to bike on trips they otherwise
| would take alternative transport, or skip entirely, which
| leads to helmet wearing being associated with injury.
|
| In the first, a pedicab company might prohibit helmets to
| reduce risky behavior, but should really compare that
| intervention to just training and incentivizing lower-risk
| riding. In the second, the company is severing the connection
| between the intervention and the effect! The passengers tell
| riders where to go, so helmet wearing has no effect on risk-
| taking behavior _specifically for their riders_. Prohibiting
| helmets then dramatically increases risk/severity of injury.
|
| I'd want to be very sure about the specifics before taking
| such a counterintuitive decision.
| dkarl wrote:
| I keep hearing this, here and in other online spaces, but
| until I see link to one of these studies I'll be skeptical,
| because I don't see how you could test this in a meaningful
| way. I see very different people wearing helmets versus not.
| The people I see not wearing helmets tend to be taking
| leisurely rides around the neighborhood or screwing around on
| sidewalks downtown. The people I see wearing helmets are
| going longer distances and taking trips that span
| neighborhoods. All the delivery cyclists, racing/fitness
| enthusiasts, and commuters I see are wearing helmets. For
| myself, the risks I expose myself to are almost entirely
| determined by where I ride, which is determined by the
| purpose of my trip. Show me a study that somehow controls for
| that, and I'll take it seriously.
|
| My personal feeling is that the "helmets don't help" line is
| a strategic choice made by bike activists who are doing work
| I approve of, but I don't trust them when it comes to my
| safety. They're fighting for separate infrastructure, which I
| like, but they're dedicated to the idea that the kind of
| riding I have to do to get anywhere is inherently unsafe.
| They aren't interested in making what I have to do now more
| safe; they're interested in making sure people in the future
| don't have to do it.
| DeWilde wrote:
| Statistics also show that increased ice cream sale rate
| correlates with increased drownings occurrences.
|
| So that means ice cream causes drownings and that we should
| ban it? Or it happens that ice cream eating and swimming both
| happen during the summer.
| porknubbins wrote:
| I am an individual, not a statistic. I am completely capable
| of wearing a helmet without increasing risky behavior, so why
| should I be prohibited from protecting myself for some
| dubious statistical effect?
| kwatsonafter wrote:
| It's a common misconception amongst amateur cyclists that
| because helmets marginally increase the chance of neck injury
| and that head injuries are relatively uncommon on bicycles
| that helmets deliver negative returns in terms of safety but
| as others have pointed out the data doesn't seem to suggest
| this is actually the case. Also in terms of common sense
| consider that all professional cyclists wear helmets when
| they're competing.
|
| I'm getting real sick of the, "your feelings" talk. You used
| to get socked in the eye for talking to people that way in
| public. There's a better way of expressing your point than
| speaking to proverbial others as though they're children.
| It's enormously toxic.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Also in terms of common sense consider that all
| professional cyclists wear helmets when they 're
| competing._
|
| Helmets are mandatory in all major cycle competitions - so
| I'm not sure this reveals a preference among professional
| cyclists, so much as a preference among competition
| administrators.
| cycomanic wrote:
| > It's a common misconception amongst amateur cyclists that
| because helmets marginally increase the chance of neck
| injury and that head injuries are relatively uncommon on
| bicycles that helmets deliver negative returns in terms of
| safety but as others have pointed out the data doesn't seem
| to suggest this is actually the case.
|
| The question is actually more interesting with public
| health. I have seen several studies that showed that
| mandatory cycling helmets decrease life expectancy. That's
| because less people will ride a bike if they have to wear a
| helmet and the benefits of cycling outweigh the dangers of
| not wearing the helmet. That doesn't mean it isn't good to
| wear one anyway if out cycling.
|
| >Also in terms of common sense consider that all
| professional cyclists wear helmets when they're competing.
|
| Mentioning professional cycling does not help your
| argument. The riders organisations were fighting strongly
| against mandatory helmets, and professional cycling was
| very late with requiring helmets they came many years after
| they were mandatory for amateur races. There is also the
| observation that professional cycling has become riskier,
| although I would not necessarily link that to cyclist
| wearing helmets, it would be worth investigating though.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| It's just really hard to eliminate adverse selection in
| population studies.
|
| If people only choose to put on their helmets when doing
| dangerous things, but don't bother when doing relatively safe
| things, then it's going to look like helmet use is correlated
| with injuries. Even if, on a per-person basis, the helmet
| actually reduces injury severity.
|
| And it's difficult to test helmet effectiveness directly
| because it is widely considered unethical to randomly subject
| people to blows to the head.
| pugets wrote:
| I don't know if the UK is sufficiently litigious, but if this
| were in the US, one bad accident causing a head injury would
| lead to the company being sued into the Stone Age.
|
| Helmets may inadvertently create more accidents, but they
| also protect the most vital organ in your body during those
| accidents.
| taeric wrote:
| I'm curious to know what your data is. Offhand, sounds more
| like most riding is with helmets, so will dominate the
| numbers. But it's being interpreted as causal? Feels
| unlikely. What is the mechanism?
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Offhand, sounds more like most riding is with helmets_
|
| My impression is:
|
| 1. Dutch-style utility riders using a bike to get around
| town for errands -> Rare helmets
|
| 2. Lycra-clad competitive cyclists with drop handlebars ->
| Widespread helmets
|
| 3. City cycle hire scheme users -> Rare helmets
|
| 4. Parents cycling with young children -> Widespread
| helmets
|
| 5. Poor people commuting on beat-up mountain bikes -> Rare
| helmets
|
| 6. Organised cycling events with mandatory helmets ->
| Widespread helmets
|
| 7. Teenagers riding with their friends -> Rare helmets
|
| So the popularity of helmets depends on your locale (does
| your area have utility riders?) - and whether you measure
| per-mile or per-bike-owner :)
| taeric wrote:
| My exposure is mainly commuters. Who largely wear helmets
| where I am. Any organized ride, too.
|
| But fair, I don't have numbers.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > but data shows that more accidents and injuries occur with
| helmets than without.
|
| This demands proof, citation, and of course, controlling for
| how many cyclists in an area wear helmets vs. not.
| Swizec wrote:
| Same statistic for motorcycles. You are more likely to be
| injured in a crash if you wear a helmet.
|
| Because otherwise you go in the dead column.
| 41b696ef1113 wrote:
| Similar story for helmets during WW1. Prior to metal
| helmets, soldiers wore cloth caps. After the soldiers
| started wearing helmets, the number of head injuries
| climbed rapidly. The alternative, of course is that the
| soldier would otherwise have been dead.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You shouldn't follow up a source request with another
| unsourced fact, but let me follow up with yet another:
| the statistic are entirely different for motorcycles
| because motorcyclists are far more likely to have the
| type of accidents that helmets protect from.
|
| Comparing the fatality rate of bicycling to the one for
| riding a motorcycle is not good.
|
| edit: That's not only a claim that bicycle helmets vastly
| reduce the fatality of bicycle accidents (rather than
| just significantly reduce them), but a claim that so many
| unhelmeted riders die from bicycle accidents that it
| distorts safety figures. All of this without any safety
| figures.
| mistersquid wrote:
| > but data shows that more accidents and injuries occur with
| helmets than without.
|
| You provided no data.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I find the claim particularly hard to believe. I ride at
| least twice a week with my brother and we behave exactly the
| same with and without helmets. If you have a habit of always
| wearing your helmet, it just starts being something you don't
| even really consider as part of the equation. In fact, we
| will occasionally go almost an entire ride before realizing
| that one of us forgot to put on our helmet.
|
| I find it much more likely that claims of "data shows..." are
| due to uncontrolled confounding factors, such as riders being
| more likely to wear a helmet when they perceive the ride as
| meeting a certain risk threshold.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I think I have seen several studies that showed that
| drivers are more aggressive towards riders in lycra and
| with helmets, so it could still be true that it is riskier
| to wear a helmet even if you don't take more risks.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| That's fair. In my neck of the woods, cyclists are
| universally hated (or ignored), helmet or no.
| christophilus wrote:
| I'd like to see the evidence of this. I can imagine that
| maybe wearing a helmet gives a false sense of security, and
| therefore leads to a bit more recklessness. Still, I'd bet
| that even if you have more accidents when wearing a helmet,
| you have fewer deaths.
| spicybright wrote:
| If anything we should be making helmets that cause _MORE_
| damage to people to bring that rate down more! /s
| spike021 wrote:
| Back in elementary school a few decades ago, they did a
| demonstration of what happens if you're not wearing a helmet.
|
| They used a watermelon and dropped it from maybe 5 or 6 feet up
| in the air.
|
| I refuse to ride anything without a helmet ever since.
| [deleted]
| mertd wrote:
| Very good point. The reasoning in the post assumes that the
| rider is responsible for all accidents.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| While the article is very short, this was still easy to miss,
| "... and those driving around them take greater risks too."
|
| So it does in fact mention that both people driving around
| those wearing helmets as well as the cyclists themselves take
| greater risks.
|
| The argument is that in the GP's anecdote that the cyclist
| (and perhaps even the truck driver) would have taken less
| risky actions preceding the crash, thus avoiding it all-
| together.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| > ... and those driving around them take greater risks too
|
| Really? Data shows that a driver will subconsciously take
| stock of the fact that a cyclist is wearing a helmet and
| adjust their risk assessments accordingly? I find that
| incredibly difficult to believe.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| This seems to be a good article on this: https://www.theg
| uardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/21/bike-he...
|
| " In 2006 he attached a computer and an electronic
| distance gauge to his bike and recorded data from 2,500
| drivers who overtook him on the roads. Half the time he
| wore a bike helmet and half the time he was bare-headed.
| The results showed motorists tended to pass him more
| closely when he had the helmet on, coming an average of
| 8.5 cm nearer."
| indymike wrote:
| > " In 2006 he attached a computer and an electronic
| distance gauge to his bike and recorded data from 2,500
| drivers who overtook him on the roads. Half the time he
| wore a bike helmet and half the time he was bare-headed.
| The results showed motorists tended to pass him more
| closely when he had the helmet on, coming an average of
| 8.5 cm nearer."
|
| This study proves nothing about rider safety. What
| matters here is actual accidents, and most bike accidents
| do not even involve a car. The study only proves that
| motorists would pass about 4 inches closer to author of
| the study when he had a helmet on. Motorists were not
| frequently hitting the author.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Well, this explaination at least makes some sense to me
|
| > Walker said he believed this was likely to be connected
| to cycling being relatively rare in the UK, and drivers
| thus forming preconceived ideas about cyclists based on
| what they wore. "This may lead drivers to believe
| cyclists with helmets are more serious, experienced and
| predictable than those without," he wrote.
|
| The article also mentions this risk-taking study where
| some participants were asked to gamble and some had
| helmets on and some had hats on, and found that people
| with helmets on took greater risks. If I were asked to do
| something like wear a helmet where one is completely
| unwarranted, I might feel silly and do silly things for
| that extra fun factor. Wearing a helmet on a bike results
| in a completely different mindset than wearing a helmet
| at the office, if not solely for the fact that it's
| unusual behavior.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I sought out that study [1]. They seemed to control for
| anxiety levels in the participants, so the results are
| still interesting. However, they also refer to some prior
| art:
|
| > Our findings initially appear different from those of
| some other studies. Fyhri and Phillips (2013; Phillips et
| al., 2011) found that risk taking in downhill bicycling,
| measured through riding speed, did not simply increase
| when a helmet was worn; rather, the people who normally
| cycled with a helmet took fewer risks when riding without
| one. Why did the participants in Fyhri and Phillips's
| study who were not habitual helmet users not react to
| wearing a helmet with increased risk taking, as our
| experiment might suggest they would? Clearly more work is
| needed to definitively pin down all the mechanisms here,
| but for now, we speculate that the difference might be
| related to considerable variations between the two
| studies' procedures. Fyhri and Phillips greatly
| emphasized the physicality of their task ("to increase
| the difference in measures between the helmet-on and -off
| conditions, all participants were instructed to cycle
| using one-hand in both conditions"; p. 60), which
| provides a direct link between the action (bicycling) and
| the condition (helmet wearing) that was absent in our
| study. Moreover, that study used a repeated measures
| design, in which participants were aware they were riding
| a bicycle both with and without a helmet. This could have
| meant that behavior changed through mechanisms different
| from those seen here, where participants took part only
| in one condition and were not aware of any manipulation,
| nor even that they were specifically wearing a safety
| device.
|
| So, in the past other studies have concluded that when
| the helmet has an _actual_ potential impact on safety,
| they do not induce greater risk-taking behavior. This
| fits right in with my personal experience, where I don't
| even consider that fact that I'm wearing my helmet during
| a ride.
|
| 1. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976
| 156207...
| bagels wrote:
| Did they do control for rider behavior? I'm curious if
| the unhelmeted rode closer to the road edge.
| frereubu wrote:
| I know you're just elaborating the parent comment's point,
| so this isn't really directed at you, but the only study
| I've ever heard of which said anything like that was one
| academic riding a bike with and without a helmet, and
| measuring how close cars came to him. IIRC the difference
| was a matter of one or two centimetres and, perhaps
| unsurprisingly, the p-value was just under 0.05. That study
| was regularly thrown around by friends who were looking for
| a rationale for their dislike of wearing helmets.
|
| We really need some high-quality studies with a much better
| experimental design that look at overall risk. Perhaps
| riders are marginally more likely to get into accidents if
| they wear a helmet, but I know from personal experience
| that when you _do_ get into an accident you _really_ want
| to be wearing a helmet - if I wasn 't wearing one when I
| had a big accident about ten years ago, I'm pretty certain
| I'd have serious neurological problems now.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| I linked to an article that I found on this in a sibling
| comment. It's an average of 8.5cm closer when wearing a
| helmet. Obviously a p95 etc would be valuable here.
|
| Personally, I believe the correct thing is to provide
| separate infrastructure from cars for bicyclists. One big
| nuance in the helmet debate is that the helmet is really
| best designed from mistakes while riding, ie when done
| for sport.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The reasoning behind the ban is that they're recording more
| accidents and injuries with helmets than without. The
| _speculation_ is that the helmeted riders are more
| aggressive. Neither the reason nor the speculation assume
| that the rider is responsible for all accidents.
| kixiQu wrote:
| "So riders wearing helmets take greater risks, _and those
| driving around them take greater risks too._ "
|
| https://psyarxiv.com/nxw2k
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Seems like this paper refutes other refutations about
| previous studies producing helmet disparaging data. Who to
| believe? I guess I'll just believe these conclusions until
| the next refutation comes along.
|
| On a more serious note, I assume that conclusions about
| helmet safety predicated on motorist passing behavior
| (which I already pretty much just intuitively reject) could
| not be safely extrapolated to include much larger and more
| visible multi-person passenger bearing bikes. They are very
| different visually and culturally and motorists almost
| certainly behave differently around them, so I'm gonna
| require new data that takes these different psychological
| effects into account.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I had a cycling accident when out training on a road bike
| coming down a hill doing about 50km/h and a delivery van turned
| in front of me into a parking lot. I hit the side of the van
| put a big dent in it and fractured my clavicle and t6 and had
| several cuts in my face. The helmet I was wearing was
| completely disintegrated on the side I hit the car with.
| Fortunately I was visiting Australia were cycling helmets were
| mandatory, back in Europe were i was living normally i would
| not have worn one.
|
| Since then I always were a helmet when out training. However I
| don't wear a helmet when dropping off the kids with my cargo
| bike. It's true that drivers are more aggressive towards helmet
| wearers, moreover I can't think of an accident where a helmet
| would help when I'm on the cargo bike.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| I had a cycling accident where I misjudged how tight a corner
| was, ran off the path, high sided and head planted into a
| tree. I wasn't going fast, maybe 10mph, but clearly too fast
| for the corner. First injury in over 15 years of cycling.
| Nobody else involved, indeed, nobody else in earshot, let
| alone cars.
|
| My friend was cycling up a hill on a cycle route and his
| handlebars fell apart. Not sure why, think it was metal
| fatigue - they split down the fork. He woke up on the floor
| with his helmet in tens of pieces and with no idea what
| happened.
|
| Things can just go wrong quickly on two wheels, and the
| outcome is often smashing your head on something.
| op00to wrote:
| > it's true that drivers are more aggressive towards helmet
| wearers
|
| Citation, please?
|
| > can't think of an accident where a helmet would help when
| I'm on the cargo bike.
|
| Right hook.
| tboughen wrote:
| "cyclists were given 8.5cm (3.3 inches) more clearance by
| cars if they were not wearing helmets."
|
| https://helmets.org/walkerstudy.htm
| threeseed wrote:
| You know that the article you posted was about refuting
| this claim:
|
| "After re-analysis of Walker's data, helmet wearing is
| not associated with close motor vehicle passing"
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| As discussed above: the "re-analysis" took an analog
| measurement, filtered it into a binary "close" or "not
| close" at an arbitrary distance threshold, and then
| patted themselves on the back when the found there was no
| difference.
| i_am_jl wrote:
| Confirmation bias machine strikes again.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| There's this Ian Walker study: https://www.sciencedirect.co
| m/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...
|
| It's a small sample size, so take with a pinch of salt.
| threeseed wrote:
| Refutation of the Walker study which "assesses the extent
| to which the sample size in the original analysis may
| have contributed to spurious results".
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3783373/
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Response to the refutation: https://researchportal.bath.a
| c.uk/en/publications/bicycle-he...
|
| Olivier and Walter re-analysed the same data in 2013 and
| claimed helmet wearing was not associated with close
| vehicle passing. Here we show how Olivier and Walter's
| analysis addressed a subtly, but importantly, different
| question than Walker's. Their conclusion was based on
| omitting information about variability in driver
| behaviour and instead dividing overtakes into two binary
| categories of 'close' and 'not close'; we demonstrate
| that they did not justify or address the implications of
| this choice, did not have sufficient statistical power
| for their approach, and moreover show that slightly
| adjusting their definition of 'close' would reverse their
| conclusions. We then present a new analysis of the
| original dataset, measuring directly the extent to which
| drivers changed their behaviour in response to helmet
| wearing. This analysis confirms that drivers did,
| overall, get closer when the rider wore a helmet.
| [deleted]
| u801e wrote:
| You can largely avoid right hooks by riding in the primary
| position/take the general purpose lane by default rather
| than riding towards the edge or in the bike lane.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Does an employer have the right to put someone's life at risk
| on purpose? If so, is the employer going to be on the hook when
| an accident does happen?
|
| It's one thing to risk your own life by not using safety gear.
|
| Its another level of reckless to not provide safety gear to
| your employees
|
| To forbid someone else from using their own safety gear is a
| level of asine behaviour that trully terrible.
|
| But these guys top even that- they don't just dicourage
| employees from wearing helmets through hush-hush, hint hint,
| they boast about it in a public press release.
|
| It's not your life to risk, that person is not a serf, and if I
| wants to wear a bulletproof vest everywhere I goes that's not
| the employer's concern. If ee allow this to stand, it sets a
| terrible precedent.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Individual choice? Perhaps some people really do have more
| awareness without a helmet? Maybe the individual involved is the
| only one that can decide if a helmet is better for them or not?
|
| Why can't our prejudices on this be just our own? We don't have
| to mandate them for others.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| If they can tell if riders are being unsafe then the rest of it
| is drivel and helmets should be worn. Train them, monitor them,
| and helmet them. Whoever set this policy is an idiot. I can see
| helmets being optional, but banning them is some big brain stats
| guy who can't look at anything but stats.
| rayiner wrote:
| The first wrongful death lawsuit over this is going to be a real
| wake-up call.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Missing info : what are the company's riders carrying ? How much
| are they incentived to ride fast and take risk ?
|
| I don't think barring Uber eats driver from wearing helmet would
| be safe. I don't know about this company, though I hope they
| don't absolutely ban helmet so much as not mandating them.
| niemandhier wrote:
| Is Pedal me going to pay if a cyclist is gravely injured without
| his own fault because he did not wear a helmet?
|
| Risk compensation ( the reason they give for the decision ) is
| incredible hard to measure, since it involves causality. We suck
| at detecting causality in observational data. Basing a decision
| on ( most likely ) bad statistics is madness.
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