[HN Gopher] Mandatory helmet laws make cyclists less safe
___________________________________________________________________
Mandatory helmet laws make cyclists less safe
Author : substation13
Score : 267 points
Date : 2022-12-05 09:39 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bicycling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bicycling.com)
| taylodl wrote:
| If you're cycling anywhere where you're depending on a painted
| line to keep you safe from tons of metal that's traveling much
| faster than you - then you'd better have a helmet on, at the
| minimum! I'd argue the same for stand-on electric scooters as
| well. Maybe what we need to normalize is always having a helmet
| with you.
|
| It's sad we have to have laws to mandate such things, but here we
| are.
| s0rce wrote:
| Or maybe we mandate real infrastructure to keep you safe from
| tons of metal traveling much faster than you?
| taylodl wrote:
| That's the proper solution, but we may have problems
| implementing it in newer cities that were designed with cars
| in mind and don't have much in the way of public
| transportation outside of busses - in other words the U.S.
| South and the U.S. Midwest.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Ah, another car vs bike culture war filled commentary section.
| Sadly a place where HN is not even immune.
|
| To sum up the article, the effect of lots of bicyclists leading
| to careful driving is greater than the protective effect of
| wearing a helmet while biking. Because helmet laws do cause a
| drop in ridership, it's counterintuitively a net negative for
| cyclist safety. That is the claim of the article.
|
| To refute this, one must show that the "critical mass theory" is
| not significant and that driver attentiveness to cyclists is not
| a function of the number of cyclists.
|
| The claim is _not_ refuted by giving studies showing that when
| cyclists crash and hit their head, then helmets are (incredibly)
| significant for reducing head injuries. Nor is the claim refuted
| by saying cyclists should not be in the road, or saying (without
| evidence) that there is no reduction in ridership from helmet
| laws (the article cites examples demonstrating that reduction).
|
| So again, the car centric here need to focus on whether the
| critical mass effect is actually a real thing, or need to find
| the evidence that ridership is not a function of helmet laws (the
| data, generally and from this article, indicate that both are the
| case).
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| > car centric here need to focus on whether the critical mass
| effect is actually a real thing Anecdotal evidence: in my
| country in the summer there are less accidents between cars and
| motorcycles per miles ridden than in early spring or late
| autumn. Why? Because in the summer car drivers expect some
| motorcycles to be on the road and pay more attention, while
| outside the season they are surprised to have motorcycles still
| on the streets and cause accidents (80% of the car-bike
| accidents are caused by car drivers).
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| The most frustrating thing about people focussing on cycle
| helmets is that they have very little effect on cyclist safety.
| PPE should be the last thing that people consider when looking
| at road danger.
|
| From https://road.cc/content/news/111258-chris-boardman-
| helmets-n...
|
| > Talking about helmets had become a time-consuming
| distraction, he said. "We've got to tackle the helmet debate
| head on because it's so annoying," he said. "It gets a
| disproportionate amount of coverage. When you have three
| minutes and someone asks 'Do you wear a helmet' you know the
| vast majority of your time when you could be talking about
| stuff that will make a difference, is gone."
|
| > He said the focus on helmets had made cycling seem more
| dangerous than it really is.
|
| > "We've gone away from the facts," he said. "We've gone to
| anecdotes. It's like shark attacks - more people are killed
| building sandcastles than are killed by sharks. It's just
| ludicrous that the facts aren't matching up with the actions
| because the press focus, naturally, on the news stories, and
| [the notion that cycling is dangerous] becomes the norm, and it
| isn't the norm.
| thinkmcfly wrote:
| Aldipower wrote:
| As someone who's friend got blood clots from the vaccine, I
| find your comment very cynic.
| thinkmcfly wrote:
| As someone who survived a nearly lethal bike accident because
| I tore my helmet off right before impact, I can really
| sympathize with you about that
| cgrealy wrote:
| Even if we are to take the propositions in the article at face
| value (some of those studies are dubious), it still leaves you
| with a simple equation.
|
| MHLs make it more likely that you will be involved in an
| accident, but also more likely that you will survive said
| accident.
|
| It's a trade off between risk and consequences. If I'm given the
| choice of getting slapped in the face on a coin toss or playing
| Russian roulette, I'm going to choose a 50% chance of a slap vs a
| 16% chance of death.
|
| And honestly, the whole argument that less people will cycle if
| they have to wear a helmet is colossally dumb. Only an idiot
| would drive without a seat belt these days, but they also faced
| resistance when they were first enforced. People just get used
| it.
|
| Also, NZ has MHLs and cycling is going up.
| elenaferrantes wrote:
| Next : mandatory helmet for pedestrians. You never know, it could
| save your life. It's not the end of the world to wear one.
| Animatronio wrote:
| Better yet - stay at home. Don't leave unless really necessary.
| Have everything delivered, preferably by autonomous electric
| drones. WFH. Exercise indoors. Have a super-insulated home, but
| don't naturally ventilate it.
| [deleted]
| oblio wrote:
| You two comments (the one I'm replying to and the previous
| one) fell of the slippery hope, near the deep end.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| I find this article riddled with circular and poor logic.
|
| Mandatory helmet laws do not prevent people from riding bikes.
| Just like mandatory seat belt laws did not prevent anyone from
| driving cars!
|
| "Lastly, we know these "quality of life" laws are
| disproportionately enforced in communities of color and in lower
| income communities." - what the hell?! Yes, helmet and safety
| laws are the reason why police officers disproportionately
| enforce various laws against communities of color. /s Let's blame
| this and not deal with the real problem: reform of police
| enforcement.
|
| To deal with bike safety, we need to make everyone wear bike
| helmets until we reach critical mass in cycling adoption. /Some/
| protection is better than nothing at all.
|
| In the meantime, we need to implement better traffic calming and
| separation of automobile and cycling/pedestrian traffic. Kids die
| every year because in many areas, they have no choice but to bike
| on the side of a road that has cars whizzing past 60+ mph with
| less than 12 inches of separation in between.
| banannaise wrote:
| > Mandatory helmet laws do not prevent people from riding
| bikes.
|
| Non-recreational biking (e.g. using a bike to get around) with
| a helmet is a _giant pain in the ass_. I have to find a place
| to store my helmet securely or carry it around all day. It
| messes up my hair, so I have to perform extra effort to be
| presentable at my destination.
|
| Within my city, I travel by bike a decent percentage of the
| time; with a helmet law, I would basically never do so.
| afiori wrote:
| > "Lastly, we know these "quality of life" laws are
| disproportionately enforced in communities of color and in
| lower income communities." - what the hell?! Yes, helmet and
| safety laws are the reason why police officers
| disproportionately enforce various laws against communities of
| color. /s Let's blame this and not deal with the real problem:
| reform of police enforcement.
|
| This is the same argument as "Guns don't kill people; people
| kill people" and it is the same level of technically-true-but-
| if-you-need-to-say-it-you-are-probably-wrong-in-practice"
| mc32 wrote:
| When you have a weak argument, you throw whatever you can to
| try to immunize it against attack[1], including things that are
| at most peripheral to the issue, like race, which is not an
| issue in many countries on earth (Thailand, China, Korea,
| Japan, most African countries, middle east, most parts of
| Europe, etc.
|
| [1]It the modern "think of the children", but instead, "think
| of the minorities" but worse because there are adult voices in
| minorities who can speak for themselves and most also want
| safety. That said in many places there are racist policies
| against one group or another, but I don't think the above is
| that.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| A seat belt is much less of an imposition on comfort and
| convenience than a helmet is. And there isn't really a more
| convenient alternative to driving a car, so of course mandating
| seat belts doesn't reduce car use.
|
| Statistically, you are much more likely to die or be injured in
| a car crash than on a bike, so surely we should mandate helmet
| use in cars, right?
| jbandela1 wrote:
| > Statistically, you are much more likely to die or be
| injured in a car crash than on a bike, so surely we should
| mandate helmet use in cars, right?
|
| That is very faulty logic.
|
| In a modern car with a person seat belted in, there is very
| little for a person to strike their head against (which is
| what a helmet protects against). The airbags are there to
| protect you from striking your head against the steering
| column or the side of the passenger compartment.
|
| On a bike, there is nothing protecting you from striking your
| head against something.
|
| When I was doing neurosurgery, I saw lots of head trauma. The
| head trauma for bad car accidents was more diffuse axonal
| injury caused by rotational or deceleration forces that a
| helmet would not protect you against (your head isn't
| slamming into anything). Whereas with bicycle accidents it
| was more impact trauma and skull fractures and resulting
| brain injury (which a helmet would have protected you
| against).
|
| Source: Neurosurgery resident at a Level 1 trauma center.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Yet, every any time you are driving a car around at track,
| during an HPDE event or Track day, you are required to wear
| a helmet, and those events are MUCH safer than the streets.
|
| Arguing on this line is pointless. You can use this line to
| justify any number of mandatory safer features. The goal
| should be to drive an adoption of clean, non congestive,
| personal transportation, and the primary drivers for this
| is cost and convenience. Mandatory laws requiring stuff is
| counter to this.
| pfdietz wrote:
| If the article was "Mandatory Helmet Laws Make Cyclists Less
| Comfortable", you'd have a point there in that first part.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| The point of the article is not that helmets are unsafe, no
| one would argue that wearing one is less safe than not.
|
| The simple fact is, in every place where cycling is
| normalized and not a deviant behavior for weird lycra-
| wearing dentists or people with DUIs, almost no one wears a
| helmet.
|
| Mandating helmets is a failed policy if the goal is to
| reduce reliance on cars, and to make cities safer for
| everyone.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > Mandating helmets is a failed policy if the goal is to
| reduce reliance on cars, and to make cities safer for
| everyone.
|
| That's not the goal. The goal is to reduce head injuries.
| Mandatory helmet laws are effective at achieving that
| goal. If part of that reduction is simply discouraging
| people who would not ride a bike safely from riding a
| bike, that's not necessarily out of line with the goal.
| sagarm wrote:
| Great, let's ban the cars doing the running over. Head
| injuries solved.
| tejohnso wrote:
| Yeah, but in the car-centric mentality I think an overall
| reduction in cyclists on the road is a great secondary
| advantage.
| michaelt wrote:
| You think the goal is to reduce cycling head injuries by
| 40% by reducing cycling by 40%?
| jjk166 wrote:
| Well it's a lot more like a 19% reduction in head
| injuries for a 4% reduction in cycling, but yes, I'm
| quite confident that the various governments that have
| enacted such laws and the constituencies they represent
| generally would agree that it's better to not bike at all
| than to risk serious head injury.
| michaelt wrote:
| [1] reports on Australian introduction of mandatory cycle
| helmet laws, and says:
|
| "Pre-law surveys counted 6072 child cyclists in NSW, 3121
| cyclists (all ages) in Victoria; and over 200 000 cyclist
| movements on two key routes in Western Australia.
| Equivalent counts a year after enforced helmet laws
| showed declines of 36% (NSW), 36% (Victoria) and 20%
| (Western Australia). Sunday recreational cycling in
| Western Australia (24 932 cyclists pre-law) dropped by
| 38%. Increases in numbers wearing helmets, 1019 (NSW) and
| 297 (Victoria) were substantially less than declines in
| numbers counted (2215 and 1110)."
|
| In other words, Victoria started with 3121 cyclists,
| gained 297 helmets and lost 1110 cyclists.
|
| Are you sure you didn't misread that 4% figure from a
| source that actually said 40%?
|
| Needless to say, a 20% reduction in head injuries from a
| 40% reduction in cycling doesn't seem like a very good
| deal to me.
|
| [1] https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/9/4/380
| jjk166 wrote:
| https://freakonomics.com/2010/01/do-bike-helmet-laws-
| discour...
|
| Nope, 4%
| californical wrote:
| > Mandatory helmet laws are effective at achieving that
| goal
|
| ...in the short term.
|
| In the long term, if they prevent cycling from ever
| becoming a viable alternative to driving, then they're
| still worse.
|
| If someone is interested in trying a bike from one of
| those sharing locations, but they don't have a helmet,
| they won't try the bike in the first place. Especially if
| a city law makes a bike-sharing app "validate" that
| you're wearing a helmet, to enforce the law, before
| giving you a bike.
|
| Fewer people try the idea of riding a bike around their
| town, so there's more pushback against improved cycling
| infrastructure because "it would never benefit me", so
| there's less infrastructure investment.
|
| Continued ad nausium, cycling is less safe due to the
| limited number of people who are willing to advocate for
| safer infrastructure in the first place, which makes a
| _much_ larger difference to safety than helmets.
|
| That's the idea.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Mandatory helmet laws are not the thing preventing
| cycling from becoming a viable alternative to cars.
| Plenty of places without mandatory helmet laws still are
| dominated by cars, and mandatory helmet laws reduce
| cycling participation by small percentages - most
| cyclists wear helmets without being required to, and it's
| not a particularly heavy burden. I know if given the
| choice between a car payment and wearing a helmet what I
| would prefer.
|
| There's resistance to improved cycling infrastructure
| because there's resistance to improving any
| infrastructure, no matter how critical, and the
| overwhelming majority of people don't see a massive
| rework of the entire transportation system to shift away
| from cars as a realistic possibility even in the moderate
| to long term.
| danhor wrote:
| But of the places known to have a large share of cycling,
| none have mandatory helmet laws (at least as far as I
| know). Thus, it may not be sufficient but it seems
| necessary.
|
| If most cyclists wear helmets, why do you need to mandate
| it?
| Steltek wrote:
| > Mandatory helmet laws do not prevent people from riding
| bikes. Just like mandatory seat belt laws did not prevent
| anyone from driving cars!
|
| I don't see how adding friction does not lead to a reduction in
| cycling?
|
| Unlike helmets, seat belts are one size fits all and they're
| built into the car. I'm not putting on someone else's sweaty
| and gross helmet.
|
| But you've hit on the right issue: helmets would be far less
| necessary if car drivers could stop hitting people. There
| aren't a whole lot of people just falling over all alone in a
| bike lane and outside Tour De France recaps, bike-on-bike
| crashes are also uncommon and uneventful. Remove the 3 tons of
| metal whizzing by and helmets would probably be reserved for
| winter conditions, rain, or sport activities.
|
| The solution isn't in changing biking. It's in changing
| driving.
| scifibestfi wrote:
| You also have to carry it around, it increases the surface
| area of your head, it's harder to do shoulder checks, they
| are uncomfortable when it's hot out, and for some hair types
| it messes up your hair for the day.
| diarmuidc wrote:
| That experiment has been tried and failed already in Australia.
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Stop spreading misinformation. It's literally the law to wear
| a helmet in every state and territory. It's been the law for
| almost 30 years. 1)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmets_in_Australia.
| 2) https://roadsafety.transport.nsw.gov.au/stayingsafe/motorc
| yc...
|
| NSW police were chasing people down and fining them for not
| wearing a helmet. My college room mate got done twice in a
| month.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| The "failed" part of the experiment is that far fewer
| people ride bicycles in Australia today than did before
| helmet laws (edit, incorrect, it's per capita reduction,
| not absolute) in absolute numbers, not even per capita,
| adjusted for population growth.
|
| The laws are successful in that they get people to wear
| helmets, but they are an abject failure in terms of
| participation in cycling.
| taneq wrote:
| Gonna need some evidence for that causal link you're
| suggesting here. Counterpoint: Plenty of bike paths get
| plenty of use. We didn't even have these bike paths when
| the helmet laws came in.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| I misread the thing I was looking at, it is per-capita,
| not absolute. Here is a graph of the number of people
| cycling to work, the peak is the late 80s/early 90s
| before the helmet laws:
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percent-cycling-to-
| work-...
| jjk166 wrote:
| If people who weren't going to do something in a safe
| matter stop doing something altogether, that's not a
| failure of a safety law.
| fud101 wrote:
| it's law but a lot of us don't bother with wearing one, esp
| to the local shops. i don't want to bother.
| tester89 wrote:
| > Mandatory helmet laws do not prevent people from riding
| bikes. Just like mandatory seat belt laws did not prevent
| anyone from driving cars!
|
| > As far as killing bike share systems, look no further than
| Seattle, Washington. After they implemented similar policies,
| their bike share system floundered. The same has been seen in
| cities across Australia.
| smazga wrote:
| Biking in Seattle is vehicular assisted suicide. The only
| variable is how long it takes.
|
| The hills don't help, either.
|
| Helmets are way down the list of reasons not to bike there.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Mandatory helmet laws do not prevent people from riding
| bikes._
|
| Mandatory helmet laws say to people "Look Out! Bicycles are
| DANGEROUS! No matter how careful or experienced you are or
| where you're cycling, you could get your head smashed like a
| bowl of eggs at any time"
|
| If that's not an anti-cycling message, what is?
| cbsmith wrote:
| > Mandatory helmet laws do not prevent people from riding
| bikes. Just like mandatory seat belt laws did not prevent
| anyone from driving cars!
|
| That's a straw man. Nowhere in the article does it use the word
| "prevent". What the article cites are studies indicating that
| the behavioural effect of the laws was a reduction in bike
| riding.
|
| > "Lastly, we know these "quality of life" laws are
| disproportionately enforced in communities of color and in
| lower income communities." - what the hell?! Yes, helmet and
| safety laws are the reason why police officers
| disproportionately enforce various laws against communities of
| color.
|
| Again, that's a straw man argument. The laws aren't the reason
| why police officers disproportionately enforce said laws
| against communities of colour, but an observable _effect_ of
| said laws is that they are disproportionately enforced on
| communities of colour. Sure, you can work on police enforcement
| reform, but until you get that problem fixed, the
| disproportionate enforcement is an observable effect.
|
| > To deal with bike safety, we need to make everyone wear bike
| helmets until we reach critical mass in cycling adoption.
| /Some/ protection is better than nothing at all.
|
| That contains the kind of poor logic you're critical of.
| There's a presumption that to reach critical mass in cycling
| adoption we need to "make everyone wear bike helmets", despite
| evidence cited in the article that the blunt instrument of
| legal mandates appears to _reduce_ cycling adoption.
|
| The article agrees with you (as does most everyone else) that
| "some protection is better than nothing at all". It's not a
| question of whether wearing a bicycle helmet is a good idea or
| not. Just because something is a good idea doesn't mean that a
| legal mandate for it is _also_ a good idea.
|
| > In the meantime, we need to implement better traffic calming
| and separation of automobile and cycling/pedestrian traffic.
| Kids die every year because in many areas, they have no choice
| but to bike on the side of a road that has cars whizzing past
| 60+ mph with less than 12 inches of separation in between.
|
| Again, the article agrees with you on this point: "Right now,
| with nearly 40,000 people killed on American roads every year,
| that means we need to keep our leaders' attention focused on
| structural reforms like complete street redesigns, which are
| proven to make our public spaces safe for everybody, whether
| they are walking, biking, taking transit, and yes, driving
| too."
| dncornholio wrote:
| You don't need helmets, you need better roads. It's that
| simple.
|
| Even with a helmet, biking in US looks fucking scary.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Totally this. The helmets sold at the bicycle store aren't
| gonna help much if you get in an accident with a van.
| Separate the roads for different uses. Cycling infrastructure
| is solved in many places. The culture of blaming cyclists
| needs to end
| rdxm wrote:
| Absolutely not true on the efficacy assertion. I've been
| run over while out training on my bike, went through a
| windshield head first. Without a helmet on my brain matter
| would have been in the lap of the driver.
|
| I've got hundreds of thousands of miles in my legs and I
| won't get on a bike without a helmet on even going around
| the block.
|
| On the infrastructure yes, agree. I'd be happy with simple
| stuff like ubiquitous bikes lanes and 10 foot wide
| shoulders...
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I'm very glad to hear you're still with us and the helmet
| helped you.
|
| Manufacturers however do warn that they aren't designed
| to mitigate dangers it vehicular collisions, and studies
| show that vehicle drivers are kinder to cyclists without
| helmets. Sources here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlt
| onreid/2020/07/10/bicycle-...
| dehrmann wrote:
| > disproportionately enforced in communities of color and in
| lower income communities
|
| Everything needs a DEI angle, these days.
| thrwy_918 wrote:
| >Mandatory helmet laws do not prevent people from riding bikes.
| Just like mandatory seat belt laws did not prevent anyone from
| driving cars!
|
| This is an absurd comparison.
|
| Mandatory helmet wearing makes bike-sharing programs almost
| completely unworkable. In my city, I see more people riding
| bikes from bike sharing programs than I do riding privately
| owned bikes.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| With regards to the 12 inches of space, the UK has recently
| passed a law requiring a 5ft gap when passing a cyclist. As a
| motorist it really does make me think about how I'm going to
| pass safely and whether it is even possible to do.
| tsukikage wrote:
| What I'd really like to see is cyclists giving themselves
| that much space. If I had a penny for every time someone's
| squeezed through between my wing mirror and the kerb in
| start/stop traffic with just an inch or two to spare...
|
| As with many other things, the way forward here is to copy
| the Scandinavian countries and separate cyclists from
| motorists entirely. Sadly, though, there are too many groups
| fighting this kind of change.
| fluoridation wrote:
| You do not have the same visibility of the lateral extent
| of your car as a cyclist has of the lateral extent of their
| bicycle. I've maneuvered at somewhat high speed through
| gaps that were only like 5 cm wider than me on each side.
| You can't do that on a car; you just don't have that kind
| of line of sight.
| tsukikage wrote:
| I am very very aware that I lack the visibility a cyclist
| has. This is precisely what makes having cyclists in my
| blind spot utterly terrifying. It is even worse when I am
| driving something larger than a car, and when the traffic
| is slow-moving rather than entirely stationary.
| Xylakant wrote:
| > What I'd really like to see is cyclists giving themselves
| that much space.
|
| If I had a penny for every time someone's squeezed through
| between my wing mirror and the kerb in start/stop traffic
| with just an inch or two to spare...
|
| This really gets pulled out every single time someone
| points out the proper distance required for passing a
| cyclist and it's wrong.
|
| First, passing a cyclist with a car and passing a car with
| a cycle are asymmetric things. The cyclist needs space to
| actually go a straight line, the path of a bicycle is never
| straight - and it sways more at slower speeds.
|
| The cyclist also needs space in both directions to make a
| turn, for example to avoid an obstacle. If you take that
| space to one side, they cannot even safely turn the other
| direction.
|
| Cars have a significantly higher draft than cyclists.
| They're bigger, heavier and scarier. If the cyclist
| twitches as you pass them, you were too close.
|
| Cars just don't fall over. Cyclists do. Slippery patch on
| the road, whatever. And when they fall, they need space.
|
| The car driver passing the cyclist has no idea how skilled
| the cyclist is. And unskilled cyclists need more space to
| maneuver - or make mistakes when scared and fall. See
| above. The cyclist passing the car knows their skill. And
| even unskilled cars do not randomly fall over.
|
| The danger is asymmetric. A car even slightly touching a
| cyclist is likely to end up with a major injury or death. A
| cyclist slightly touching a car is a dent and a scratch.
|
| This is why in many places, there's a mandatory minimum
| distance when for a car passing a cyclist, but none for
| cyclist passing a car.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > The car driver passing the cyclist has no idea how
| skilled the cyclist is.
|
| If the cyclist changes bikes, then even the cyclist
| doesn't know. And cyclists change bikes quite a lot,
| because cycle thieves. You have to get used to a new
| bike; each machine has different steering geometry and
| balance.
| tsukikage wrote:
| I'm absolutely not denying the cyclist needs space and
| motorists have to give them space. I completely agree
| with this. I completely agree that the danger is
| asymmetric.
|
| I'm saying the cyclist still needs that space even when
| they are moving faster than the cars around them, because
| they are still in danger even when they are the fastest
| moving thing in the vicinity.
|
| Cars have blind spots, and cyclists that overtake with
| insufficient clearance fit precisely into them. Cyclists
| can still wobble, fall or slip even when they are the
| ones doing the overtaking, and they still get hurt.
| Danger is present even when the motorised vehicle is only
| moving at low speed, because parts of the cyclist and/or
| bike can still get snagged on parts of the motor vehicle
| if the cyclist wobbles or falls into it.
|
| I firmly believe insufficient clearance between cyclists
| and cars is a situation that we can and should avoid with
| sensible design of cycle paths, roads and junctions. In
| the sad absence of such, enough clearance has to be
| maintained to avoid collision if either party stops
| suddenly or the cyclist wobbles or falls.
|
| In slow or start/stop traffic, the car is generally
| trapped between other cars and has nowhere to move to;
| the cyclist is the only party with any control over the
| situation.
| microtherion wrote:
| I don't think the argument was that the cyclist passing
| close would endanger the car, it's that cyclist seem to
| sometimes have a disturbing disregard for their OWN
| safety when it comes to the choices THEY make.
|
| Squeezing by cars in start/stop traffic is one of the
| more debatable ones. There's also rampant red light
| running. Driving without lights at night, wearing dark
| clothes, is the one where I see absolutely no upside for
| their behavior.
| Xylakant wrote:
| I agree, some Cyclist do seem to have little regard for
| their own safety - but it's their own safety. A car
| making a close pass endangers someone else's safety.
| LanceH wrote:
| As a cyclist and a driver, I've never had a cyclist throw
| something at my car just for _existing_. My brother has
| been shot at with a pellet gun. I 've had cars swerve at
| me to run me off the road.
|
| There are a lot of psychos out there with a straight up
| violent hatred for cyclists and a way too many people
| justifying it because a cyclist was a danger to
| themselves at some point.
| microtherion wrote:
| Last week, while driving my car, I had a car behind me
| flash his headlights and honking at me because I decided
| not to pass a cyclist in front of me in an area I
| assessed as too narrow to pass safely. So sometimes even
| automobilists experience psycho attitudes towards
| cyclists by proxy.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Squeezing by cars in start/stop traffic is one of the
| more debatable ones.
|
| Where I live, this is called "filtering", and it's
| encouraged by both cycling organisations and motoring
| organisations. If the ICE traffic has stopped, then the
| worst that can happen is that you misadjust some
| motorist's wing mirror, and they have to wind their
| window down to fix it.
|
| > Driving without lights at night, wearing dark clothes,
| is the one where I see absolutely no upside for their
| behavior.
|
| Agreed! If you dress up as a piece of tarmac and proceed
| down a tarmac road made for cars, without lights, you
| should expect cars to treat you like a piece of road,
| because that's what you look like.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > If the cyclist twitches as you pass them, you were too
| close.
|
| If I feel the breeze as you pass me, you were too close.
| Actually I think that's quite a good metric, because it
| ties together your speed and closeness.
| stefan_ wrote:
| I assume you also wonder why there is an area marked on the
| train platform you should not stand in, yet people enter it
| all the time when a train is stopped.
| tsukikage wrote:
| Thankfully, no-one's attempted to actually enter my car
| in slow-moving traffic to date.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| That's the point though, isn't it? 12 inches is not safe for
| the cyclist. 5ft is a little safer.
|
| If you can't give the cyclist that much space, slow down and
| wait until you do.
| egormakarov wrote:
| the comparison with car seat belts is not that good. you dont
| need to schlep around your seat belt with you any time you
| leave the car.
| taeric wrote:
| They don't just have arguments, they have data to back it?
|
| Your post is compelling, in comparing it to seatbelt laws. That
| said, you probably don't know those as well as you think you
| do. For an easy example, public transit that is often targeting
| lower income areas often does not require seat belts. Indeed,
| I've never been in a bus that required them. Even car seat laws
| often have carve outs for cabs.
|
| Worse, though, your post is ultimately a false dichotomy. There
| is no need to pick one. We should reform police to be less "us
| versus them," we should make better traffic calming choices.
| All the while we should encourage helmets. This article even
| does that. The claim is not to make it criminal and not to
| weaponize enforcement. Because they have strong evidence that
| that doesn't work.
| bambax wrote:
| > _Mandatory helmet laws do not prevent people from riding
| bikes. Just like mandatory seat belt laws did not prevent
| anyone from driving cars!_
|
| There's a big difference between a helmet and a seat belt; the
| seat belt is part of the car; you have to carry the helmet,
| have it with you at all times, before and after riding. The net
| result is a drop in the number of riders, which has an impact
| on overall safety.
|
| I came to this article thinking it would be BS but it turns out
| to be quite reasonable. Yes, helmets protect rider and all
| riders should wear one; but making helmets mandatory have
| unintended consequences which result, as a whole, in making
| bikes less safe for everyone.
| 5555624 wrote:
| > you have to carry the helmet, have it with you at all
| times, before and after riding.
|
| You need it when you're on your bike, riding it. I commuted
| by bicycle for 19 years and biked (or walked) almost
| everywhere (Arlington, VA - Washington, DC). When I rode to
| the store or to meet someone or to get something to eat, the
| helmet usually stayed with the bike. I never thought someone
| would steal just my helmet. I didn't bother to lock it up,
| although you can get a wire to pass through the helmet and
| lock it up with the bike.
| bambax wrote:
| It seems my post was unclear and sounds like I'm against
| helmets. If so, sorry about that. It's quite the opposite.
| I ride a bike every day and use a helmet at all times, and
| would recommend everybody should do the same.
|
| But I agree that making it mandatory will do more harm than
| good, for the reasons stated in the article.
| RhysU wrote:
| These same arguments apply to motorcycles. I find them
| ridiculous. But, it's your head man and as an adult you
| should be able to go helmetless if you so choose.
| malfist wrote:
| Except if they wreck and are on medicare you and I are
| footing that bill. Or if you bump them with a car and then
| they die because they're not wearing a helmet it's going to
| really fuck up your life too.
|
| Or if they just don't have insurance, the hospital passes
| on the cost to recoup their care in the form of high rates
| for everyone.
|
| You don't ride a bicycle in a vacuum.
| Karsteski wrote:
| Isn't that argument easily extendible to anything
| optional that is also dangerous..? Also this is an
| argument from a US perspective. As someone who lives in
| Canada, where healthcare is in large part paid by taxes,
| I have no interest in restricting what people do because
| "it'll cost me more". Leads down a road I don't like
| ghaff wrote:
| It's a very small step from there to saying that
| activities like above treeline winter hiking, ice
| climbing, motorcycle riding, playing football, etc.
| should be prohibited (or at least require expensive
| private insurance) because some number of people consider
| them unreasonably dangerous.
| jjk166 wrote:
| You know that if something is paid by taxes, and you pay
| taxes, you are footing the bill for it? Yes you aren't
| going to get an itemized bill with a line item for Jim's
| cracked skull, but that's still money that could have
| gone to things like schools or infrastructure or cancer
| treatments or what have you.
| aikinai wrote:
| Then why is anyone allowed to drink, smoke, or be fat?
| Why draw the line at helmets at not even more expensive
| choices?
| jjk166 wrote:
| We do put restrictions on drinking and smoking, such as
| limiting consumption to certain times, places and age
| groups, and many places have things like taxes on soda
| and other such tactics to reduce obesity. We have even
| heavier restrictions on other activities that don't pose
| much threat to anyone but the person doing it, such as
| hard drugs. We don't want to stop people from having fun,
| we're all willing to bear some cost for our fellow man,
| but minor inconveniences which lead to big cost savings
| make sense. Helmets are incredibly beneficial and the
| burden is pretty light - even when not required by law
| most people voluntarily wear helmets. Mandatory helmet
| laws allow cyclists to keep doing what they love while
| dramatically reducing the number of severe injuries that
| society at large needs to deal with, it's a happy medium.
| Karsteski wrote:
| This is basically what I mean. If we go down the road of
| preventing people from doing things based on medical
| expenses, where does it end
| Karsteski wrote:
| That is what I meant yes, I am okay with paying for
| stupid things that people do, else we end up with an
| insane system where are prevented from doing anything
| even mildly dangerous or disrupted, as it'll cost the
| taxpayers money.
|
| I'm infinitely more concerned with the insane amount of
| government waste that happens where that money could go
| to schools or infrastructure or cancer treatments. I
| imagine that government waste is orders of magnitude more
| expensive than cyclists damaging themselves because they
| weren't wearing helmets, for example.
| WelcomeShorty wrote:
| As long as you yourself pay for the potential "avoidable"
| damage: sure!
| [deleted]
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > But, it's your head man and as an adult you should be
| able to go helmetless if you so choose
|
| The reasoning behind wearing an helmet on motorbikes is two
| fold:
|
| - there are a lot more chances of being left disabled by
| the accident than dying, which is something you might not
| have thought about, but when you're disabled suddenly it's
| not your head anymore, you depend on other people to take
| care of your head and the rest of your body. There's a cost
| involved in severe head traumas and the monetary one is by
| far the less important.
|
| - your head splattered on the asphalt is something other
| people might not want to watch. Some people might be even
| traumatized by that view. So please if you really want to
| risk it, do it when you're alone, in the middle of nowhere.
| Because you can still do it, you won't get arrested if you
| do it, simply fined.
|
| but the real reason why I do not understand this "easy
| rider" alle cozze argument is: helmets are super cool! If
| professional bikers wear it, then why not?
| soco wrote:
| In a world without health insurance, fine. Otherwise the
| system will try to minimize the costs - by forcing the
| people contribute at minimizing the risks. This is how it
| works now (in Germany, maybe also other places?) if you
| have a bike or ski accident without wearing a helmet, if it
| was self caused you'll probably get reduced payments.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Where does it end?
|
| Do you get reduced payments for orthopedic rehab if you
| play sports and get injured?
|
| Do you get reduced payments for diabetes treatments if
| you're overweight?
| pfarrell wrote:
| It doesn't have to be a slippery slope. People who take
| on more risk or have higher protection pay higher
| premiums.
| ferongr wrote:
| Not in countries with socialized health care. I shouldn't
| have to pay for other people's recklessness.
| Karellen wrote:
| As someone who lives in a country with socialised
| healthcare, who has occasionally done lightly reckless
| things in the past, I am happy to pay for other people's
| recklessness.
|
| Or, rather, I am happy that if you end up in hospital for
| any reason at all, the only thing on everyone's mind is
| treating you as best they can, and helping you to get
| better. No matter how you ended up there, or whether it
| was your fault or not, or how much money you have - if
| you're hurt, people will take care of you.
|
| It's what I'd want to happen to me, it's what I'd want to
| happen to my family, it's what I'd want to happen to some
| of my friends who have somewhat more reckless hobbies
| than I do. And so I'm happy to have my tax money do the
| same thing for complete strangers, because they're
| somebody else's family or good friends. (And even if
| they're not, being alone is not a reason to deny someone
| healthcare.)
|
| I trust people not to "take advantage" of this and be
| stupidly reckless simply because the healthcare is there,
| because... even with great healthcare that's available
| for free at the point of use, serious injuries _suck_.
| Having great healthcare doesn 't make pain less painful,
| or physiotherapy to come back from injury less time-
| consuming, or less of a crimp in your whole goddamn life.
| soco wrote:
| While I totally agree with you on the payments side, I
| still like to see the message being sent out that
| reckless _has_ consequences outside my own little head.
| Even those family members can suffer from my reckless
| behaviour. Right now, in case of a self caused accident
| without precaution measures (like, no helmet) the
| insurance will shorten the payments yes, but the system
| also won 't let me default on the treatments - social
| support will kick in. So I have both the support and the
| threat and I think it works fine like that.
| invalidname wrote:
| So carry it or tie it to your bike. There are folding helmets
| and pretty light helmets. I crashed recently. It made a
| difference to my skull.
|
| I had a motorcycle for well over a decade. We have helmet
| laws here and I carried that heavier helmet or placed it on
| my bike. It was fine. Part of the cost of having a bike.
| yboris wrote:
| "Carry it or tie it to your bike" ... wouldn't it be
| possibly stolen if you left it on your bike that you
| chained up on the street? And carrying it doesn't sound
| comfortable at all -- where do you put it?
|
| The amount of discomfort (psychological fear of theft or
| physical nuisance of carrying it) is very likely going to
| discourage its use. But then you're liable for a fine for
| not having a helmet, so you choose to not ride the bike.
|
| Just don't require helmets for bike riders over some age.
| invalidname wrote:
| I tie it to my bag. I've seen ones that fold to a size of
| a banana. If someone breaks the chain then they take my
| bike, the helmet is the least of my concerns.
|
| The idea that use would be discouraged because of that is
| ridiculous when you consider the alternative: cars or
| public transport. Both are terrible options. Parking,
| traffic, etc.
|
| I'm 47 and had a crash recently. How does my age have to
| do anything if someone suddenly jumps in my lane or a car
| runs into me?
|
| If anything my healthcare bill will be higher.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > If someone breaks the chain then they take my bike, the
| helmet is the least of my concerns.
|
| Why not? A good bike helmet is several hundred dollars.
| That's not life-altering money of course, but it adds a
| decent percentage to the cost of replacing the stolen
| bike.
| esteth wrote:
| I think they're arguing that children should be made to
| wear helmets because won't somebody think of the
| children.
|
| The same argument applies to children of course - where
| do you put your helmet after you've cycled to school?
| Attach it to the bike loosely and someone will steal it,
| it's too big to carry in your rucksack all day, and you
| don't want to have to go back and forth to your locker
| potentially on the other side of school if you have one
| at all.
| invalidname wrote:
| There are foldable helmets, even smaller than this one:
| https://www.amazon.com/Bicycle-Foldable-Closca-Electric-
| Pate...
|
| Also if it's locked to the bike you would break the lock
| and steal the bike. The helmet is the cheaper part.
| Helmets are often designed so locks can go through them.
| marssaxman wrote:
| It's one thing to decide that a helmet is a good idea and
| choose to wear one.
|
| It's another thing to make a law forcing everyone to agree
| with you, or else.
|
| The paradoxical result shown in this article, which has
| been seen repeatedly, is that forcing people to wear
| helmets does more harm, by discouraging people from riding
| bicycles, than the benefit it creates by pushing some small
| number of the bicyclists who remain to take safety
| precautions they would otherwise have neglected.
| invalidname wrote:
| This is a libertarian talking point. I strongly disagree
| but I doubt I can change your mind here (or vice versa).
|
| The reasons for requiring this for the "greater good"
| are:
|
| * Younger people are easily influenced and without such a
| law wouldn't use a helmet, seatbelt, etc.
|
| * Costs of healthcare after a bad crash can be serious.
| Yes, my country like pretty much everyone outside the US,
| has single payer. We would foot the bill, regardless.
|
| * It's proven that regulation and legislation can help.
| Regulation for seat-belts, airbags, crash testing, etc.
| has saved many lives. IMO this is what government is
| about, saving people. Sometimes from their stupidity and
| ignorance.
| ddeck wrote:
| All of those arguments would also support mandating the
| use of helmets for all passengers in a car.
|
| So why not do that too?
| maxsilver wrote:
| > would also support mandating the use of helmets for all
| passengers in a car.
|
| We _do_ also do that too.
|
| Every car is built with a fancy headrests and seatbelts
| and airbags -- the entire car _is literally_ a helmet,
| and we require this on every new vehicle sold for
| decades. (And we require the seatbelt be worn too,
| legally enforceable by law in most areas)
|
| We even check every single car sold to make sure the
| Helmet-worthiness of it is safe for the general public
| (see https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle/2019/CHEVROLET/VOLT/5%
| 252520HB... as an example of a vehicle results)
|
| When an occupant of the car is small enough such that the
| built-in helmet-worthiness of the car might be rendered
| insufficient, we also require they get _extra_ helmet-
| like protections wrapped around their head /neck/body -
| see https://www.dmv.com/car-seats for specifics -- and
| even _these_ are _also_ legally enforceable by law in
| most areas
| ddeck wrote:
| I understand the point being made and certainly there are
| very many safety devices mandated for cars, but the fact
| remains, that the vast majority of cars do not have
| airbags for rear seat passengers for example, and given
| the volume of auto accidents, it would be hard to imagine
| that mandating helmet usage would not significantly
| reduce injuries and fatalities.
|
| Of course all of this is simply to say, that there is a
| line, where the marginal safety gain is outweighed by the
| cost, both economic and otherwise. Different people and
| organizations are going to have differing opinions on
| where this line should be, but arguing purely on the side
| of harm reduction misses a great deal. This is aside from
| personal responsibility, liberty, etc.
| musk_micropenis wrote:
| invalidname wrote:
| No they won't. You can argue they would do that for
| walking around everywhere but there's a cost/benefit
| ratio that's recommended by experts and backed by
| statistics. You can take anything to an extreme and I
| agree that some regulation does.
| marssaxman wrote:
| It's not a libertarian talking point; it is a summary of
| the research presented in the article that we are
| nominally discussing.
|
| It may be proven that regulation _can_ help, in general,
| but it has also been proven that _this specific type of
| regulation_ does more harm than good.
| invalidname wrote:
| It shows correlation not causation and not "research".
| There's no such proof.
|
| The key sentence in the article is: " Financial struggle
| for popular bike sharing systems"...
|
| That's where the money is and that's who made up that
| nonsense. Lots of people die because of those terrible
| motorized bikes and scooters. They're trying to get
| cyclists to fight their regulatory requirements by making
| up fake science.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > That's where the money is and that's who made up that
| nonsense. Lots of people die because of those terrible
| motorized bikes and scooters. They're trying to get
| cyclists to fight their regulatory requirements by making
| up fake science.
|
| I think it's entirely plausible that the article was
| written by a PR company, and that is one possible reason
| (though not the only) they were paid to do it.
|
| I'll quibble with you on a few points though:
|
| Much research only find correlation. Just because it's
| not conclusive about causation doesn't mean it's not
| research.
|
| As much "those terrible motorized bikes and scooters"
| might have lead to people dying (I've heard the anecdotal
| horror stories, I've just not looked at the data, so I'm
| ignorant to the overall effect), there have been plenty
| of attempts (some successful) at non-motorized bike
| sharing systems. One could reasonably imagine that when
| those systems are successful, it is likely there's a net
| increase in cycling within the community, thereby
| increasing overall safety of cycling via the "safety In
| Numbers" effect cited in the article, not to mention a
| possible reduction in the amount of driving. It therefore
| follows that one could make an argument that improving
| the success rate of such systems helps improve bike
| riding safety (though I'd like to see THAT data). It
| might even be true (and again, I have not seen any data
| on this) that for all the terrible deaths from motorized
| bikes & scooters, that adoption of them still increases
| the safety for cyclists, because if the alternative is
| the same person being in a car/truck/SUV, then a cyclist
| being hit by a motorized bike or scooter, even if they
| get hit more often, might be far less dangerous.
|
| I think we shouldn't presume any particular PR motive for
| the article _necessarily_ means it is not in line with
| the interests of cyclists. Ad hominems aren 't don't
| really undermine the arguments presented in the article.
| marssaxman wrote:
| Good eye. I bet you're right about the PR origins of this
| specific article, and I can see why that would make you
| skeptical.
|
| For me, however, this idea is old news. People have been
| investigating this issue for years and the results seem
| to be generally consistent. I have been reading reports
| about the link between helmet laws, reduced cycling
| rates, and reduced overall safety for at least five years
| now.
|
| I live in Seattle, where the surrounding county passed a
| mandatory helmet law back in 1993. After decades of
| experience, this law was seen to do more harm than good,
| and the Board of Health decided earlier this year to
| repeal it.
| musk_micropenis wrote:
| cbsmith wrote:
| > Younger people are easily influenced and without such a
| law wouldn't use a helmet, seatbelt, etc.
|
| I did feel this aspect of the effect of regulation was
| not well addressed in the article at least. I think
| there's an implication that the effect of regulation has
| been to reduce cycling, and therefore the effect on youth
| has been more to discourage cycling altogether than to
| encourage cycling with helmets, but I don't think that's
| well established. IIRC, the positive effects of seat belt
| laws are generally much more pronounced after a
| generation or two.
|
| > It's proven that regulation and legislation can help.
| Regulation for seat-belts, airbags, crash testing, etc.
| has saved many lives. IMO this is what government is
| about, saving people. Sometimes from their stupidity and
| ignorance.
|
| There's also plenty of evidence of cases where regulation
| and legislation has harmed, or had no effect. Arguments
| that regulation & legislation intrinsically help or harm
| are, at best, specious. Regulation & legislation are
| tools that obviously _can_ be helpful; the debate should
| always be about whether a particular regulatory
| /legislative approach _is_ helpful.
| bambax wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33865031
| seadan83 wrote:
| In cities with bike shares, a significant number of short
| distance bike trips are on the bike share (like, 50% plus
| range). Requiring a bike helmet eliminates those people
| that are walking around and decide to use a bike share to
| go 2 miles.
|
| Tying a helmet to a bike can result in theft and weathering
| (rain).
|
| The article goes to describe that it is the secondary
| effects that are important. Ie, it's better to have 100
| cyclists on a road with 50% helmet usage, than it is to
| have 3 with 100% usage.
|
| I've seen campaigns and memorial stickers asking drivers to
| watch for motorcycles. So it is not dissimilar for pedal
| bikes, except the safety effect for driver awareness is
| even more important for non-motorized bikes. Which is
| essentially the non-intuitice conclusion of the article.
| scott_w wrote:
| > So carry it or tie it to your bike.
|
| Or do what happened in Australia and just don't bother
| riding a bike and drive your car instead.
|
| I sound flippant but I'm just reflecting _what actually
| happened_, which is where conversations need to be
| grounded.
| Fricken wrote:
| I've had hundreds of crashes on a bike and hundreds of
| others crashes and wipeouts doing other activities. A
| helmet has never once come in handy. So I've come to
| believe that knowing how to wipe out, as a reflexive skill,
| is far more critical to safety than strapping some
| styrofoam to your head.
|
| Unfortunately you can't glance at a cyclist and decide
| affirmatively that they're an idiot for riding without
| wipeout skills.
| vehemenz wrote:
| This is as naive as drivers refusing to wear seatbelts.
| In serious crashes, you cannot control your body in the
| first place.
|
| Of course, the helmet is only 10% of cycling safety. But
| it's for that important 10% when your head crashes into
| the ground. Suggesting that it would never come in handy
| is naive.
|
| Since you seem to believe in the power of personal
| anecdote, I am an experienced cyclist and have crashed
| directly on to my head before. It was just once, but it
| prevented a serious head injury.
| mdorazio wrote:
| This is survivorship fallacy. You don't hear from the
| thousands of people who weren't so lucky _because they're
| dead_.
| Fricken wrote:
| I hear from 1000s of internet people who are totally
| triggered by my occasional lack of a helmet. My ability
| to avoid hitting my head using reflexive skill cultivated
| over many years of practice never gets the credit it
| deserves. It has come in handy on so many occasions.
|
| Let me assure you, if you've decided cycling safety is a
| binary contingent on whether or not you're wearing a
| helmet, you're doing it wrong. It's no better than
| superstition. There are so many other variables.
| eCa wrote:
| Safety in depth:
|
| * Avoiding the crash in the first place
|
| * Knowing how to fall if you crash
|
| * Helmet, and potentially other protection, when unable
| to execute crashing properly.
|
| (Edit: Changed 'security' to 'safety')
| denton-scratch wrote:
| My wipeout: I heard a chink behind me, and thought I had
| dropped my keys, so I looked over my shoulder. I lost
| control, and my face hit the road. Not my head, my chin.
|
| I got three stiches in my chin. I lost two teeth; one was
| driven through my lip, and I had 13 stiches in that lip
| (there are three layers in a lip: outer skin, muscle,
| inner skin). I needed two root-canals. I fractured my
| mandible, which is now joined to the maxilla on only one
| side. I was concussed, and wound up sleeping about 15
| hours a day for the next 3 months. I couldn't chew for
| ages.
|
| A motorbike helmet might have helped; but not a bicycle
| helmet.
| malfist wrote:
| It only takes one crash where the helmet was needed for
| you to never need one again...if you didn't wear one.
|
| We went through this same nonsense with motorcycles. Stop
| acting like it's the end of the world to put a piece of
| foam and plastic on your head for a little bit.
| quicklime wrote:
| I'm surprised at all the comments comparing this to
| motorcycle helmets. To me, the big difference with a
| bicycle and a motorcycle is that I can run as fast or
| faster than I ride by bicycle around my local
| neighbourhood.
|
| If someone asked me to wear a helmet while running, I
| would find that ridiculous. Same thing when riding my
| (non-road) bike.
| luckylion wrote:
| How often do you sprint over uneven terrain? Or do you
| just ride your bike very slowly?
|
| Bike speeds > 20km/h are normal and easily achievable for
| the untrained on flat ground. Downhill, you'll quickly go
| past 30km/h. This isn't something that you're doing while
| running for longer periods of time while you're still
| half-asleep.
|
| Helmets annoy me too, but "the fastest runners can peak
| at speeds higher than what I reach every other day on my
| bike and they don't wear helmets" is a weird argument.
| quicklime wrote:
| I ride my bike slowly around my local neighbourhood,
| often on shared paths with pedestrians. This is usually
| under 20 km/h, probably under 15, or even less when it's
| busy.
|
| For rides where I go faster, I will take my road bike and
| wear a helmet.
|
| For rides where I go slower, I would prefer not to wear a
| helmet, but mandatory helmet laws don't make that
| distinction.
| alwa wrote:
| I agree- it does feel like "biking" encompasses an
| awfully wide range of riskiness.
|
| As you alluded, even between bike trips, I weigh the
| risks differently when I think about a casual spin down a
| protected lane or a recreational trail as compared to an
| aggressive commute inches apart from vehicle traffic.
|
| My local bike share program has started blurring things
| even more for me lately as they introduce progressively
| zippier e-bikes. Any more, it's trivial for me to move
| with traffic on these huge heavy clunkers of bikes, while
| to my impulses it still feels like the low-effort casual
| kind of ride I'd instinctively rate as not warranting a
| helmet.
|
| Still, I'm glad to be judging for myself how to mitigate
| the specific risks of a specific ride.
| frob wrote:
| You're very lucky. The worst wipeout I ever had was on
| the side of a small town street. I was accelerating, the
| chain popped of my gears, and I basically flipped the
| bike over and ground to a stop on my helmet. My reactions
| and training absolutely helped me; I knew how to roll
| into it and how to not break my wrists. But without that
| helmet, I would have ground a hole into my skull.
|
| You don't need that helmet until you do.
| [deleted]
| uoaei wrote:
| Latest on HN: someone with zero personal experience in the
| matter bullshits as if they are an expert on the basis of
| debate-bro style analysis involving only the structure of the
| argument. It has been zero days since our last...
| scott_w wrote:
| > /Some/ protection is better than nothing at all.
|
| As a regular bike rider of 20 years, a helmet has protected me
| on exactly 2 occasions: once when I was training for racing and
| once actually in a race. So technical/fast conditions that most
| riders don't encounter.
|
| The biggest danger to a leisure or commuter rider are car
| drivers running them over. Helmets do nothing to stop a
| multiple ton steel object hitting your body at 30+mph and don't
| protect the parts that get hit.
|
| > In the meantime, we need to implement better traffic calming
| and separation of automobile and cycling/pedestrian traffic.
| Kids die every year because in many areas, they have no choice
| but to bike on the side of a road that has cars whizzing past
| 60+ mph with less than 12 inches of separation in between.
|
| 100% this is the answer. The only thing helmet laws and
| discussions do is let people feel good about themselves while
| doing literally nothing to prevent vulnerable users.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > As a regular bike rider of 20 years, a helmet has protected
| me on exactly 2 occasions: once when I was training for
| racing and once actually in a race
|
| That's their purpose, protect you when you need it, which is
| on average a couple of times in a lifetime.
|
| If the helmet had protected you hundreds of times, probably
| you should have stopped riding a bike (or your friends and
| family should have stopped you).
|
| If you heard someone say "the seat belt saved my life at
| least 30 times" would you or would you not think that that
| person is dangerous and should not drive?
| Animats wrote:
| The new phrase is "acceptable losses". If some important social
| goal can be accomplished at the cost of some lives, that's
| acceptable. That reasoning has been applied to COVID.[1][2] A
| China-style lockdown reduces deaths to a very low level, but the
| impact on GDP is unacceptable to most of the rest of the world.
| Here, it's being applied to bicyclists. Because more people of
| color are cited for not wearing a helmet, it's more important to
| eliminate that discrimination than to save a few lives.
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7255398/
|
| [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/11/28/covid-
| who-i...
| zip1234 wrote:
| These laws 1. make it harder for people to cycle and 2. give
| motorists a scapegoat when they hit cyclists (a cyclist not
| wearing their helmet as they were crushed by a 7000lb Hummer).
| bowsamic wrote:
| It's interesting to me how different countries approach helmets.
| In Germany some people wear them, but many don't. In the
| Netherlands wearing a helmet is practically unheard of.
| golemiprague wrote:
| b93rn wrote:
| In the Netherlands you're either a tourist or 60 year or older
| if you wear a helmet. But it is also not that fair to compare
| the Netherlands to other countries. We grew up with bicycles
| and our infrastructure is much better for cycling.
| diarmuidc wrote:
| I suspect people don't like comparing with the Netherlands
| because it doesn't support their biases in this argument
| smcl wrote:
| It's more that the Netherlands is a substantial outlier in
| terms of how they accommodate cyclists, so applying their
| attitudes towards helmets _without_ also being as cyclist-
| friendly (infrastructurally and socially) as they are is
| asking for trouble.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Obviously infrastructure helps a lot, but there is still the
| danger inherent in the fact that it's quite far from your
| head to the ground. I don't wear a helmet though personally,
| since the bike infrastructure is good in my city in Germany,
| at least on the routes I take
| cowmoo728 wrote:
| Almost every racefiets rider wears one. Anyone going far or
| fast typically does.
| usrusr wrote:
| Pretty much exactly the same as driving: those who put on
| special clothes for their vehicle use activity routinely make
| the helmet part of that special attire, those who operate
| their vehicle in plain clothes don't.
| konha wrote:
| I wear a helmet every single time here in Germany and I don't
| when I visit the Netherlands. Not that surprising when you
| consider Dutch cities have (by German standards) excellent and
| safe biking infrastructure and, even more important, huge
| numbers of cyclists. You'll never be overlooked between cars
| when you're part of a large group on the bike lane.
| guntherhermann wrote:
| if you're doing a standard 20kmh / 12mph which is a casual pace
| to do on a flat elevation, have segregated, dedicated space to
| cycle and have a culture where everyone cycles so everyone has
| a "cycling mindset" then yes, you'll probably see different
| outcomes than one with the opposite culture.
|
| I cycle in the UK, i wear a helmet because our cycling infra is
| not good, cyclists are not really protected by the police, and
| it's common to complain about cyclists. The attitude here is
| different. You're the enemy, a parasite, you're in the way of
| my car!
| robbrawkly wrote:
| Mandatory motorcycling helmeting was enacted in Minnesota and
| traffic deaths with motorcycles went way down.
|
| I think it was people wanting organ donations that wanted helmets
| to be not mandatory(and maybe some other unsavory people). I
| guess it makes sense.
| macrolime wrote:
| Seems one of the big issues here is that almost nobody will use
| bikesharing when needing to wear a helmet as people would rarely
| have a helmet available when wanting to rent a bike. I wonder how
| it would look if all rental bikes had a helmet included.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Helmets get pretty gross. I would not want to use someone
| else's helmet.
| billyt555 wrote:
| According to the CDC, 30% of injury related deaths are TBI-
| related, and 14% of those TBIs are from car accidents. Why not
| have mandatory helmets for auto drivers too?
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Because the car already has multiple redundant safety systems.
| The bicycle has exactly zero.
| billyt555 wrote:
| Maybe so, but auto accidents still result in lots of head
| injuries even with the existing safety systems.
| ben7799 wrote:
| You're right, if anyone was rational we'd all wear helmets
| in the car all the time.
|
| It's all irrationality and a belief that cars are much
| safer than we pretend they are.
|
| As someone who has worn a helmet in the car from time to
| time, a lot of cars don't even leave enough headroom
| available for someone 6' tall to wear the helmet without
| their head hitting the ceiling.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Is that a reason to adopt no safety systems for a bicycle?
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Not sure if you've ever worn a racing/motorcycle helmet but the
| visibilty/mobility is not the same. People would shoulder check
| even less than they do now.
| billyt555 wrote:
| I'm talking about a bicycle helmet.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I think that'd be pointless, right?
| billyt555 wrote:
| Not sure I follow you, are you suggesting bicyclists
| should wear motorcycle helmets?
| bitL wrote:
| Why not mandate a HANS device for everyone? Basal skull
| fracture is no joke and happens often with head-on
| collisions...
| billyt555 wrote:
| Right - good point. And obviously my larger point is where do
| you draw the line with mandates? The arguments here are
| largely about preventing head injuries - so how far is too
| far?
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| Of course, mandatory helmet laws do NOT make cyclists less safe.
| They may make people who choose not to cycle because of the law
| less safe. But there is no discussion of the balance of safety --
| more for helmet wearers, perhaps less for people who choose not
| to cycle.
| kevincox wrote:
| Not quite right.
|
| They make those who still cycle less safe because less people
| will cycle overall.
|
| So basically a single person wearing a helmet is safer than not
| wearing. But a person wearing a helmet is a crowd is less safe
| than that person biking "alone" not wearing a helmet.
| aeharding wrote:
| It's a lot more productive to support a free helmet program in
| your city, if you really want more people to wear helmets.
| dncornholio wrote:
| Helmet on a bicycle does do more harm then good.
|
| If you're MTB or going fast, sure wear a helmet. If you just bike
| to get to work or school and stay well below 25km/h, and have
| good cycling infra, you don't a helmet.
|
| It's like US don't want people to bike.
| swader999 wrote:
| I don't wear a helmet skiing but always when biking. It's too
| easy to lose your front tire grip on gravel or wet pavement and
| that often puts your face in direct contact with the earth. It
| happens almost instantly.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Mods, I submitted this exact url 23 hours ago. Why didn't future
| submissions go to mine?
| konha wrote:
| The effects of Safety In Numbers cannot be overstated. I'd go as
| far and say it's even more important than cycling infrastructure
| like physically separate bike lanes. You do not want to be the
| only cyclist at a busy intersection between cars making a turn
| crossing your lane.
|
| Might be counterintuitive, but if a helmet mandate reduces the
| number of riders even slightly it is a bad idea.
|
| And of course: Wear a helmet. Especially if your city is still
| designed for cars.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > You do not want to be the only cyclist at a busy intersection
| between cars making a turn crossing your lane.
|
| With well designed infrastructure this won't happen. Give
| cyclists separate lights with priority. The situation you're
| describing is extremely rare in somewhere like the Netherlands.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| But that is just a trivially true point. Let's think of
| things we can do until our city becomes interested in redoing
| its streets in 100 years, if ever.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Why? Our cities aren't magical beasts whose whims we must
| yield to. They're shaped by people. Demand better. Look at
| the transformations taking place in Paris, how cities like
| Utrecht have been saved from car-centric design and given
| back to humans.
|
| I just don't understand this defeatist attitude. Most
| people on this site live in healthy democracies. Why do we
| call for reforms in every political sphere but maintain an
| adamant denial of our power over city planning?
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| Ironically, municipal politics probably serves the
| largest impact and easiest entry point for leveraging
| political will.
|
| Not everything has to be harangued like many federal-
| level politics are. You can just go to your city council
| and demand better. The worst that can happen is they say
| no - and you can just organize to vote them out with the
| rest of your community.
| giantg2 wrote:
| It seems that most of the commentary here is about whether or not
| there are more injuries with helmets. It seems largely moot since
| this is basically a proxy for the conversation that we should
| have - should there be helmet mandates?
| cptskippy wrote:
| I think the title should be changed to "Mandatory Helmet Laws
| reduces Bike Share usage which results in fewer bikes on the
| road".
| Zigurd wrote:
| The real lesson is that studies like this can't be boiled down to
| clickbait.
|
| Helmets make each individual cyclists isolated action safer. The
| question then becomes whether cyclists ride more, in more
| diverse, less protected settings, and are exposed to more risk
| because of road design? Or do they take more risks intentionally?
| And for what purpose? Both, or neither, can turn out to be true.
|
| Making cycling safer can't be reduced to "don't bother with
| helmets." Much less is it valid to say helmets are a "nanny
| state" matter.
|
| On top of which, none of this directly bears on whether, in
| making lack of a helmet a premise for a traffic stop, we gave
| cops another tool for harassing minorities. In some places, like
| LA, the vast majority of cop "work" is cop-initiated traffic
| stops, disproportionately of minorities, that does nothing to
| enhance road safety and leave just a sliver of resources for
| property crime and other things that matter much more to the
| people of the community.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Mandatory helmet laws make the number of injuries associated with
| biking go down. That is their purpose, and they are effective.
| Yes, some of that is people who would rather not bike at all than
| bike safely, and there are some non-linear effects from that, but
| it's still a net reduction in injuries.
|
| There is a real need for society to discuss whether the value of
| reduced injuries outweighs the cost in terms of less cycling -
| for example more car emmisions, more traffic congestion, less
| easy cardio, etc. But to say people are less safe is just not
| true for the common definition of safe.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| We could just do what the Netherlands does and make
| streets/paths safe for biking rather than armoring up bikers to
| deal with a more dangerous environment.
| rhacker wrote:
| so basically for most urban areas you're advocating a huge
| usage of eminent domain, since doing such retrofits would
| likely involve chopping off the livingrooms of many homes to
| make space necessary for the change. so that we can have
| bikes without helmets, destroy a million homes.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| No. Simply segmenting a lane for bike traffic is enough, or
| turning certain streets into bike only streets during
| certain hours.
| Scarblac wrote:
| No, because that wasn't necessary on the Netherlands
| either, and are streets were never as wide as US streets.
|
| Just make the streets smaller, with fewer, narrower lanes.
| It slows down the cars and makes bicycles look better in
| comparison too.
| soperj wrote:
| > Yes, some of that is people who would rather not bike at all
| than bike safely, and there are some non-linear effects from
| that, but it's still a net reduction in injuries.
|
| Doubtful, since it raises the number of miles driven in cars,
| which would increase the number of injuries there.
| aceHN wrote:
| Sure, and lets make the speed limit 5mph and avoid 1.3 million
| vehicle deaths every year. It'll take people longer to get
| places but we know what's best for them
| zip1234 wrote:
| You say this in jest but truly their should be speed
| governors on every car. Would do WAY more for safety than any
| mandatory helmet law for cyclists.
| jjk166 wrote:
| We did implement speed limits to reduce the probability of
| car fatalities.
| chitowneats wrote:
| > but it's still a net reduction in injuries.
|
| Citation needed. If they are now traveling via automobile, I
| doubt there is a net reduction when taking into account:
| vehicle injuries and fatalities, air pollution, and of course,
| in the long term, anthropogenic climate change.
|
| This is a classic example of a system with perverse incentives.
| Everyone feels safer in their big SUV. In reality it's just an
| arms race, and we're all losing.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > Everyone feels safer in their big SUV. In reality it's just
| an arms race, and we're all losing.
|
| I'm not sure, absent secondary effects, wearing a helmet
| makes cycling more dangerous for other cyclists the way that
| driving a big SUV, absent secondary effects makes it more
| dangerous for other drivers. It's not like the extra mass
| from helmets means you'll do more damage when you smash in to
| other cyclists.
| noirbot wrote:
| Sure, but that's not the argument. It's that if you require
| people to carry a helmet with them to use your for-hire
| bike system, less people will use it, but they'll still
| need to get places, so they're more likely to hire a car or
| drive themselves.
|
| The hypothesis is that requiring helmets may make
| individual bikers safer in isolation, but if it causes less
| people to bike and to drive instead, the increase in people
| driving cars may make it less safe to ride a bike, even
| adjusted for the fact that they're safer via the helmet.
|
| I'd imagine this is especially true given that the helmet
| mostly only helps prevent the more dramatic injuries to the
| head. Getting hit by a car is still likely to seriously
| injure you in plenty of places the helmet doesn't help
| with.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > Sure, but that's not the argument.
|
| Agreed. I just thought the metaphor was not helpful.
|
| > The hypothesis is that requiring helmets may make
| individual bikers safer in isolation
|
| ...though there's a (somewhat) credible argument that
| even this isn't true. There are arguments against this
| too. Some argue automobiles see someone without a helmet
| as more "at risk" and therefore are more mindful of them,
| thereby net increasing their safety. Others argue that
| mandates tend to discourage innovation in safety
| equipment design, effectively encouraging the deployment
| of limited safety equipment at the expense of more
| effective alternatives.
|
| > I'd imagine this is especially true given that the
| helmet mostly only helps prevent the more dramatic
| injuries to the head. Getting hit by a car is still
| likely to seriously injure you in plenty of places the
| helmet doesn't help with.
|
| Which also brings up the ol' "is it better to be more
| likely to live, but also more likely to have broken arms
| and legs?" question.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > If they are now traveling via automobile, I doubt there is
| a net reduction when taking into account: vehicle injuries
| and fatalities, air pollution, and of course, in the long
| term, anthropogenic climate change.
|
| You're not thinking like a Zero-sum American.
|
| If you accidentally hit & injure a pedestrian, cyclist, or
| another driver in your Hummer - better them than you.
|
| Best to stick to your Hummer and avoid the bike.
| chitowneats wrote:
| I absolutely love your comment. I wish I could upvote it
| enough to counteract the downvotes. In lieu of that I'm
| leaving this comment.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Citation needed. If they are now traveling via automobile
|
| First, there's no need for any citation, helmets _do reduce
| trauma from impact sensibly_
|
| See:
|
| _" Helmets provide a 63 to 88% reduction in the risk of
| head, brain and severe brain injury for all ages of
| bicyclists"_
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7025438/
|
| Secondly: if they are now traveling via automobile, the risk
| of injuries is less than going by bike without an helmet.
|
| If you believe that by driving cars the risk of brain trauma
| goes up 63 to 80%, you should provide some evidence,
|
| You're also blindly assuming that no bike means car, in my
| opinion it would mirror the usage pattern of someone not keen
| to use a car: public transportation, walking, other means of
| transportation such as skateboard, scooters etc.
| chitowneats wrote:
| "First, there is no need for citation"
|
| Then you proceed to cite a study. Thanks for doing that.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > "First, there is no need for citation"
|
| To prove that claim.
|
| I'm no native english speaker, in my language we usually
| understand things from the context
|
| So if someone says "you should prove that" and someone
| reply "there's no need to" we understand that is not
| referred to _in general_
|
| But I guess there are people in the World not equally
| averagely smart, so sorry for not taking into account
| that fact, next time I will ELI5 my thoughts just for
| you.
|
| Silly me for thinking that quoting the particular
| paragraph I was replying to would help...
|
| Silly me for thinking that citing a study that actually
| proves why _there is no need for citations_ because it;s
| common knowledge, would make things clearer.
|
| My fault for thinking that the HN guidelines such as
|
| _Please respond to the strongest plausible
| interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one
| that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._
|
| could help the conversation.
|
| Now we're stuck with people who did not understand the
| context, jumped to conclusion and wasted everyone's time
| with snarky comments.
|
| It must be very hard to be you, I'm really sorry for you
| guys, good luck!
|
| Ma annate affanculo, cojoni.
| 0x457 wrote:
| > there's no need for any citation
|
| > provides citation
|
| Yeah, it's going great.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| > Mandatory helmet laws make the number of injuries associated
| with biking go down. That is their purpose, and they are
| effective.
|
| There's significant problems with most of the studies showing
| the effectiveness of bike helmets (especially the Thompson and
| Rivara study) and there's also the issue that they can
| conceivably cause greater brain damage die to rotational forces
| (by increasing the diameter of the head). Some issues are
| discussed here https://crag.asn.au/5-ways-wearing-a-bicycle-
| helmet-can-resu...
|
| Also, there's the Dr Ian Walker study (although very small)
| that shows a greater number of close passes from drivers when
| the cyclist wears a helmet. Risk compensation may also be at
| play, so that cyclists take more chances when wearing a helmet
| (I recall a study showing that effect was particularly
| pronounced in kids).
|
| Unfortunately, most helmet studies use hospital admissions
| which is going to bias the results unless hospital admissions
| are a close match with the cyclist population.
|
| It's of note that cycle helmets are safety tested by typically
| a 2m drop onto a flat surface - this equates to providing a
| level of protection at slow speeds up to approx 12mph, but they
| are most certainly not tested to withstand the forces involved
| when there's a RTC. The question then is why are they being
| prescribed for situations far beyond their designs?
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| The point here is that the "mandatory helmet" part is less
| significant than the "law enforcement" part.
|
| People who would happily be riding with a helmet are
| disincentivized to go riding at all, because they don't want to
| be the subject of police patrol. That's the effect we clearly
| don't want.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > Mandatory helmet laws make the number of injuries associated
| with biking go down.
|
| You can also reduce the number of cycling injuries by banning
| bicycles.
|
| [Edit] /s
| dylan604 wrote:
| You can also reduce the number of cycling injuries by banning
| cars
| notch656a wrote:
| Doubtful if "cars" means motor vehicles, as most of the US
| has poor public transit thus cycling would be the closest
| best substitute readily available. The number of cyclists
| would explode.
|
| There would likely also be lots of deaths due to weakness
| in the supply chain.
| 6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote:
| You seem to have missed the fact that cycling deaths NOT
| involving cars are negligible. Remove cars, remove
| deaths.
| rhacker wrote:
| I think he was saying that if suddenly cars were not
| allowed, there would be a class of people unable to get
| food or services and would die. Aka, you can't replace a
| fedex truck delivering food to a handicapped person with
| 500 fedex bikers delivering one box each. (and what about
| couch deliveries).
| jjk166 wrote:
| About 30% of cycling deaths are not traffic related,
| hardly negligible. If cars magically disappeared there
| would be a lot more than 3 times the current number of
| cyclists on the road.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Citation? If car traffic is pushing someone into the
| shoulder, and they hit a grate, was that counted as car
| related? If it is a hit and run (super common), and
| someone comes up to a person that was left for dead, is
| that counted? How exactly is that 30% computed?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I'll cite it with anecdotal evidence: I've broken a
| bicycle helmet twice, and neither time involved a car.
| jjk166 wrote:
| https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-
| topics...
|
| It does not say what counts as non-traffic incidents
| 6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote:
| Your reply made me check for the UK, so in 2016 we have
|
| "For teenage and adult cyclists, accidents are more
| likely to involve collisions with motor vehicles, but
| about 16% of fatal or serious cyclist accidents reported
| to the police do not involve a collision with another
| vehicle, but are caused by the rider losing control of
| their bicycle." [1]
|
| Not quite 30% but much more than I expected and obviously
| not negligible. Thanks for the rebuttal.
|
| 1. https://www.rospa.com/rospaweb/docs/advice-
| services/road-saf... (PDF)
| b3morales wrote:
| Agree but that said cyclists can still _injure_
| themselves without help from cars. We 'd expect the
| absolute number of cycling injuries to rise with the
| number of cyclists. However, they will be much less
| serious injuries.
| oblio wrote:
| > The number of cyclists would explode. There would
| likely also be lots of deaths due to weakness in the
| supply chain.
|
| In the short term, yes.
|
| In the medium and long term, if you Americans would put
| all that money you spend on cars & car infrastructure
| into equivalent walking and cycling infrastructure and
| public transport, you'd probably leave even the Dutch
| behind...
| seanw444 wrote:
| It's frustrating that people think every problem needs to be
| solved via legislation and enforcement. Not every problem
| can, or needs to be.
| nske wrote:
| Can, needs or _should_ , I would add. My perspective
| doesn't seem to be very popular, however I could never
| understand how laws that are intended to protect us only
| from ourselves are compatible with the philosophy of law
| that we're supposingly embracing in the west.
|
| The only rational argument for these laws would be the
| burden on the national-health system for injuries sustained
| on the head during riding a bike. This could be solved by
| allowing people to opt-out of the free national health
| system coverage explicitly in these instances of injuries,
| if indeed statistics show that there is a significant
| burden imposed on it. And still there is the counter-
| argument that this would be biased -what about people who
| are engaging into leisure activities with higher-risk,
| "extreme-sports" and such. I wouldn't be surprised if even
| the cost of treating normal sports-related injuries is
| higher than the cost of head-related injuries of bikers
| riding with no helmet. Why not enforce wearing full
| protective gear when engaging in every sport?
|
| If we start with this mentality, it's only a slippery slope
| that would lead us in a place we don't want to be.
|
| Same as with smoking taxes. It started with the
| justification that it's fair to counteract the increased
| cost that smokers have on the national health system. A
| perfectly fair reasoning. But by now these taxes have
| increased so much that this justification is no longer
| convincing -instead they are widely accepted as a sort of
| "luxury tax" that smokers pay, no longer to cover the cost
| of the medical treatment they are more likely to receive on
| average, but just "because that's how it is". This income
| is not even earmarked for the health system in many cases.
| They also started covering things that evidence don't
| support they pose any or as much of a risk as cigarette
| smoking (Vaping), and in some cases -Italy, IIRC-, even
| with official lawmaker justification that these products
| deprive the state from tax income that they would receive
| through the smoking tax. A completely illogical argument
| that I was surprised to see it made nobody blink twice.
|
| So I think such laws are really a demonstration of
| government acting as a for-profit entity, squeezing money
| from whatever they think they can get away with.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Oh, there are scores of risky activities that can result
| in medical costs that some people (libertarians?) would
| prefer that we didn't socialize.
|
| Incorrect use of OTC drugs; crossing the road while
| diddling a mobile phone; drinking alcohol; hell, pushing
| your toddler on a swing in a playground. Perhaps
| socialized medicine should refuse to treat people who
| have declined vaccination, or declined a bowel cancer
| screening. Maybe climbing a ladder should close you off
| from socialized medical care. Perhaps you shut yourself
| out if you ever hang out with sick people.
|
| Obviously, I'm not serious.
|
| For me, the big thing about socialized medicine is that
| it's universal. It's a massive benefit to everyone, if
| people with people with infectious diseases like TB,
| diphtheria and cholera can get treatment for free,
| without producing ID or proof of entitlement. And that's
| true whether or not they have legal status, as immigrants
| or whatever.
| nske wrote:
| I agree, I was trying to follow the only line of
| reasoning I can think of that would rationalize the
| existence of such laws in a way that doesn't break the
| concept that we should be able to choose for ourselves
| the amount of risk we want to be exposed in (which is
| generally accepted in other cases of everyday life).
| jjk166 wrote:
| And I think most cyclists would prefer a mandatory helmet
| requirement to a cycling ban
| josefx wrote:
| You might as well go all the way. Quite sure most of the
| bikes where I live don't even qualify as road safe because
| only road/city bikes are sold with the mandatory safety
| equipment (lights, bell, reflectors, ...) out of the box
| and the attachable variants of those are often not road
| legal either.
|
| So if you want to protect cyclists from themselves lock
| them in a cell and throw away the key, it is the only way
| to be sure.
| jjk166 wrote:
| So you're saying there is a mandatory safety law for
| bikes on the books already and people haven't all stopped
| biking?
| josefx wrote:
| An outstanding result, if your only goal is to get people
| to ignore laws.
| equalsione wrote:
| This topic has come up several times now on HN and the
| conversation is always very frustrating. The debate tends to
| run towards "no one will tell me to wear a helmet". The same
| studies are cited as supporting one side or the other when all
| the studies are clearly insufficient.
|
| It's good that HN doesn't take things are face value, and the
| discussions here seek to understand unintended consequences.
| But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and anecdata does in fact
| equal data.
|
| Unfortunately cycling is dangerous because - in most countries
| - cyclists share the road with cars and trucks. There's only
| one winner in a cyclist vs car showdown. If you cycle somewhere
| that doesn't have nice cycling infrastructure a helmet is a
| great idea. A helmet will not automatically turn you into a
| target for indifference or road rage from motorists - that's
| the default posture of most motorists towards cyclists, helmet
| or not.
| emj wrote:
| That's the rub cycling is not dangerous, but you are right
| that 100% helmets usage will mean a slight decline in deaths
| _as long as_ no one stops cycling.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| > rather not bike at all than bike safely
|
| There are many many thousands of Dutch who bike daily without a
| helmet, so this is a false dichotomy.
|
| I bike a lot as in for transportation and running errands, and
| the speeds are generally quite low, and after many years I'm
| good at not falling off my bike. The biggest thing that
| concerns me is drivers and their associated cars. In many cases
| a helmet will do nearly nothing when you get crushed by an
| overpuffed SUV or truck.
|
| > There is a real need for society to discuss whether the value
| of reduced injuries outweighs the cost
|
| You could make an equal argument about driving and car/vehicle
| use. For example the city I live in has had more deaths by
| vehicle than deaths by homicide this year.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Which city?
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Portland, I cant find the slide with that stat that I saw
| from a PBOT meeting, and it looks like the results are
| contradictory to my statement for last year (2021)
|
| 66 dead from traffic:
| https://www.portland.gov/sites/default/files/2022/traffic-
| cr...
|
| 93 dead from homicide (breaking the previous record of 66
| from ~30 years prior):
| https://www.opb.org/article/2022/01/15/2021-was-a-record-
| yea...
| uoaei wrote:
| > I'm good at not falling off my bike. The biggest thing that
| concerns me is drivers...
|
| I think this is a good way to frame it for those who ~~are
| anxious about riding~~ don't regularly ride bikes. It's
| really easy to ride _safely_ on your own once you learn the
| intricacies of riding on two wheels. Bikes are hard to tip
| over if you know what you 're doing. It's the introduction of
| large machines with the means of generating immense amounts
| of kinetic energy with very little human input that things
| start getting complicated. In fact this applies for the
| introduction of electric bikes and scooters, too. So many
| times I have seen new riders on shiny new e-bikes
| accidentally shock themselves four meters forward because
| they aren't used to the throttle. Imagine if they're waiting
| behind a cyclist, or at a stoplight, and they push either
| themselves or a cyclist in front of them into the flow of
| traffic.
|
| I would be interested to see hard data but I suspect "one-
| person" bike injuries are much less prevalent and dangerous
| on average than those involving at least one cyclist and at
| least one motor vehicle (including e-bikes).
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I was driving to work one day and there was a bicyclist far
| ahead of me, alone.
|
| I have no idea what happened but the gentleman flipped the
| bike and took a tumble right over the handlebars. No
| visible road debris, road wasn't wet, bicyclist wasn't
| doing anything silly.
|
| I stopped and luckily he was fine (he was wearing a helmet)
| but seemingly for no reason, a bicyclist ate pavement.
| wizofaus wrote:
| "Less prevalent" seems unlikely, from the large number of
| accidents I'm aware of among myself and peers, maybe 25%
| have involved motor vehicles? Sure, they tend to be the
| more serious ones, but certainly if you do any sort of
| regular off-road recreational riding (esp. MTB) you're
| almost certainly going to come off quite a few times with
| no other vehicles involved. But I don't know how well my
| own observations extrapolate to the population as a whole -
| I suspect a large percentage of bicycle falls never get
| reported/recorded anywhere anyway.
| uoaei wrote:
| Off-road MTB riding has no relevance here in the
| discussion around riding bicycles on roads with motor
| vehicles.
| wizofaus wrote:
| It's still completely relevant to MHL.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| Helmets are required around construction sites for health
| and safety. That's not an argument to require helmets for
| pedestrians. Any particular activity can be particularly
| dangerous, and you can mandate safety gear for that
| activity, but that has absolutely no bearing on stuff
| outside of that activity.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I've never been in a car accident that required a seat belt
| either. We should remove them all by your logic.
|
| Cars have tons of safety regulations built into them and seat
| belt laws are pervasive. I don't expect them to relax over
| time either, cars are much safer than they ever have been and
| I expect their safety will continue to improve year over
| year.
|
| Can you say the same thing about the bicycle? What safety
| features do they have? The helmet is the only one I can think
| of.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > the speeds are generally quite low,
|
| Your speed doesn't matter, it's the speed at which your head
| hits the ground that matters and that can be quite high even
| if you're standing still before falling
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| The speed you travel on your bike directly contributes to
| the speed your head potentially hits something. Also the
| slower you travel the more time you have to react to or
| avoid or mitigate a crash.
|
| We could require everyone to wear helmets all the time (for
| their own safety since someone could just fall over or trip
| at any time), but that's clearly not going to happen.
|
| I think the more general point to consider here is that
| helmet laws are a distraction from larger issues
| surrounding traffic deaths and the way we design our cities
| and transportation systems.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I'd note that being hit by a car doesn't crush you
| typically, it merely transfers a lot of force and you hit
| the ground very hard. One of my best friends in high school
| was an unparalleled genius in everything he attempted -
| piano, chess, sports, math, everything. But he was hit by a
| car driving and hit his head on the curb. He has lived
| there rest of his life in the care of his parents with the
| mental capacity of a 5 year old.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > There are many many thousands of Dutch who bike daily
| without a helmet, so this is a false dichotomy.
|
| That is not a false dichotomy. The meaning of "safety" here
| is referencing local standards that have been socially
| defined. Specifically, this is about the US.
|
| > The biggest thing that concerns me is drivers and their
| associated cars. In many cases a helmet will do nearly
| nothing when you get crushed by an overpuffed SUV or truck.
|
| Or getting knocked to the ground, where you will not have the
| angle or too much momentum to protect your head (even after
| your wrist/arm snaps).
|
| > There is a real need for society to discuss whether the
| value of reduced injuries outweighs the cost
|
| This is the value in helmets, which has been validated
| immediately in every locale where it was enacted, to my own
| chagrin. The article immediately tries to conflate reduced
| usage with reduced injuries, as if more usage would reduce
| injuries. I'm sure there's a small multivector "Safety In
| Numbers" variable that has a reduced injury rate with an
| increase in usages...if nothing else, from normalizing bikes
| _in some areas_ , but it's small enough that the injury
| numbers still go up from increased usage and no helmets.
| seadan83 wrote:
| The safety in numbers should not be resigned as a small
| effect. When drivers see zero cyclists, they stop looking
| for them.
|
| There is a very notable difference in streets that get high
| non motorized usage vs a lot. Compare a playground or park
| with a lot of pedestrians compared to say a national
| forest.
|
| What's more, a helmet only helps if you hit your head. A
| small fraction (afaik, less than 10%) of falls will have a
| helmet helping you at all (but when it would, you tend to
| really want the helmet)
| ricardobeat wrote:
| [citation needed]
| jjk166 wrote:
| Very few cyclists get crushed, the overwhelming majority of
| people who die in cycling accidents suffer the head trauma
| that helmets are specifically meant to prevent.
|
| Plenty of people do bike daily without a helmet, likewise
| plenty of people don't wear their seatbelts daily - and 99.9%
| of the time they suffer no ill effect. The Netherlands is one
| of the few countries where more people die per year cycling
| than driving, and per capita they have a much higher cycling
| fatality rate than neighboring countries. Well designed
| infrastructure is a good thing, but accidents still happen.
| [deleted]
| jeffbee wrote:
| Head injuries are also the most common thing that kills
| drivers. Your argument provides an equally strong case that
| drivers should be required to wear helmets.
|
| The hierarchy of helmet need is #1 motorcyclists, #2
| drivers, #3 pedestrians-pedestrian head injuries are
| incredibly common-, and #4 cyclists.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| If you are basing on totally detached statistics, maybe..
|
| But what's obviously missing is _context_. Safety is all
| about context. Walking _shouldn 't_ require protection
| _until_ excessive risk is added to it, like walking on
| ice or across a busy intersection.
|
| The moment that risk is added, it needs to be balanced
| with safety. Helmets might be an effective safety
| measure, but they are situationally inconvenient for
| pedestrians; and rely on too much behavioral discipline.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _Walking shouldn 't require protection until excessive
| risk is added to it, like walking ... across a busy
| intersection._
|
| It's next to impossible in the US to walk anywhere useful
| (transport vs recreation) without crossing a busy
| intersection.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Yes, I don't mean to say that's uncommon. My point is
| that helmets aren't the method generally chosen to
| mitigate _that_ risk.
| chollida1 wrote:
| > The hierarchy of helmet need is #1 motorcyclists, #2
| drivers, #3 pedestrians-pedestrian head injuries are
| incredibly common-, and #4 cyclists.
|
| Interesting. I would have assumed cyclists are second
| given how fast road bikes go and the fact that they
| normally ride on major roads where cars speeds are well
| above 60 km/hr.
|
| How did you arrive at your ordering? Was it from an
| unlinked source?
| jeffbee wrote:
| I'm just going from national injury stats you can find in
| CDC WONDER and derived reports. Head injuries among
| American cyclists are a non-issue, far behind practically
| all other causes of head injuries, and using government
| powers to force cyclists to wear helmets is a complete
| waste of everyone's time.
|
| My go-to reference for this is https://discovery.ucl.ac.u
| k/id/eprint/10053381/1/Mindell_Cau... but if you want to
| translate it from UK to USA you have to do it yourself.
| chollida1 wrote:
| I appreciate the link, but I can't tell if those number
| are per capita or just raw numbers.
|
| It would make sense that bike numbers are smaller if they
| are just the raw numbers given that there are probably
| 100x more cyclists and 1000x more pedestrians than
| bikers.
|
| If those numbers aren't adjusted for usage then it makes
| bikes look even more dangerous when you adjust for how
| often each form of travel is used.
|
| As someone who commutes by bike, yikes!!
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I am both a motorcycle rider and a bicycle rider for
| decades. While I never-ever got on the motorcycle without
| a helmet, half of my bicycle rides on the road are
| without a helmet and the only reason I wear one ever is
| because it has better venting than a regular cotton cap.
| I always wear a helmet offroad on the bicycle.
|
| The day the helmet will be mandatory on a bicycle I will
| sell by bikes, it means cycling is too dangerous to be on
| a street and the government is incapable of protecting
| cyclists but by mandating helmets. It's like mandating
| bulletproof vests in Philadelphia or Baltimore instead of
| solving the gun violence problem in the cities.
| oblio wrote:
| > Head injuries are also the most common thing that kills
| drivers
|
| I wonder what the correlation is with seatbelt usage.
|
| My guess is that most people who die of head injuries due
| so because they're not wearing a seatbelt, and the head
| doesn't take kindly to being turned into the tip of a
| meat missile.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| The first couple of pages in this doc substantiate your
| claim (for Portland) at least: https://www.portland.gov/s
| ites/default/files/2022/traffic-cr...
| jeffbee wrote:
| Well, that is interesting, but head injuries are often
| from just falling over from any height, not really from
| being hit by cars. Most traumatic brain injuries in older
| adults are from falling from standing height or less.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| The classic argument is that people should be wearing
| bike helmets when climbing ladders, using stairs and
| having a shower (a lot of people slip in the shower).
| However, when examined logically in terms of head
| protection, people think that it's only appropriate for
| cyclists.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Well, per capita is pretty meaningless, as the Dutch ride
| so much more per person.
|
| Anyway there should be more discussion about what _kind_ of
| bicycle.
|
| Racing bikes go fast, your feet are in toeclips, you're in
| a bent down position - those things are dangerous. And
| everybody in the Netherlands wears a helmet riding them.
|
| E-bikes can go very fast, cars underestimate their speed,
| people wear helmets.
|
| But city or transport bikes, they go very slow (like
| 15km/h), you sit upright and can easily evade trouble or
| put a foot to the ground. Falls happen and old people break
| legs or hips sometimes, but to hit the ground with your
| head would be very very unusual. Those are the bikes we
| don't use helmets on.
|
| I think most riders in the US ride racing bikes.
| avar wrote:
| I ride a bike daily in Amsterdam, and almost everyone on
| an E-Bike is cruising at 20-25 km/h.
|
| It's common to see people up that to 32 km/h (20 mph),
| which you can do by setting the limits to US ones instead
| of EU ones, and trivial on some bikes.
|
| None of these people are wearing helmets, or close enough
| to nobody.
|
| I only see people on E-Bikes that can legally reach
| speeds of 40-50 km/h or so wear helmets.
|
| Those look like bicycles, but are legally classified as
| light motorcycles. They require license plates, helmets
| etc.
|
| I think mandatory helmet laws are dumb, but let's not
| misrepresent Dutch cycling.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Toeclips? Which year is it over there?
|
| The kids these days are using clipless pedals (stupid
| name to distinguish them from toe-clips) which connect to
| a cleat on the bottom of your cycling shoes. Once
| practised, a twist of your ankle is all that's required
| to get your foot free. When not practised, you see a
| cyclist falling over slowly to the side when they forget
| to unclip at a traffic light.
| Scarblac wrote:
| I never ride racing bikes, so forgive me. But it's still
| always slightly harder to quickly put a foot on the
| ground than without, I assume?
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Yes it is. I've only come off a handful of times, but I
| never noticed my feet being trapped - after a while it
| becomes almost a subconscious action.
|
| Toeclips are considered more dangerous as you often need
| to loosen the straps first to free your foot. I know one
| person that broke bones in his foot when riding up a curb
| at the wrong angle (i.e. wheel slips) when using
| toeclips. (I also hurt my wrist when using modified
| toeclips on a unicycle and didn't get my foot free in
| time).
|
| They're still in use, but probably more likely on a fixie
| than a road/racing bike.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Interestingly, mandatory helmet laws for car drivers and
| passengers would get us more QALYs than MHLs for bikes. By our
| reasoning chain of proximate injury reduction, we must
| prescribe them.
| nix0n wrote:
| > Mandatory helmet laws make the number of injuries associated
| with biking go down.
|
| What are the effects on the number of fatalities associated
| with biking?
|
| It's well known (you didn't cite any studies, so I won't
| either) that cars pass closer to helmeted cyclists than to
| unhelmeted cyclists.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Back when mandatory seatbelt laws were debated, people used
| to concoct scenarios where a rider/driver is saved because
| they're _not_ wearing a seatbelt (they were "thrown clear").
|
| This reminds me of that. Your "safety in numbers" and "cars
| pass closer to helmeted cyclists" is a desperate attempt to
| avoid a simple fact:
|
| _if a head hits the pavement without a helmet, it gets
| injured._
|
| Of course you can invent other scenarios, but only by
| ignoring that one.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Although: https://crag.asn.au/5-ways-wearing-a-bicycle-
| helmet-can-resu...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| "Risk compensation" is definitely a legit issue. I think
| you're the first to bring it up.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| It's not my first helmet debate rodeo
| jjk166 wrote:
| https://helmets.org/evalstudies.htm
|
| There is an incredibly large number of studies that have all
| shown massive reductions in the rates of head injuries and
| deaths with the introduction and enforcement of mandatory
| helmet laws.
|
| Apparently whatever negative effect drivers passing closer to
| helmeted cyclists has is insignificant against the massive
| improvement of protecting an extremely important and
| extremely vulnerable part of your body.
| adql wrote:
| Okay but we care for amount of helmeted individuals injury
| rate vs ones without helmets.
|
| Less incidents can be just less cyclists, or something
| mildly related as "on average, helmets are colorful and
| increase visibility vs average cyclist that before helmet
| had nothing well visible on them"
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| All of these studies are measuring incidents per year. They
| miss the confounding effect that helmet laws can make
| people bike less.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Which just by itself would help reduce the total number
| of injuries, as the unfortunate reality is almost every
| other form of transport is less likely to result in hits
| to the head. So you then have to balance that against the
| downsides of people choosing "safer" forms of transport,
| which are not inconsiderable.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Not true, if you look into the data there are more
| _pedestrian_ head injuries than cyclists'. Or car
| accidents.
| wizofaus wrote:
| It might be conceivable that more people hurt their heads
| on a per-km basis walking than cycling, but I'd be
| extremely surprised that for the same individual, walking
| (or driving) a given distance would be more likely to
| result in a serious head injury than cycling it.
| RyanHamilton wrote:
| If you are implying cars. What about deaths from
| pollution? Reduced years of life from pollution? Reduced
| years of life from being overweight due to lack of
| exercise? Miserable years of life caught in traffic?
|
| "Air pollution, which is primarily the result of burning
| fossil fuels, takes 2.2 years of the global life
| expectancy for each person".
| https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-
| pharmaceuticals/...
| wizofaus wrote:
| Absolutely, I certainly _don 't_ wish to see more people
| driving cars! But for any individual, if safety is your
| primary concern and you're deciding between a car and a
| bicycle, you'd choose the former.
| b3morales wrote:
| I'm a little wary of relying on this, because it seems like
| the kind of effect that would go away if no-helmet was more
| normalized. In other words, if we have a (local) culture that
| says "bicycling is sufficiently dangerous as to require a
| helmet", then drivers (even the ones who don't themselves
| cycle) are going to have that in their heads, and it's going
| to influence their behavior: "if I accidentally strike this
| person not wearing a helmet they're going to get _really_
| hurt, I 'd better be extra careful". If the consensus is that
| lacking a helmet is not particularly problematic, I suspect
| we'll find drivers not acting specially too.
| r00fus wrote:
| > you didn't cite any studies, so I won't either
|
| This doesn't make your response sound any better, just
| bitter.
| vxNsr wrote:
| There is some serious reaching going on here, chicago has
| mandatory helmet laws, most people don't wear helmets anyways its
| one of those selective enforcement laws that will get you in
| trouble you're already doing something the cops care about. Our
| bike share program is fine and bike infra is increasing.
| Xylakant wrote:
| Selective enforcement is even worse. It leaves the decision to
| the cops and who are they going to go after? The ones that are
| weak and have little power to defend themselves.
| vxNsr wrote:
| All street violations are selectively enforced.
| toss1 wrote:
| This is nonsense, and sounds like the same kind of opposition to
| motorcycle helmets, i.e., a series of platitudes and excuses that
| are thinly or not-at-all supported by any actual data.
|
| Basic protective gear has a high frequency of converting a life-
| changing or life-ending event into a "drat, I scratched my
| helmet/glasses/gear" event. When I was a teenager a guy in my
| town was getting known as a motocross racer. Until one Friday he
| was tuning his bike, went around the block to check something
| about the tune, slid on a patch of sand, hit his head and died.
| If he'd just spend 5sec to toss his helmet on, he'd have had to
| get another one for that race. Instead, he is no more.
|
| Their entire argument here is that 'fewer cyclists come out with
| helmet _laws_ because it is mandatory '. Aside form no data, I'd
| say that it is better that there are fewer cyclists but they have
| their helmets on. Sure, there's less of a 'safety in numbers'
| effect, but the effect of many more injuries in the
| news/scuttlebut will also reduce numbers of cyclists.
| fredley wrote:
| Mandatory Helmet Laws may make cyclists less safe by macroscopic
| effects but for the love of God wear a helmet. I would not have a
| father right now if he had not been wearing a helmet when he hit
| a pothole.
|
| It's not just cars / other road users that are potentially
| dangerous to cyclists, poor road surface or debris can just as
| likely cause a life-changing injury, even if you're not
| travelling at high speed. Wear a helmet.
| jonstewart wrote:
| This is kind of what the article says. It's not anti-helmet.
|
| For cities, bikeshare can be amazing--I live in DC and our CaBi
| system is very popular. It is a cheap and easy way for everyone
| to have access to a bike, and it complements the District's
| investment in a bike lane network. A helmet law would kneecap
| the system.
|
| Wearing a helmet is good, but getting people out of cars and
| onto bikes with good bike lanes will lead to overall health
| benefits for a community.
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| Yet it is being anti helmet by trying to cite sketch studies
| and be too clever by half.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > A helmet law would kneecap the system
|
| Just an anecdote. Bike share in Vancouver, BC where helmets
| are mandatory comes with helmets attached to the bikes. And
| there are "hair nets" IIRC for hygiene purposes.
| conor_f wrote:
| The safest thing for cyclists is not a helmet, it's good
| infrastructure. Everything else is just noise.
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| As a cyclist riding a dedicated and perfectly safe lane by the
| country, the day helmets are mandatory is the day I sell my bike.
| Enough with that zero-risk obsession.
| cies wrote:
| The only real argument for making it less safe is the "increased
| interactions with the police" argument. This seems to be very US-
| centric as in most other places an interaction with the police
| will not get you shot/teased/maced/neck-kneeled as likely.
| filbo wrote:
| AlbertCory wrote:
| If ever there was a deliberately-deceptive clickbait headline,
| this is it. Let's look at their overall conclusions:
|
| 1. A reduction in the number of cyclists on streets;
|
| 2. Financial struggle for popular bike sharing systems; and
|
| 3. More exposure among vulnerable populations to unnecessary
| interactions with police.
|
| NONE of these support the clickbait headline. #1 and #2 say that
| MHLs reduce the _number of cyclists_. And #3 fails to control for
| "percent of populations who ride without helmets."
|
| None of them say that a cyclist wearing a helmet is just as
| likely, or more likely, to get injured.
|
| > The unfortunate truth is mandatory helmet laws simply don't
| lead to their purported goal, which is to make streets safer.
|
| No, that's never been the "purported goal." The goal is to
| protect people who already ARE cycling.
| jeffbee wrote:
| https://www.bicycling.com/news/a25358099/drivers-give-helmet...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Missing from this is any proof of a connection between "close
| passes" and injuries:
|
| "The new paper from Walker also re-affirms that wearing a
| helmet was indeed associated with more "close" passes when
| you take into consideration that in some places, the law
| dictates more than one meter of room."
|
| and any increase in accidents, let alone injury accidents.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| It seems obvious to me that if drivers are passing closer,
| then there's less room for error, either by the driver not
| judging distance or the cyclist needing to avoid a pothole
| etc. There's also the intimidation factor - a lot of people
| are put off from cycling due to not feeling safe, and
| having vehicles pass at speed within a metre is extremely
| scary.
| 3bone wrote:
| I agree, they don't do a fantastic job of justifying the title.
| However, #1 and #2 are related, and the article does try to
| explain why they cause less safety. More people biking means
| both fewer cars, and people driving cars are more aware of
| bikers.
|
| > Safety in Numbers is a straightforward concept: More people
| on bikes creates safer conditions on our streets. The National
| Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), which
| represents professional planners from 81 cities from around the
| United States, pointed this out in their own pushback on NTSB's
| recommendations.
|
| If you follow the links in the article you'll come to some
| actual research about the topic
| https://www.bmj.com/content/332/7543/722.2.
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| As someone that has commuted through urban and industrial
| environments for years on bicycle I don't care what
| statistics say about assertions and possible changing
| circumstances for cyclists safety.
|
| Wear a helmet. Your skull doesn't care about this study.
|
| And titles like could lead to people to thinking that they
| won't need one. Which is unsafe for cyclists.
| taeric wrote:
| I want you to read that a bit more slowly. And then explain
| to me how this isn't a paraphrase of "I don't believe in
| science and studying things."
|
| It would help if you ack that the article encourages
| helmets. They are not trying to say to not wear them. They
| are arguing that the practicalities of how "mandates" work
| out cause more issues than they solve.
|
| I, for one, fully accept that "more studies" would be good.
| I also always wear a helmet. I don't think either of those
| are good rebuttals. And any blanket statement of "I don't
| care what evidence there is," is almost certainly the wrong
| foot to be on.
| CaptainNegative wrote:
| > And then explain to me how this isn't a paraphrase of
| "I don't believe in science and studying things."
|
| I think a more accurate description would be "I don't
| waste my time with bad science and sealioning" (of which
| I accuse the article, not you).
|
| Take the "dropped precipitously" link from the article.
| Does it link to an article about the before-and-after
| effects of the helmet mandates in Sydney in Melbourne?
| No. Does it talk about a drop in bicycle usage,
| irrespective of any relation to the mandates? Also no.
| It's an uninstrumented observational article about the
| lack of adoption (specifically) of bike share programs in
| several Australian cities, with no meaningful analysis of
| policy-based or temporal factors (outside of the changing
| coverage areas of the bikeshare companies). That study
| has zero relation to the claim for which the posted
| article cites it. Trying to pass it off as if it does is
| entirely in bad faith.
|
| Articles like the one linked in the OP are a dime a
| dozen, and disregarding them based on simple heuristics
| is a good use of everyone's time. If one has a bold
| scientific claim to make, they should either present the
| data alongside the article in which they make the
| statement, or accompany it with a peer-reviewed article
| that does.
| bombcar wrote:
| People are surprisingly bad about reading words and
| instead reading something entirely different.
|
| It's clear from even the short HN title that we're
| talking about making helmets mandatory by law, not
| whether you should wear them.
| dingdingdang wrote:
| Cracked bikehelmet this morning due to black ice, still f'd
| due to hurting my foot badly when going down but
| honestly... without a bike helmet I would be in hospital
| for sure.
| addingadimensio wrote:
| Without a bike helmet perhaps your confidence would
| better match your surroundings eg: black ice. If I biked
| all winter in full hockey gear I'm certain I would fall
| more often because I would not be scared to death of
| slipping on black ice and getting running over by the
| truck behind me
| _ZeD_ wrote:
| the point here is very simple: have you ever crossed a
| street on bicycle alone? and have you ever crossed the same
| street in a group of bicycles?
|
| THIS is the real difference.
| u801e wrote:
| I don't see your point. If I cross the street in a group,
| I pay more attention to others in my group as opposed to
| approaching traffic. That would be less safe in my
| opinion because I'm relying on someone else's judgement
| who may also be distracted by the group.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| > I don't care what statistics say about assertions and
| possible changing circumstances for cyclists safety.
|
| Why not? Shouldn't we want to increase cyclist safety?
| Wearing helmets does that, both the data and common-sense
| concur here. But article was making a different claim. We
| shouldn't have laws MANDATING helmet use due to unintended
| side-effects actually producing more net-harm than the
| whatever deterrence impact the laws have in increasing
| helmet use. This is really not an obvious conclusion and
| requires reviewing the empiric data - but I suspect it is
| right.
|
| > And titles like could lead to people to thinking that
| they won't need one.
|
| Yes - the title is badly phrased. They are trying to
| present a subtle, nuanced argument that is not-obvious to a
| casual reader scanning headlines or even an article
| summary.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| So absolutely everyone should wear a helmet, and
| absolutely nobody should be required to wear a helmet.
| There must be a name of this sort of paradox.
| trgn wrote:
| Yes, it's called reality. It's only a paradox for
| obsessive right brains, pushing their glasses up their
| noses, pointing their fingers in the skys, _grunting
| smacking noises_ , semantics!
|
| Multiple things can be true at once. MHL hurt cyclists,
| and having a helmet on makes your head hurt less when you
| fall.
|
| Cyclist safety is _not_ an individual responsibility.
| It's a collective one. Mandatory helmets promote a state
| of affairs where cycling is considered a leisure opt-in
| activity, a fig leaf for shameless victim blaming when
| drivers do run into a cyclist (should have worn a helmet
| har har). The collective psychology of drivers, -
| reckless, inconsiderate, entitled - combined with a
| street design that actively encourages speeding and
| reptile-brain fueled jostling for position is what is
| hurting cyclists. This is why mandatory helmet laws are
| harmful, they are actively nurture a deadly collective
| mindset.
|
| Plus, we are not making drivers where helmets. In a
| crash, having their head packaged inside a helmet will
| benefit drivers too. So maybe let's start there.
| [deleted]
| gernb wrote:
| The society with the most cyclists disagrees with you. I'm
| confident their bike safety record is better than countries
| with mandatory helmet laws.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=dutch+cyclists+don%27t+wear
| +...
|
| Your argument that you're safer with a helmet might be true
| but you're probably being hypocritical in that there are
| plenty of things you do in life where you'd be safer with a
| helmet were you don't personally wear a helmet. Apparently
| you'd be ok if the government forced you to where a helmet
| at all times except sleeping because by the same argument,
| it's safer to walk with a helmet than without therefore
| there should be a law requiring it
| Arainach wrote:
| Number of cyclists on the streets is incredibly important to
| safety. If drivers aren't expecting cyclists they pay less
| attention to them and aren't as practiced in how to drive
| safely around cyclists.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Perhaps, but cars aren't the _only_ hazards bikes face. Bikes
| wipe out on ice, on potholes, on stopping suddenly and
| flipping over the handlebars when a pedestrian steps out in
| front of you (biker 's fault, yes, but I've seen this
| happen). Without a helmet, an otherwise minor accident can
| result in serious brain damage, car or no car.
|
| It's also possible to have mandatory helmet laws and still
| have lots of cyclists. Vancouver Canada is a good example.
| Lots of cyclists. Good cycling infrastructure. Mandatory
| helmets. They do get black ice.
|
| Maybe we should just make helmets mandatory for drivers. Then
| perhaps they'll hop on a bicycle instead.
| bombcar wrote:
| If I could get significant discounts on health or car
| insurance by wearing a helmet I would (though I'm not sure
| I'd fit in most cars with a helmet on).
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| There's a really big difference between cars and other
| hazards. All the other hazards for a cyclist are them
| hitting something which is a lot safer than them being hit
| by a vehicle that weighs a ton or two.
| bluGill wrote:
| Hitting things other than cars is what helmets are good
| for. If you are in a bike-car accident no helmet will
| protect you - you need a several ton cage around you if
| you want a chance. (motorcycles face the same issue).
| However there are a lot of things other than cars that
| you can get in a bike accident with, and most of those
| are things where helmets are helpful.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| The ground weighs a lot more than two tons. It really
| depends on speed, and hitting the ground hard can be very
| deadly -- especially without a helmet.
| acdha wrote:
| I'm solidly on team helmet but F=ma is dominated by
| several tons of SUV. It's really hard for almost any
| other situation to reach the same energy levels and on
| average that's what determines how severe an impact is.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| That's true if and only if the SUV is moving at a high
| relative speed. Otherwise an SUV will not out-inertia the
| Earth or anything bolted to it, like a concrete paver, a
| brick wall, or a lamppost. And yes, if the car hits you
| at a high speed, you're no better off than a pedestrian
| and the helmet is unlikely to help.
|
| But without a helmet, it really doesn't require much
| energy for a head strike to be a fatal or life-changing
| injury. If riders face a baseline risk from non-car
| collisions, there's a strong case to be made for
| mandatory helmets, even if it means the risk from car
| collisions increase.
| zzzeek wrote:
| > The goal is to protect people who already ARE cycling.
|
| if you have 4x as many people on bikes, the cyclists with
| helmets are safer due to the "safety in numbers" effect. If
| you've done any urban bike riding you'd see this is obviously
| true.
| mike_hock wrote:
| And why shouldn't I be allowed to risk my life the way I see
| fit? Who am I endangering by cycling without a helmet?
| iso1631 wrote:
| Who am I endangering by driving without a seatbelt?
| bitL wrote:
| There is a trend of increased incidence of severe injuries when
| wearing a cycling helmet in countries that introduced mandatory
| helmets.
|
| EDIT: Evidence: https://road.cc/content/news/268605-wearing-
| cycle-helmet-may...
| AlbertCory wrote:
| This is without any supporting evidence, where one would
| expect some. What do you mean "a trend" ?
|
| Do you mean "more injuries overall" or "more injuries per
| cyclist"? Or something else entirely?
| welshwelsh wrote:
| The article goes on to explain why these conclusions make
| cyclists less safe.
|
| Basically, the only reason that bicycling is unsafe is cars.
| Cars are only a threat to cyclists when they share the same
| roads, which is only a problem because not enough people bike.
| The best way to ensure safety for cyclists is for there to be
| dedicated bike infrastructure that is completely separated from
| car infrastructure, and that's only going to happen once enough
| people switch to biking.
|
| >None of them say that a cyclist wearing a helmet is just as
| likely, or more likely, to get injured.
|
| That is not said or implied by the headline.
|
| > The goal is to protect people who already ARE cycling.
|
| If that's true, it's an idiotic and shortsighted goal. We have
| to do better than that- the goal should be to promote bicycling
| as a safe and accessible alternative to driving for everyone.
| 8-year-old children should be free to bike to school
| unsupervised without the risk of getting hit by a car.
| Mandatory helmet laws don't solve the problem, they make it
| worse.
| com2kid wrote:
| > Basically, the only reason that bicycling is unsafe is
| cars.
|
| How is that true? I fall off my bike and hit my helmet on
| pavement once every couple of years or so. I am quite
| thankful I wear a helmet regularly.
|
| Bicycling is of course much safer with less cars.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > I fall off my bike and hit my helmet on pavement once
| every couple of years or so.
|
| That seems extremely unusual. Are you MTBing / using
| skateparks / etc?
| com2kid wrote:
| > That seems extremely unusual. Are you MTBing / using
| skateparks / etc?
|
| No, just riding around streets. Typically from a large
| stone or something in the walkway, or I try to jump a
| curb and miss it by a bit.
|
| I don't have the best balance in the world.
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| steelframe wrote:
| > > I fall off my bike and hit my helmet on pavement once
| every couple of years or so.
|
| > That seems extremely unusual. Are you MTBing / using
| skateparks / etc?
|
| As someone who commutes exclusively by bicycle and who
| goes on 80+ mile rides on the weekend, I used to hit the
| pavement about once a year. I now ride with elbow pads in
| addition to a helmet, and I think I've developed a pretty
| good instinct for what could go sideways. I don't have
| control over every factor, and being a normal animal that
| gets tired or distracted, I expect falls to happen again
| in the future.
|
| Some of the ways I've hit the ground include hitting a
| patch of icy road after 3 days of 50+F temps because that
| spot happened to be covered by shadow no matter where the
| sun was that time of year, hitting a small wet metal
| grate at the entrance to my employer's parking garage
| where the bike cage is, and the driver of a truck passing
| too close and hitting my hand which was out signaling my
| intention to turn.
|
| Speaking nothing of the hundreds of times I've identified
| a hazard and avoided it by adjusting my road position,
| slowing down, bunny hopping, or sometimes even stopping
| and dismounting when I'm in the middle of the stroad
| (once when I found myself in a mess of overlapping
| streetcar tracks all around me). But even with a 99.9%
| success rate at responding to hazards correctly in the
| moment, I can expect to fail once every 1,000 hazards or
| so. That's why I wear protective gear.
| codexb wrote:
| #1 supports their argument that a cyclist is _more likely_ to
| be involved in a vehicular accident and therefore more likely
| to suffer an injury with mandatory helmet laws.
|
| Less overall cyclists means less visibility and less awareness
| by motorists (ie. if you encounter less bikes, you're less
| likely to watch out for them)
| shwestrick wrote:
| You seem to be interested in this question: "If I bike without
| a helmet, how much more likely am I to be injured than if I
| bike with a helmet?". And of course, the answer is that you are
| safer with a helmet.
|
| But the article is interested in a different question: "If I
| bike, how likely am I to be injured?".
|
| This question is very heavily influenced by the ratio of bikes
| to cars on the road. More bikes leads to lower chance of injury
| for bicyclists.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| "overall traffic safety" is not a goal for MHLs for bikes, or
| motorcyclists; or seatbelt laws for car riders. Your first
| paragraph's question is the only relevant part of that.
| shwestrick wrote:
| That's not a useful perspective. It doesn't matter what the
| goal of the law is; it matters what effect the law has.
| alistairSH wrote:
| But, that's not correct either.
|
| MHLs could increase my overall risk of cycling accident
| enough to offset any gain from wearing the helmet.
|
| There are studies that show drivers go faster and closer to
| cyclists wearing helmets (vs those without helmets). That
| alone could increase the risk of deadly car-bike
| interaction enough to offset the gains from wearing the
| helmet.
|
| https://www.bicycling.com/news/a25358099/drivers-give-
| helmet...
|
| Edit - either way, I'm all for separate, protecetetd
| bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. That's the "real"
| solution here - get bikes and cars onto different roads and
| what drivers do or don't do ceases to be a problem (almost,
| we still get drunken idiots driving down our protected bike
| paths outside DC).
| Cpoll wrote:
| > And of course, the answer is that you are safer with a
| helmet.
|
| I'm not claiming you're wrong, just that it's not a home-run
| "of course": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation
| pdonis wrote:
| I would put it this way: the article's information might be
| useful if you are trying to decide _whether or not to bike_.
|
| But if you have decided to bike, the article's information in
| no way means you should not wear a helmet.
|
| Unfortunately, the clickbait headline mixes up these two very
| different things.
| lanstin wrote:
| The choice to ride with or without a helmet is different
| for different people. It depends on where you are going,
| how many other bikers take that route, how fast you will
| bike, to what extent is it biking in traffic and what just
| bike trails, and also have you been there before, and
| do:you think:you should always wear a helmet. One weird
| factor is that people (car drivers and bike riders) have a
| certain tolerance to risk, so cars will get closer if you
| have a helmet on.
|
| https://www.bicyclelawyer.com/cycling-law-blog/study-
| shows-c...
|
| I bet that people also drive with a bit more risk tolerance
| when they are wearing a helmet than otherwise, and of
| course more likely to get that helmet for a fast, risky,
| fun ride than a quick trip to the grocery store.
|
| Interestingly, if you are seeking to reduce your personal
| odds of dying, it is a no brainer to bike. The
| cardiovascular health benefits outweigh the chance for
| getting hit by a car.
|
| Edit: add the link
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2031394/Cycling-
| w...
| PeterisP wrote:
| If you have already decided to bike, the article's
| information means that passing a mandatory helmet law is
| expected to make you less safe, because the effect of
| having less bikers causing less safety outweighs the effect
| of motivating you to wear the helmet more often.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> If you have already decided to bike, the article 's
| information means that passing a mandatory helmet law is
| expected to make you less safe_
|
| You can _change_ your decision of whether to bike or not
| based on information about the effects of mandatory
| helmet laws. Some people might choose not to bike any
| more based on that information.
|
| But _if_ , taking the effects of those laws into account,
| you still decide to bike, the article says nothing to
| contradict the obvious common sense that you'll still be
| better off wearing a helmet than not.
| [deleted]
| hyperpape wrote:
| As I see the title (just in case it has been changed), it
| is "Turns Out, Mandatory Helmet Laws Make Cyclists Less
| Safe".
|
| This simply doesn't indicate that wearing a helmet makes
| cycling less safe. Perhaps someone might misread it that
| way, but that would be a mistake in terms of both logic and
| rhetoric.
| welshwelsh wrote:
| The article isn't for either of those things. Mandatory
| helmet laws are a matter of public policy, they have
| nothing to do with individual people making individual
| decisions.
|
| The article's information is useful _if you are a voter or
| a politician trying to decide whether mandatory helmet laws
| will help to make your city a safe place for cyclists._
| pdonis wrote:
| _> The article isn 't for either of those things._
|
| You'd never know it from the clickbait headline.
|
| _> Mandatory helmet laws are a matter of public policy,
| they have nothing to do with individual people making
| individual decisions._
|
| Public policy doesn't _do_ anything by itself; all it
| does is determine the incentives that people face when
| making individual decisions to do or not do things. So
| correctly describing the effects of a public policy is
| very important to individual people trying to make
| individual decisions.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > You'd never know it from the clickbait headline.
|
| What headline are you seeing? At the time of this
| comment, the clickbait headline is:
|
| > > Mandatory helmet laws make cyclists less safe
|
| Which is clearly relevant for:
|
| > a voter or a politician trying to decide whether
| mandatory helmet laws will help to make your city a safe
| place for cyclists.
|
| and _not_ clearly relevant for individual people making
| individual decisions, whether about biking at all, or
| about wearing a helmet when they do. (It 's obviously
| possible (even likely) that relevant information might
| show up, but the clickbait headline isn't actually
| claiming that.)
| pdonis wrote:
| It's easy to interpret the headline as telling you what
| the article is actually saying...if you already know what
| the article is actually saying.
|
| But my initial reaction on reading the headline was:
| "Huh? They're saying wearing a helmet makes you less
| safe? That doesn't make sense! A helmet protects your
| head." I suspect I'm not alone (at least one other poster
| in this discussion has called the headline "deliberately
| deceptive clickbait", which is an even stronger claim
| than just "clickbait").
| substation13 wrote:
| > all it does is determine the incentives
|
| You say that like it's not a HUGE thing. Incentives will
| determine the entire transport ratios of a region.
|
| Biking on freeways is for misfits and weirdos :)
| pdonis wrote:
| _> You say that like it 's not a HUGE thing._
|
| I said no such thing. Obviously incentives are important.
|
| I'm just pointing out that incentives act on _individuals
| making individual decisions_. So to claim, as the GGP
| (not you) did, that public policy has nothing to do with
| individual decisions is simply wrong.
| wizofaus wrote:
| But that problem _can_ be addressed in other ways - primarily
| better infrastructure (though I 'd like to see better driver
| education too, e.g. as per the Netherlands where drivers are
| encouraged to open doors while parked in a manner that
| ensures they see any oncoming cyclists before doing so). We
| have MHL where I live and while I think there's a good
| argument for relaxing them at least for certain cases, I am
| grateful for having grown up in a culture where wearing a
| helmet is expected/ normal while riding a bike - they've
| certainly saved me from more serious injuries multiple times
| (including cases where I've hit the top of my head on
| branches etc. while riding!). But the fact that so few places
| in the world do have such legislation is telling - if a law
| truly is effective with limited downsides it tends to get
| adopted far more universally.
| mackrevinack wrote:
| but would you have hit your head if you weren't wearing a
| helmet? maybe you would have been more cautious! maybe
| people are slightly more careless/risk taking when they
| take certain safety measures?
| stingrae wrote:
| The infrastructure doesn't get built until you have large
| demand from existing cyclists.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Building out better infrastructure is usually the most
| effective way to increase the number of people cycling
| (and to make it safer for those already doing so).
| jackbravo wrote:
| Politicians usually don't do anything unless they see a
| demand for it on their citizenship. Just hoping they will
| build better infrastructure is naive. And if you want to
| increase the number of cyclists, laws that make it
| harder, like helmet requirements, will of course slow the
| demand.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Politicians have access to the studies showing that such
| infrastructure when built has the desired effect, and
| studies showing that the number one reason people don't
| cycle more is that they feel unsafe riding among traffic,
| regardless of helmets. Governments have the job of
| providing infrastructure to enable cities to function,
| and in many cases better bicycle infrastructure is the
| cheapest way to achieve it.
| thrashh wrote:
| There also studies about how car on-ramps can be built,
| how sidewalks should be routed, how schools should be
| organized, etc. etc.
|
| And money has to be split between all those things. A
| government has to provide for its people's needs and if
| its people show no interest in cycling, some other more
| pressing problem is going to take priority
| stingrae wrote:
| They ignore it as long as there is a vocal contingent of
| people against cycling infrastructure because of cost or
| because it may create a slight disruption to a car.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Some do, sure. But thankfully at least where I live
| governments (both state and local-level) have seen the
| benefits of improving cycling infrastructure and are
| continuing to do so. A good many car drivers are quite
| happy to not have to share roads with bikes too! Well-
| built cycling infrastructure makes roads better for all
| users, esp. if it can reduce the number of unnecessary
| car trips.
| substation13 wrote:
| > No, that's never been the "purported goal." The goal is to
| protect people who already ARE cycling.
|
| The real goal is often to reduce the number of people biking.
| This is why there is strong correlation between supporting
| mandatory helmet laws (and bicycle taxes, license plates and
| mandatory training) and opposing safe infrastructure such as
| segregated bike lanes.
| halostatue wrote:
| MHLs also put the burden back on the vulnerable road users,
| allowing spineless politicians to blame the victims.
| jona-f wrote:
| When there are more cyclists on the streets, car drivers are
| used to taking care of them, so its safer for the individual
| cyclist. Also, for many people, being safe includes not getting
| stopped by police. It's a different kind of safety, yes. This
| isn't really hard to see, so i think your hate of clickbait is
| clouding your vision. There is no deception, mandatory helmet
| laws make cyclists less safe. At least that is the authors
| opinion.
| taeric wrote:
| This is a poor summary. The reduction in the number of cyclists
| is very easy to see as making things less safe for the
| remaining cyclists. The data is rather clear on that, oddly.
| The article even linked to the study they are basing that on at
| https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/02/27/safety-in-numbers-
| bik....
|
| Do we know the full causal factors? I'd wager not. But it is a
| testable hypothesis as much as "mandating helmets will save
| lives is." Per the evidence of this article, that hypothesis is
| on much shakier ground than your post would allow.
| bombcar wrote:
| The "reduction makes it less safe" is quite common. When
| something is "common and normal" everyone works around it,
| when something is rare nobody expects it.
|
| This is why you can have _less_ pedestrian fatalities in
| cities where everyone wanders into the roads seemingly
| haphazardly than in cities where there are fewer pedestrians
| and they usually cross with the lights.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Your article is statistically naive and doesn't prove
| anything like what you think it does.
|
| https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/02/27/safety-in-numbers-
| bik...
|
| There are so many confounding factors in there that it would
| be laughed out of the room at any statistician conference.
|
| No, it's not a "testable hypothesis." Maybe you can find a
| "natural experiment" where two localities are exactly alike,
| _except_ one has a MHL and the other doesn 't: like a city
| where two school districts with identical demographics are
| divided by an artificial barrier.
|
| Even in your article, they admit the uncertainties:
|
| > Do more people on bikes cause cycling to become safer, or
| does safer infrastructure attract more people to bike?
| There's no conclusive evidence either way, but the answer is
| probably a mix of both.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Your article is statistically naive and doesn't prove
| anything like what you think it does.
|
| A major point here is that the burden of proof should be on
| the ones proposing to make something _mandatory_.
|
| Intuitively you might think that mandating helmets would
| improve safety. But now we've got a plausible argument that
| it might not. At this point _there should not be a mandate_
| unless the proponents can conclusively prove that it
| actually helps.
|
| Because if helmets make things safer, people are still free
| to wear them in the absence of a mandate. But if they
| don't, and you impose the mandate anyway, you are now
| actively causing harm that its victims have no way to
| mitigate.
| adql wrote:
| I'd wager most of what they observed there is just "how
| well are cities build for cyclist" (prime example:
| Netherlands) and how competent average driver is (Germany)
| not some nebulous "safety in numbers"
| stingrae wrote:
| The numbers lead to more bike infrastructure and safer
| riding conditions.
| ben7799 wrote:
| bike infrastructure quality can be more important than
| quantity.
|
| A lot of what we are getting for bike infrastructure in
| the US is horribly designed and often ends up being
| statistically more dangerous than no infrastructure at
| all.
|
| A lot of our urban bike lanes, even the ones protected by
| barriers, fall into this trap. They make things safer in
| between intersections, but very few accidents happen in
| between intersections. But the poor design of the lanes
| causes increased risk AT the intersections. And the
| intersections were already where almost all the accidents
| happen. We have an epidemic of bike lanes designed by
| people who don't bike who have the irrational fear of
| being rear ended by a car as the #1 risk when that's
| actually one of the least common accidents.
|
| The bad infrastructure puts more cyclists who don't
| really know what they are doing on the road and they
| don't understand the pitfalls of the lane design. So you
| don't see reduced bike-car collision rates.
| halostatue wrote:
| The truth is the opposite: more bike infrastructure and
| safer riding conditions _with_ fewer barriers (e.g.,
| mandatory helmet laws, cyclist licensing -- another
| stupid idea that comes up with regularity) brings more
| cyclists.
| stingrae wrote:
| Of course this is also the case. I am just saying it is
| hard to get cities to prioritize investments in cycling
| infrastructure without a large number of users.
| taeric wrote:
| Apologies, I should not have indicated that it "proves"
| that this is so. Rather, it does paint a convincing picture
| that something is there. It is akin to a smell test, if you
| will.
|
| So, yes, lets debate the confounding factors. If you can
| name some factors, they should guide us in how we would
| build tests to explore them. I didn't claim it was easily
| testable, but it is certainly testable.
| joegahona wrote:
| > The reduction in the number of cyclists is very easy to see
| as making things less safe for the remaining cyclists.
|
| Perhaps that should be the headline then. "Mandatory Helmet
| Laws Make Cyclists Less Safe" implies that going helmet-free
| is safer than wearing a helmet. I get that there's a logical
| thread the writer is following re: fewer cyclists create a
| more dangerous environment -- we could also follow that logic
| when talking about rising bike prices or any number of things
| removed from the actual noggin-protecting benefits of
| helmets. Not sure I'd go so far as to call the headline
| "clickbait," but a more precise headline would've more
| accurately described the actual story (which was interesting
| to me, and I learned something).
| timzaman wrote:
| Zero people in Holland use bike helmets, and we are the biggest
| bikers. I usually say: 'if you need to wear a helmet to be safe,
| you shouldnt be biking'. Make the streets safer, dont focus on
| the helmet.
| balls187 wrote:
| American cities are almost overwhelming designed for car
| traffic and not pedestrian / people.
|
| I wonder if Dutch cities tend to favor bikes and people, which
| leads to fewer fatal accidents.
|
| Or as the article is suggesting because biking is such integral
| to dutch culture, drivers expect bicyclists and are more apt to
| look out for them
| alkonaut wrote:
| The article doesn't seem to make any claims about reduced safety.
| It claims there is a reduction in cycling, worse business for
| bike-sharing and more harassment of minorities.
|
| But what are the concrete numbers on injuries (either absolute or
| per distance traveled) that would back up the safety claim? Or is
| the "less safe" not actually refering to physical safety while
| riding?
| fredrikholm wrote:
| Headline sounds like a Friedman quote.
|
| Coming from Scandinavia where dedicated bike paths are the
| default, I'm surprised that Americans willingly bike _directly in
| traffic_. Especially given how few they are (compared to the very
| high number of cars).
|
| The few times people bike in traffic here is on the rare occasion
| where you need to switch between two separate bike lanes that
| aren't connected.
|
| Having seen cyclist getting hit by a car doing 20kmh/30mph and
| hitting the pavement head first, however inconvenient it might be
| for you, please wear a helmet.
| lamontcg wrote:
| The only legal effect of mandatory helmet laws are that black and
| homeless people will get a ticket when they get into an accident,
| even if the accident wasn't their fault (but then it certainly
| becomes their fault).
| missedthecue wrote:
| You can buy a bicycle helmet for $15, are you saying that
| minorities are priced out of this? How do they afford the bike
| itself?
| snhly wrote:
| Worded differently: Minimum $15 (average: $35) _each time_
| your helmet is stolen /lost/forgotten (from my experience as
| a cyclist: this is a much more frequent occurrence than
| losing the bike).
|
| We'd be adding a new legal requirement for cycling. This
| would of course discourage financially struggling groups with
| more pressing issues at the front of their mind. If someone
| is living well below the poverty line, and they or their kids
| lose a helmet, through theft or otherwise, they may just
| decide to start walking 3 hours to work/school each day for a
| while. $15 each time you lose it may seem small to us, but
| for some parent it could be a choice between buying a new
| helmet and buying 2-3 days of MacDonalds meals for the kids.
| The over-arching cause of cyclist death is bad cyclist
| infrastructure. Solutions targeting anything else are just
| red herrings and detraction. Bike helmets should be
| encouraged but not enforced.
|
| PS mandatory bike helmets would inevitably drive up the price
| of bike helmets beyond minimum $15.
| lamontcg wrote:
| I'm really saying that the only people who get the ticket are
| minorities or homeless, and its used as a tool to blame them
| if there's any accidents.
|
| https://crosscut.com/news/2020/12/nearly-half-seattles-
| helme...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/18/us/seattle-bicycle-
| helmet...
| [deleted]
| qwertox wrote:
| When I started biking around 4 years ago, I rode my bike for at
| least two years without a helmet. That would be around 10.000 km
| without one. I never had an issue. When I started wearing a
| helmet I started breaking my bones, because I started to do
| riskier stuff (which was the reason for starting to wear a
| helmet).
|
| Then I got used to it and bought myself a better one last year,
| instead of the 20EUR one wich I initially had.
|
| But I don't ride my bike in traffic on a street, so those first
| two years were never really a high-risk scenario.
| jupp0r wrote:
| I started playing daily russian roulette last month and never
| had an issue. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
| anorwell wrote:
| The article says:
|
| > When the Australian cities of Melbourne and Brisbane mandated
| helmet use, it actually made streets less safe for cyclists. The
| number of people riding bikes dropped precipitously, which
| reduced the "Safety in Numbers" effect.
|
| This links to [1], but this paper doesn't seem to support the
| assertion at all.
|
| > These results help explain why two of the four companies
| operating in Sydney decided to leave the city in July 2018: the
| low rate of trips-per-day per bike, a high level of vandalism,
| and the threat of heavy fines from councils made the system one
| without potential for financial profit. While dockless
| bikesharing appears to be successful in many cities globally, the
| factors leading to its success have not been replicated in Sydney
| to date.
|
| There's no mention of helmets, and the paper is specifically
| about bike sharing programs, not biking in general.
|
| [1] https://findingspress.org/article/7615-stationless-in-
| sydney...
| float4 wrote:
| I'll cite SWOV.nl (Dutch institute for road safety research):
|
| > The effect of (mandatory) bicycle helmets on bicycle use is
| not clear. Several international studies show that bicycle use
| decreases after the introduction of helmet laws, even though
| most studies do not find such an effect or only find a
| temporary effect [9] [42] [49]. [...]
|
| > There are two international review studies of the effect of
| mandatory helmet use on the use of bicycles, both dating from
| 2018 [9] [42]. The first study [42] shows that the available
| research results are not unequivocal. It states that mandatory
| helmet use could indeed result in a decrease of the number of
| cyclists, but that this need not always be the case and that,
| if the number of cyclists initially decreases, that need not be
| of long duration. The second study is a mostly qualitative
| analysis of the available literature [9]. Based on their
| findings, the researchers conclude that there is little to no
| evidence of a substantial decrease of bicycle use due to the
| introduction of mandatory helmets. They have examined 23
| studies/data sets and conclude that 2 of these studies support
| the hypothesis that mandatory helmets lead to a decrease of
| cycling, whereas 13 studies do not, and 8 studies show mixed
| results.
|
| > The abovementioned review studies only concern research done
| abroad, in particular in Australia and North America.
|
| https://swov.nl/en/fact-sheet/bicycle-helmets (Under "What is
| the effect of helmet use on the popularity of cycling?")
| michaelt wrote:
| Presumably the first link was intended to link [1] which says
| Australia's mandatory helmet laws reduced cycling by _" 30-40%
| overall, and up to 80% in some demographic groups"_
|
| It also claims that _" MHLs are the main reason for the failure
| of Australia's two public bike hire schemes. Brisbane and
| Melbourne are the only two cities in the world with helmet laws
| to have attempted public bike hire. While schemes in places
| like Paris, London, Montreal, Dublin and Washington DC have
| flourished, Brisbane and Melbourne have amongst the lowest
| usage rates in the world."_
|
| Presumably in editing, the article's two mentions of cycle hire
| schemes got confused.
|
| [1]
| https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=173283f8-7b1c-4...
| [deleted]
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Just wear a helmet.
|
| It protects you from brain damage.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Indeed, you should wear a helmet in cars and trains too.
| Dobbs wrote:
| Having proper cycling infrastructure protects you far more.
| charonn0 wrote:
| It's not either/or.
| malfist wrote:
| Okay? Mandating helmets don't prevent cities from building
| better cycling infrastructure.
| zip1234 wrote:
| If they reduce cycling, they do in fact prevent that. The
| old 'nobody cycles so why should we build that' argument is
| highly persuasive.
| usrusr wrote:
| E.g. while driving. All the professional racers do it, I guess
| they know a thing or two about dangers while driving.
| diarmuidc wrote:
| So all drivers should be required to wear a helmet? If not,
| why not ?
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| They wear them because:
|
| Their cars are custom built (e.g. F1) and don't have air bags
| or crumple zones and are open top.
|
| Their cars are modified to be lighter weight, so air bags and
| other safety equipment is removed. Instead they are fitted
| with roll cages and wear a helmet.
|
| They're also racing around at high speeds where rolling a car
| is a real possibility.
|
| Yes, let's equate that to a road car with a proven safety
| record (NCAP) tests.
|
| Let's see how many tests of a cyclist smashing their head
| into the ground shows that it's harmless...
| usrusr wrote:
| > Let's see how many tests of a cyclist smashing their head
| into the ground shows that it's harmless...
|
| I'm sure that you can provide evidence of helmet-wearers
| doing the same to show that it's harmless one you put on a
| foam hat?
|
| On a related note, thousands of drivers dying from head
| trauma each year demonstrate that NCAP is no immortality
| cheat either.
| cies wrote:
| Demand bicycle safe cities!
|
| Helmets should be optional. Taking risks should be legal.
|
| > Just wear a helmet.
|
| You do you. Next up we gonna enforce pedestrians to wear air-
| bag suits "for their own safety", forbid roller skating, etc.
|
| Disclaimer: living in the Netherlands.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > Taking risks should be legal
|
| What's the difference from a seat belt law? As long as I'm
| paying for everyone elses' healthcare (which is the norm in
| developed countries), their personal risk taking is my
| concern. Even in places without publically funded healthcare,
| everyone pays for others' risks through premiums so the
| difference isn't as big as it would seem.
| mughinn wrote:
| Seat belts laws also shouldn't exist
|
| You also shouldn't be paying for everyone elses' healthcare
| alkonaut wrote:
| Even in the US you would be paying for the risktaking of
| others because their premiums depend on whether everyone
| in their insurance pool wears a seatbelt or not.
| mughinn wrote:
| I don't know if this is legal now in the US, but
| insurance should be allowed to charge more for people
| with higher risk-taking, either because of past offenses,
| or other behaviors
| lukas099 wrote:
| Interesting take, so we should allow people to ride
| without helmets and then when they're bleeding out on the
| street we should just leave them there if they can't pay.
| mughinn wrote:
| Yes, we should allow people to ride without helmets.
|
| No, I'm not saying we should just leave them there to
| die.
| cies wrote:
| In same vain we could ban ice hockey then :)
| cies wrote:
| > What's the difference from a seat belt law?
|
| You found a risk reducing law that probably does make
| sense. Very small investment (Volvo relinquished the
| patent, thanks Volvo) and very large benefit.
|
| But this "their personal risk taking is my concern"
| argument of yours makes me shiver. I'd never want someone
| else's risk taking to be my concern: I've got more
| important stuff to attend to, thank God.
| tsukikage wrote:
| All right, let's suppose for a minute that self-interest
| is literally the only thing to be considered.
|
| Your personal risk preferences impact me in a variety of
| ways:
|
| * my cost of living goes up, because damage control is
| much more expensive than prevention; someone has to pay
| for it, and dead people can't.
|
| * my personal risk goes up, because resources I might
| need such as emergency doctors' time are occupied dealing
| with the consequences of your decisions instead.
|
| * my quality of life goes down, e.g. I have to spend more
| time waiting in traffic jams while the bodies are scraped
| off the roads.
|
| If you take your risks in a space I am forced to share
| with you, whether physical, societal or economical, your
| choices affect me.
| cies wrote:
| And we will live in the most boring Brave New World where
| all danger is eliminated because of this reasoning.
|
| Sports will be gone, only the gym survives as it has the
| lowest risk factor. No more alcohol and drugs. And there
| will be condom police checking up on you when you cozy up
| with anyone except your wife.
|
| Sure, go and try to make it happen. But I will also try
| to subvert it :)
| cies wrote:
| There was a commedian saying cars should be make more
| dangerous for the driver: "that will teach 'm". He claimed
| car's driver safety features made them less safe for
| everyone else, as driving like an idiot had little negative
| outcome for the driver.
|
| "Put a sharp pin in the steering wheel and forbid belts and
| airbags." he jokingly argued.
|
| There's quite some truth to it.
| tsukikage wrote:
| Dead people can't learn.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| But they wouldn't be dead, because no one would be
| brave/stupid enough to drive such a car at high speeds
| while texting on their phone.
| mbg721 wrote:
| I dunno, people are generally wired to ignore high-
| severity but low-frequency bad events. You can drive like
| an idiot for a long time and have nothing happen.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Bicycling makes you fitter and healthier, reducing overall
| disease burden, as well as providing mental health
| benefits, reduced traffic, consequently reduced air
| pollution which also is a major win for public health.
|
| Cars literally don't do any of those things. They're
| convenient (at least when your city isn't subject to awful
| traffic) and that's it.
| tsukikage wrote:
| Motorists and street furniture in bike lanes are not the only
| things helmets protect you from. Pedestrians, other cyclists,
| mechanical failure, rubbish in the road, oil patch, black
| ice; any number of things can result in you hitting the
| ground even when entirely separated from motor vehicles.
| Meanwhile, more and more people are using e-bikes and
| spending a larger proportion of their time on the bike doing
| 20-30mph or more.
|
| Hitting concrete with your body at speed is not going to be
| great for you regardless of the exact cause or exact body
| part. Just wear the helmet, pity's sake. Why be a meat
| crayon?
| cies wrote:
| You do you. I want helmets for those who want helmets.
|
| I'm fine without, thank you for being considerate.
|
| The article makes a point, I agree with: don't put barriers
| on cycling.
|
| I agree wholeheartedly. And I have trouble with most safety
| laws: they can be recommendations, but not laws (yes seat
| belt was mentioned, I know, I know).
| diarmuidc wrote:
| That's a fallacious argument. There is no activity that could
| not be made more safe by wearing a helmet. Yet we don't because
| the arguments like yours are simple and wrong.
| fleischhauf wrote:
| how is this wrong? A helmet protects your head and thus your
| brain. It makes sense wear helmets in situations where your
| head is more prone to be damaged (e.g. construction work, or
| in this case biking).
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| It absolutely makes sense to wear a helmet while cycling
| but it just shouldn't be compulsory.
| usrusr wrote:
| Multiple cases have been documented of children strangulating
| themselves wearing a bike helmet while mucking about on
| playgrounds and the like. Entire education campaigns have set
| out to prevent the wearing of helmet in activities that
| turned out to be made less safe by them.
|
| But I agree with your general point, if the marginal safety
| gain during cycling was enough to make them mandatory, few
| activities would remain without mandatory protective headwear
| (my last bike-related head injury happened while _walking
| through the kitchen_ during maintenance).
| fjfaase wrote:
| Are you implying to always wear a helmet? When you are in a
| car, in public transportation, walking down the street, going
| down the stairs or just always? The last time, I hit my head
| was in a house.
|
| The closest I came to a concussion was when I slipped while
| walking on ice.
|
| It is quite likely, I spend at least 10,000 of biking so far
| without a helmet. I had some small accident, but non where I
| got any brain damage. In most cases the accidents was the
| result of my own stupidity: being too hurried, not watching the
| traffic, or doing putting on a rain coat while biking.
| chrisbaker98 wrote:
| What possible reason is there to _not_ wear a helmet when
| riding a bike?
| walthamstow wrote:
| I'll chip in with my main reason, as a London cycling
| veteran of nearly 10 years: shoulder checks.
|
| I whip my head back and forth over my right shoulder
| constantly to check the state of traffic behind me.
|
| Before I maneuvre, I check, check and check again. Always
| checking. Always fully aware of what's behind me.
|
| Having something attached to my head makes it harder and
| less comfortable to do these rapid checks. I think this
| makes me less safe overall.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Having to carry it around. People who say you can just clip
| it to your bike haven't lived in any city I've lived in.
| kypro wrote:
| Same reason for not wearing one in a car, bus or when
| crossing the road, I guess. Some people just like to take
| risks.
| fjfaase wrote:
| I do not like taking risks and I think i am a risk
| avoiding person.
|
| Here in the Netherlands, I guess that my risk for getting
| involved in an accident, is not any higher than walking
| and other forms of transportation. I am not using an
| e-bike and I usually bike at a speed of about 15km/h. I
| do not use a racing bike, but a bike where you sit in an
| upright position allowing you to look around easily. I
| also take care of using routes that are safe. Here in the
| Netherlands, where are more bikes than cars, and biking
| is an important means of transportation for daily
| commutes and doing shoppings. We have good
| infrastructures for bikes.
| airza wrote:
| What possible reason is there not to wear a helmet when
| driving a _car_?
| chrisbaker98 wrote:
| Seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones.
| blahedo wrote:
| Several of the reasons are shown elsewhere in this thread,
| but here's one I haven't seen here yet:
|
| Because I like my head not freezing when it's ten degrees
| below freezing? When I bring this up, sometimes people tell
| me about thin membrane caps that fit under the hat, but
| they don't work when it's actually really cold out. Helmets
| absolutely do not fit over warm-weather hats (or any hats,
| really). (Other people have said "why would you be biking
| if it's below freezing", which shows that they don't
| understand the entire conversation.)
| Sharparam wrote:
| I think I might be quite warm naturally but those thinner
| caps that fit below the helmet work just fine for me when
| I bike in cold Sweden in the winter. -10 degC and below.
|
| The helmet itself gives some wind protection which helps
| as well I think.
| wl wrote:
| I've got a thin balaclava I've worn under a bike helmet
| down to 0degF that's kept me warm enough. Let out the
| band on the helmet a few clicks and it fits perfectly.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I wear a helmet 99.9% of the time on a bike. They are not
| zero hassle. If you live somewhere where stuff gets nicked
| in public and you've got a nicer helmet, you bring it
| inside your destination with you. They mess up hair too.
|
| They're not GOOD reasons but let's not pretend there aren't
| any at all.
| 3nf wrote:
| Helmet hair. Once my hair gets compressed by a helmet,
| nothing other than a shower can fix it, and we don't have
| showers at work [not an issue as I'm remote now].
|
| I live less than a mile from my former cubicle, and my old
| commute was mostly through a park with two road crossings.
| There was no reason to wear a helmet.
|
| If I'm on a longer road ride, or riding off-road, I
| religiously wear a helmet. If I'm riding lift-assisted
| downhill, I wear a full-face helmet.
| Kiro wrote:
| What's your grudge with helmets? Strange hill to die on.
| pfdietz wrote:
| That's not quite fair. They could be dying in ditches, on
| hoods of cars, against walls or trees, not just on hills.
| tsukikage wrote:
| If you _really_ _hate_ helmets, you could use one of these
| instead: https://hovding.com/
| fjfaase wrote:
| Not very practical for daily commutes. If I would not feel
| safe biking, I would rather wear a helmet than a device
| like this.
|
| Here in the Netherlands, biking (without support) at speeds
| around 15km/h if you are in good health and of sound mind,
| is not more dangerous than walking or traveling by some
| other means. Recently, the number of traffic causalities
| has gone up, that those are mostly related to the use of
| e-bikes by elderly people and younger people. I feel that
| if you need support for biking when you do not have the
| strength (due to old age), you probably are not fit for
| biking at all. Many young people using e-bikes remove the
| speed restriction allowing them to bike at speed up to 30
| km/h. At those speeds, the chance of accidents go up very
| quickly.
| tsukikage wrote:
| True, a helmet is better in all kinds of ways. It doesn't
| need a battery, it still works even when things hit you
| rather than you hitting things, and it's an order of
| magnitude cheaper to replace after a knock.
|
| But if someone will wear one of these things who wouldn't
| otherwise wear anything at all...
|
| Cycle routes in the Netherlands are awesome! Things are
| slowly improving here, but we're still a long way from
| that level of care placed into the design.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| I've seen a cyclist lying motionless on the street. Eyes
| open, blood coming from her nose. No helmet.
|
| I've also seen helmets from friends who have crashed where
| the helmet is completely destroyed. It just isn't worth it.
|
| Your argument is the same as that against seatbelts. I've
| driven hundreds of thousands of miles but never had an
| accident. I still put my seatbelt on.
| rmvt wrote:
| just don't leave your house. it protects you from getting run
| over, being robbed at gunpoint, heartbreak, etc. do you see
| where your logic fails?
|
| this is not news. wearing helmets has been associated with a
| range of negative issues for years now.
| (https://road.cc/content/news/268605-wearing-cycle-helmet-
| may..., https://www.bicycling.com/culture/a29802208/helmet-
| laws-safe..., https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060
| 911102200.h...)
| rmvt wrote:
| correction: i pasted the wrong bicyling.com link, this is the
| one i meant https://www.bicycling.com/news/a20009468/people-
| take-more-ri...
| JohnGB wrote:
| The Netherlands did a study on bike helmets and found that cars
| tend to be more dangerous with cyclists if the cyclists are
| wearing a helmet, which is why there are no mandatory bicycle
| helmet laws in the Netherlands. However, it's worth noting that
| the cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands also for the most
| part separates bikes and cars with more than just a line of
| paint, so their experience may not translate well to other
| countries with poor cycling infrastructure.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > The Netherlands did a study on bike helmets
|
| They did not.
|
| But it's true that _" Dutch neurologists and surgeons call on
| people to wear helmets while cycling"_
|
| https://road.cc/content/news/dutch-neurologists-call-cyclist...
|
| Because, you know, politicians would do anything to keep people
| voting for them, including putting people lives at risk to
| please them (COVID just proved it, if there was some doubt
| left), but doctors opinions are a bit more of a reliable source
| to understand what could potentially kill you and what could
| save your life.
| kqr wrote:
| I don't agree. A surgeon is not going to see the vast
| majority of people who don't suffer head trauma, so they are
| not any more reliable than anyone else. If anything, they are
| likely to be _more_ biased than the average person.
|
| Now, get me a statistician and we can talk.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > A surgeon is not going to see the vast majority of people
| who don't suffer head trauma
|
| Which is a very silly argument.
|
| A surgeon is one among the few that can see a spike in
| brain traumas cases and can investigate the causes, it's
| totally more reliable than you or me, because he has the
| data and the knowledge, we don't.
|
| I don't know about you, but I would ask a veteran about the
| horrors of war, not to 4 years kids, who, having seen none
| of it, are, by your reasoning, less biased.
|
| > A surgeon is not going to see the vast majority of people
| who don't suffer head trauma
|
| Because surgeons are notoriously not people too and live in
| a closet in the hospital.
|
| > Now, get me a statistician and we can talk.
|
| first of all, medical professionals typically study
| statistics, epidemiology doesn't really figure out itself
| on its own.
|
| Secondly, I work with statisticians to assess the risks for
| insurance companies (not in the US). I work with that kind
| of data everyday and, guess what, MDs reports are highly
| predictive of risks, the average Joe with a laptop
| opinions, are discarded because, after examination, have
| been found "completely non-predictive".
| mmcnl wrote:
| Ban cycling. Even less trauma. And why stop there, make
| it illegal to walk outside as well. No more pedestrians
| getting hit by cars!
|
| This sounds absurd ofcourse, and it is. But from the
| point of the surgeons it is not absurd, as it reduces
| trauma significantly. So any decisions should be taken by
| taking into account socio-economic effects as well.
| Cycling is a part of Dutch culture and compared to other
| countries we are doing very well. Mandatory helmets are a
| big deal (where do you keep the helmets?) and will
| definitely move people from bikes to cars.
| xapata wrote:
| > medical professionals typically study statistics,
| epidemiology doesn't really figure out itself on its own.
|
| Having tutored medical professionals trying to pass their
| epidemiology classes, I would not make that claim. From
| my observations, epidemiology and statistical literacy is
| treated as a "check this box" effort, the least important
| of their courses.
| float4 wrote:
| > The Netherlands did a study on bike helmets
|
| This was a British study
|
| > and found that cars tend to be more dangerous with cyclists
| if the cyclists are wearing a helmet
|
| Re-analysis showed that there actually was no significant
| effect. Source: https://swov.nl/en/fact-sheet/bicycle-helmets
| (under: "Do bicycle helmets also have adverse effects?")
|
| > which is why there are no mandatory bicycle helmet laws in
| the Netherlands
|
| We (the Netherlands) don't have helmet laws because we hate
| helmets, not because we did research and concluded they'd have
| significant adverse effects.
| tremon wrote:
| _because we hate helmets, not because we did research_
|
| Actually, we did. From [0] (the link to the study itself is
| on that page too):
|
| > A recent Dutch study (2021) concludes that many people
| expect to make fewer bike rides when mandatory helmet laws
| are introduced. These findings suggest that such a law would
| have a negative effect both on bike usage and on public
| health in general.
|
| In addition to the standard arguments already posted here
| about safety in numbers, efficacy of a helmet, and
| infrastructure design, they also mention a few practical
| problems with helmets:
|
| - What to do with the helmet when you're not wearing it? A
| good helmet is too big to just store in a coat pocket or a
| handbag.
|
| - What to do if you lose your helmet or it gets stolen? How
| will you make it home then?
|
| [0] https://www.fietsersbond.nl/de-
| fiets/accessoires/fietshelmen...
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I believe that re-analysis was refuted by Dr Ian Walker:
| https://psyarxiv.com/nxw2k
| dylan604 wrote:
| > and found that cars tend to be more dangerous with cyclists
| if the cyclists are wearing a helmet
|
| I know that when I'm driving a car, I specifically behave
| differently when I see a bicyclist with a helmet vs without.
| /s
|
| This just sounds so preposterous. First off, I doubt the
| average driver notices bicyclists at all. Of those that do,
| I'd seriously doubt if they even consider that they are
| wearing a helmet or not and just express frustration at the
| bicycle being there in the first place. The suggestion that a
| driver notices a helmet and acts more aggressively towards
| the rider or that they give a wider berth to the rider when
| not wearing a helmet is just "trying too hard" for lack of
| better words to describe my incredulity.
| paddez wrote:
| > I doubt the average driver notices bicyclists at all.
|
| This seems like an issue. The average driver should
| absolutely notice the environment they're operating in.
|
| This includes noticing those around them. This should be
| especially true for the more vulnerable road users.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Um, that's the point of it being _THE_ issue.
|
| If you are riding a bicycle in an area (like mine) where
| biking is just not at all that common in the majority of
| areas, then the drivers of motor vehicles are just out of
| practice of noticing bicycles. It is not in their muscle
| memory of needing to look out for them. Other cars, sure.
| Pedestrians, maybe (but that's probably pretty low as
| well).
| kenjackson wrote:
| I do behave differently with some bicyclists than others
| and it _might_ be correlated with helmet use.
|
| If I see a bicyclist that looks like a bicyclist I tend to
| drive closer to them because I expect they are going to
| stay in their lane. Conversely, people who look like they
| aren't regular bike riders or teenagers just screwing
| around -- I will give a much wider berth... in some cases
| even going a completely different route to avoid them.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > If I see a bicyclist that looks like a bicyclist
|
| I recall a coworker explaining the duality of cycling in
| full kit vs. cycling in "street" clothes with his
| children. In the former case, he appears as a pro or
| semi-pro cyclist and in the latter, as a dad spending
| time with his children.
|
| It's not hard to guess which get-up gets him honked at,
| coal rolled[0], etc. It's also not hard speculate that a
| driver is more likely to give the dad spending time with
| his children more room on the road. (Of course, in either
| case the cyclists should all be wearing helmets, but
| we're only even having this discussion because not all
| are so responsible.)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal
| lmm wrote:
| The "re-analysis" just does a bunch of ad-hoc adjustments to
| make the study underpowered. You could make literally any
| scientific paper show no effect by doing the same thing.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > because we hate helmets
|
| I mean yeah helmets for commuting at a snail's pace in areas
| without cars are an annoyance at best.
| [deleted]
| Fiahil wrote:
| that study comes out a lot, but, AFAIK was poorly challenged.
| It would be nice to get a second opinion on this topic before
| jumping to conclusions.
| lukas099 wrote:
| It may not be perfect, but if it's the best study we have on
| the matter I think we should tentatively and judiciously
| accept it.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Why not attempt to reproduce it?
| snakeboy wrote:
| I would assume there is quite a lot of evidence for the
| efficacy of helmets in the event of a crash, no? I think in
| general it makes more sense to give credence to studies
| that give intuitive results that are explainable by sound
| first principles modeling, rather than one study that gives
| an unintuitive result based on human behavior.
| banannaise wrote:
| Bicycle helmets are designed to protect riders from
| collisions with terrain at normal cycling speeds (in
| fact, less than that; helmet tests are done with a speed
| of about 14 miles per hour [0]).
|
| Cyclists who are hit by traffic are likely to be hit
| much, much harder than that. Therefore the effect of the
| helmet is more or less entirely untested, and
| manufacturers have no incentive to design helmets for
| that scenario.
|
| [0] https://helmets.org/limits.htm
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| Not really? There may be slight reductions in some
| injuries as a result of helmet use, but for most cyclists
| this isn't really what you'd call definitive data. At the
| end of the day, a few inches of foam isn't going to
| protect you from a few tonnes of steel.
|
| That said, it's notoriously under-studied. If you look
| into "best helmet" in terms of safety you'll see a lot of
| marketing speak and not a lot of science. The way that
| helmets are tested tend to 1) not be reflective of actual
| use of the helmet in a conflict scenario and 2) tend to
| make pretty broad assumptions about the largest danger
| factor on the roads.
|
| The thing is that you would /think/ that there's a lot of
| evidence out there for helmet use. The most compelling
| evidence for helmet use is for drivers in cars /
| automobiles, and we wouldn't dare mandate that into
| existence.
|
| Helmet laws always seem to get people ruffled up but at
| the end of the day the number of bike fatalities is
| already low, and skewing that in terms of helmet use
| somewhat misses the point - dedicated and separated
| bicycle infrastructure will have a vastly larger impact
| compared to any mandate on using a helmet. It seems like
| arguing about adding a mandate on helmets is just an easy
| way for the system to wash its hands of responsibility
| for not regulating vehicle and street design more
| thoroughly.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Not really? There may be slight reductions in some
| injuries as a result of helmet use,
|
| Yes, actually, really!
|
| _Helmets provide a 63 to 88% reduction in the risk of
| head, brain and severe brain injury for all ages of
| bicyclists_
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7025438/
|
| _There was a significantly higher crude 30-day mortality
| in un-helmeted cyclists 5.6% (4.8%-6.6%) versus helmeted
| cyclists 1.8% (1.4%-2.2%) (p <0.001). Cycle helmet use
| was also associated with a reduction in severe traumatic
| brain injury (TBI) 19.1% (780, 18.0%-20.4%) versus 47.6%
| (1211, 45.6%-49.5%) (p<0.001), intensive care unit
| requirement 19.6% (797, 18.4%-20.8%) versus 27.1% (691,
| 25.4%-28.9%) (p<0.001) and neurosurgical intervention
| 2.5% (103, 2.1%-3.1%) versus 8.5% (217, 7.5%-9.7%)
| (p<0.001)._
|
| https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/9/9/e027845
|
| _"The evidence is clear: helmets save lives and
| significantly reduce the risks of severe injury," said
| Lois K. Lee, MD, MPH, FAAP, lead author of the statement,
| written by the AAP Council on Injury, Violence, and
| Poison Prevention. "And yet sports-related injuries make
| up a substantial proportion of all traumatic brain
| injuries. As a pediatric emergency medicine physician, I
| advise all my patients - and their parents-- to wear
| helmets."_
|
| https://www.aap.org/en/news-room/news-
| releases/aap/2022/amer...
| seadan83 wrote:
| The kicker is rate of head injuries during a bicycle
| crash. A fraction of crashes involve a person's head
| (though when it does, for those one in ten falls, you
| really want it)
|
| The numbers are under reported. Every cyclist I know that
| uses a bike for transport has been hit by a car. Myself
| thrice, never reported. Crashes involving myself, never
| reported. Hence, there is a bias in the data for the
| really traumatic injuries
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| There's some debunking of helmet studies here:
| https://www.cyclehelmets.org/1027.html
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| thanks.
|
| A very good example of what "selection bias" means.
| ThatGeoGuy wrote:
| I don't think I'm necessarily disagreeing that in the
| worst-case scenario that helmets do the job of reducing
| brain and skull trauma. Doing something is the
| alternative to doing nothing, you'd expect some
| difference here.
|
| My problem is that helmet use isn't exactly "well-
| studied." All these studies look at existing reports from
| medical centres on injuries & deaths. This doesn't
| actually account for the broader behavioural changes in
| the system, or look at causes outside of "injured while
| wearing a helmet vs. not."
|
| In any other industry this kind of reporting (while
| factual) is absolutely ignoring everything else. A short
| list of what isn't being considered:
|
| - Which road and behaviour led to incident?
|
| - Which kinds of road conflicts can be addressed by
| helmets?
|
| - How did road design lead to the incident?
|
| - Were environmental factors a concern (winter, ice,
| rain, etc.)?
|
| - How does behaviour for the cyclist change as a result
| of not wearing a helmet?
|
| - How does behaviour for other road users change as a
| result of a cyclist not wearing a helmet?
|
| - What kinds of helmets are more viable for protection in
| the case of the most extreme (and most common) conflict
| scenarios? How do we then test these helmets to ensure
| compliance in manufacturing?
|
| These are all questions you'd expect to be answered here,
| and then you'd do the cost-benefit analysis on whether a
| mandate is necessary or not. A "well-studied" field would
| have discussed these effects in broader detail, not just
| short-cut to "fewer people who already had huge injuries
| while cycling died when using a helmet." That is not the
| entire problem, because it leaves out a huge sampling of
| people who do not wear helmets and do not make it to the
| hospital in the first place.
| cryptonector wrote:
| I got to witness an accident where a helmet would have
| made a huge difference for the cyclist. A lady was
| cycling at fairly low speed on a street that had old
| rails, then her front wheel apparently got stuck in a
| rail and she fell over and got a pretty serious looking
| head injury. Several of us in cars pulled over, called
| 911, and waited till the ambulance arrived and told them
| what happened. I have no idea what happened to her in the
| end, but she was unconscious and bleeding profusely from
| her her. She was not wearing a helmet, as you might
| surmise.
| incomingpain wrote:
| >A reduction in the number of cyclists on streets;
|
| Really a goal of the move. For sure there's a reduction, article
| suggests 15-40% which jives for me. So long as a bikes are
| allowed on the road, you will have movements to punish cyclists.
| Soon as a city has bike pathes all over enabling you to get to
| your destination and banning cyclists off the road and sidewalks.
| Then this problem will be solved.
|
| Bike sharing systems basically cant function where bike helmets
| are mandatory. Which is super interesting because how many people
| really just ignore the bike helmet rule anyway?
|
| >More exposure among vulnerable populations to unnecessary
| interactions with police.
|
| Police brutality is a huge problem for the USA. Not anyone else.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| One risk for cyclists from helmet-wearing is torque.
|
| If you fall off and bang your head, the helmet will give you some
| protection against a head injury (how much protection? Nobody
| knows, because unlike motorcyle helmets, there are no standards).
|
| But the helmet increases the width of your head, which means that
| torque from the impact is more likely to injure your neck.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Everything about this is misinformation.
|
| The neck torque thing constantly has been trotted out by anti-
| helmet motoryclists and has never been shown to be real.
|
| And there are many bicycle helmet standards, some of which are
| very strict. CPSC, the European equivalents, SNELL bicycle
| certifications, etc.. There are separate certifications for
| bicycling disciplines with higher risk like BMX, Downhil/Enduro
| mountain biking, etc.. as well.
|
| The SNELL standards for bicycles don't require the same levels
| of protection as motorcycle or car motorsports helmets but are
| very strict in that they will go and buy helmets in the field
| to hold the manufacturers honest. CPSC famously lets the
| companies self-certify.
|
| CPSC Standard:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/part-1203
|
| SNELL Standards: https://smf.org/stds
|
| EU Stanard (EN 1078):
| https://www.helmetfacts.com/standards/en-1078/
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > More exposure among vulnerable populations to unnecessary
| interactions with police.
|
| Don't forget to leave out the obligatory reference to structural
| racism.
| trmsw wrote:
| A better way to make cyclists and pedestrians safer would be more
| stringent laws against dangerous car designs, and some
| enforcement of the existing laws. We are starting to see US-style
| monster pickups and SUVs here in Belgium and they are a fucking
| abomination - far too large for city streets - and their extra
| weight and height plus reduced visibility make them dangerous for
| pedestrians and cyclists.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Imagine requiring non-smokers to wear respirators because passive
| smoking is bad for you.
| jiripospisil wrote:
| I think the article and the arguments presented don't really make
| much sense, but I do find interesting that it says the article
| was published on Oct 5, 2022, yet there are comments going back
| as far as November 2019.
| taeric wrote:
| The article seems clearly from 2020. It leads with a concern
| over something from "last year" that is dated 2019.
|
| On its topic, I was expecting to mostly disagree. That said,
| the case is compelling. To condense, it is basically saying
| don't turn it into a partisan conflict between riders and
| police. That plays out in predictably bad ways for communities.
| laborcontract wrote:
| Good catch. This is a SEO trick they probably do every year to
| convince google that their information is timely.
|
| Edit: Yep.
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220000000000*/https://www.bicy...
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| Is Google's search team really this naive? Google keeps
| cached versions of sites it crawls. An algorithm to catch
| these date changes would not be difficult to implement.
| chrisbaker98 wrote:
| It might not necessarily be about tricking Google's
| algorithm. It could also be to make users stick around.
| People might be less likely to read an article (and
| potentially click another link on the site and generate
| another ad impression) if see that the article is "old".
| laborcontract wrote:
| Most people make cursory updates to the body of the text as
| well. Like my sibling comment said, updating the date also
| helps your search engagement by showing a more recent date.
| That said it's considered best practice to show the
| original and updated date.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| I think the entire point is that it shouldn't "help
| search engagement" if it's an older article that's been
| "updated for present year" just to game search results.
|
| >cursory updates to the body of the text
|
| Still pretty straightforward to algorithmically determine
| if this has happened.
| User23 wrote:
| It's interesting that a search engine would choose to
| encode recency bias.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Why would that be surprising? When people search for
| something, they tend to want more recent info, more
| recent coverage, more recently made lists, etc.
| User23 wrote:
| For some things sure. For others, for example recipes,
| newer is not necessarily better.
| goldcd wrote:
| Yep - they're not quite keeping up though. Original 2019:
| "the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommended
| <i>last week</i>"
|
| Then at some point it was <i>last year</i> - and they've just
| left it like that for new next couple of years.
|
| Only other real change is that the author used to work for
| "Transportation Alternatives and Families for Safe Streets" -
| and now doesn't.
| jmount wrote:
| I know one observation is just an anecdote, but my experience is
| totally different.
|
| 1) I had one fall from a bicycle in my 30s from a front axle
| failure. My fault on not setting the quick release on the wheel
| correctly. I had the good fortune to roll forward. My head
| touched the ground, and I had no injury or concussion. My foam
| (no outer shell) helmet had cracked. I think the impact "doing
| work" on the helmet prevented a serious injury.
|
| 2) I have never been injured by the helmet (dropped on my foot,
| or not been able to see due to it).
| pja wrote:
| A helmet protects you by being crushed - it dissipates the
| kinetic energy of your head in the process. They're not very
| strong in tension at all - a cracked helmet is a helmet that
| failed to do its job properly.
|
| If it crushed first & then cracked then that's different of
| course.
| gernb wrote:
| Do you wear a helmet when you walk? 800k people a year get
| injuries from falling while walking. Would you be for a
| mandatory walking helmet law?
| josephcsible wrote:
| You're confusing helmets with mandatory helmet laws.
| [deleted]
| jmount wrote:
| Ah, good point. Policy can be different than individual
| actions.
| olliej wrote:
| My supervisor for my masters was vehemently anti-helmet. Not
| anti-helmet law, anti _helmet_ - was so viscerally opposed to
| them that he bought a tricycle to circumvent NZs mandatory helmet
| law and then intentionally goaded police into writing tickets so
| he could then say "the law says bicycle and this is a tricycle".
|
| Note that every study has shown that wearing a helmet reduces the
| likelihood of permanent injury, so while you can complain that
| helmet laws are bad, this guy was an idiot and believed that the
| act of wearing a helmet itself increased your likelihood of
| injury.
| Naijoko wrote:
| This Articel is bullshit. Helmets make cyclist more safe. It only
| reduces the total number of cyclist. And because of that there is
| less investment in cycling infrastructure. But the scientific
| articel they are linking to says following
|
| " Do more people on bikes cause cycling to become safer, or does
| safer infrastructure attract more people to bike? There's no
| conclusive evidence either way, but the answer is probably a mix
| of both. "
|
| So full blown clickbait...
| julius wrote:
| Does not matter if it is more safe or not. It is typical
| goverment overreach. Me wearing a helmet is no ones business but
| my own. It has no effect whatsoever on anyone else in society.
| taylodl wrote:
| You're emphatically wrong. If we have an accident and you die
| as a result of not wearing a helmet then your estate can file a
| wrongful death lawsuit against me. If there was a helmet law in
| place and you weren't wearing a helmet at the time of the
| accident then your estate is going to have a much more
| difficult time winning a wrongful death lawsuit. Your actions
| have consequences for others and frankly it's rather childish
| to try to pretend they don't.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > It has no effect whatsoever on anyone else in society
|
| If you die or not in an accident makes an enormous difference
| in society, especially for the other people involved in the
| accident.
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| Your brains splayed out on the concrete has an effect on my
| child as she watches you die a gruesome death...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Is your child specifically sensitive to brains? If she sees
| me lying at the end of a long red smear in a pool of blood
| with my head intact, but with my leg ripped off and my other
| limbs contorted into absurd positions, is she likely to have
| no lasting effects.
|
| Fascinating child.
| ravenstine wrote:
| A possible steel man for the opposite position could be that a
| person hospitalized because of a preventable injury to the head
| will be of a greater cost to society, and that the sacrifice of
| personal liberty is outweighed by every dollar going towards
| something more beneficial.
|
| I'm not saying I totally agree with that, but I think it's an
| argument that's rarely articulated, whereas the more reductive
| argument of keeping everyone "safe" is almost always the
| default.
| charonn0 wrote:
| It seems like they're really reaching to find ways to oppose
| helmet laws on "safety" grounds. I discern that their opposition
| to helmet laws has nothing to do with safety.
| cbsmith wrote:
| You'll note the criticism in this article goes beyond safety
| grounds. The reason for the headline is patently obvious
| though: if the sole intended _positive_ effect of the laws
| doesn 't actually play out, then it's no longer a case of
| weighing the positives vs. the negatives.
| charonn0 wrote:
| I noted that the criticism in the article attempts to frame
| on safety grounds.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Yes. I point is that even if your motives have nothing to
| do with safety, assuming you can make a credible argument,
| it makes perfect sense that you'd attack the laws on
| "safety" grounds, since the presumed positive safety effect
| is really the only supporting argument for the laws.
|
| tl;dr: if there was an oracle that could tell us
| definitively that mandatory helmet laws don't improve
| safety, I think we'd see mandatory helmet laws repealed
| pretty much everywhere.
| charonn0 wrote:
| I don't think they've made a credible argument here. This
| is true regardless of whether the arguments they raise
| have merit otherwise (e.g. police interactions.)
|
| People are well justified in looking at them askance for
| their choice of framing device. It's manipulative and
| dishonest, or at the very least comes off that way.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > I don't think they've made a credible argument here.
|
| That seems irrelevant.
|
| > People are well justified in looking at them askance
| for their choice of framing device.
|
| Yes, but I think, if you ask that question, you also have
| to ask, "what would be the best way to frame this
| article?" I don't think there's such an obviously better
| answer.
|
| > It's manipulative and dishonest, or at the very least
| comes off that way.
|
| A key argument of the article is that mandatory helmet
| laws don't improve cyclist safety. I don't see how it is
| dishonest to frame the article that way.
|
| If you're looking to persuade someone to make a decision
| you want them to make, it's usually best to speak to
| their concerns, not your own. You can call that
| manipulative if you want, but I think a lot of people
| would just call it persuasive.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| "Seat belts make drivers less safe"
| teddyh wrote:
| A special case in the U.S. is that I've heard that car drivers
| have an unusually large ire against cyclists. They see cyclists
| as a stereotype; i.e. using a racing bicycle, wearing spandex,
| going dangerously fast around both people and cars, not
| respecting traffic laws, and, crucially, _wearing helmets_. If
| you are biking using a normal bicycle, while wearing normal
| street clothes, but _are_ wearing a helmet, this might make
| drivers associate you with the stereotype and therefore feel safe
| in hating you and your bicycle. You have changed from "a normal
| person on a bicycle" to the dreaded _cyclist_. If this is so,
| then it might be that the helmet in fact did _not_ make you any
| safer, on balance.
| balls187 wrote:
| Pronto didn't fail due to mandatory helmets.
| lajosbacs wrote:
| I wear a helmet, laws or not. But when I occasionally don't, I
| notice that I am way more careful, e.g. more mindful of a curb
| with a metal post that I ride by.
|
| I wonder if this effect is permanent, if I would stop wearing a
| helmet forever.
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| Being more mindful won't protect your brain if you do get in an
| accident without a helmet. If the effect as permanent, why wear
| helmets at all? This is all galaxy freakonomics brain shit.
| up2isomorphism wrote:
| The cyclists have been the most blatant traffic violators for
| quite a while in the city. Ik any day if someone is running a red
| light it is likely a cyclists.
|
| Now this type of article is just a another way of presenting such
| a mentality.
| smcin wrote:
| No, and your individual experience (which country/state/city?)
| doesn't necessarily prove anything: minor violations by
| cyclists don't _necessarily_ imply any reduction to other
| people 's safety, totally unlike violations by
| cars/trucks/buses. They often simply mean the regulation
| doesn't make sense or can safely be ignored (we're all aware of
| some regulations for motorists being ignored or under-
| prosecuted.)
|
| Extremely relevant example: many jurisdictions in the US have
| or are looking at legalizing so-called _Idaho stop_ /rolling
| stop [0], which allows cyclists to treat a stop sign as a yield
| sign, and a red light as a stop sign. (Obviously they still
| have to stop or yield to pedestrians crossing or about to
| cross).
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop
| kriro wrote:
| My cousin had a cycling accident where his helmet cracked in half
| (pretty much) but the head was safe. He just slipped on some
| leafs or ice or something so there wasn't even anyone else
| involved. Ever since I saw that picture I'm religious about
| wearing a helmet. Skulls crack folks, not rocket science. I mean
| I don't need a law for that. I kind of like my life.
| scelerat wrote:
| If we're looking for effectively reducing injury across all
| people, shouldn't we be working on mandatory helmet laws for
| automobile occupants first?
|
| Bicycle riders (in the US) are a small minority.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Do you have any research that wearing a helmet in an automobile
| saves people? Given that you have a full frame and airbags that
| seems questionable.
| seadan83 wrote:
| I recall seeing similar research. On a phone, but could try
| to dig up citations showing head injuries is significant
| factor for mortality.
|
| Eg: if it makes no sense, and airbags and frame are good
| enough, why do they wear helmets in nascar? (Answer, the
| helmet helps prevent head injuries when in a motor-vehicke
| crash)
| vorpalhex wrote:
| NASCAR cars go a bit faster than mom goes on the freeway
| (your mom goes about 70mph, NASCAR goes up to 200mph). They
| also don't have airbags as they have helmets and four point
| harnesses.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| More people have head injuries in showers than on bicycles.
| Furthermore, the focus on helmets makes it sound as though head
| injuries were the only -- or even primary -- threat that
| cyclists face.
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