341–350 of 612 posts
The idea is that looking behind also protects you from being smashed to a pulp by an incoming car.
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> But in practice some drivers will see it as an aggressive move to take 'their' lane. [...] In a car centric society the last thing you want to do is to occupy a full lane sized for vehicles but going 1/3rd their speed. I think this overestimates the antagonism car drivers feel towards cyclists and underestimates the danger of simply not being noticed. When I cycled, I usually found that cars would give me as much s…
I've had (full) beercans thrown at me in traffic in the USA just for cycling, I'd rather avoid playing dodgem with SUVs and pick-up trucks driven by people that feel that roads are not for sharing with vehicles other than cars. To boldly occupy a whole lane is something that might work in a few cities that have considerable bike traffic but I don't think that is a universal rule to live by as a cyclist.
I am not fond of enforcement. I'd rather everyone just do the right thing because it is the right thing to do but some people clearly don't get it. Please report incidents like this.
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It's not just how you're treated. Research has shown that cyclists wearing helmets tend to put more trust in their helmet, whereas cyclists without helmet tend to be more careful.
There is also a study that shows other traffic participants engage in riskier overtaking when a cyclist wears a helmet. Instead of leaving 1.5 m space when the cyclist is on the side of the car, drivers leave an average of 0.5 m space for cyclists wearing a helmet. If I remember correctly, drivers see helmets as increased safety for the cyclist and feel they can engage in less safe behavior because it evens out. Edit…
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If you've tried driving in the Netherlands, you know why so many people prefer to ride a bike instead. Well maintained, but narrow and extremely busy roads, densely packed with tiny vehicles. Wearing a helmet while cycling in the Dutch bike lanes is a bit like wearing a helmet while walking on the side walk. I used to only wear it while racing. Since I had a bad crash after being hit in the eye by an insect, I wear a…
It's not just how you're treated. Research has shown that cyclists wearing helmets tend to put more trust in their helmet, whereas cyclists without helmet tend to be more careful.
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This comment is important in how it shows biking is totally different in The Netherlands. The first type of bike most non-Dutch think of when they hear 'bicycle', where the rider sits hunched forward poised to race is not even considered a regular bike here. If you go faster than 15mph you are basically considered to be comparable to a moped and doing it without a helmet is frowned upon even here. When you are not in…
> "When you are not in The Netherlands you should most definitely wear a helmet no matter what kind of bike." Why? It's actually not statistically safer.
> Bicycle helmet use was associated with reduced odds of head injury, serious head injury, facial injury and fatal head injury. The reduction was greater for serious or fatal head injury. Neck injury was rare and not associated with helmet use.
[1] http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/09/06/ije.d...
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That's a completely different situation than the average Dutch cyclist faces. First, there are no hills to be seen, so not that easy to pick up speed. Especially on a city bike which is 99% of the fleet. It's unusual to even reach 20km/h. People carry their shopping, kids, furniture and pets in them. They cycle in whatever they are wearing - suits, skirts, jeans, whatever; the fact you can just hop on a bike without…
> There was also this study from a university in Utrecht showing that [in the Netherlands] cyclists wearing helmets are more careless and cause more accidents, nullifying any safety benefit.. Are there any links in English to that study? Someone said only people racing (or with racing bikes) trend to wear helmet in Netherlands. Knowing that it feels like that study confuses correlation with causation, but a universit…
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It's not hard to be going fast inadvertently. The worst bike accident I was in involved me coming down a hill, stopping at the bottom on what turned out to be an invisible bump, and flying over my handlebars. I broke my collarbone upon landing, but if I hadn't been wearing a helmet it would have been a lot worse. It just seems foolhardy to me to ride a bike without a helmet, like driving a car without a seatbelt.
The Netherlands is famous for its hills ;)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This comment is important in how it shows biking is totally different in The Netherlands. The first type of bike most non-Dutch think of when they hear 'bicycle', where the rider sits hunched forward poised to race is not even considered a regular bike here. If you go faster than 15mph you are basically considered to be comparable to a moped and doing it without a helmet is frowned upon even here. When you are not in…
> "When you are not in The Netherlands you should most definitely wear a helmet no matter what kind of bike." Why? It's actually not statistically safer.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457500... http://www.cochrane.org/CD005401/INJ_bicycle-helmet-legislat...
That said, despite personally wearing a helmet on my daily commute, I don't support legislation. I unfortunately don't have sources on hand, but I firmly believe that spending public dollars on bike infrastructure and better legislation for bicycle/car interaction would yield better safety improvements for cyclists AND increase cycling uptake.