Is this the same argument as 'we should ban condoms, because people have more sex when they think they have some protection' ...
Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons
161–170 of 797 posts
Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Riding on roads isn't like mountain biking where you mostly control the amount of risk you take on. Riding on roads puts you at the mercy of other people's choices. I feel the need to wear a helmet anytime I'm riding on a road for that reason.
The point is the risk on the road is smaller when you don't wear a helmet because drivers take less risk with you. Even better if you are a woman in summer dress. Then the drivers give you way more space and are super careful around you. It was researched.
An attractive woman in a bikini on a bike probably elicits the slowest and carefullest passing by many of the drivers.
Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons
#163This is extremely context specific. It calls to mind another counter-intuitive Dutch effort, in which stop signs and speed limits were removed, which slowed traffic down and made a village safer. Traffic engineers know that too many stop signs increase the speed of driving as impatient drivers speed up between stop signs.
Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Germany it's actually discussed quite heavily whether to make helmets a legal requirement. I also don't see how you don't think of bikes driving on roads as risky. Even with a helmet, you can get very seriously injured; a helmet will just help you to not die and (hopefully) still walk again afterwards. Feel free to look up images from serious bike accidents; I can't imagine anyone sane risking that, helmet or not.
I cycle 10,000km+ a year in London, so I think I have a better idea about this than the vast majority of HN commenters. I generally wear a helmet, but encouraging and definitely enforcing helmet use is the least effective thing we can do to protect people [0]. https://lmb.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/FJKHORIVUAI799Z.j...
If you generally wear a helmet, aren't you either encouraging risk-taking, or giving the illusion that the activity is risky?
Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/publications/bicycle-he...
From the abstract: > The distribution of overtaking events shifted just over one-fifth of a standard deviation closer to the rider – a potentially important behaviour if, as theoretical frameworks suggest, near-misses and collisions lie on a continuum. Looking at the graph in figure 1, " one-fifth of a standard " looks as unimpressive as expected. The distance from the kerb looks much more relevant. IIUC all the anal…
Yes, but you're missing that overtaking events is just one of the metrics in question.
You're right that perhaps it is a big difference between cyclists, my guess would be the number of cars matters more than the number of cyclists. The study has been replicated elsewhere.
> Walker published 5 articles about the same data, and he got a different result in each one.
Uh, no? The 8.5 cm result has been consistent.
At the margin, these things make a difference, especially given that collisions are rare as a fraction for rides taken.
Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons
#166I'm sorry, and pardonner mou Français, but what in the actual fuck? Should delivery drivers not wear seatbelts because they might not be as afriad that they'll fly through the windshield? Should linemen not wear harnesses because they might be more confident working on power lines? Should warehouse workers not wear hi-vis jackets because they might be more confident working around forklifts? Should construction worke…
> I'm sorry, and pardonner mou Français, but what in the actual fuck? Do you wear a helmet when you drive inside your car? If not, why not? It might make you much safer in case of a crash, according to your reasoning. Wearing a helmet can itself become a leading factor to cause an incident, and it's clearly what they are hinting at in the linked article: that data seems to indicate that riders wearing helmets may be…
> Do you wear a helmet when you drive inside your car? If not, why not?
Because I have a seatbelt, an airbag, and a reinforced shock absorbing shell around me.
Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
So why not do the reasonable thing and provide passengers with helmets, like they do with motorbike taxi?
Who decided that was reasonable? I certainly did not.
You dont think its reasonable to offer passengers the option to wear a helmet?
I suppose it's also not reasonable to provide seatbelts to passengers as well as the driver of a taxi?
Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
No amount of infrastructure safety will help if you take a tumble and hit your head - a helmet would totally help. Even experienced cyclists take the occasional fall :)
Technically you are correct that wearing a helmet does reduce risk of head injury somewhat. However -when infrastructure for cycling is already very safe- you start seeing all sorts of strange statistical effects; and it is not immediately obvious that helmets are a net benefit. As an example of one of the more funny&misleading statistics: People who wear bicycle helmets in the Netherlands actually end up in hospital…
I assume the paper checked that the non-helmet wearers were not appearing in the morgue?
Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the objective here is to make money whatever-it-takes.. This. Definitely. However if it came to court, as indeed it might, and they tried to argue helmets cause risky behavior, it wouldn't take Johnny Cochrane to get them slapped with a massive fine and laughed out of court. They're gambling that the cost of safely resolving the issue will be more than any legal costs. Talk about preventing risky behavior!
I very much doubt this service is sustainable so most likely this is just a stop-gap/desperate hack until they reach their "exit", whether yet another round of VC money, a buy-out by a bigger idiot or quietly shutting down. I bet they all know this isn't viable and just hope this problem disappears before an accident actually happens and brings this in front of a court.
This is what my lawyer would tell me is willful. And high risk.
Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons
#170I'm sorry, and pardonner mou Français, but what in the actual fuck? Should delivery drivers not wear seatbelts because they might not be as afriad that they'll fly through the windshield? Should linemen not wear harnesses because they might be more confident working on power lines? Should warehouse workers not wear hi-vis jackets because they might be more confident working around forklifts? Should construction worke…
> I'm sorry, and pardonner mou Français, but what in the actual fuck? Do you wear a helmet when you drive inside your car? If not, why not? It might make you much safer in case of a crash, according to your reasoning. Wearing a helmet can itself become a leading factor to cause an incident, and it's clearly what they are hinting at in the linked article: that data seems to indicate that riders wearing helmets may be…
> Do you wear a helmet when you drive inside your car? If not, why not?
My car has other safety measures in place to protect me from head injuries. A bicycle does not.