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Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons

bikebiz.com

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Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons

#181

Post by enkid »

aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #142
ekianjo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I've seen research stating adjacent car drivers will give less space to a cyclist wearing a helmet due to implied added safety.

This sounds like one of those papers that got published with just barely "significant statistical evidence" but never had follow-up to verify, meaning you can't really draw conclusions for it.

Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons

#182

Post by Nextgrid »

yellowapple wrote: post #118
Nextgrid wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that as another commenter points out, passengers wouldn't feel safe next to a helmet-wearing driver while not wearing one themselves. The proper solution here is to provide helmets for passengers as well, but that raises more problems - they needs to be a way to sanitize them, multiple sizes might need to be available (I assume they need to be sized properly for adequate protection?), etc. The aforemen…

Passengers could always bring their own helmets if they feel they're safer wearing one. EDIT: also, this doesn't explain prohibiting helmets for cargo bikes, too.

> EDIT: also, this doesn't explain prohibiting helmets for cargo bikes, too.

I think it's a PR thing. They don't want prospective passengers seeing their branded bikes as dangerous enough to justify wearing a helmet, regardless of whether that particular bike is currently transporting passengers.

Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons

#183

Post by treesprite82 »

ekianjo wrote: post #129
yellowapple wrote: post #52

I'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?

Cars already have airbags and seatbelts which help a lot for the kind of collisions that would otherwise result in head injuries.

> It might make you much safer in case of a crash, according to your reasoning.

I don't see what in their comment could be construed to say that helmets make you much safer regardless of vehicle.

> Wearing a helmet can itself become a leading factor to cause an incident

Is there a source for this? Should be a randomized A/B test as you mentioned, not just a correlation - wearing a hi-vis jacket or other precautions taken more often in dangerous situations probably also correlate with accidents.

Even if helmets do cause accidents through increased carelessness, some may still take issue to intentionally making a scenario more dangerous such that people are more careful. It's kind of settling for a local minimum, rather than aiming to reduce inherent risk alongside aligning people's risk estimates to not overestimate the precautions.

Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons

#184

Post by jdr23bc »

y7 wrote: post #63

Maybe relevant: the Netherlands is probably the country with the highest use of bicycles for transport, yet no one, except for cyclists on racing bikes/MTBs or foreign tourists, ever wears a bike helmet. This is because they're only marginally effective at preventing injury, and the disadvantage of reduced cycling use if helmets are mandated results in far worse public health outcomes. See also https://dutchreview.co…

No doubt Pedal Me contractors operating in Dutch cities might choose to not wear a helmet. That'd be fine. But that choice should be left to the contractor, not the company.

Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons

#185

Post by mrgoldenbrown »

sampo wrote: post #101
perlgeek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was one study about that, which was... not very robust science. It relied on self-report of the biker (and if I remember correctly, it was just a single one, so not enough data).

> There was one study about that, which was... not very robust science. It relied on self-report of the biker Here is another study, where they measured the distance to overtaking cars with a distance sensor: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014... "A Trek hybrid bicycle was fitted with a Massa M-5000/95 temperature-compensated ultrasonic distance sensor with its centre 0.77 m from the ground,…

This study is done by the same researcher as the first. I applaud Walker for studying this, but both his studies have a sample size of one cyclist - himself, riding in one area of one country. [He did put a wig on sometimes, so maybe you could say the sample size is 2? ]

Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons

#186

Post by whimsicalism »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #171
whimsicalism wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You believe that if the evidence indicates more people would die with the helmets, it would still be morally verboten even though it would be a statistical certainty your omission of action is basically causing people's deaths when we are talking about large numbers of people? Crazy. I suspect you are actually reasoning from your thought that people are more likely to die without helmets and ignoring the premise of t…

if even 1 incident occurs which was unavoidable by an unhelmeted cyclist which harms them more than they would have been harmed wearing a helmet, then the policy is unconscionable claiming you're removing safety equipment to reduce risky behavior is the tail wagging the dog. there are other ways to reduce risky behavior which do not have such tragic consequences as side effects to them.

> then the policy is unconscionable

Let's say you do an A/B test on this policy and find 15 more people die with the helmet allowed policy, but in the other side, one person died who if they had chosen a helmet they likely wouldn't have. You're saying it is unconscionable to pick the policy where the 15 wouldn't have died?

Do the other things to reduce risky behavior, certainly, but if this is an uncorrelated improvement I don't see why that wouldn't be worth taking.

Note, I doubt that this is actually true, but I wanted to highlight your moral apriori claims as ridiculous.

Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons

#187

Post by kylecordes »

It is interesting to see the various categories of reactions/objections, which point in different or conflicting directions.

1) The theory that this change reduces overall injury rate is true, therefore this is a good change.

2) The theory is false because of some mistake, or intentionally false, therefor this is a bad change.

3) The theory is true, but nonetheless this is a bad change because there are other factors more important than the injury rate.

Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons

#188

Post by yellowapple »

whimsicalism wrote: post #133
yellowapple wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe there are some cases where safety protections make people act dumber And I don't believe that to be a justification for removing those safety protections entirely. This ain't some data science problem to be solved; this is ethics and morality, and there is precisely nothing ethical or moral about demanding that your employees make themselves less safe and then having the gall to pretend that this somehow…

You believe that if the evidence indicates more people would die with the helmets, it would still be morally verboten even though it would be a statistical certainty your omission of action is basically causing people's deaths when we are talking about large numbers of people? Crazy. I suspect you are actually reasoning from your thought that people are more likely to die without helmets and ignoring the premise of t…

> You believe that if the evidence indicates more people would die with the helmets

That ain't what was argued. The commenter above argued that helmets encourage people to take more risks. Even assuming that to be true, the sane answer is to train people to ride safely even when wearing helmets, not to ban helmets.

> it would be a statistical certainty your omission of action is basically causing people's deaths

1. "statistical certainty" is an oxymoron.

2. correlation != causation

Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons

#189

Post by Kim_Bruning »

bombcar wrote: post #168
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The first document explains that people who take risks (like riding at high speeds or on a mountain bike) DO wear helmets in the Netherlands. Which is the reason why helmet wearers show up in hospital more often.

The second is a recent paper that applies evenly to people who ride a bike "normally", [From experience: at low speeds on segregated infrastructure at around 15 km/h or so]. My interpretation is that it concludes that wearing a helmet would improve safety for cyclists somewhat; however it would not (currently) be risk-cost-effective according to their measure; and would require intervention to break even.

Re: Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons

#190

Post by stefan_ »

treesprite82 wrote: post #183
ekianjo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Cars already have airbags and seatbelts which help a lot for the kind of collisions that would otherwise result in head injuries. > It might make you much safer in case of a crash, according to your reasoning. I don't see what in their comment could be construed to say that helmets make you much safer regardless of vehicle. > Wearing a helmet can…

But a helmet will help even more. It costs nothing, what is there to reject?
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