191–200 of 797 posts
Earlier 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.
Helmets protect against falls. They don't protect against cars.
glad I could help out here
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…
IIRC it is studied that cars behave more dangerously around bikers with helmets while they give a wide berth to unhelmeted bikers.
I have been T-boned by a driver approaching from the opposite direction, in full daylight with no visual disruptions, when they failed to "look bike" and turned across my lane. They totally did not see me - so they fact I was wearing a helmet did not factor at all into the situation.
I was flipped through the air and landed 10m down the side road on my back. My backpack took the brunt of of the impact but my head still snapped back and hit the ground. The helmet protected my head and prevented what would have at least been a concussion and possibly a fractured skull.
In my 30+ years of regularly cycling on roads, I'd say the majority of close calls I've had have happened in with cars turning out of side streets of with cars turning across my lane from the opposite direction. Those are due to a combination of the following in my perceived order of likelihood:
- the driver checking for cars/buses/trucks and not looking for motorcycles or bicycles - the driver seeing the cyclist but totally misjudging their speed and assuming they have time to complete their turn in front of the bike - the driver being as asshole and cutting off the cyclist.
_Maybe_ the cyclist wearing helmet could affect the second scenario. It doesn't affect the first scenario and assholes are assholes regardless of helmet wearing.
I've had less trouble with close/reckless overtaking. It does happen, but it is highly unlike the car driver completely fails to see a cyclist they are overtaking.
Saying helmets reduce rider safety due to one scenario, where the car driver has to see the helmet and thus the cyclist in order to make a more risky overtaking gap judgement call, seems like a massive stretch to me.
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…
To me, that seems like a clear difference in infrastructure. If a biker shares a stretch of asphalt with a car, that's a risk for the biker and they need a helmet. In the Netherlands, this is widely understood and bikes get their own infrastructure everywhere. Only then you don't need helmets anymore at all.
i bet the more useful metrics are length of trip, average speed of the cars around you, and if you need to cross stop signs/intersections. dutch bike trips are often very short and the speed limits are low. you do not share the road with 35mph+ traffic as is common in america. intersections are the place where people get hurt on bikes the most and it’s more likely in american biking you will cross them. this one is where the separate infrastructure really comes in to play
Okay, true story. Years ago I struggled with this exact logic regarding skiing with helmet. After serious consideration I decided to start skiing so carefully that I do not need a helmet. As you may guess at this point, The very first day I left my helmet home, I got into an accident and got a skull fracture. I started using my helmet again after that. (But another safety related thing I have started to really doubt.…
Okay, true story. Years ago I struggled with this exact logic regarding skiing with helmet. After serious consideration I decided to start skiing so carefully that I do not need a helmet. As you may guess at this point, The very first day I left my helmet home, I got into an accident and got a skull fracture. I started using my helmet again after that. (But another safety related thing I have started to really doubt.…
Michael Schumacher would disagree.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, there is always a study made somewhere by somebody supporting whatever you want to believe in. Individual studies are on average fairly useless.
Could you reply with the study showing the opposite using new data? It should be pretty easy given that there is always a study showing you what you want. I'll be waiting :)
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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...
Well, if you think wearing a helmet increases risk, why do you wear one? Don't get me wrong, I don't want to force anyone to wear a helmet. It's completely fine if one wants to take that risk. But forbidding them is just insane. Also, helmets are not a get-out-of-jail-free-card. They increase your chances of survival in case of a crash, you will still get injured. Protecting people might be the least effective thing…
Helmets are trying to reduce an already tiny risk. We live in a world of safety fanaticism.
The "tiny risk" and potentially large consequences is why people should choose to wear helmets, regardless of experience. You never quite know when an accident is going to happen and it is difficult to account for that. The big risks are easier to account for, to be alert and modify your behaviour accordingly. I have seen experienced ice skaters go from not wearing a helmet to being fanatical about wearing one, simpl…
Driving is high risk activity that can lead to severe head injuries. It is even easier to keep a helmet with your car than with your bike. The cost to risk profile here is extremely similar but the resultant behavior is quite different.
People rarely approach risks rationally and risk avoidance behavior is highly influenced by social acceptability.
During my lifetime of skiing, I have seen the shift from nobody wearing helmets to most people wearing them. The ski patrols worked hard to make helmet wearing first socially acceptable and then socially expected (at least in some groups.) The risks didn't changed, there was some rise in awareness, but the biggest change (from my perspective) is social.
This I see the vehement support for helmet wearing as predominantly cultural alignment enforcement rather than reasoned risk avoidance analysis.
Personally, I always wear a helmet skiing because it is more comfortable, plus I ski FAST sometimes. I rarely wear a helmet on a bicycle because I bike slow and strongly try to avoid situations where my safety is in the hands of other drivers. Instead I stick to mostly quiet residential streets, bike paths, or separated bike lines. The helmet has a much larger impact on my risk profile when skiing than biking because of my behaviors.
All that said, I don't think that the company should ban standard safety gear for their riders. Especially since they claim to have good incident tracking, they should be able to find and let go any riders who act recklessly with a helmet.
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).
> It relied on self-report of the biker (and if I remember correctly, it was just a single one, so not enough data). Unless I'm misunderstanding what's meant by "self-reporting", it sounds like regardless of how many riders they got data from, it would say that there are 0 fatalities to bikers because people who are dead don't respond to surveys.