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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

#211

Post by Brian_K_White »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #138
mrpopo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which they mentioned in the article: “A major cause of head injuries is going over the handlebars, which is not possible with a 3 metre long bike. Helmets protect against falls. They don't protect against cars.

Unless the bike is made of rubber, you can totally hit your head somewhere on the bike. Also look at the amount of car vs. bike accidents where the cyclists head smashes against the windshield. A helmet protects in that case too.

Probably should wear a hocky mask then.

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

#212

Post by treesprite82 »

stefan_ wrote: post #190
treesprite82 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I don't perceive the benefit from risk reduction of helmets in cars to overcome the hassle hurdle. But I wouldn't advocate banning others from wearing helmets in cars if they so wished.

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

#213

Post by yellowapple »

_Wintermute wrote: post #119
Sebb767 wrote: post #91

Earlier 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...

Nobody's even "encouraging" (let alone "enforcing") helmet use in this case. This is purely staff riders choosing on their own whether or not they should wear a helmet, and Pedal Me throwing a fit over it over some patently absurd "safety reasons".

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

#214

Post by hammock »

Nextgrid wrote: post #85
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…

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 wouldn't feel safe next to a helmet-wearing driver while not wearing one themselves.

Wouldn't the same apply to mask wearing? Yet we consistently see service employees wearing them and customers not.

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

#215

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

whimsicalism wrote: post #186
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 improve…

I pretty clearly articulated exactly what was unconscionable:

> 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

if you can think of a scenario in which what I described as unconscionable happens, then I would find that scenario unconscionable.

> 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.

whereas I DO see why such a helmet ban would be a risk not worth taking, it is at the top of this post.

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

#216

Post by CaptainHardcore »

stefan_ wrote: post #203
CaptainHardcore wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So you wear a helmet as a pedestrian then? You are so unprotected!

I guess if I was going to walk in the road with traffic.

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

#217

Post by whimsicalism »

yellowapple wrote: post #188
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…

> 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. "…

1. It's may be an oxymoron but also there is no such thing as any other form of certainty.

2. Yes, this is why we have RCTs.

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

#218

Post by whimsicalism »

zmgsabst wrote: post #209
whimsicalism wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 improve…

> Note, I doubt that this is actually true, but I wanted to highlight your moral apriori claims as ridiculous. You failed to do that: You didn’t address the agency problem where the 15 chose to engage in risky behavior while that 1 was coerced into dying — and ignoring the role of agency in the Trolley Problem is amateur hour. The helmets didn’t kill anyone, their following choices while wearing helmets did; which is…

They were not coerced into dying. I prefer fewer people dying personally, your mileage might vary.

All I can say is I am glad that the actual people making decisions seem to also prefer fewer people dying over non-coercion.

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

#219

Post by yellowapple »

stephen_g wrote: post #155
sampo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do drivers take greater risks from wearing a seatbelt? Some people have suggested even that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation#Seat_belts

It seems completely debunked in that case at least. I can imagine how somebody could have thought risk compensation might be a thing in the short term - such as when seatbelts were a new invention. I've seen the kind of thing like people demonstrating how their active cruise control won't let their new car crash into the car in front, which is a pretty dumb idea (even if it will almost certainly work). But that seems…

> I've seen the kind of thing like people demonstrating how their active cruise control won't let their new car crash into the car in front, which is a pretty dumb idea (even if it will almost certainly work)

Guilty as charged lol (though in my case it's to better understand how ACC behaved in various situations, given my unfamiliarity with it.

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

#220

Post by whimsicalism »

BurningFrog wrote: post #197
whimsicalism wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

There is a big asymmetry of effort in these kinds of requests, that are easily mistaken for winning the argument.

It's pretty easy to win the argument when the opposing side is "studies are meaningless."
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