Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by michaelt » Sun, May 22, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #330

prepend wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of those situations where there is a lot of fear and anecdotes but data shows that more accidents and injuries occur with helmets than without. A company should design their safety protocol well and it includes what equipment workers should and should not wear to protect them best. So prohibiting helmets is very responsible. Criticizing them seems to be taking an irrational stance that it’s better to addr…

I'm curious to know what your data is. Offhand, sounds more like most riding is with helmets, so will dominate the numbers. But it's being interpreted as causal? Feels unlikely. What is the mechanism?

> Offhand, sounds more like most riding is with helmets

My impression is:

1. Dutch-style utility riders using a bike to get around town for errands -> Rare helmets

2. Lycra-clad competitive cyclists with drop handlebars -> Widespread helmets

3. City cycle hire scheme users -> Rare helmets

4. Parents cycling with young children -> Widespread helmets

5. Poor people commuting on beat-up mountain bikes -> Rare helmets

6. Organised cycling events with mandatory helmets -> Widespread helmets

7. Teenagers riding with their friends -> Rare helmets

So the popularity of helmets depends on your locale (does your area have utility riders?) - and whether you measure per-mile or per-bike-owner :)

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

#392

Post by Loic » Sun, May 22, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #275

Loic wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In German speaking countries we went from 15% to 3% of the ski accidents with hospitalization being related to head injuries, this within the past 15/20 years. This correlates very well with the increase of helmet usage.

Do you happen to know the overall change in accidents? That's the big question behind the motivation for this change. There's no doubt that helmets would reduce the percent of all accidents that are head related, but does some reduced concern about safety result in more accidents overall?

From the biggest Ski insurance/interest group in Germany (the ones from the Ski federation), the stats show a 50% decrease since the 80's.[0]

The trend is stable/slight increase in the past 5 years.

For the head injuries, it reduced from 2/1000 skier to about 1/1000 skier/year. It follows the general trend of the number of accidents per skier/year.

Looking at the material and the quality of the slopes in the past 40 years, they are definitely a big driver of this change, they improved a lot!

[0]: https://www.stiftung.ski/sis-lab/asu-unfallanalyse/

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

#393

Post by ComputerGuru » Sun, May 22, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #367

323 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the polystyrene which cracks, but the plastic shell holding it in place. The separation will happen after the compression force is removed, because the compression will keep the split parts close together. Meaning that the helmet falls apart after it's done the job. Also, there are various degrees of helmets, from a simple polystyrene to a mountain bike one to a motorcycle helmet. You can always go to the ne…

The pictures that I've seen of the various "saved my life" destroyed helmets have the polystyrene split apart - it's usually quite easy to split polystyrene if the force is applied the right (wrong) way. I don't like the concept of requiring PPE for a relatively safe activity as cycling as it makes cycling seem like a far more risky activity than it is and there's also the problem of "helmet hair" which can dissuade…

Cycling in a vacuum is safe-ish and not a particularly risky affair. Cycling on a shared road with automobiles going eight times your speed and weighing some 250 times your bipedal vehicle’s weight is not so safe.

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

#394

Post by porknubbins » Sun, May 22, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

ascar wrote: post #297

sokoloff wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also significant legal penalties for being at-fault and injuring/killing a cyclist in the Netherlands as compared to the US.

Can you elaborate? The US has such a high incarceration rate for in European eyes often benign offenses that I find that statement hard to believe even though I don't know the Dutch laws (I'm German). E.g. I can't imagine a Dutch person being incarcerated for injuring a cyclist unless it's on alcohol/drugs. I can totally imagine that for the US though. But I might be totally wrong. Would be really curious for some de…

As a general rule US public policy is enormously biased towards being pro automobile. Putting drivers in jail (ie for less than extreme recklessness) impedes that goal. It was very eye opening when I lived abroad and the law was actually biased against the “stronger” party in a traffic accident (ie truck > car > motorbike > bicycle > pedestrian ). It makes sense to me to essentially require more responsibility in proportion to the damage you are able to cause.

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

#395

Post by aasasd » Sun, May 22, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #376

aasasd wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another such example is drivers or passengers opening cars' doors without looking in the mirrors. A car's doors are reinforced plenty while having relatively sharp-ish metal ‘lip’ on the butt end, and you really don't want to run into one from that angle.

That's why it's a good idea to not cycle in the "door-zone" on roads. Annoyingly, some bike "infrastructure" (i.e. bit of paint) is put directly into the door-zone of parked vehicles which typically makes it worse than useless and best avoided (which then of course risks getting ire from drivers who don't understand why you choose to cycle where you do). One interesting way of reducing doorings is to teach drivers an…

Yeah, in regard to bike lanes between the road and the sidewalk, some note that passengers are even less likely than the drivers to look in the mirrors or just back out the window when getting out, since they expect mostly walking people on that side. Thankfully, some lanes are separated from the parked cars, usually with some flowebeds or just bollards in that space: e.g. https://i2.wp.com/www.theurbanist.org/wp-content/uploads/201...

I suspect that a side-effect of the popularity of electric scooters will be that passengers will habituate a bit to seeing faster things on the sidewalks.

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

#396

Post by supertrope » Sun, May 22, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

ascar wrote: post #297

sokoloff wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also significant legal penalties for being at-fault and injuring/killing a cyclist in the Netherlands as compared to the US.

Can you elaborate? The US has such a high incarceration rate for in European eyes often benign offenses that I find that statement hard to believe even though I don't know the Dutch laws (I'm German). E.g. I can't imagine a Dutch person being incarcerated for injuring a cyclist unless it's on alcohol/drugs. I can totally imagine that for the US though. But I might be totally wrong. Would be really curious for some de…

Operators of heavier vehicles have a duty of care toward smaller vehicle rider.

Compare this with New York City where if you negligently kill someone with your car, the police won't even issue a ticket unless you're drunk. Then comes the civil lawsuit in which the surviving family will probably settle for your car insurance policy limits (e.g. $100,000, far lower than German limits that are in the millions of Euros).

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

#397

Post by [deleted] » Sun, May 22, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

wl wrote: post #21

tejohnso wrote: post #2

From [the tweet], "People that are taking risks that are sufficient that they feel they need to wear helmets are not welcome to work for us" [the tweet]: https://twitter.com/pedalmeapp/status/1489594692857647113?s=...

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.

[deleted]

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

#398

Post by DangitBobby » Sun, May 22, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

kixiQu wrote: post #357

mertd wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good point. The reasoning in the post assumes that the rider is responsible for all accidents.

"So riders wearing helmets take greater risks, and those driving around them take greater risks too. " https://psyarxiv.com/nxw2k

Seems like this paper refutes other refutations about previous studies producing helmet disparaging data. Who to believe? I guess I'll just believe these conclusions until the next refutation comes along.

On a more serious note, I assume that conclusions about helmet safety predicated on motorist passing behavior (which I already pretty much just intuitively reject) could not be safely extrapolated to include much larger and more visible multi-person passenger bearing bikes. They are very different visually and culturally and motorists almost certainly behave differently around them, so I'm gonna require new data that takes these different psychological effects into account.

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

#399

Post by cycomanic » Sun, May 22, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

spankalee wrote: post #272

I once saw an accident where a cyclist going straight through an intersection was hit by an oncoming truck turning left that was impatient, didn't see the cyclist and gunned it between cars. The cyclist was launched headfirst into the bumper of a car stopped at the light and her helmet loudly cracked in two. She was still hurt, but I'm sure she would have died without that helmet. If some riders choose to not wear a…

I had a cycling accident when out training on a road bike coming down a hill doing about 50km/h and a delivery van turned in front of me into a parking lot. I hit the side of the van put a big dent in it and fractured my clavicle and t6 and had several cuts in my face. The helmet I was wearing was completely disintegrated on the side I hit the car with. Fortunately I was visiting Australia were cycling helmets were mandatory, back in Europe were i was living normally i would not have worn one.

Since then I always were a helmet when out training. However I don't wear a helmet when dropping off the kids with my cargo bike. It's true that drivers are more aggressive towards helmet wearers, moreover I can't think of an accident where a helmet would help when I'm on the cargo bike.

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

#400

Post by frereubu » Sun, May 22, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

bluejekyll wrote: post #352

mertd wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good point. The reasoning in the post assumes that the rider is responsible for all accidents.

While the article is very short, this was still easy to miss, “… and those driving around them take greater risks too.” So it does in fact mention that both people driving around those wearing helmets as well as the cyclists themselves take greater risks. The argument is that in the GP’s anecdote that the cyclist (and perhaps even the truck driver) would have taken less risky actions preceding the crash, thus avoidin…

I know you're just elaborating the parent comment's point, so this isn't really directed at you, but the only study I've ever heard of which said anything like that was one academic riding a bike with and without a helmet, and measuring how close cars came to him. IIRC the difference was a matter of one or two centimetres and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the p-value was just under 0.05. That study was regularly thrown around by friends who were looking for a rationale for their dislike of wearing helmets.

We really need some high-quality studies with a much better experimental design that look at overall risk. Perhaps riders are marginally more likely to get into accidents if they wear a helmet, but I know from personal experience that when you do get into an accident you really want to be wearing a helmet - if I wasn't wearing one when I had a big accident about ten years ago, I'm pretty certain I'd have serious neurological problems now.