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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

#451

Post by msrenee »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #309
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…

Can you cite any of those studies? Is this one of those things where studies count the accidents reported for each group without controlling for population size? I ask because there are “studies” that show there are more skiing accidents with helmets than without, but anyone who has spent a day at a ski hill can tell why that is: the vast, vast majority of people are wearing helmets. Throw a rock into a crowd of skie…

It's been over a decade since I last stepped foot in a ski area. I don't remember anyone wearing a helmet that wasn't on a snowboard. Are they more common now? It makes a lot of sense with how bad things go when they go bad plus all the trees.

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

#452

Post by skeeter2020 »

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…

The Dutch don't actively prohibt you from wearing a helmet though...

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

#453

Post by shkkmo »

toast0 wrote: post #437
shkkmo wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motor vehicle accidents are a leading cause of traumatic brain injury related deaths. If you are under 55 the obly higher cause is suicide. (If you qre older than 55, your chances of a TBI related death from an accidental fall start to skyrocket with age.) There is a reason why race car drivers wear helmets, and it isn't just to have another place to plaster sponsor logos. I am not aware of any studies looking specif…

Race car drivers are at a lot higher risk of a collision, spin, vehicle fire, or rapid disassembly in general than general traffic. And in many forms of racing, they usually go significantly faster than general traffic too. Helmets, neck restraints, five point harnesses, and flame retardant suits all reduce risk of injuries, and would likely reduce risk in general traffic as well, but the risks seem low enough that t…

> And in many forms of racing, they usually go significantly faster than general traffic too.

Yet, lethal TBIs are more likely to come from motor vehicle accidents than from bicycle accidents.

> the risks seem low enough that the expense (including time to equip) of that additional equipment is too much to justify its general use.

Yet, somehow this argument is deemed irrelevant when helmets for bicycles are discussed.

There really is not a compelling reason why helmet usage in a car is different from on a bicycle. The main difference is social acceptability, not any objective risk analysis.

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

#454

Post by indymike »

bluejekyll wrote: post #406
DangitBobby wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> … and those driving around them take greater risks too Really? Data shows that a driver will subconsciously take stock of the fact that a cyclist is wearing a helmet and adjust their risk assessments accordingly? I find that incredibly difficult to believe.

This seems to be a good article on this: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/21/bike-he... “ In 2006 he attached a computer and an electronic distance gauge to his bike and recorded data from 2,500 drivers who overtook him on the roads. Half the time he wore a bike helmet and half the time he was bare-headed. The results showed motorists tended to pass him more closely when he had the helmet on, coming…

> “ In 2006 he attached a computer and an electronic distance gauge to his bike and recorded data from 2,500 drivers who overtook him on the roads. Half the time he wore a bike helmet and half the time he was bare-headed. The results showed motorists tended to pass him more closely when he had the helmet on, coming an average of 8.5 cm nearer.”

This study proves nothing about rider safety. What matters here is actual accidents, and most bike accidents do not even involve a car. The study only proves that motorists would pass about 4 inches closer to author of the study when he had a helmet on. Motorists were not frequently hitting the author.

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

#455

Post by DeWilde »

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…

The Dutch have separate lanes for bicycles and a lot bicycle traffic goes through areas where cars don't even go.

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

#456

Post by DangitBobby »

DangitBobby wrote: post #431
bluejekyll wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be a good article on this: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/21/bike-he... “ In 2006 he attached a computer and an electronic distance gauge to his bike and recorded data from 2,500 drivers who overtook him on the roads. Half the time he wore a bike helmet and half the time he was bare-headed. The results showed motorists tended to pass him more closely when he had the helmet on, coming…

Well, this explaination at least makes some sense to me > Walker said he believed this was likely to be connected to cycling being relatively rare in the UK, and drivers thus forming preconceived ideas about cyclists based on what they wore. “This may lead drivers to believe cyclists with helmets are more serious, experienced and predictable than those without,” he wrote. The article also mentions this risk-taking st…

I sought out that study [1]. They seemed to control for anxiety levels in the participants, so the results are still interesting. However, they also refer to some prior art:

> Our findings initially appear different from those of some other studies. Fyhri and Phillips (2013; Phillips et al., 2011) found that risk taking in downhill bicycling, measured through riding speed, did not simply increase when a helmet was worn; rather, the people who normally cycled with a helmet took fewer risks when riding without one. Why did the participants in Fyhri and Phillips’s study who were not habitual helmet users not react to wearing a helmet with increased risk taking, as our experiment might suggest they would? Clearly more work is needed to definitively pin down all the mechanisms here, but for now, we speculate that the difference might be related to considerable variations between the two studies’ procedures. Fyhri and Phillips greatly emphasized the physicality of their task (“to increase the difference in measures between the helmet-on and -off conditions, all participants were instructed to cycle using one-hand in both conditions”; p. 60), which provides a direct link between the action (bicycling) and the condition (helmet wearing) that was absent in our study. Moreover, that study used a repeated measures design, in which participants were aware they were riding a bicycle both with and without a helmet. This could have meant that behavior changed through mechanisms different from those seen here, where participants took part only in one condition and were not aware of any manipulation, nor even that they were specifically wearing a safety device.

So, in the past other studies have concluded that when the helmet has an _actual_ potential impact on safety, they do not induce greater risk-taking behavior. This fits right in with my personal experience, where I don't even consider that fact that I'm wearing my helmet during a ride.

1. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976156207...

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

#458

Post by threeseed »

tboughen wrote: post #447
op00to wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it’s true that drivers are more aggressive towards helmet wearers Citation, please? > can't think of an accident where a helmet would help when I'm on the cargo bike. Right hook.

“cyclists were given 8.5cm (3.3 inches) more clearance by cars if they were not wearing helmets.” https://helmets.org/walkerstudy.htm

You know that the article you posted was about refuting this claim:

"After re-analysis of Walker's data, helmet wearing is not associated with close motor vehicle passing"

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

#459

Post by zasdffaa »

rollcat wrote: post #359
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…

Background: I do downhill longboarding as a hobby. > If some riders choose to not wear a helmet [...] ...we take their board from them, until they show up with one. This sport is almost completely unregulated (outside of official events), but somehow the community has developed an incredibly strong culture of keeping both yourself and the others around you safe. I guess something about being a niche sport, perhaps a…

> ...we take their board from them, until they show up with one.

Reminds me of a blessedly terse reminder on the entry to a building site: "No hat no boots no job"

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

#460

Post by capableweb »

dharmab wrote: post #412
rollcat wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Background: I do downhill longboarding as a hobby. > If some riders choose to not wear a helmet [...] ...we take their board from them, until they show up with one. This sport is almost completely unregulated (outside of official events), but somehow the community has developed an incredibly strong culture of keeping both yourself and the others around you safe. I guess something about being a niche sport, perhaps a…

I'm sure one serious injury can ruin an entire day for everyone at an event. It makes sense that the community would expect consideration from boarders of the consequences on an accident on others.

I'm sure some think like that too, but people are also selfless enough to want others to be safe, no matter if it ruins the event for them or not.
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