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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

#551

Post by schroeding »

Oof. Most bicycle accidents I was in were not caused by me, and you can only reduce the risk so much by defensive cycling.

Bicycle helmets are the kind of thing that you don't need 99,9% of the time, but you will die (or be reduced to a vegetable) if you don't have it in the few cases you do need it. While they should not be mandated, they also should not be banned, IMO.

Reads a bit like "We don't want our car drivers to use airbags, as the vehicles are heavy and dangerous and as such we require them to feel confident without such a safety device, so they don't drive recklessly", IMO.

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

#552

Post by niemandhier »

Is Pedal me going to pay if a cyclist is gravely injured without his own fault because he did not wear a helmet?

Risk compensation ( the reason they give for the decision ) is incredible hard to measure, since it involves causality. We suck at detecting causality in observational data. Basing a decision on ( most likely ) bad statistics is madness.

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

#553

Post by locallost »

PufPufPuf wrote: post #543
locallost wrote: post #539

196 points and 513 comments at the moment... obviously a very controversial topic. But would it be a very controversial topic if a taxi company announced the same thing, that taxi drivers should not wear helmets? Formula 1 drivers wear helmets, so maybe car drivers should too. People that insist on bike helmets because of their bad experience have as much to say to overall safety as people that got a head injury whil…

Cars have other safety mechanisms that provide the same safety as helmets, most notably seatbelts and airbags. A better comparison would be a taxi company asking drivers to drive without those.

Then why do so many people end up with head injuries after a car crash? Falling down, especially among the elderly, is another one of the top reasons.

Quote: "People most commonly get TBIs from a fall, firearm-related injury, motor vehicle crash, or an assault"

https://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/get_the_facts.html#...

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

#554

Post by calibas »

watwut wrote: post #502
calibas wrote: post #478

"If you're driving so dangerously that you feel the need to wear a seat belt, you shouldn't be driving a car."

That is actually true. If your driving style involves you feeling those seat belts or situations in which you think you might crash, the your driving style is too dangerous. Once in a few years close call? ok. Regularly feeling like you need seatbelts? You should not be driving and should take safety focused additional lessons.

It's not even remotely true for a car seat belt or a bike helmet. You can be extremely cautious, and still through no fault of your own have someone crash into you.

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

#555

Post by _proofs »

jasonkester wrote: post #475
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…

What do you suppose happened to the rest of skateboarding that pushed it in the opposite direction? Watching the olympics this summer, it was amazing to watch the street skating events with none of the competitors wearing any sort of protective gear. And it’s not like they didn’t need it either. They were getting wrecked in falls to the point where some of the couldn’t even finish the competition. It was nuts watchin…

short answer: branding

long answer: branding

anecdotally, am a daily skateboarder and long time snowboarder who is guilty of having an ego, and even wear pads to protect a couple massive contusions (swellbos) but i never wear a helmet, so ill frame it like this: 95% of the time i am not that much at risk for serious head injury when skating, and even though i take it for granted, there is an element of knowing how to fall/bail early and skating just within my means.

however on a snowboard, i am much more acutely aware of the consequence -- my casual and super comfort "resting" level is like 25-35+ mph, which is a car accident, which is almost always a threat for serious head injury.

there is a huge difference between tripping at about walking/jogging speed and hitting your head versus at 35mph, and this realization happened after 15 winters of safe riding without a helmet.

the reality is, i am just not that worried about it -- ego or no ego, except when i snowboard, which i will not do without a helmet anymore.

./shrug

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

#556

Post by KennyBlanken »

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…

> The cyclist was launched headfirst into the bumper of a car stopped at the light and her helmet loudly cracked in two

Bicycle helmets "work" by deformation of the hard polystyrene foam. If it cracked in two, it failed. If the foam did not deform, no energy was absorbed.

It is an extremely common misconception, especially among cyclists, that a cracked/disintegrated helmet "worked" and "saved their life."

Bicycle helmets crack and fall apart in many of these crashes because they're not designed to take anywhere near the typical forces involved in actual crash. They're only designed to "work" for a stationary fall from about the height of an average adult male, falling straight upside-down on top of their head.

> I'm sure she would have died without that helmet.

That's not how that works.

"I saw someone wearing a bunch of ring of flowers around their head and they got hit by a car. The flowers exploded in a poof of pedals. I'm sure she would have died without the ring of flowers around her head."

"I wear a ring of garlic around my neck. I haven't been attacked by vampires. Garlic repels vampires!"

Etc.

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

#557

Post by naniwaduni »

nayuki wrote: post #241

This is very much like: > The name "Tullock's spike" refers to a thought experiment in which Tullock suggested that if governments were serious about reducing road casualties, they should mandate that a sharp spike be installed in the center of each car's steering wheel, to increase the probability that an accident would be fatal to the driver. Tullock's idea was that the normal process of risk compensation would the…

Setting aside whether reverse risk compensation actually works (and it would be absolutely bizarre to have >100% risk compensation), Tullock's spike has the problem that it makes driving less effective, i.e. people get from point A to point B more slowly. If your policy goal is for people to drive less then sure. If your goal is for people to be safer in the course of achieving their actual objective of getting from point A to point B, though, the policy is spectacularly bad.

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

#558

Post by hgomersall »

threeseed wrote: post #508
bluejekyll wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cycling is only risky due to the shared infrastructure with cars. The thing that raises the risk is cars. We should all be demanding that our streets are made safe for all users. We already have sidewalks in many places for this reason, we just need to extend similar safe infrastructure to bicycles and other road users too. Just throwing your hands up and not asking for change is a sure way to not improve things.

> We should all be demanding that our streets are made safe for all users We should also be demanding that there is no crime as well. But outside of this fantasy land you need to accept that cyclists will be interacting with cars at multiple points in their journey from A to B. There are just too many practical issues building an entirely seperate cycling network. So until this magical day cycling should be considere…

There are many cities that manage to make cyclists feel completely safe from cars. Nothing magical, just consistent policy and good design standards.

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

#559

Post by KennyBlanken »

threeseed wrote: post #458
tboughen wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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"

As discussed above: the "re-analysis" took an analog measurement, filtered it into a binary "close" or "not close" at an arbitrary distance threshold, and then patted themselves on the back when the found there was no difference.

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

#560

Post by blamazon »

ornornor wrote: post #503
ascar wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My experience in NA was that killing a pedestrian or a cyclist with your car is actually the easiest way to get away with murder. At worst you’ll get away with a 500$ fine, at best nothing. And “wooops didn’t see them, the sun was in my eyes” is a valid defense.

Some folks call it the SMIDSY defense - as in, " Sorry Mate I Didn't See You"
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