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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

#621

Post by edmcnulty101 »

anonymousab wrote: post #288
edmcnulty101 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hypocritical of you to not be wearing full body chain mail to protect yourself from bullets and stabbings. There's more gunshots and stabbings than people injuring their head on bicycles. You can buy a suit of chainmail for the same price as a modern bicycle. Its minimal cost.

> It's hypocritical of you to not be wearing full body chain mail to protect yourself from bullets and stabbings. In most countries, the risk of shootings or stabbings are orders of magnitude lower than having a fall or accident on a bike on the road with other types of vehicles. In certain parts of the US, though? Yeah, wearing body armor would probably be a good idea. I think people just generally try to avoid goin…

I bet if you looked up just about any region in the world shootings and stabbings have been way more frequently than bicycle head injuries.

to be absolutely safe you should wear both full body chainmail and a bicycle helmet.

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

#622

Post by Kim_Bruning »

grumple wrote: post #240
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically you are correct that wearing a helmet does reduce risk of head injury somewhat. However -when infrastructure for cycling is already very safe- you start seeing all sorts of strange statistical effects; and it is not immediately obvious that helmets are a net benefit. As an example of one of the more funny&misleading statistics: People who wear bicycle helmets in the Netherlands actually end up in hospital…

There's a couple takeaways from the first article. The cyclists with helmets are the serious ones riding for sport. I'd also guess commuters who are going long distances wear helmets. These cyclists are putting in far more miles than unhelmeted cyclists. I see the same thing in my city; very casual bikers don't wear helmets. Commuters and sport cyclists do. And those groups are putting in the most miles by far. If ze…

You've got the gist of it. I'm trying to point out how .nl statistics come out funny because the infrastructure has been made so safe.

Commuters actually make up the majority of cyclists in the Netherlands, there are a lot of them (cycle commuting is heavily encouraged for all kinds of people at all ages), and they don't wear helmets. Despite the large number of commuters on bicycles, commuting is (apparently) so safe that the commuters are heavily outnumbered by the sports cyclists in the hospital statistics.

It is still a somewhat misleading measure of course. You probably should not conclude that wearing a helmet is highly unsafe. ;-)

And... that's the point I'm making. Take measures from the Netherlands with a few grains of salt, because the situation is atypical. On the one hand it's really cool that it's atypical, but then you do need to watch out. The numbers don't line up with the intuition of someone from a typical cars-are-more-important-than-safety country at all; so it's easy to make funny assumptions and draw wrong conclusions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD-uImSUlPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAKMNr0P5r4 <- or eg here on dedicated paths, Nieuwegein. A lot of school children at that particular point in time by the look of it.

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

#623

Post by ghaff »

usrusr wrote: post #531
msrenee wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's almost ten years for me and the last thing I remember was a landslide shift from "hardly anybody" to "almost everybody" within only a few seasons (Austrian alps). Never read any triumphant reports about how this has saved ten thousands of lives though, so I suspect that numbers aren't that impressive.

Though I do very little downhill skiing these days, they're extremely common at US ski areas now whereas they used to be almost unheard of except for racers. (I don't wear one but I do wear a hat that has ribs of deformable material.)

I don't remember a big campaign or anything but probably some combination of snowboarders normalizing, it becoming seen as negligent not to make kids wear them, and probably a general increase in safety culture--especially among the sort of people who can afford to downhill ski.

There are only around 40 downhill skiing deaths in US annually--although the majority of those are brain injuries.

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

#624

Post by aeternum »

bad_alloc wrote: post #608
aeternum wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think it's a little hypocritical to force everyone to draw their acceptable risk line at exactly where you happen to draw it? Longboarding is risky, downhill longboarding is riskier, doing it without a helmet slightly moreso, doing it naked probably slightly moreso. Why is it okay for you to set the acceptable risk bar and steal boards from anyone that doesn't agree? Should people that think that downhill l…

> Why is it okay for you to set the acceptable risk bar and steal boards from anyone that doesn't agree? For the same reason we enforce seatbelts in cars: Enough people died. Then those who saw them die decided on these rules so we don't need to go through the same pain. The fact that you don't get this shows that the rules work.

The seatbelt thing is somewhat illogical. Like if that's the level of risk we deem acceptable for society then things like wingsuit diving and probably even motorcycles, longboarding and bicycling on city streets should also be illegal.

Especially if measured by any objective metric like fatality risk per passenger mile.

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

#625

Post by robbrown451 »

shrimpx wrote: post #587
searchableguy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what I think as well. This might lower risk for the customers because driver may take less risk without a helmet in some situation but the risk for driver is only increased. This is optimizing for customers at the cost of drivers. I don't see any supportive extensive research linked from them .

How is it optimizing for customers, when customers don’t wear helmets either?

Because the crashes are less likely when the driver is not wearing a helmet. This is sort of the point of the article.

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

#626

Post by watwut »

calibas wrote: post #554
watwut wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes accidents happen to innocent people.

But no. If your driving style is such that you feel the need of seatbelt or helmet, then it is too aggressive. Otherwise said, if your biking story is "helmet saved my life 5 times" then your crash rate is super high and the common determinant is you.

Likewise, safe driving style never ends with anyone saying "I am so glad I has seatbelts". It ends with people unbuckling without thinking about seatbelts at all.

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

#627

Post by thayne »

bad_alloc wrote: post #608
aeternum wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think it's a little hypocritical to force everyone to draw their acceptable risk line at exactly where you happen to draw it? Longboarding is risky, downhill longboarding is riskier, doing it without a helmet slightly moreso, doing it naked probably slightly moreso. Why is it okay for you to set the acceptable risk bar and steal boards from anyone that doesn't agree? Should people that think that downhill l…

> Why is it okay for you to set the acceptable risk bar and steal boards from anyone that doesn't agree? For the same reason we enforce seatbelts in cars: Enough people died. Then those who saw them die decided on these rules so we don't need to go through the same pain. The fact that you don't get this shows that the rules work.

Interesting you should bring that up. That was used as an example of unintended side effects of policy in my economics class, because when people started wearing seat belts, they drove faster and more recklessly, so while the seatbelts protected people inside the cars, the number of pedestrians hit by cars went up.

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation

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

#628

Post by MrBump_ »

prepend wrote: post #307
isitmadeofglass wrote: post #53

The first person fired for wearing a helmet is going to be so damn lucky. That settlement money will end up being equivalent of several lifetimes with of work. There is absolutely no way that their logic holds up in court.

Almost everywhere in the US is at will so there’s likely no successful lawsuit in the situation you describe. Sadly, it’s likely the first driver who dies without a helmet will result in their family filing a giant lawsuit. But that payout will be paid by insurance that is probably already factoring in the probability of such a payout.

Pedal Me is a British company. Not sure how the situation might differ there c.f. the USA.

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

#629

Post by petre »

_abox wrote: post #542
idiotsecant wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could have the best designed city in the world and you will still be at a high risk of your fragile brain case impacting the ground or something worse at speed. Whether you're pedaling down a country road or the busiest NYC intersection not wearing a helmet on a bike is stupid, full stop.

In the Netherlands we're doing fine without them though. Nobody wears one on a regular bike. I've had a few times where I slipped so fast I didn't even remember what happened but every time my arm was there protecting my head. Reflexes are awesome. Accidents can happen sure but the added hassle doesn't seem worth it. Of course things are different when you do high speed cycling or mountain biking.

In the Netherlands normal cycle commuters almost never exceed 15 km/h. But I keep watching some Dutch road cycling youtube channel and they all wear helmets.

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

#630

Post by Gravyness »

dawnerd wrote: post #336

I can’t real the article, the page keeps reloading itself but please please wear a helmet. It’s so incredibly irresponsible not to.

Here is a excerpt from the article titled "Pedal Me bans staff riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons" by Rebecca Morley (no idea who she is or how to find her on google/linkedin) on 08/02/2022 at https://bikebiz.com/pedal-me-bans-staff-riders-from-wearing-...:

> Pedal Me has explained the reasons why it has banned staff riders from wearing helmets.

> In a Twitter thread, the pedal-powered passenger and cargo service said people that are taking risks that are sufficient that they feel they need to wear helmets are 'not welcome to work for us' – because its vehicles are heavy and could cause harm, and because they carry small children on the bikes.

> Instead, it said it systematically works to reduce risk at the source– by thorough risk assessment, a high level of training, and near-miss reporting.

> “We know that increasing helmet wearing rates make cycling more dangerous per mile – although there are confounding factors here, this indicates that overall they do not provide a strong protective effect in the round – otherwise the opposite effect,” said the company. “Extensive reading of the literature suggests that this is because while helmets definitely help in the event of a crash, that risk compensation results in more collisions. So riders wearing helmets take greater risks, and those driving around them take greater risks too.

> “A major cause of head injuries is going over the handlebars, which is not possible with a 3 metre long bike. Another thing that makes us unique is our training systems, maintenance systems, and ability to track poor rider behaviour.”

> [photo of twitter thread, the official place where all important things are said and done]

> Pedal me: People that are taking risks that are sufficient that they feel they need to wear helmets are not welcome to work for us - because our vehicles are heavy and could cause harm, and because we carry small children on our bikes.

> Clive Andrews: That would indeed be interesting to know. Compulsion is a bad idea - in either direction. What's the score, @pedalmeapp?

Instead - we systematically work to reduce risk.(1/n)

> Pedal Me said it observes that companies that use helmets while wearing cargo bikes seem to be ‘much more likely’ to jump red lights and take greater risks. The company said the majority of injuries to its riders occur off the bike, which it knows because of its near miss and incident reporting, and that’s its focus for tackling danger.

Not sure if sharing articles here is against the rules, please let me know.

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