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 helmet, that may be fine, but prohibiting helmets is irresponsible. Riders have a much higher cumulative risk of accidents that are not their fault than customers. It's a workplace safety issue.
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 bit of natural selection.
If e.g. a sponsor (hypothetically - I'm nowhere near good enough to get sponsorship) told me not to wear any particular piece of safety gear, I'd laugh them out of the room, and likely the entire local crew would join in the laughing. It's a small sport, once the word gets out, that company would also likely no longer be getting many sales either.
The only correct move for the Pedal Me riders is to go pedal for someone else.
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 itâs not like they didnât need it either. They were getting wrecked in falls to the point where some of the couldnât even finish the competition.
It was nuts watching it, since my last exposure to the sport was from the 90s where Tony Hawk would be padded out to the nines while standing around giving an interview by the side of the park.
What is going on that made helmets so uncool that you wouldnât even wear one if you knew you were going to fall on your head?
You wouldnât generally exceed 15mph street skating. Competent downhill skaters can reach 50mph+, with world record speeds exceeding 80mph.
That alone makes safety gear much more essential for downhill.
In addition, if someone shows up to a spot without adequate gear, crashes and badly hurts themselves, it can cause the spot to be blown for other riders. Downhill skateboarding is much easier when youâre on the good side of local residents and police.
Also, since DH communities tend to be very small and tight-knit, if someone gets hurt you hear about it. Iâve personally witnessed multiple incidents leading to broken spines, countless minor injuries, and have had one friend die while skating. Either you take safety seriously or pay the piper.
There are more factors than this, would probably make for an interesting sociology dissertation.
> What do you suppose happened to the rest of skateboarding that pushed it in the opposite direction?
Widdershin's response is excellent, but I'll add a bit more context: the physical similarities between a skateboard and a longboard are very superficial (we can barely trade any hardware at all); that extends to the respective communities, which also have disjoint histories.
Longboarders trace their roots to surfers; likely someone bored of waiting for a good wave has put skateboard trucks on their surfboard. Some niche longboarding cultures/disciplines were inspired by surfing/SUP (surfskate, pumptrack, land paddle), and one major longboarding discipline is a lot about moving on and around the board ("dancing" on it).
In these other longboarding communities (perhaps except pumptrack), you will see people using helmets and other safety gear much less often, and it's probably fair. But I've never, ever been dissed by any of these people for wearing a helmet, even if just cruising.
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
Protective gear was always uncool in street skateboarding. Vert (Tony Hawk's main discipline) was the exception. From what I understand it's about being counterculture, punk etc. Today even bowl riders mostly don't wear helmets or pads, and crashing in a concrete bowl is arguably even worse than on a wooden ramp.
I''m not defending Pedal Me but you could try to design the city so biking is safer
https://www.treehugger.com/why-dutch-dont-wear-helmets-48581...
Sure you can still get in an accident. That's true of everything though. I don't go for a walk in a plastic bubble just in case a car hits me
https://www.google.com/search?q=cars+hitting+pedestrians&tbm...
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.
Even well-maintained streets can get potholes, especially after huge weather swings. I once hit a pothole while biking and somersaulted over the handlebars. I landed on my back, but a slightly smaller rotation would have me in the hospital, or worse.
Design won't do anything for the millions of ignorati that are handed drivers licenses without demonstrating driving competence.
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 longboarding with a helmet is risky steal your board?
> 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.
Unregulated sports like this are a delicate thing. Itâs up to the participants to self regulate and avoid catching the public eye so they donât lose access to the areas they get to enjoy. This is a huge thing in FAR 103 sports (ultralight flying). Unregulated doesnât mean âdo whatever you wantâ it means âweâve given you some leeway here donât mess it upâ.
In this example, If people start getting hurt on a hill - sooner or later using that hill gets banned.
> 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?
I always find takes like this a little weird. This is something we do all the time in society. Seat belt laws. Bicycle and motorcycle helmet laws. All sorts of safety regulations and laws around sports, transportation, health, etc.
We as a society often decide to "protect people from themselves". Some of it is out of an understanding that humans are notoriously bad at risk assessment and will do unsafe things. Sure, that's a bit paternalistic, but... that's life. But some of it is also because severe injury and death don't just hurt the person injured or killed. The emotional toll of those effects are felt widely. The economic effects are felt widely too.
Certainly there are lines to be drawn, and there's plenty of reasonable debate as to where those lines should be drawn. Some possible safety measures might be very difficult, burdensome, or expensive; sometimes in those cases we can't require things like those without causing other types of harm. But others... not so much.
> Why is it okay for you to set the acceptable risk bar and steal boards from anyone that doesn't agree?
Because it's not just about the individual in question. It's about the entire community. The community of longboarders don't want severe injury and death on their hands, so they develop social norms that include requiring helmets. That's entirely within their right to do so, as it is their right to ostracize those who do not conform. (For the record, I think "steal their boards" was hyperbole. I doubt people's boards actually get taken. I expect it's more likely that they get shunned and ejected from the community.)
> Should people that think that downhill longboarding with a helmet is risky steal your board?
If the community consensus is there, then maybe that's reasonable. (In the "eject from community" sense, that is, not necessarily the literal "steal their board" sense.)
Certainly all of these sorts of decisions should be based on research as to what actually makes people safer. Humans are imperfect and don't always follow the science, but the hope is that, on a long enough time scale, with enough people weighing in, we'll get it right most of the time.
> Why is it okay for you to set the acceptable risk bar and steal boards from anyone that doesn't agree?
If it is a group activity the group sets the acceptable behaviour. Don't like it? Demand your board back and go play with another group, rather than expecting this group to accept your risk assessment which doesn't agree with their's.
This is especially true if the group is in any way more formal than a bunch of people arbitrarily meeting up.
Somewhat unrelated but in car culture aftermarket safety gear like roll cages, bucket seats, racing harnesses, HANS and helmets are seen as cool and badass. It's a good sight.
Though there are some problems, like if you start running the race safety gear, you need to go all out--you can't have a bucket seat and a race harness without also using a helmet and HANS, your head is vulnerable, and if you run a roll cage without a helmet your head is vulnerable. But in race events a lot of people run "cool" safety gear and people have a good attitude towards it.
I had a near miss like this that really scared me in Vancouver. I was going straight, and the light went yellow just before I got to the intersection. Thinking like a car, I speed up to clear the intersection before the red light. An oncoming car in the left lane also sped up to make a left turn. I don't remember if he indicated, certainly I didn't see it. We both slammed on the brakes and narrowly missed each other. He honked at me and was pissed. I was too scared and shaken for a while to realize I had the right of way. My next realization was that it doesn't matter if I have the right of way and am dead. Since then I always look carefully for left turners, even if they're not indicating, and I stop for yellow lights whenever possible (which to be fair, is what one is supposed to do.) Cycling on roads with cars is dangerous, even when there is a dedicated bike lane.
> Cycling on roads with cars is dangerous, even when there is a dedicated bike lane.
Don't trust the motor vehicles to keep you safe. That's your job.
That's so sad, it breaks me up just reading it. Much strength to you and your sister.
One thing I've noticed is that it doesn't really matter whether cars indicate or not, you should just treat them as hostile whether they are going to intersect with you or whether it seems like they won't.
That's horrible, my heart goes out to your sister and your family.
I'm so sorry for your family's loss.
A painted bicycle gutter is not dedication, it's lack of dedication from your local government.
Vancouver left turns are wild. Thereâs almost never a turn lane or turn signal.
When I first moved there I didnât realize that a yellow was treated as if left turners now owned the intersection. Had a few close calls when I would go straight on a yellow while left turners were trying to turn.
> My next realization was that it doesn't matter if I have the right of way and am dead.
For precisely this reason, whenever I'm teaching aircraft right-of-way I always emphasize that you do not want to be "dead right."
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.
I had a cycling accident where I misjudged how tight a corner was, ran off the path, high sided and head planted into a tree. I wasn't going fast, maybe 10mph, but clearly too fast for the corner. First injury in over 15 years of cycling. Nobody else involved, indeed, nobody else in earshot, let alone cars.
My friend was cycling up a hill on a cycle route and his handlebars fell apart. Not sure why, think it was metal fatigue - they split down the fork. He woke up on the floor with his helmet in tens of pieces and with no idea what happened.
Things can just go wrong quickly on two wheels, and the outcome is often smashing your head on something.
> itâs 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.
There's this Ian Walker study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...
It's a small sample size, so take with a pinch of salt.
You can largely avoid right hooks by riding in the primary position/take the general purpose lane by default rather than riding towards the edge or in the bike lane.
âcyclists were given 8.5cm (3.3 inches) more clearance by cars if they were not wearing helmets.â
The distance from your head to the ground on a bike is sufficient to cause serious injury of you just fall off. Your individual risk is very low, because you don't fall of bikes often. But multiplied across millions in the population, it starts to make a difference.
the same argument might work for walking, but none is suggesting to have helmets while walking
It concerns me that there's so many stories of bike helmets cracking in two and allegedly having saved someone's life. Bike helmets are designed to compress under impact and as such, they are very weak under tension, so when you see a helmet split into two, it indicates that it wasn't working as designed. Compressed polystyrene in the helmet would indicate that it was doing its job.
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 next level if you want more protection. The polystyrene one is not supposed to be the end all of protection, just to be better than nothing with minimal inconvenience.
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 commuters. It's telling that countries where bike helmets were mandated had a sharp downturn in the numbers of cyclists.
> 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.
Nope. As a cyclist, I've seen numerous people in social media groups, friends, etc post pictures of their helmets that "saved their lives." Every single time, it's cracked to pieces, with no visible denting to the polystyrene foam.
Deformation of that foam is how a helmet absorbs impact force, and cracking apart is a failure of the helmet.
Bike helmets in the US are required to pass one test - a weight being dropped directly on top of the helmet that simulates a detached adult male head falling onto the ground from about the height of an average adult male. The test makes absolutely no sense, because the whole thing is a sham.
Motorcycle helmets are typically also polystyrene, although with multiple densities for handling both light and heavy impacts.
Motorcycle helmets also have degrees of protection, from the useless DOT standard to the less bad Snell standards to the quite good ECE and FIM standards.
I have worn a bike helmet without fail starting in the early 80s. I have always understood that they are disposable after any hard hit. Visible or not, polystyrene compresses, cracks, crumbles, etc. The shell or skin of the helmet never seemed to matter much, so whether it splits or shreds, doesn't matter. Maybe I'll have a look for a source on this.
Yeah, it's a crumble zone that might add a few precious millimeters to the very short deceleration path of the brain if limbs and reflexes fail to do that job completely. Disintegration means that it's doing its job.
That's a completely different story from the primary task of the helmets for rock climbers, construction workers or soldiers, which is distributing a small, concentrated impact (a rock or a dropped tool or random debris) to a wider area.
Well, when I was hit by a car and hitting the asphalt head first as a teenager, I found it adequate, that the helmet was cracked to pieces afterward. Did it save my life? I don't know, but with the helmet I only had a light concussion (and broken leg) compared to very possible skull crack.
Compressed polystyrene I know only from light accidents, but it has been a while and I suppose todays helmets are a bit more durable. (But luckily never had to find out, if they fare better nowdays. Also I learned to fall and only rarely wear a helmet nowdays)
Could be both? Usually it is the outer shell that is cracked and described as split. I could see that happening more on the road style helmets, due to their shapes.
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.
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 then lead to safer driving by the affected drivers, thereby actually reducing driving fatalities.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Tullock#Tullock's_spike
It's a good thought experiment but assumes that everyone has the same ability to assess risk, which isn't true. Not only does the ability to correctly assess risk vary greatly between individuals, it varies greatly over the lifetime of an individual and sometimes even over the course of a day for the same individual.
>but assumes that everyone has the same ability to assess risk
It does not make, nor need, that assumption. If only a few people drove better from understanding increased risk, then that may be enough to lower bad outcome rates.
Why did you claim Tullock "assumes that everyone has the same ability to assess risk"? I can find no such reference or claim online - except yours. Have some info about it?
It has the effect of stopping the driving of those with poor risk assessment and judgement too though.
So the takeaway here is that some people should not be issued drivers licenses.
Well now we go down a rabbit hole of a complex social problem. People don't drive just to joyride. They so because many areas are zoned into car dependency. When faced with no legal way to drive:
(1) Keep driving anyway without a license or with a suspended license.
(2) Use public transit that takes two or three hours one way. When the bus is late again one day they get fired possibly setting off a downward spiral and that's another person on public assistance.
(3) Vote for politicians who allow ridiculous policies like Arizona's lifetime driver licenses.
That's certainly the case for people with eyesight problems and conditions such as epilepsy.
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.
That's really not the point. The thought experiment doesn't consider the safety, and far less the convenience (did you call this "effectiveness"?), of drivers. Rather, it examines the safety of all those who suffer the presence of drivers: pedestrians, cyclists, road workers, wild animals, unleashed dogs, etc.
Of course it's not the point! The problem with the thought experiment is that it misses the point!
Getting from point A to point B faster is more than an incidental convenience to a driver, it is the primary goal of having a car and driving it!
Risk compensation or risk homeostasis is one of those hypothesis that sound good to economists and the moralizing class, but has never been proven.
https://slate.com/technology/2021/11/risk-compensation-debun...
https://www.mdpi.com/2313-576X/2/3/16/htm
Edit: added another reference
Can't that be seen as an argument against seatbelts and airbags as well?
Not really, because people perceive the threat differently. A spike in the steering wheel is very obviously extremely dangerous. Not having a functioning airbag is invisible. If you are trying to change people's behavior, the perception of risk is more important than the actual statistical risk.
People will get used to that spike. People get used to a lot of dangerous and scary things. Going faster than walking speed and operating heavy machinery is dangerous and scary if you are not used to it, and yet, people do it every day without a giving second thought.
People will need constant reminders that that spike is dangerous, like seeing people they know die from it. So it is essentially advocating that in order to make less people die from car accidents, we have to make more people die from car accidents, which make no sense.
Protective equipment, and the absence of spikes on the steering wheel work. For example, machine tools today are much safer than they once where, resulting in much less workplace accidents. By the Tullock's spike standards, removing the cover between you and that blade loudly spinning at high speed should improve safety by making people more careful, it doesn't, and there are few more obvious threats than that.
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.com/culture/cycling/5-reasons-why-the-du...
This completely misses the forest for the trees and misattributes causality. The Dutch don't wear helmets because the traffic culture and infrastructure are completely different, not because of some questionable statistic no one has heard of. In the Netherlands you feel safe as a cyclist. Drivers look out for you because they're also all cyclists at other times. Cycling is so prevalent that it's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't experienced it.
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 details.
My opinion on this might also be heavily and incorrectly influenced by popular media sprinkled with a few factual statistics that reinforce the bias.
Arenât the at fault vehicular manslaughter laws in the US the same for drivers who hit cars, cyclists, and pedestrians? If you kill a cyclist in the US and youâre at fault, thatâs likely jail time (same for hitting a car or pedestrian).
Whatâs missing in US laws vs Netherlands?
The "must wear helmets" advocacy is never focused on conditions or nuanced ideas about when it is OK not to wear helmets.
Instead, it is focused on make people feel as afraid of biking as possible. Literally all these debates are focused on making people afraid no matter of what conditions, speed. Whether you go mountain bike competition or whether you are 50 years old manager slowly commuting in skirt and business hairstyle.
I roughly agree with you but this hypothesis would suggest:
- more helmet wearing in less cycling-friendly cities like Rotterdam which, IIRC, is an example of such a place in the Netherlands
- more helmet wearing (in the sense that the ratio between Dutch helmet wearing and helmet wearing in other Western European countries is higher) at points in the past when bicycle infrastructure was less protected. Though this is confounded by lots of things.
To me, that seems like a clear difference in infrastructure. If a biker shares a stretch of asphalt with a car, that's a risk for the biker and they need a helmet. In the Netherlands, this is widely understood and bikes get their own infrastructure everywhere. Only then you don't need helmets anymore at all.
while there is a lot, bikes do not get their own infrastructure everywhere. most likely the street you live on has no bike path. many city streets have bike lanes but not separated from the road
i bet the more useful metrics are length of trip, average speed of the cars around you, and if you need to cross stop signs/intersections. dutch bike trips are often very short and the speed limits are low. you do not share the road with 35mph+ traffic as is common in america. intersections are the place where people get hurt on bikes the most and itâs more likely in american biking you will cross them. this one is where the separate infrastructure really comes in to play
One flaw in this logic: helmets don't protect against cars ÂŻ\_(ă)_/ÂŻ
Maybe not if a car hits you head on, but if a car cuts you off or clips one of your wheels a helmet will be useful.
They don't protect from the part where the car directly hits the rest of your body straight on, or the bike itself. Every single part that happens immediately after that - such as the fall, flying through the air, or what have you, the parts that always come afterwards - is where the helmet can provide life-saving protection.
You swerve to miss a car, dog, obstacle, person and take a spillâŚ
You T-bone a car.
It helps.
There is a HUGE difference between NOT REQUIRING helmets and PROHIBITING helmets.
The Netherlands probably also have some of the safest roads for cyclists.
Nonetheless I recommend to always wear gloves when riding a bike. They weigh nothing, fit in every bag/pocket and if you ever crash you'll be glad you wore them. Hands are very likely to get injured in an accident and it's not fun to not use them for a couple of days.
This is a pedicab service. A cynic would assume that Pedal Me is mandating this (and thus putting their drivers at risk) because passengers are more nervous about taking a service where the driver wears a helmet and they do not.
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 donât 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.
So why not do the reasonable thing and provide passengers with helmets, like they do with motorbike taxi?
Lice
It is a consideration, but there are solutions, like disposable caps. There are also sanitizing sprays. It wouldn't be the first time people share helmets.
Also, the idea is to offer an option. Not to make it mandatory unless legislation require it. If your passengers are more comfortable not wearing them, their choice.
It makes the activity look dangerous. I do perceive motorbike taxi as more dangerous then, say, car.
It should not be a reasonable basis for denying their employees right to wear PPE.
Who decided that was reasonable? I certainly did not.
You dont think its reasonable to offer passengers the option to wear a helmet?
I suppose it's also not reasonable to provide seatbelts to passengers as well as the driver of a taxi?
The obvious solution is to require passengers to wear helmets, as well as the drivers. But this brings us to the core of the endless helmet debate, which is that lots of people are deeply repulsed by wearing a goofy ass helmet and getting nasty helmet hair while out on the town. And the data shows that if you require helmets, lots of people stop cycling â in this case, people would stop using bike taxis.
Correct, and publicly banning helmets is a publicity move (see: weâre talking about the company).
Note, these are not normal bikes. From the article:
> 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.
Made me curious what they actually look like[0].
Seeing that, Iâd tend to reset my presumptions about wearing helmets with these. Thereâs definitely going to be a different injury profile with these bikes than the bikes you rode as a kid. Without seeing those injury profiles Iâd probably say you canât really deduce anything from this announcement.
[0] https://www.positive.news/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pedal-M...
This assumes that it's completely impossible to not hit your head when you fall on your side. Which is blatantly not true. This isn't a three-wheeler bike which is much harder to tip over. It's just a two wheeler that's longer. I can attest from personal experience that if you fall sideways, chances are you'll crack the side of your skull open. I got into a bike accident where someone T-boned me and if I hadn't had the helmet on, at the very least I'd have a concussion
The idea that you don't need to wear a helmet cause you won't fall over the handlebars is nonsense
You have my sympathy for your accident, but you can't very well "attest from personal experience" and then describe a hypothetical that didn't occur.
Have you ever had a concussion?
helmets? but then how will you see the rider's little hat?
> A major cause of head injuries is going over the handlebars, which is not possible with a 3 metre long bike.
Disregards that going over the handlebars happens in case if frontal collision, which can definitely happen with a 15m bike. Would you hurt your head? Who knows, because they're not looking at that statistics.
> makes us unique is our training systems, maintenance systems, and ability to track poor rider behaviour
Victim blaming. Assumes that accidents can be prevented by having a safer behaviour. They're lowered, sure, but anecdotally in all the bike accidents of people I know, the car involved did something stupid, and there's no prevention from that, whatever you train people for, short of not going on the road, they're at the mercy of people driving 2 tons of steel whilst texting. Multiply by the extended time they spend out, and it becomes statistics
It's irrelevant how much data and training they have. Accidents happen and an accident with a car and no helmet is a bad time.
I'd like to wear helmet as a passenger as well as a driver on such bike. The helmet doesn't add almost any inconvenience, is reasonably cheap and light. Why not wear it?
I use shared bikes one-way quite often and I usually carry my helmet around, strapped to a backpack. In colder weather I would cycle in a business shirt. No issue with a helmet.
>Why not wear it?
The argument that is mentioned in the article -- "increasing helmet wearing rates make cycling more dangerous per mile... 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."
Is it that drivers wearing helmets take greater risks, or that drivers in more risky settings opt more often to wear helmets? Who can tell?
> Why not wear it?
Car drivers often get head and brain injuries if they are involved in a collision with another car or with a tree/building. Do you wear a helmet when you drive? The helmet doesn't add almost any inconvenience, is reasonably cheap and light, as you say.
Unless you're on a racetrack or driving a test vehicle, probably not.
For the record, I do wear a helmet on a racetrack in a car. :-) It adds major inconvenience, but the general risk on a racetrack is greater because you're pushing the vehicle to its limits.
The risk/inconvenience ratio seems OK for me when driving a car without a helmet but not for biking without a helmet. I'm not advocating for mandatory helmets. But I would feel very uncomfortable if they would be banned.
I think most people will disagree with you on how big of an inconvenience a helmet is. At least I will.
In Europe most people didn't even wear helmets when they went skiing (on-piste) until a few years ago. Now pretty much everyone does, but it's one more thing you'll carry with you everywhere you go. And on warm days I sometimes have to take my helmet off in the gondola because it gets very warm.
Okay, true story. Years ago I struggled with this exact logic regarding skiing with helmet. After serious consideration I decided to start skiing so carefully that I do not need a helmet. As you may guess at this point, The very first day I left my helmet home, I got into an accident and got a skull fracture.
I started using my helmet again after that.
(But another safety related thing I have started to really doubt. Skiing alone is supposed to be risky. I do ski alone, quite a lot actually. I have gotten into my share of accidents of various seriousness. And not a single of them has been when I have been alone.)
I have the exact opposite experience.
My first time ever wearing a helmet on the slopes I slammed head-first into a tree. Got up, laughed it off, and rode away. Better lucky than good.
My old boss was an experienced skier on an organised cross country ski tour and got killed by an avalanche. It was in a low avalanche risk area with no avalanches forecast, and he was wearing all safety equipment, including one of those balloons. Medical help was almost immediate and nobody else on the tour was seriously injured.
Sometimes the universe just wants you dead.
The fact is that experienced back country skiers are more likely to die in an avalanche.
Part of this is complacency, but honestly most of it is just probability. The more you do something, the more chances you have for just the wrong combination of factors to happen.
I suspect skiing was invented to cull the clumsy (and the simply unlucky) from the ranks of the rich.
There was already Polo for that.
Well, you would need something when it's too cold for polo.
I had this exact talk with my rich buddy in high school once 15 years ago :) . He was heading for a ski trip that my family couldn't have afforded in my wildest dreams.
I have a ski helmet at home with a big crack in it. My daughter was wearing it. She's a cautious skier with a lot of training.
End of 2020 I had a serious bike accident. I was specifically riding slowly and carefully because I did not want to fall and end up in hospital - in the middle of the second wave in SA and a shortage of hospital space. Even so, I had the most ridiculous and embarrassing crash, whilst hardly moving, and ended up in the ER. I was wearing a helmet and I still got a concussion. My helmet was broken and certainly saved me from a much more serious head injury. Additionally, the peak on the front managed to prevent my nose from smashing into the ground too (it was a weird angle). I would never cycle without a helmet ever.
Yeah, not sure how more careful a rider you can be when you have your own toddler in a child-seat behind you â and yet my bike went down on an unexpectedly slick part of the pavement. I had a helmet on, as did my toddler.
I don't buy the argument that because someone has a helmet on they're intentionally (or even subconsciously) reckless. Shit can happen.
> Yeah, not sure how more careful a rider you can be when you have your own toddler in a child-seat behind you â and yet my bike went down on an unexpectedly slick part of the pavement. I had a helmet on, as did my toddler.
How does one safely transport a toddler? I am not asking incredulously, but curiously. I am an experienced cyclist; I don't know if I'd feel safe doing it, but I haven't looked into it either. Maybe a helmet is sufficient? And cars aren't perfectly safe either.
The carrier (bike seat) I had for her had a kind of "roll cage" (more like a frame) around the perimeter such that if the bike went down on one side or the other, she would not be grinding against the pavement. Plus helmet.
Safe? Well, as you say, nothing is truly safe. But I stuck to back roads and probably never exceeded 15 MPH. We would ride to the local park where she could play in the sand for a bit before we rode home again.
Reminds me of when I first learned that most snowboarding injuries are at low speed or standing still and slipping. Not sure if it's true, but could be. Slipped on ice a few times - my tail bone didn't appreciate it.
"riders wearing helmets take greater risks"
That's why I've glued 3-inch shards of broken glass to my steering wheel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Tullock#Tullock's_spike (I think this was mentioned earlier but I can't find the comment, so I'll just link it again)
I seem to remember old Camaros had this super pointy dashboard that seemed unnecessarily dangerous.
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