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Asking cyclist not to wear a helmet is like asking drivers not to wear a seatbelt. Yes, they are not needed if everyone follows all the safety rules. Yet acci

by tim58 7y ago

Asking cyclist not to wear a helmet is like asking drivers not to wear a seatbelt. Yes, they are not needed if everyone follows all the safety rules. Yet accidents still happen.

scarejunba 7y ago
Well, unlike a seat-belt, a helmet is easily stolen and needs to be kept track of by itself. This means that if the net effect of having to keep track of it is to cost you sufficiently that you choose a car or other sedentary mode of transit over a bike you may well lose more quality-adjusted life years. We shouldn't over-weight rare catastrophic events compared to common continuous damage events. In practice this means that I wear a helmet all the time in SF. But most of the time, I wouldn't wear one in Cambridge.
Carpetsmoker 7y ago
Except that the evidence is not clear that cycle helmets actually improve safety for adults (it is clear that it improves it for children), and cyclists will avoid cycling altogether if helmets are mandatory. Perhaps more importantly, cars carry safety risks for everyone. If I walk or cycle I am at risk of being run over by your car, my lungs get damaged due to the exhaust, the climate suffers.
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  How could helmets not improve safety for adults?
  - crispyporkbites 7y ago
    Because less people cycle, which makes cycling overall more dangerous for everyone.
  - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
    Turns out things are a bit more complex than "survival rate after being hit by a car at 40 km/h in the front": - Both cyclists and motorists tend to take slightly more risks when wearing helmets (cars give less distance when overtaking). - Mandatory helmets means fewer people cycle, so cars are less used to cyclists leading to more dangerous situations. It's been discussed many times on HN, and there is no clear-cut answer. Some research (I can't be bothered to find it all again, sorry) suggests it doesn't make a difference, other that it makes things slightly safer, and others that it makes it slightly less safe. On balance, it probably doesn't make much of a difference.
    - tim58 7y ago
      > Mandatory helmets Mandatory helmets is a separate thing. You're arguing against a policy none of the parent comments or the root article talks about. > Both cyclists and motorists tend to take slightly more risks when wearing helmets This whole article is about being an assertive bicyclist while not wearing a helmet. The author is encouraging people to not wear a helmet and bicycle less defensively than they typically do. The primary argument for this behavior is because it feels good.
      - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
        The original comment is comparing it to seatbelts, which are mandatory in many countries.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
u801e 7y ago
Yet, bicycle helmets aren't designed to protect one's head in anything other than a simple fall. In fact, the CPSC (Consumer Products Safety Commission) impact test standard only tests for a guided free fall from a height of about 6.5 feet. That's not sufficient to protect one in a crash with a motor vehicle. If seatbelts were only designed to protect in a frontal collision speed of 15 mph, then they won't provide any protection in a 45 mph crash.
- tim58 7y ago
  > CPSC (Consumer Products Safety Commission) impact test standard only tests for a guided free fall from a height of about 6.5 feet To be fair, not every bicyle helmet is designed to meet minimum safety standards.
Kim_Bruning 7y ago
I think this shows a difference between ways of thinking. A helmet helps to mitigate your injuries during a serious accident, but tacitly accepts that such serious accidents still happen. The Dutch government feels that serious accidents are not acceptable in the first place, and seeks to eliminate them (almost) entirely. There is more to it than merely safety rules. It's making separate roads for bicycles, making different intersections, taking care of tiny little details like the exact shape of the curb (to minimize damage and injury if hit). It's a systematic, integrated, systems thinking approach; backed by (in total) billions of Euros of infrastructure investment and research over several decades. It's not that a helmet doesn't give more protection (it does), it's just that for normal A-to-B cycling, one should make things so the helmet is no longer needed.

by tim58 7y ago

Asking cyclist not to wear a helmet is like asking drivers not to wear a seatbelt. Yes, they are not needed if everyone follows all the safety rules. Yet accidents still happen.

scarejunba 7y ago

Well, unlike a seat-belt, a helmet is easily stolen and needs to be kept track of by itself. This means that if the net effect of having to keep track of it is to cost you sufficiently that you choose a car or other sedentary mode of transit over a bike you may well lose more quality-adjusted life years. We shouldn't over-weight rare catastrophic events compared to common continuous damage events. In practice this means that I wear a helmet all the time in SF. But most of the time, I wouldn't wear one in Cambridge.

Carpetsmoker 7y ago

Except that the evidence is not clear that cycle helmets actually improve safety for adults (it is clear that it improves it for children), and cyclists will avoid cycling altogether if helmets are mandatory. Perhaps more importantly, cars carry safety risks for everyone. If I walk or cycle I am at risk of being run over by your car, my lungs get damaged due to the exhaust, the climate suffers.

oh_sigh 7y ago
How could helmets not improve safety for adults?
- crispyporkbites 7y ago
  Because less people cycle, which makes cycling overall more dangerous for everyone.
- Carpetsmoker 7y ago
  Turns out things are a bit more complex than "survival rate after being hit by a car at 40 km/h in the front": - Both cyclists and motorists tend to take slightly more risks when wearing helmets (cars give less distance when overtaking). - Mandatory helmets means fewer people cycle, so cars are less used to cyclists leading to more dangerous situations. It's been discussed many times on HN, and there is no clear-cut answer. Some research (I can't be bothered to find it all again, sorry) suggests it doesn't make a difference, other that it makes things slightly safer, and others that it makes it slightly less safe. On balance, it probably doesn't make much of a difference.
  - tim58 7y ago
    > Mandatory helmets Mandatory helmets is a separate thing. You're arguing against a policy none of the parent comments or the root article talks about. > Both cyclists and motorists tend to take slightly more risks when wearing helmets This whole article is about being an assertive bicyclist while not wearing a helmet. The author is encouraging people to not wear a helmet and bicycle less defensively than they typically do. The primary argument for this behavior is because it feels good.
    - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
      The original comment is comparing it to seatbelts, which are mandatory in many countries.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

u801e 7y ago

Yet, bicycle helmets aren't designed to protect one's head in anything other than a simple fall. In fact, the CPSC (Consumer Products Safety Commission) impact test standard only tests for a guided free fall from a height of about 6.5 feet. That's not sufficient to protect one in a crash with a motor vehicle. If seatbelts were only designed to protect in a frontal collision speed of 15 mph, then they won't provide any protection in a 45 mph crash.

tim58 7y ago
> CPSC (Consumer Products Safety Commission) impact test standard only tests for a guided free fall from a height of about 6.5 feet To be fair, not every bicyle helmet is designed to meet minimum safety standards.

Kim_Bruning 7y ago

I think this shows a difference between ways of thinking. A helmet helps to mitigate your injuries during a serious accident, but tacitly accepts that such serious accidents still happen. The Dutch government feels that serious accidents are not acceptable in the first place, and seeks to eliminate them (almost) entirely. There is more to it than merely safety rules. It's making separate roads for bicycles, making different intersections, taking care of tiny little details like the exact shape of the curb (to minimize damage and injury if hit). It's a systematic, integrated, systems thinking approach; backed by (in total) billions of Euros of infrastructure investment and research over several decades. It's not that a helmet doesn't give more protection (it does), it's just that for normal A-to-B cycling, one should make things so the helmet is no longer needed.