5 ms·

Are you sure? Just falling over on the bike while stationary (I admit I've managed this before) without being able to partially break your fall. could outright

by retrac 5y ago

Are you sure? Just falling over on the bike while stationary (I admit I've managed this before) without being able to partially break your fall. could outright kill you if your head hits the pavement. (An uncontrolled fall from standing height to concrete such as by fainting can kill.) Even if you don't die, head impacts are really bad for the brain.

Robelius 5y ago
You could also hit your head after tripping while walking, but people don’t wear helmets on walks. I think the point was that there is a comfortable level of risk people are willing to take. If you remove cars from the equation, then the perceived risk is much lower while biking.
- taeric 5y ago
  Falling on a stationary bike is a lot easier than you'd imagine. And the extra foot off the ground that you will be, can easily add to the damage. I remember when I first started using clipless peddles, you free the foot on the wrong side, and odds are high you are hitting the ground. Stupid easy to do.
  - bradlys 5y ago
    This is a trivially small amount of people. If it wasn’t - people wouldn’t even bother with learning how to clip in. They’d be like, “oh no, clipless pedals is what killed my pa back in ‘04.”
    - taeric 5y ago
      I have yet to meet anyone that hasn't at least come close to falling on clipless peddles.
      - bradlys 5y ago
        Falling != death.
        taeric 5y ago
        This seems a bit of a non-sequitur. Falling from a bike is enough to cause head trauma. The claim here is that a helmet is useful and effective, not just from a moving bike, but from a stationary one. Adding to that, merely mounting a bike is already a greater risk of falling than most folks do. Is it a certainty? Of course not. But, by that same argument, seatbelts are useless the vast majority of the time. Indeed, on most moving vehicles I'm on (busses/trains), I don't wear them. Not even offered in many cases. I still support and recommend them where they are available. Same for helmets.
  - phonypc 5y ago
    Who's using clipless pedals to putt around their school campus? If you're doing some sort of recreational/sport biking, then ya, a lot more people are going to agree you should be wearing a helmet.
    - taeric 5y ago
      Fair, though my point was more that experienced riders that use clipless are still prone to falling. Around campus, problems from not balancing with a backpack are more likely. Though, I do mean to say I don't think it is a certainty. Just that it is more likely than you'd think. And helmets are good at low speeds. They are not just a high speed protection.
taeric 5y ago
I don't think I can underline this point enough. Helmets are just as effective on the slow/no speed fall as they are on the high speed ones. In many ways, I wouldn't be surprised if they are more effective there.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  Humans have evolved reactions to protect their head when they fall at running speeds. For example, you instinctively throw out your arms to break the fall. It's when you are biking faster than a fast human can run that helmets become really necessary.
  - taeric 5y ago
    Appeal to evolution is silly. First thing you learn when skating or any real parkour like things is how to properly fall. So, I can't say you are wrong, but I would love actual studies to settle this.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
The statistics don’t lie. Biking in the Netherlands is incredibly safe even without helmet wearing. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0925753515001472 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09257... Turns out there are other ways to make cycling safe. One could argue that helmet wearing might make it even safer, but we are talking about optimizing a number that is already very low. I’ve been to Stanford before and the campus is pretty car free. It is big and mostly flat, so most students have bikes to get from one building to another, but you aren’t speeding around or anything, it’s a very Dutch biking experience.
- cratermoon 5y ago
  Traffic and road infrastructure for cycling and cars is radically different from the US. Has anyone attempted to compare cycling injury and death data while controlling for street design, relevant laws, and driver behavior? > we are talking about optimizing a number that is already very low. In the US, we have almost zero change of optimizing the factors that are better at reducing not only bicycling but traffic injury and fatalities generally. Americans are so enamored with the personal automobiles that fixing the roads and infrastructure is basically a non-starter. Holding that factor constant, the safety of wearing a helmet starts to become quite significant.
  - isbvhodnvemrwvn 5y ago
    It's difficult to compare it if you also don't compare the culture. If you look are /r/idiotsincars, most of the commenters from the US would be treated as murderous psychopaths, as they can't comprehend people can ride bikes for anything else than sports and they are considered to be "blocking" 4 lane highways.
    - cratermoon 5y ago
      Yeah, I alluded to that with "driver behavior", which is determined by culture. Those murderously psychopathic car-centric attitudes are part of why the US transportation infrastructure is how it is and why it's so hard to change it. What is it with Americans willingness to allow the most extreme selfish points of view harm the public good?
thinkingemote 5y ago
Bike helmets are mainly for falling off a bike by yourself, not being hit by a car, generally. it's why bicyclists don't wear the same helmets as motorcycle riders. The risk remains the same
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Then you would expect the Netherlands to have a lot more injuries than the USA, since the number of miles biked without helmets is a lot higher. For some reason, it isn’t. They actually found in the 70s that yes, the problem is cars.
sershe 5y ago
The standards for biking in Netherlands are very different... people treat it more like walking than like driving, as far as I can tell. Everyone's upright on a comfy bike and going pretty slow... the distances are shorter so you don't need to be a spandex cyborg to commute, and there are so many people it's probably hard to pass anyway. You don't wear helmets or carry poles walking, even though you could easily trip (someone I know got injured accidentally stepping off a curb). I've only been to Amsterdam a couple times but my favorite snapshot of biking there was a lady biking hands free fiddling with her eye makeup (I think?), being passed by a hands-free dude wearing a suit, talking on his phone with one hand and other hand just kinda hanging alongside his body ;)

by retrac 5y ago

Robelius 5y ago

You could also hit your head after tripping while walking, but people don’t wear helmets on walks. I think the point was that there is a comfortable level of risk people are willing to take. If you remove cars from the equation, then the perceived risk is much lower while biking.

taeric 5y ago
Falling on a stationary bike is a lot easier than you'd imagine. And the extra foot off the ground that you will be, can easily add to the damage. I remember when I first started using clipless peddles, you free the foot on the wrong side, and odds are high you are hitting the ground. Stupid easy to do.
- bradlys 5y ago
  This is a trivially small amount of people. If it wasn’t - people wouldn’t even bother with learning how to clip in. They’d be like, “oh no, clipless pedals is what killed my pa back in ‘04.”
  - taeric 5y ago
    I have yet to meet anyone that hasn't at least come close to falling on clipless peddles.
    - bradlys 5y ago
      Falling != death.
      - taeric 5y ago
        This seems a bit of a non-sequitur. Falling from a bike is enough to cause head trauma. The claim here is that a helmet is useful and effective, not just from a moving bike, but from a stationary one. Adding to that, merely mounting a bike is already a greater risk of falling than most folks do. Is it a certainty? Of course not. But, by that same argument, seatbelts are useless the vast majority of the time. Indeed, on most moving vehicles I'm on (busses/trains), I don't wear them. Not even offered in many cases. I still support and recommend them where they are available. Same for helmets.
- phonypc 5y ago
  Who's using clipless pedals to putt around their school campus? If you're doing some sort of recreational/sport biking, then ya, a lot more people are going to agree you should be wearing a helmet.
  - taeric 5y ago
    Fair, though my point was more that experienced riders that use clipless are still prone to falling. Around campus, problems from not balancing with a backpack are more likely. Though, I do mean to say I don't think it is a certainty. Just that it is more likely than you'd think. And helmets are good at low speeds. They are not just a high speed protection.

taeric 5y ago

I don't think I can underline this point enough. Helmets are just as effective on the slow/no speed fall as they are on the high speed ones. In many ways, I wouldn't be surprised if they are more effective there.

bryanlarsen 5y ago
Humans have evolved reactions to protect their head when they fall at running speeds. For example, you instinctively throw out your arms to break the fall. It's when you are biking faster than a fast human can run that helmets become really necessary.
- taeric 5y ago
  Appeal to evolution is silly. First thing you learn when skating or any real parkour like things is how to properly fall. So, I can't say you are wrong, but I would love actual studies to settle this.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

The statistics don’t lie. Biking in the Netherlands is incredibly safe even without helmet wearing. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0925753515001472 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09257... Turns out there are other ways to make cycling safe. One could argue that helmet wearing might make it even safer, but we are talking about optimizing a number that is already very low. I’ve been to Stanford before and the campus is pretty car free. It is big and mostly flat, so most students have bikes to get from one building to another, but you aren’t speeding around or anything, it’s a very Dutch biking experience.

cratermoon 5y ago
Traffic and road infrastructure for cycling and cars is radically different from the US. Has anyone attempted to compare cycling injury and death data while controlling for street design, relevant laws, and driver behavior? > we are talking about optimizing a number that is already very low. In the US, we have almost zero change of optimizing the factors that are better at reducing not only bicycling but traffic injury and fatalities generally. Americans are so enamored with the personal automobiles that fixing the roads and infrastructure is basically a non-starter. Holding that factor constant, the safety of wearing a helmet starts to become quite significant.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 5y ago
  It's difficult to compare it if you also don't compare the culture. If you look are /r/idiotsincars, most of the commenters from the US would be treated as murderous psychopaths, as they can't comprehend people can ride bikes for anything else than sports and they are considered to be "blocking" 4 lane highways.
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    Yeah, I alluded to that with "driver behavior", which is determined by culture. Those murderously psychopathic car-centric attitudes are part of why the US transportation infrastructure is how it is and why it's so hard to change it. What is it with Americans willingness to allow the most extreme selfish points of view harm the public good?

thinkingemote 5y ago

Bike helmets are mainly for falling off a bike by yourself, not being hit by a car, generally. it's why bicyclists don't wear the same helmets as motorcycle riders. The risk remains the same

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
Then you would expect the Netherlands to have a lot more injuries than the USA, since the number of miles biked without helmets is a lot higher. For some reason, it isn’t. They actually found in the 70s that yes, the problem is cars.

sershe 5y ago

The standards for biking in Netherlands are very different... people treat it more like walking than like driving, as far as I can tell. Everyone's upright on a comfy bike and going pretty slow... the distances are shorter so you don't need to be a spandex cyborg to commute, and there are so many people it's probably hard to pass anyway. You don't wear helmets or carry poles walking, even though you could easily trip (someone I know got injured accidentally stepping off a curb). I've only been to Amsterdam a couple times but my favorite snapshot of biking there was a lady biking hands free fiddling with her eye makeup (I think?), being passed by a hands-free dude wearing a suit, talking on his phone with one hand and other hand just kinda hanging alongside his body ;)