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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 cycli

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.

rhinoceraptor 4y ago
Should drivers also be required to wear helmets? Driving a car is itself unsafe, motor vehicle accidents are one of the leading causes of TBIs.
- bagels 4y ago
  That's what airbags are supposed to help with, thankfully.
  - BrianHenryIE 4y ago
    Yet 53,000 people a year in the US suffer traumatic brain injuries from motor vehicle crashes. If we are to believe a helmet will help a cyclist, it must be true that helmets would have helped those drivers and passengers too. The airbag argument is just distracting. "Let's not use antivirus because we already have a firewall". https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7048a3.htm#T2_down https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7048a3.htm#T2_down
- profile53 4y ago
  I don’t think helmets would mitigate that risk. For comparison, should bicyclists be required to wear seatbelts?
  - rhinoceraptor 4y ago
    Race car drivers wear helmets, so clearly they help.
    - profile53 4y ago
      Race cars are built differently; they have a tube frame to protect against high speed roll overs and have no airbags. You wear a helmet to protect yourself from hitting your head against the metal roll cage or steering wheel (because no airbag).
- krab 4y ago
  At racetracks, they're usually mandatory. It's all a matter of risk vs. inconvenience.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
buildingsramen 4y ago
Did you read the article? These bikes are 2-3 meters long. There is no chance of this type of injury occurring with them.
- lyschoening 4y ago
  Of course going over the handlebars is possible with a cargo bike. The cyclist will hit the cargo area before they hit the pavement, which makes these situations no less dangerous.
  - buildingsramen 4y ago
    The physics don't work that way. With a normal bicycle, you go over the handlebars because the whole bike tips forward - it's just gravity + momentum. Then you faceplant. With a wheelbase of 2-3m, there's just no way the bike tips forward like this, especially with the rider positioned towards the back. Couple that with the fact that cargo bikes travel at lower average speeds and it's not clear to me how this injury occurs.
- rtkwe 4y ago
  It's inevitable, inattentive other drivers will eventually hit one of these cargo bikes no matter how safely their operators are riding.
- practice9 4y ago
  Unless Pedal Me provide open-source data on which they based this decision, I don't believe it is based on safety. It's seems like marketing and cost-cutting issue for them. Customer: "Driver is wearing a helmet, and nobody provided helmets for us.. Are we in danger?" Pedal Me: "Say no more.. " Plus it seems they only bought caps & jackets for their drivers previously, no safety gear. Drivers are replaceable, aren't they? (\s) And other thing, why is a 3 meters long bike road-legal?
  - blacksmith_tb 4y ago
    That wouldn't surprise me at all. But as for a 3m bike, that's still shorter than most cars? Broadly speaking, bikes of any size are classed as vehicles in the US, with the same rights and duties (though that may vary a bit state by state).
gameswithgo 4y ago
prepend 4y ago
This is one of those situations where there is a lot of fear and anecdotes but data shows that more accidents and injuries occur with helmets than without. A company should design their safety protocol well and it includes what equipment workers should and should not wear to protect them best. So prohibiting helmets is very responsible. Criticizing them seems to be taking an irrational stance that it’s better to address your feelings than the actual reality of what happens.
- anonymousab 4y ago
  > but data shows that more accidents and injuries occur with helmets than without. This demands proof, citation, and of course, controlling for how many cyclists in an area wear helmets vs. not.
  - Swizec 4y ago
    Same statistic for motorcycles. You are more likely to be injured in a crash if you wear a helmet. Because otherwise you go in the dead column.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      You shouldn't follow up a source request with another unsourced fact, but let me follow up with yet another: the statistic are entirely different for motorcycles because motorcyclists are far more likely to have the type of accidents that helmets protect from. Comparing the fatality rate of bicycling to the one for riding a motorcycle is not good. edit: That's not only a claim that bicycle helmets vastly reduce the fatality of bicycle accidents (rather than just significantly reduce them), but a claim that so many unhelmeted riders die from bicycle accidents that it distorts safety figures. All of this without any safety figures.
    - 41b696ef1113 4y ago
      Similar story for helmets during WW1. Prior to metal helmets, soldiers wore cloth caps. After the soldiers started wearing helmets, the number of head injuries climbed rapidly. The alternative, of course is that the soldier would otherwise have been dead.
aasasd 4y ago
Another such example is drivers or passengers opening cars' doors without looking in the mirrors. A car's doors are reinforced plenty while having relatively sharp-ish metal ‘lip’ on the butt end, and you really don't want to run into one from that angle.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
  That's why it's a good idea to not cycle in the "door-zone" on roads. Annoyingly, some bike "infrastructure" (i.e. bit of paint) is put directly into the door-zone of parked vehicles which typically makes it worse than useless and best avoided (which then of course risks getting ire from drivers who don't understand why you choose to cycle where you do). One interesting way of reducing doorings is to teach drivers and passengers the Dutch reach. Basically you should always use your furthest hand to open the door as that involves twisting your body and encourages you to see a nearby pedestrian/scooter/cyclist.
  - aasasd 4y ago
    Yeah, in regard to bike lanes between the road and the sidewalk, some note that passengers are even less likely than the drivers to look in the mirrors or just back out the window when getting out, since they expect mostly walking people on that side. Thankfully, some lanes are separated from the parked cars, usually with some flowebeds or just bollards in that space: e.g. https://i2.wp.com/www.theurbanist.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/GEDC0700.jpg https://i2.wp.com/www.theurbanist.org/wp-content/uploads/201... I suspect that a side-effect of the popularity of electric scooters will be that passengers will habituate a bit to seeing faster things on the sidewalks.
    - u801e 4y ago
      > I suspect that a side-effect of the popularity of electric scooters will be that passengers will habituate a bit to seeing faster things on the sidewalks. That's unlikely. Even if 95% of people did, there's still 5% who won't. The real problem is bad design that places preferential use lanes for cyclists too close to parked cars and expects cyclists and occupants of motor vehicles to figure it out. This results in serious injuries and deaths of cyclists. Authorities should be encouraging cyclists to ride at least 6 feet away from parked vehicles. One way is to paint shared lane markings to guide cyclists to ride in the safest position in the general purpose lane far enough away from parked vehicles.
mertd 4y ago
Very good point. The reasoning in the post assumes that the rider is responsible for all accidents.
- bluejekyll 4y ago
  While the article is very short, this was still easy to miss, “… and those driving around them take greater risks too.” So it does in fact mention that both people driving around those wearing helmets as well as the cyclists themselves take greater risks. The argument is that in the GP’s anecdote that the cyclist (and perhaps even the truck driver) would have taken less risky actions preceding the crash, thus avoiding it all-together.
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    > … and those driving around them take greater risks too Really? Data shows that a driver will subconsciously take stock of the fact that a cyclist is wearing a helmet and adjust their risk assessments accordingly? I find that incredibly difficult to believe.
    - bluejekyll 4y ago
      This seems to be a good article on this: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/21/bike-helmet-cyclists-safe-urban-warfare-wheels https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/21/bike-he... “ In 2006 he attached a computer and an electronic distance gauge to his bike and recorded data from 2,500 drivers who overtook him on the roads. Half the time he wore a bike helmet and half the time he was bare-headed. The results showed motorists tended to pass him more closely when he had the helmet on, coming an average of 8.5 cm nearer.”
      - DangitBobby 4y ago
        Well, this explaination at least makes some sense to me > Walker said he believed this was likely to be connected to cycling being relatively rare in the UK, and drivers thus forming preconceived ideas about cyclists based on what they wore. “This may lead drivers to believe cyclists with helmets are more serious, experienced and predictable than those without,” he wrote. The article also mentions this risk-taking study where some participants were asked to gamble and some had helmets on and some had hats on, and found that people with helmets on took greater risks. If I were asked to do something like wear a helmet where one is completely unwarranted, I might feel silly and do silly things for that extra fun factor. Wearing a helmet on a bike results in a completely different mindset than wearing a helmet at the office, if not solely for the fact that it's unusual behavior.
ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
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.
- altcognito 4y ago
  Basically, crumple zones for heads. If you could demonstrate that the helmet was splitting and taking energy with it maybe you could make an argument for splitting, but it seems unlikely that this is a mode of operation.
  - hgomersall 4y ago
    Why not? Given every helmet I've seen in a significant crash was split somehow, my assumption is that splitting is an important part of the energy absorption.
    - ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
      Polystyrene is very weak in tension (can be broken by hand) so won't be deflecting much energy. The principle is to slow the deceleration of the head by the polystyrene compressing and thus reducing the g-forces to the skull (not so much the brain which tends to slosh in the skull and cause concussion). Some motorbike helmets use materials such as polycarbonate which are intended to provide protection by breaking - quite different to bicycle helmets.
- taeric 4y ago
  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.
  - ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
rollcat 4y ago
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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9yL5usLFgY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9yL5usLFgY
- dharmab 4y ago
  I'm sure one serious injury can ruin an entire day for everyone at an event. It makes sense that the community would expect consideration from boarders of the consequences on an accident on others.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    I'm sure some think like that too, but people are also selfless enough to want others to be safe, no matter if it ruins the event for them or not.
- backtoyoujim 4y ago
  Freedom in an unregulated space requires less freedom for the individual, I suppose.
  - Covzire 4y ago
    Doesn't have to be a zero sum game, they may be free but have a strong safety culture for another reason.
  - mhmmbt 4y ago
cycomanic 4y ago
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.
- op00to 4y ago
  > it’s 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.
  - tboughen 4y ago
    “cyclists were given 8.5cm (3.3 inches) more clearance by cars if they were not wearing helmets.” https://helmets.org/walkerstudy.htm https://helmets.org/walkerstudy.htm
    - threeseed 4y ago
      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"
      - i_am_jl 4y ago
        Confirmation bias machine strikes again.
      - KennyBlanken 4y ago
        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.
eloff 4y ago
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.
- _moof 4y ago
  > 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."
- dougmsmith 4y ago
  - dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp 4y ago
    >And now you know why riding with body armor is pointless. I can confidently say I am among the elite in terms of urban riding competency, having logged at least 15,000 miles riding around Los Angeles. I’ve crashed three times. Two of those were were the result of a combination of bad luck and me taking unnecessary risks. The other one was entirely unavoidable, and totally the result of a negligent driver. In that case I slammed my head hard on the pavement, broke my helmet, and managed to ride away shaken but not seriously injured. The point is I have skills too, I’ve avoided countless accidents by employing them. I also wear a helmet to further reduce that risk.
    - raegis 4y ago
gorgoiler 4y ago
With that level of violence it is the same scenario and the same outcome for a car. If we insist that cyclists protect themselves against multiple tonnes of kinetic energy impact, we should insist on the same protection for car drivers.
- GVIrish 4y ago
  We already do. Crash safety standards, seatbelts, and mandatory air bags dramatically decrease injury and death in crashes, and numerous other safety mandates reduce the chance of a crash in the first place.
  - gorgoiler 4y ago
    Thanks for the reply. I hadn’t thought of airbags-as-helmet-substitutes in that way. Are helmets the bicycle equivalent of air bags then? Isn’t that quite a third rate equivalent?
ekanes 4y ago
When I was 13 I was hit by a car on my bike. Same thing. Helmet cracked, and my head didn’t.
spike021 4y ago
Back in elementary school a few decades ago, they did a demonstration of what happens if you're not wearing a helmet. They used a watermelon and dropped it from maybe 5 or 6 feet up in the air. I refuse to ride anything without a helmet ever since.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
Does an employer have the right to put someone's life at risk on purpose? If so, is the employer going to be on the hook when an accident does happen? It's one thing to risk your own life by not using safety gear. Its another level of reckless to not provide safety gear to your employees To forbid someone else from using their own safety gear is a level of asine behaviour that trully terrible. But these guys top even that- they don't just dicourage employees from wearing helmets through hush-hush, hint hint, they boast about it in a public press release. It's not your life to risk, that person is not a serf, and if I wants to wear a bulletproof vest everywhere I goes that's not the employer's concern. If ee allow this to stand, it sets a terrible precedent.
KennyBlanken 4y ago
> 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.
lock-the-spock 4y ago
Their argument is that riders with helmets take more risk. I'd argue this is likely wrong causality. It seems far more likely that those in more risky settings (e.g. streets without cycle paths) are more likely to wear helmets.

rhinoceraptor 4y ago

Should drivers also be required to wear helmets? Driving a car is itself unsafe, motor vehicle accidents are one of the leading causes of TBIs.

bagels 4y ago
That's what airbags are supposed to help with, thankfully.
- BrianHenryIE 4y ago
  Yet 53,000 people a year in the US suffer traumatic brain injuries from motor vehicle crashes. If we are to believe a helmet will help a cyclist, it must be true that helmets would have helped those drivers and passengers too. The airbag argument is just distracting. "Let's not use antivirus because we already have a firewall". https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7048a3.htm#T2_down https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7048a3.htm#T2_down
profile53 4y ago
I don’t think helmets would mitigate that risk. For comparison, should bicyclists be required to wear seatbelts?
- rhinoceraptor 4y ago
  Race car drivers wear helmets, so clearly they help.
  - profile53 4y ago
    Race cars are built differently; they have a tube frame to protect against high speed roll overs and have no airbags. You wear a helmet to protect yourself from hitting your head against the metal roll cage or steering wheel (because no airbag).
krab 4y ago
At racetracks, they're usually mandatory. It's all a matter of risk vs. inconvenience.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

buildingsramen 4y ago

Did you read the article? These bikes are 2-3 meters long. There is no chance of this type of injury occurring with them.

lyschoening 4y ago
Of course going over the handlebars is possible with a cargo bike. The cyclist will hit the cargo area before they hit the pavement, which makes these situations no less dangerous.
- buildingsramen 4y ago
  The physics don't work that way. With a normal bicycle, you go over the handlebars because the whole bike tips forward - it's just gravity + momentum. Then you faceplant. With a wheelbase of 2-3m, there's just no way the bike tips forward like this, especially with the rider positioned towards the back. Couple that with the fact that cargo bikes travel at lower average speeds and it's not clear to me how this injury occurs.
rtkwe 4y ago
It's inevitable, inattentive other drivers will eventually hit one of these cargo bikes no matter how safely their operators are riding.
practice9 4y ago
Unless Pedal Me provide open-source data on which they based this decision, I don't believe it is based on safety. It's seems like marketing and cost-cutting issue for them. Customer: "Driver is wearing a helmet, and nobody provided helmets for us.. Are we in danger?" Pedal Me: "Say no more.. " Plus it seems they only bought caps & jackets for their drivers previously, no safety gear. Drivers are replaceable, aren't they? (\s) And other thing, why is a 3 meters long bike road-legal?
- blacksmith_tb 4y ago
  That wouldn't surprise me at all. But as for a 3m bike, that's still shorter than most cars? Broadly speaking, bikes of any size are classed as vehicles in the US, with the same rights and duties (though that may vary a bit state by state).

gameswithgo 4y ago

prepend 4y ago

This is one of those situations where there is a lot of fear and anecdotes but data shows that more accidents and injuries occur with helmets than without. A company should design their safety protocol well and it includes what equipment workers should and should not wear to protect them best. So prohibiting helmets is very responsible. Criticizing them seems to be taking an irrational stance that it’s better to address your feelings than the actual reality of what happens.

anonymousab 4y ago
> but data shows that more accidents and injuries occur with helmets than without. This demands proof, citation, and of course, controlling for how many cyclists in an area wear helmets vs. not.
- Swizec 4y ago
  Same statistic for motorcycles. You are more likely to be injured in a crash if you wear a helmet. Because otherwise you go in the dead column.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    You shouldn't follow up a source request with another unsourced fact, but let me follow up with yet another: the statistic are entirely different for motorcycles because motorcyclists are far more likely to have the type of accidents that helmets protect from. Comparing the fatality rate of bicycling to the one for riding a motorcycle is not good. edit: That's not only a claim that bicycle helmets vastly reduce the fatality of bicycle accidents (rather than just significantly reduce them), but a claim that so many unhelmeted riders die from bicycle accidents that it distorts safety figures. All of this without any safety figures.
  - 41b696ef1113 4y ago
    Similar story for helmets during WW1. Prior to metal helmets, soldiers wore cloth caps. After the soldiers started wearing helmets, the number of head injuries climbed rapidly. The alternative, of course is that the soldier would otherwise have been dead.

aasasd 4y ago

Another such example is drivers or passengers opening cars' doors without looking in the mirrors. A car's doors are reinforced plenty while having relatively sharp-ish metal ‘lip’ on the butt end, and you really don't want to run into one from that angle.

ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
That's why it's a good idea to not cycle in the "door-zone" on roads. Annoyingly, some bike "infrastructure" (i.e. bit of paint) is put directly into the door-zone of parked vehicles which typically makes it worse than useless and best avoided (which then of course risks getting ire from drivers who don't understand why you choose to cycle where you do). One interesting way of reducing doorings is to teach drivers and passengers the Dutch reach. Basically you should always use your furthest hand to open the door as that involves twisting your body and encourages you to see a nearby pedestrian/scooter/cyclist.
- aasasd 4y ago
  Yeah, in regard to bike lanes between the road and the sidewalk, some note that passengers are even less likely than the drivers to look in the mirrors or just back out the window when getting out, since they expect mostly walking people on that side. Thankfully, some lanes are separated from the parked cars, usually with some flowebeds or just bollards in that space: e.g. https://i2.wp.com/www.theurbanist.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/GEDC0700.jpg https://i2.wp.com/www.theurbanist.org/wp-content/uploads/201... I suspect that a side-effect of the popularity of electric scooters will be that passengers will habituate a bit to seeing faster things on the sidewalks.
  - u801e 4y ago
    > I suspect that a side-effect of the popularity of electric scooters will be that passengers will habituate a bit to seeing faster things on the sidewalks. That's unlikely. Even if 95% of people did, there's still 5% who won't. The real problem is bad design that places preferential use lanes for cyclists too close to parked cars and expects cyclists and occupants of motor vehicles to figure it out. This results in serious injuries and deaths of cyclists. Authorities should be encouraging cyclists to ride at least 6 feet away from parked vehicles. One way is to paint shared lane markings to guide cyclists to ride in the safest position in the general purpose lane far enough away from parked vehicles.

mertd 4y ago

Very good point. The reasoning in the post assumes that the rider is responsible for all accidents.

bluejekyll 4y ago
While the article is very short, this was still easy to miss, “… and those driving around them take greater risks too.” So it does in fact mention that both people driving around those wearing helmets as well as the cyclists themselves take greater risks. The argument is that in the GP’s anecdote that the cyclist (and perhaps even the truck driver) would have taken less risky actions preceding the crash, thus avoiding it all-together.
- DangitBobby 4y ago
  > … and those driving around them take greater risks too Really? Data shows that a driver will subconsciously take stock of the fact that a cyclist is wearing a helmet and adjust their risk assessments accordingly? I find that incredibly difficult to believe.
  - bluejekyll 4y ago
    This seems to be a good article on this: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/21/bike-helmet-cyclists-safe-urban-warfare-wheels https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/21/bike-he... “ In 2006 he attached a computer and an electronic distance gauge to his bike and recorded data from 2,500 drivers who overtook him on the roads. Half the time he wore a bike helmet and half the time he was bare-headed. The results showed motorists tended to pass him more closely when he had the helmet on, coming an average of 8.5 cm nearer.”
    - DangitBobby 4y ago
      Well, this explaination at least makes some sense to me > Walker said he believed this was likely to be connected to cycling being relatively rare in the UK, and drivers thus forming preconceived ideas about cyclists based on what they wore. “This may lead drivers to believe cyclists with helmets are more serious, experienced and predictable than those without,” he wrote. The article also mentions this risk-taking study where some participants were asked to gamble and some had helmets on and some had hats on, and found that people with helmets on took greater risks. If I were asked to do something like wear a helmet where one is completely unwarranted, I might feel silly and do silly things for that extra fun factor. Wearing a helmet on a bike results in a completely different mindset than wearing a helmet at the office, if not solely for the fact that it's unusual behavior.

ndsipa_pomu 4y ago

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.

altcognito 4y ago
Basically, crumple zones for heads. If you could demonstrate that the helmet was splitting and taking energy with it maybe you could make an argument for splitting, but it seems unlikely that this is a mode of operation.
- hgomersall 4y ago
  Why not? Given every helmet I've seen in a significant crash was split somehow, my assumption is that splitting is an important part of the energy absorption.
  - ndsipa_pomu 4y ago
    Polystyrene is very weak in tension (can be broken by hand) so won't be deflecting much energy. The principle is to slow the deceleration of the head by the polystyrene compressing and thus reducing the g-forces to the skull (not so much the brain which tends to slosh in the skull and cause concussion). Some motorbike helmets use materials such as polycarbonate which are intended to provide protection by breaking - quite different to bicycle helmets.
taeric 4y ago
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.
- ndsipa_pomu 4y ago

rollcat 4y ago

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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9yL5usLFgY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9yL5usLFgY

dharmab 4y ago
I'm sure one serious injury can ruin an entire day for everyone at an event. It makes sense that the community would expect consideration from boarders of the consequences on an accident on others.
- capableweb 4y ago
  I'm sure some think like that too, but people are also selfless enough to want others to be safe, no matter if it ruins the event for them or not.
backtoyoujim 4y ago
Freedom in an unregulated space requires less freedom for the individual, I suppose.
- Covzire 4y ago
  Doesn't have to be a zero sum game, they may be free but have a strong safety culture for another reason.
- mhmmbt 4y ago

cycomanic 4y ago

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.

op00to 4y ago
> it’s 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.
- tboughen 4y ago
  “cyclists were given 8.5cm (3.3 inches) more clearance by cars if they were not wearing helmets.” https://helmets.org/walkerstudy.htm https://helmets.org/walkerstudy.htm
  - threeseed 4y ago
    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"
    - i_am_jl 4y ago
      Confirmation bias machine strikes again.
    - KennyBlanken 4y ago
      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.

eloff 4y ago

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.

_moof 4y ago
> 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."
dougmsmith 4y ago
- dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp 4y ago
  >And now you know why riding with body armor is pointless. I can confidently say I am among the elite in terms of urban riding competency, having logged at least 15,000 miles riding around Los Angeles. I’ve crashed three times. Two of those were were the result of a combination of bad luck and me taking unnecessary risks. The other one was entirely unavoidable, and totally the result of a negligent driver. In that case I slammed my head hard on the pavement, broke my helmet, and managed to ride away shaken but not seriously injured. The point is I have skills too, I’ve avoided countless accidents by employing them. I also wear a helmet to further reduce that risk.
  - raegis 4y ago

gorgoiler 4y ago

With that level of violence it is the same scenario and the same outcome for a car. If we insist that cyclists protect themselves against multiple tonnes of kinetic energy impact, we should insist on the same protection for car drivers.

GVIrish 4y ago
We already do. Crash safety standards, seatbelts, and mandatory air bags dramatically decrease injury and death in crashes, and numerous other safety mandates reduce the chance of a crash in the first place.
- gorgoiler 4y ago
  Thanks for the reply. I hadn’t thought of airbags-as-helmet-substitutes in that way. Are helmets the bicycle equivalent of air bags then? Isn’t that quite a third rate equivalent?

ekanes 4y ago

When I was 13 I was hit by a car on my bike. Same thing. Helmet cracked, and my head didn’t.

spike021 4y ago

Back in elementary school a few decades ago, they did a demonstration of what happens if you're not wearing a helmet. They used a watermelon and dropped it from maybe 5 or 6 feet up in the air. I refuse to ride anything without a helmet ever since.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

Does an employer have the right to put someone's life at risk on purpose? If so, is the employer going to be on the hook when an accident does happen? It's one thing to risk your own life by not using safety gear. Its another level of reckless to not provide safety gear to your employees To forbid someone else from using their own safety gear is a level of asine behaviour that trully terrible. But these guys top even that- they don't just dicourage employees from wearing helmets through hush-hush, hint hint, they boast about it in a public press release. It's not your life to risk, that person is not a serf, and if I wants to wear a bulletproof vest everywhere I goes that's not the employer's concern. If ee allow this to stand, it sets a terrible precedent.

KennyBlanken 4y ago

> 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.

lock-the-spock 4y ago

Their argument is that riders with helmets take more risk. I'd argue this is likely wrong causality. It seems far more likely that those in more risky settings (e.g. streets without cycle paths) are more likely to wear helmets.