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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 pe

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.
    - DangitBobby 4y ago
      I sought out that study [1]. They seemed to control for anxiety levels in the participants, so the results are still interesting. However, they also refer to some prior art: > Our findings initially appear different from those of some other studies. Fyhri and Phillips (2013; Phillips et al., 2011) found that risk taking in downhill bicycling, measured through riding speed, did not simply increase when a helmet was worn; rather, the people who normally cycled with a helmet took fewer risks when riding without one. Why did the participants in Fyhri and Phillips’s study who were not habitual helmet users not react to wearing a helmet with increased risk taking, as our experiment might suggest they would? Clearly more work is needed to definitively pin down all the mechanisms here, but for now, we speculate that the difference might be related to considerable variations between the two studies’ procedures. Fyhri and Phillips greatly emphasized the physicality of their task (“to increase the difference in measures between the helmet-on and -off conditions, all participants were instructed to cycle using one-hand in both conditions”; p. 60), which provides a direct link between the action (bicycling) and the condition (helmet wearing) that was absent in our study. Moreover, that study used a repeated measures design, in which participants were aware they were riding a bicycle both with and without a helmet. This could have meant that behavior changed through mechanisms different from those seen here, where participants took part only in one condition and were not aware of any manipulation, nor even that they were specifically wearing a safety device. So, in the past other studies have concluded that when the helmet has an _actual_ potential impact on safety, they do not induce greater risk-taking behavior. This fits right in with my personal experience, where I don't even consider that fact that I'm wearing my helmet during a ride. 1. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797615620784 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976156207...
  - indymike 4y ago
    > “ 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.” This study proves nothing about rider safety. What matters here is actual accidents, and most bike accidents do not even involve a car. The study only proves that motorists would pass about 4 inches closer to author of the study when he had a helmet on. Motorists were not frequently hitting the author.
  - bagels 4y ago
    Did they do control for rider behavior? I'm curious if the unhelmeted rode closer to the road edge.
frereubu 4y ago
I know you're just elaborating the parent comment's point, so this isn't really directed at you, but the only study I've ever heard of which said anything like that was one academic riding a bike with and without a helmet, and measuring how close cars came to him. IIRC the difference was a matter of one or two centimetres and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the p-value was just under 0.05. That study was regularly thrown around by friends who were looking for a rationale for their dislike of wearing helmets. We really need some high-quality studies with a much better experimental design that look at overall risk. Perhaps riders are marginally more likely to get into accidents if they wear a helmet, but I know from personal experience that when you do get into an accident you really want to be wearing a helmet - if I wasn't wearing one when I had a big accident about ten years ago, I'm pretty certain I'd have serious neurological problems now.
- bluejekyll 4y ago
  I linked to an article that I found on this in a sibling comment. It’s an average of 8.5cm closer when wearing a helmet. Obviously a p95 etc would be valuable here. Personally, I believe the correct thing is to provide separate infrastructure from cars for bicyclists. One big nuance in the helmet debate is that the helmet is really best designed from mistakes while riding, ie when done for sport.
- rcxdude 4y ago
  I agree. That same researcher has a lot of other research in the same vein. Having read some of the papers, I find them pretty unconvincing (and there are other papers which show that to the extent that 'risk compensation' is a thing, it's a short-term effect: if you increase the perceived risk of an activity, people may be more cautious for a bit, but they quickly relax into the same behaviour as before).

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.
  - DangitBobby 4y ago
    I sought out that study [1]. They seemed to control for anxiety levels in the participants, so the results are still interesting. However, they also refer to some prior art: > Our findings initially appear different from those of some other studies. Fyhri and Phillips (2013; Phillips et al., 2011) found that risk taking in downhill bicycling, measured through riding speed, did not simply increase when a helmet was worn; rather, the people who normally cycled with a helmet took fewer risks when riding without one. Why did the participants in Fyhri and Phillips’s study who were not habitual helmet users not react to wearing a helmet with increased risk taking, as our experiment might suggest they would? Clearly more work is needed to definitively pin down all the mechanisms here, but for now, we speculate that the difference might be related to considerable variations between the two studies’ procedures. Fyhri and Phillips greatly emphasized the physicality of their task (“to increase the difference in measures between the helmet-on and -off conditions, all participants were instructed to cycle using one-hand in both conditions”; p. 60), which provides a direct link between the action (bicycling) and the condition (helmet wearing) that was absent in our study. Moreover, that study used a repeated measures design, in which participants were aware they were riding a bicycle both with and without a helmet. This could have meant that behavior changed through mechanisms different from those seen here, where participants took part only in one condition and were not aware of any manipulation, nor even that they were specifically wearing a safety device. So, in the past other studies have concluded that when the helmet has an _actual_ potential impact on safety, they do not induce greater risk-taking behavior. This fits right in with my personal experience, where I don't even consider that fact that I'm wearing my helmet during a ride. 1. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797615620784 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976156207...
- indymike 4y ago
  > “ 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.” This study proves nothing about rider safety. What matters here is actual accidents, and most bike accidents do not even involve a car. The study only proves that motorists would pass about 4 inches closer to author of the study when he had a helmet on. Motorists were not frequently hitting the author.
- bagels 4y ago
  Did they do control for rider behavior? I'm curious if the unhelmeted rode closer to the road edge.

frereubu 4y ago

I know you're just elaborating the parent comment's point, so this isn't really directed at you, but the only study I've ever heard of which said anything like that was one academic riding a bike with and without a helmet, and measuring how close cars came to him. IIRC the difference was a matter of one or two centimetres and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the p-value was just under 0.05. That study was regularly thrown around by friends who were looking for a rationale for their dislike of wearing helmets. We really need some high-quality studies with a much better experimental design that look at overall risk. Perhaps riders are marginally more likely to get into accidents if they wear a helmet, but I know from personal experience that when you do get into an accident you really want to be wearing a helmet - if I wasn't wearing one when I had a big accident about ten years ago, I'm pretty certain I'd have serious neurological problems now.

bluejekyll 4y ago
I linked to an article that I found on this in a sibling comment. It’s an average of 8.5cm closer when wearing a helmet. Obviously a p95 etc would be valuable here. Personally, I believe the correct thing is to provide separate infrastructure from cars for bicyclists. One big nuance in the helmet debate is that the helmet is really best designed from mistakes while riding, ie when done for sport.
rcxdude 4y ago
I agree. That same researcher has a lot of other research in the same vein. Having read some of the papers, I find them pretty unconvincing (and there are other papers which show that to the extent that 'risk compensation' is a thing, it's a short-term effect: if you increase the perceived risk of an activity, people may be more cautious for a bit, but they quickly relax into the same behaviour as before).