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I was struck by the number of people pictured wearing high vis but not helmets; I suppose it might partially be because they're riding in places where pedestria

I was struck by the number of people pictured wearing high vis but not helmets; I suppose it might partially be because they're riding in places where pedestrians are otherwise very rare so cars are an even greater danger than usual. The article mentions: > At the same time, helmets pose special problems for Amish women. They grow their hair long and keep it wrapped in a bun covered with a cap. For this reason, most bike helmets do not fit Amish women. Mullett said he has talked with some helmet manufacturers and encouraged them to build helmets suitable for Amish women, so far without success. For now, far more men wear helmets than women. Seems to me that if you could make an exception/determination that ebikes were okay, it would make sense to adjust the rules around hairstyle and cap wearing as well. Not really my place to speak though.

AlotOfReading 3y ago
The Amish aren't really about rejecting technology just to be luddites, but rather to about trying to preserve their traditions and culture. One of the ways they do that is to avoid adopting new things (technologies, processes, etc) until the community leadership agrees to it. There are Amish that have cars, electricity and computers because their communities have determined that those technologies are acceptable in certain situations and allowed them. Seen that way, electric bikes may not be a big change from the regular bikes some communities already allow for transportation. Appearance is a very significant part of Amish culture though, and changing those norms just to fit a technology is exactly what they don't want to do.
- itake 3y ago
  I wonder if this change is economically driven: if electric vehicles and tools allow Amish to produce more, then their churches benefit from higher tithes.
  - bbatha 3y ago
    To some degree yes the Amish are most likely to use modern technology in business contexts. On the other hand if economics were the sole factor they’d all have robot tractors and the other multitude of productivity enhancing tools that have been developed for agriculture that have been developed over the last 200 years.
  - bruce511 3y ago
    It's interesting to me that you pose this question. I would suggest that this says more about the culture you live in than the culture the Amish live in. (No offence intended.) My hypothesis is that you live in a primarily material culture (safe bet, since we mostly all do.) Thus most of your life decisions surround money. What can you afford, how to get more of it, how to spend less of it and so on. Again, z safe bet, since that's true for most of us in general, and is emphasised especially in the US. Most of this is just baked in, so when we look at alternative lifestyles we can assume that they make decisions as we do. That can be a mistake simply because its hard to conceive the way others live. For example it's common for Europeans to get over 30 days paid leave a year. In the US most shift workers get none. In Europe salaried workers work fixed hours, then go home. In the US they stay late, do emails all night, and so on. Neither approach is right or wrong, they're just different. And it's easy to put my motivations on another group, send then see their decisions as crazy.
    - itake 3y ago
      Gentrification and inflation are real and they are coming for you if you fall behind. The Amish try to be self-sustaining, but it is extremely hard to not participate in modern society, especially considering healthcare. If Grandma is sick, do you let her die or do you pay $100k for cancer treatments? If you have 7 or 8 kids, then where does the land come from to house them? Europe is a great example of a region that hasn't had a significant technology breakthrough in decades. (I'm less familiar with healthcare tech, but most engineering products have come out of the USA and Asia). The impact is real: the pounds and euro have fallen in value to the dollar.
      - fennecbutt 3y ago
        A-are you serious? You've never heard of ASML? And that's just one example. Gonna write you off as just trolling lmao.
        itake 3y ago
        I am sure you can name a small number of examples that came out of Europe (Mistral, Spotify, Siemens, etc.), but the fact is the US and Asia generate way more value than Europe has in the last few decades. ASML is half the size of TSMC, by marketcap.
- hgomersall 3y ago
  Slight aside, but that was the position of the luddites too.
  - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
    > The Amish aren't really about rejecting technology just to be luddites, but rather to about trying to preserve their traditions and culture. One of the ways they do that is to avoid adopting new things (technologies, processes, etc) until the community leadership agrees to it. Neither feels right to me. The Luddites and Amish share a common thread, which is that of ownership and control and ability to set one's own course. I don't think the Luddites agreed that preserving traditions and culture was what drove them. They wanted mechanization to serve us all, to not be used to control them. They resisted the mechanization of the human spirit. The Amish have their own culture & tradition, but I think again what's afoot here is also in part about control & ownership, at least as much as it is tradition & culture. To call this just tradition & culture ignores & skips over what's really at stake, which is control & ownership. Whether we have the ability to use technology on our own footing, or whether it is an injected force that shapes and molds us. Is tech soft and malleable, or is it hard & unyielding, forcing humanity to change itself?
  - kmeisthax 3y ago
    Smashing looms was their tactic, not their goal. Their actual goal was to own the looms (to the exclusion of the factory owners). The original Parliamentary compromise regarding the introduction of looms was that skilled weavers would get first dibs on using them. A bunch of factory owners said "Fuck that" and just started using them anyway. Parliament not only didn't punish them for breaking the law, they passed even more laws to criminalize machine breaking on pain of death so that the Luddites couldn't protest anymore. Then they made up a story about them irrationally hating machines so they could paint organized labor as regressive. The Amish reject technology that ties them into a centralized society because they think decentralized, off-the-grid living makes you closer to God. The Luddites did not reject technology, they destroyed it as a tactic to bring capital back to the negotiating table. They're closer to the artists naming-and-shaming AI art users: few if any of them are Dunepilled[0] enough to actually want, say, a ban on computer programs that create art. What they want is protection against being economically replaced. [0] We must destroy the machines that think.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  I couldn't imagine a community 'leadership: telling me what to do and wear :( Of course we in the modern world are also a bit limited in terms of what we can buy but I often make my own pretty extravagant stuff to wear. Not always appreciated by conservatives but I couldn't care less. Ps nobody in the Netherlands wears helmets on bikes and we don't really need to. But I guess collisions with cars are more common in areas where bikes are less common. I've fallen many times but I always had my arm protecting my head in reflex even though it happened so fast I didn't even realise. The thing is that we don't view bikes as an exercise or sports thing you gear up for but just a convenience thing you grab for the 500m run to the shop. Besides having to put it on you'd be stuck having to carry it as well. And bikes are kinda the king of the road in Holland anyway. If you get hit by a car it's automatically their fault so they're really careful.
TomK32 3y ago
Neither high viz nor helmets help if the motorists are not driving their car as they should https://twitter.com/SurreyRoadCops/status/1454919907964035077 https://twitter.com/SurreyRoadCops/status/145491990796403507... https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/18206596.pictured-police-car-wrecked-bus-crash-upton-bypass/ https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/18206596.pictured-pol... https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2021/08/stoned-lorry-driver-crushed-police-car-and-seriously-injured-officers-in-a1-crash/ https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2021/08/stoned-lorry-driver-crus... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0qy743j0do https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0qy743j0do
_ZeD_ 3y ago
why should they wear helmets?
- tfourb 3y ago
  To avoid death or serious injury in case of an accident.
  - romafirst3 3y ago
    By that logic everyone in a car should wear a helmet in case of an accident. Head trauma is a real danger in car accidents. Wearing a helmet in your car will help with any head trauma. Why don't car drivers wear a helmet?
    - defrost 3y ago
      Because car drivers, unlike ebike riders and buggy drivers, are surrounded by a metal cage built to some level of crash protection standard. Car drivers also largely wear seat belts that prevent them being thrown through the air and impacting trees, kerbs, etc. It's kind of obvious really.
    - dxdm 3y ago
      You're probably aware of other cases where people wear helmets, for example on construction sites and while riding motorbikes or indeed bicycles. A lot of people riding cars wear seatbelts. I don't understand what's supposed to be so baffling about wearing helmets in this case, as well.
      - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        Bicycle helmets are virtually useless when involved in a multi-vehicle collision (e.g. a cyclist and a car driver). They are typically tested IIRC for speeds of up to 12mph onto a static surface from a height of 2m or so. The forces involved when colliding with a motorised vehicle are orders of magnitude greater. https://www.cycleplan.co.uk/cycle-savvy/what-are-the-cycle-helmet-safety-standards/ https://www.cycleplan.co.uk/cycle-savvy/what-are-the-cycle-h...
throwaway892238 3y ago
The high vis is paramount. The helmet... well, I just don't know how much good it would do if you get clipped by an F-150 going 60mph
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  Hi-Viz is only useful if the driver(s) are actually looking and paying attention. There's plenty of examples of drivers hitting static objects that are festooned with hi-viz colouring and reflectives. Bicycle helmet safety standards are generally for speeds up to 12mph and/or a static drop from 2m onto a hard surface. They are specifically not designed to withstand the forces/accelerations involved in a multi-vehicle collision. (One of my bug-bears is when people point to a destroyed bicycle helmet and claim that it saved their life. Helmets are designed to compress and are particularly weak when subjected to tensile/shear forces. If a helmet splits in two, then it most likely wasn't being effective)
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Helmets are for when they fall awkwardly; in practice, this rarely happens (disclaimer: I live in a bike friendly country). High-vis is for other traffic to see them. Motorcyclists often have both.
cardinalfang 3y ago
An airbag helmet full of electronics would allow traditional dress, but I don't know enough theology to make the decision.
- usrusr 3y ago
  The only company that made them has gone bankrupt, so there's that. They were successful in Copenhagen, where helmet-wearing is not quite as exotic as in the Netherlands, but apparently one city is not enough.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    I half-considered getting one of those (I'm in the UK), but the initial cost was expensive and they were single-use as in they needed to go back to the manufacturer to be reset after being triggered which was an additional cost. https://www.hovding.com/ https://www.hovding.com/
    - usrusr 3y ago
      I'd be dead scared of false positives riding in one. That might be harmless at a speed slightly above pedestrian, but my speed range does not end there.
    - euroderf 3y ago
      Could I, as a consumer of said helmet, have performed a non-destructive test ?
      - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        I don't believe so - once they were triggered they'd need to be factory reset.
        euroderf 3y ago
        And so my only alternative is to place my utmost and final faith in the product.
bcta1 3y ago
Slightly off topic, but I’m surprised that helmet manufacturers haven’t made more helmets for other people whose practices make wearing traditional helmets challenging (like Sikh men with turbans).

AlotOfReading 3y ago

The Amish aren't really about rejecting technology just to be luddites, but rather to about trying to preserve their traditions and culture. One of the ways they do that is to avoid adopting new things (technologies, processes, etc) until the community leadership agrees to it. There are Amish that have cars, electricity and computers because their communities have determined that those technologies are acceptable in certain situations and allowed them. Seen that way, electric bikes may not be a big change from the regular bikes some communities already allow for transportation. Appearance is a very significant part of Amish culture though, and changing those norms just to fit a technology is exactly what they don't want to do.

itake 3y ago
I wonder if this change is economically driven: if electric vehicles and tools allow Amish to produce more, then their churches benefit from higher tithes.
- bbatha 3y ago
  To some degree yes the Amish are most likely to use modern technology in business contexts. On the other hand if economics were the sole factor they’d all have robot tractors and the other multitude of productivity enhancing tools that have been developed for agriculture that have been developed over the last 200 years.
- bruce511 3y ago
  It's interesting to me that you pose this question. I would suggest that this says more about the culture you live in than the culture the Amish live in. (No offence intended.) My hypothesis is that you live in a primarily material culture (safe bet, since we mostly all do.) Thus most of your life decisions surround money. What can you afford, how to get more of it, how to spend less of it and so on. Again, z safe bet, since that's true for most of us in general, and is emphasised especially in the US. Most of this is just baked in, so when we look at alternative lifestyles we can assume that they make decisions as we do. That can be a mistake simply because its hard to conceive the way others live. For example it's common for Europeans to get over 30 days paid leave a year. In the US most shift workers get none. In Europe salaried workers work fixed hours, then go home. In the US they stay late, do emails all night, and so on. Neither approach is right or wrong, they're just different. And it's easy to put my motivations on another group, send then see their decisions as crazy.
  - itake 3y ago
    Gentrification and inflation are real and they are coming for you if you fall behind. The Amish try to be self-sustaining, but it is extremely hard to not participate in modern society, especially considering healthcare. If Grandma is sick, do you let her die or do you pay $100k for cancer treatments? If you have 7 or 8 kids, then where does the land come from to house them? Europe is a great example of a region that hasn't had a significant technology breakthrough in decades. (I'm less familiar with healthcare tech, but most engineering products have come out of the USA and Asia). The impact is real: the pounds and euro have fallen in value to the dollar.
    - fennecbutt 3y ago
      A-are you serious? You've never heard of ASML? And that's just one example. Gonna write you off as just trolling lmao.
      - itake 3y ago
        I am sure you can name a small number of examples that came out of Europe (Mistral, Spotify, Siemens, etc.), but the fact is the US and Asia generate way more value than Europe has in the last few decades. ASML is half the size of TSMC, by marketcap.
hgomersall 3y ago
Slight aside, but that was the position of the luddites too.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  > The Amish aren't really about rejecting technology just to be luddites, but rather to about trying to preserve their traditions and culture. One of the ways they do that is to avoid adopting new things (technologies, processes, etc) until the community leadership agrees to it. Neither feels right to me. The Luddites and Amish share a common thread, which is that of ownership and control and ability to set one's own course. I don't think the Luddites agreed that preserving traditions and culture was what drove them. They wanted mechanization to serve us all, to not be used to control them. They resisted the mechanization of the human spirit. The Amish have their own culture & tradition, but I think again what's afoot here is also in part about control & ownership, at least as much as it is tradition & culture. To call this just tradition & culture ignores & skips over what's really at stake, which is control & ownership. Whether we have the ability to use technology on our own footing, or whether it is an injected force that shapes and molds us. Is tech soft and malleable, or is it hard & unyielding, forcing humanity to change itself?
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  Smashing looms was their tactic, not their goal. Their actual goal was to own the looms (to the exclusion of the factory owners). The original Parliamentary compromise regarding the introduction of looms was that skilled weavers would get first dibs on using them. A bunch of factory owners said "Fuck that" and just started using them anyway. Parliament not only didn't punish them for breaking the law, they passed even more laws to criminalize machine breaking on pain of death so that the Luddites couldn't protest anymore. Then they made up a story about them irrationally hating machines so they could paint organized labor as regressive. The Amish reject technology that ties them into a centralized society because they think decentralized, off-the-grid living makes you closer to God. The Luddites did not reject technology, they destroyed it as a tactic to bring capital back to the negotiating table. They're closer to the artists naming-and-shaming AI art users: few if any of them are Dunepilled[0] enough to actually want, say, a ban on computer programs that create art. What they want is protection against being economically replaced. [0] We must destroy the machines that think.
wkat4242 3y ago
I couldn't imagine a community 'leadership: telling me what to do and wear :( Of course we in the modern world are also a bit limited in terms of what we can buy but I often make my own pretty extravagant stuff to wear. Not always appreciated by conservatives but I couldn't care less. Ps nobody in the Netherlands wears helmets on bikes and we don't really need to. But I guess collisions with cars are more common in areas where bikes are less common. I've fallen many times but I always had my arm protecting my head in reflex even though it happened so fast I didn't even realise. The thing is that we don't view bikes as an exercise or sports thing you gear up for but just a convenience thing you grab for the 500m run to the shop. Besides having to put it on you'd be stuck having to carry it as well. And bikes are kinda the king of the road in Holland anyway. If you get hit by a car it's automatically their fault so they're really careful.

TomK32 3y ago

Neither high viz nor helmets help if the motorists are not driving their car as they should https://twitter.com/SurreyRoadCops/status/1454919907964035077 https://twitter.com/SurreyRoadCops/status/145491990796403507... https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/18206596.pictured-police-car-wrecked-bus-crash-upton-bypass/ https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/18206596.pictured-pol... https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2021/08/stoned-lorry-driver-crushed-police-car-and-seriously-injured-officers-in-a1-crash/ https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2021/08/stoned-lorry-driver-crus... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0qy743j0do https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0qy743j0do

_ZeD_ 3y ago

why should they wear helmets?

tfourb 3y ago
To avoid death or serious injury in case of an accident.
- romafirst3 3y ago
  By that logic everyone in a car should wear a helmet in case of an accident. Head trauma is a real danger in car accidents. Wearing a helmet in your car will help with any head trauma. Why don't car drivers wear a helmet?
  - defrost 3y ago
    Because car drivers, unlike ebike riders and buggy drivers, are surrounded by a metal cage built to some level of crash protection standard. Car drivers also largely wear seat belts that prevent them being thrown through the air and impacting trees, kerbs, etc. It's kind of obvious really.
  - dxdm 3y ago
    You're probably aware of other cases where people wear helmets, for example on construction sites and while riding motorbikes or indeed bicycles. A lot of people riding cars wear seatbelts. I don't understand what's supposed to be so baffling about wearing helmets in this case, as well.
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      Bicycle helmets are virtually useless when involved in a multi-vehicle collision (e.g. a cyclist and a car driver). They are typically tested IIRC for speeds of up to 12mph onto a static surface from a height of 2m or so. The forces involved when colliding with a motorised vehicle are orders of magnitude greater. https://www.cycleplan.co.uk/cycle-savvy/what-are-the-cycle-helmet-safety-standards/ https://www.cycleplan.co.uk/cycle-savvy/what-are-the-cycle-h...

throwaway892238 3y ago

The high vis is paramount. The helmet... well, I just don't know how much good it would do if you get clipped by an F-150 going 60mph

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Hi-Viz is only useful if the driver(s) are actually looking and paying attention. There's plenty of examples of drivers hitting static objects that are festooned with hi-viz colouring and reflectives. Bicycle helmet safety standards are generally for speeds up to 12mph and/or a static drop from 2m onto a hard surface. They are specifically not designed to withstand the forces/accelerations involved in a multi-vehicle collision. (One of my bug-bears is when people point to a destroyed bicycle helmet and claim that it saved their life. Helmets are designed to compress and are particularly weak when subjected to tensile/shear forces. If a helmet splits in two, then it most likely wasn't being effective)

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

Helmets are for when they fall awkwardly; in practice, this rarely happens (disclaimer: I live in a bike friendly country). High-vis is for other traffic to see them. Motorcyclists often have both.

cardinalfang 3y ago

An airbag helmet full of electronics would allow traditional dress, but I don't know enough theology to make the decision.

usrusr 3y ago
The only company that made them has gone bankrupt, so there's that. They were successful in Copenhagen, where helmet-wearing is not quite as exotic as in the Netherlands, but apparently one city is not enough.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  I half-considered getting one of those (I'm in the UK), but the initial cost was expensive and they were single-use as in they needed to go back to the manufacturer to be reset after being triggered which was an additional cost. https://www.hovding.com/ https://www.hovding.com/
  - usrusr 3y ago
    I'd be dead scared of false positives riding in one. That might be harmless at a speed slightly above pedestrian, but my speed range does not end there.
  - euroderf 3y ago
    Could I, as a consumer of said helmet, have performed a non-destructive test ?
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      I don't believe so - once they were triggered they'd need to be factory reset.
      - euroderf 3y ago
        And so my only alternative is to place my utmost and final faith in the product.

bcta1 3y ago

Slightly off topic, but I’m surprised that helmet manufacturers haven’t made more helmets for other people whose practices make wearing traditional helmets challenging (like Sikh men with turbans).