Wearing a bike helmet may make you more likely to get into accidents | Hacker News Reader

Wearing a bike helmet may make you more likely to get into accidents

qz.com

14 pointsjshc11 comments

Miss me with that anti-helmet study that doesn't address head injuries or deaths. People don't wear helmets to have fewer accidents. People wear helmets to protect their head when an accident occurs.

It doesn't matter if you lose more fingers if you lose fewer brains.

Also (2016)

I find the benefits of not wearing a helmet to be:

* Deciding to cycle for short or leisure trips is lower friction (I always wear street clothes, too.)

* I can hear better.

* I find myself more careful about intersections.

* Motorists seem to give me more room.

* I have one fewer item that can be stolen.

——

On the other hand, I find the helmet benefits to be:

* My head is better protected in a crash.

* I feel more confident choosing cycling for strenuous commuting.

* People aren’t as worried about me. :)

> I can hear better.

??? Road bicycle helmets leave the ears completely uncovered.

Try the same route both ways. The helmet creates noise that makes it harder to hear.

Other benefits of not wearing a helmet:

* Wearing a helmet only protects the head from a limited number of possible injuries.

* Wearing a helmet makes people overconfident and overly risk-taking.

* In the Netherlands, very few cyclists wear helmets because they are experienced by cycling almost daily, don't take unnecessary risks and street traffic design is far superior.

* Wearing a helmet looks dorky.

* Wearing a helmet is proven to cause vehicle drivers to respect bicyclists' space less, leading to more fatalities and injuries. [0,1]

0: https://www.bicycling.com/news/a25358099/drivers-give-helmet...

1: https://road.cc/content/news/252652-study-still-indicates-dr...

Conclusion: A helmet is unnecessary for experienced cyclists who are only going 10-15 km/h in proven safe traffic-designed areas, all other use-cases: it depends.

Most cyclists get serious head injuries when they get dinged by cars, of which helmets pretty much offer no protection from, so it is reasonable to not wear a helmet IMO when cycling (except for in rainy/icy conditions where single bicycle accidents are likely).

> Most cyclists get serious head injuries when they get dinged by cars, of which helmets pretty much offer no protection from, so it is reasonable to not wear a helmet

I don't understand. Did you just say that helmets offer no protection from head injuries?

I should point out that main risks to cyclists are having to share the road with motorized vehicles, and cyclists going faster than is reasonably safe without protective gear.

I feel like the emphasis on head gear is just a way to avoid the real issues.

Strange that the study take place in a lab: you definitively not behave the same in a lab or on the road.

tldr, So they strapped different head gear on people doing the balloon analogue risk task (BART) and found the helmeted folks inflated the balloon more.

I'm inclined to think cyclists in a whole bunch of gear do take more risks, but this experiment doesn't really do much to prove that. Headgear offers no functional protection in the BART, so the effect must derive entirely from some more general, irrational, feeling of security.

A few years ago I might have said "this is Hacker News, not Google News - we're not all idiots here", but I had a different username then. Have fun crashing without a helmet. Better really... for humanity I mean.

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