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Comment by isostatic | Hacker News Reader

Do you wear a helmet while walking?

Do you walk at up to 20 miles per hour (32 km/h) in roadways right next to cars going much faster?

I recently saw a Dutchman explaining that they don't wear helmets because they don't cross paths with cars. Bike lanes are designed to keep cars and bicycles apart. From the article it seems that cars always give precedence to bicycles.

It really depends on the situation and the signs.

The worst accident I ever had was when I collided with another bike, not a car - I flew over my handlebars and hit my head directly on the edge of a concrete slab. There was a loud crack, and in half split my....helmet. I was pretty ok(apart from severe bruises all over).

My point is that whether you cross your path with cars or not is irrelevant - you're still travelling anywhere between 15-30km/h and your head is 1.5-2m above the road - it's enough of a speed and enough of a distance to kill you just from a fall, vehicles notwithstanding.

Regular dutch (commuter) cyclists tend to ride a bit slower than 30. Sports cyclists DO wear a helmet!

Cars and bicycles are mostly equals in terms of who gets to get first. Though, in cities, it's indeed common for cars to take up a lower, more careful position and they will frequently let bikes go first even if the law may've said they were allowed to go first.

There's just so much stuff going on around you when you're driving a car in an inner city in the Netherlands, that it's wise to drive very carefully. In contrast, bikes have their own lanes, can use both sight and sound more easily and don't have to be so afraid of bumping into pedestrians, this means they have a far better grasp of the situation and possible risks. This combined with higher agility means they can move confidently and adjusted as needed.

It varies. Roads where cars are allowed to go over 30 kph tend to have separate bicycle paths (not always, but it's the goal). Slow streets, limited to 30 kph, often don't have separate bike paths, but since cars can't go much faster than bikes anyway, it's easy for them to give bikes the space they need.

Of course in many traffic situations, bikes really do have right of way. It wasn't always like that, though. In the 1980s, cars coming from the left on an equal intersection would have right of way over a bike coming from the right. Bikes were still explicitly "lesser" traffic. This was changed in the early 1990s I think, when bikes became truly equal to cars. These days the pendulum seems to have swung in the opposite direction, and some bikes bully cars around.

Doesn't matter. Here, on HN, you'll soon get in your face that study about how incident reports go up when it's made mandatory by law to wear a helmet when riding a bike.

Probably because that's the evidence

Yeah, but people conveniently forget that wearing a wig cancel that :(.

FTA: ”Studies have demonstrated that when a car hits a cyclist at speeds in excess of thirty kilometres per hour the cyclist is not likely to survive. Therefore, Bot told me, “thirty kilometres is the maximum speed in every living area in the Netherlands.””

The EU seems to concur with that. https://en.30kmh.eu/why-30kmh-20-mph/trendsetter-cities-for-...: About 50% of Dutch road network are having 30 km/h speed limits.

Also, typical cyclists speed inside city centers is more like 8 miles an hour, the speed of a reasonably fast runner (https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2018/01/02/dutch-cycling-... says 12.4 km/h)

> typical cyclists speed inside city centers is more like 8 miles an hour

Is this referring to average speed? I suspect that this doesn't take hills into account. In my rides with a loaded trailer, my usual average speed is about 11 to 13 mph and my top speed on downhill sections ranges from 20 to 25 mph. My uphill speed is about 5 to 7 mph.

Hills are fairly rare in the Netherlands, certainly in cities, where of the day-to-day cycling takes place. In cities, cyclists typically also use their brakes more when going downhill than in the countryside because there’s more traffic and the traffic coming out of side ways can be harder to spot. So, I don’t think it makes much of a difference.

Also, 20 mph downhill and 5 mph uphill gives an average speed of 8 mph, a bit lower than your claimed speed. I think that’s the generic pattern for hills: you lose more on the ascent than you gain on the descent because you spend more time on the ascent than on the descent.

I'm basing my figures for max, min and average speeds as displayed by my bicycle computer. I also mentioned a loaded trailer to demonstrate that I'm actually slower than the majority of cyclists here because they're not towing around extra weight like I am (meaning their average speeds are higher than mine and they can maintain higher speeds when going up hill compared to me).

Also if I were to maintain an average speed of 8 mph, then my commute where I pick up my kids in different locations would take me nearly 2 hours as opposed to about 1 hour and 15 minutes. So speed matters if you want to complete the ride in a reasonable period of time.

Most people don't cycle at 32km/h, especially not in cities. In fact, I'd argue that doing that in most cities is just stupid.

Bicycle helmets are not tested at 20 mph or in collisions with motor vehicles.

A study titled "Head Injuries As a Cause of Road Travel Death in Cyclists, Pedestrians and Drivers" has the following quoted text in its conclusions section:

> Head injuries in cyclists are often considered to be an important cause of road travel death, but this depends on the metric used for assessing importance. Pedestrians and drivers account for five and four times the number of fatal head injuries as cyclists. No-one is calling for pedestrians to wear helmets although the fatal head injury rates are similar for cyclists and pedestrians. The rate is higher for cyclists than pedestrians by time travelled and is higher for pedestrians than cyclists using distance travelled.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221414051...

Of course not, and since I ride my bike at 15 km/h in a bicycle-friendly city, on safe paths, I don't wear one on my bike either.

I wouldn't wear a helmet in the U.S. since I'd rather not risk getting on a bike at all over there.

That’s the Dutch reasoning... if I need one during cycling, might as well walk eat and sleep with helmet

Some friends of mine were out recently with the kids. They had been riding so had helmets on, but had stopped at a playground for the kids.

One of them started walking back and went straight over a wall, landing on his head, helmet taking the blow.

Thank god people wear helmets when walking around in a children's playground!

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