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Comment by Aeronwen | Hacker News Reader

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation

The more likely you are to survive putting the car on it's roof, the less you think about avoiding it.

Right. The same logic that says bike helmets lead to more deaths because people drive more risky. Which I guess is great until you get t-boned by someone you don’t see coming and just die because you didn’t have a $20 helmet on.

Car drivers are also taking less care when encountering a cyclist with a helmet on. People weirdly tend to put others into greater risk when assuming others are protected, which in case of cyclists is clearly false.

I’m not sure why this comment is being downvoted. There are multiple papers showing drivers are less safe around helmeted bike riders. Here’s one: https://psyarxiv.com/nxw2k.

It can be both true and bad advice. It’s bad advice to preach against helmets as they are an excellent safety device.

This is strange, is there any major flaws to the study because anecdotally seeing helmet/no helmet does not consciously effect my driving near cyclists.

Why am I being downvote? I asked about the caveats of a research paper to someone who read it, a task that takes considerable time. Since I got not informative reply, I did read it and apparently this is a controversial topic with papers going both ways although for the areas studied it does look like it’s a true effect, but I have questions about how universal it is across different areas.

I come back to my original anecdote, helmets is not something that consciously effects my driving. Not only that, unless a road biker biking for exercise is going super chill, it’s hard to notice the a helmet or not. And second, the prevalence of helmets, the prevalence of bikers and the regional road layout all probably effect general driving behaviors around hikers. I’m skeptical this effect is universal, but sure it apparently happened in the area of Europe under conditions studied.

This isn’t even the original paper, but one responding to another paper saying the original paper was wrong. I can’t read that original paper because it’s paywalled.

From skimming the article it looks like the effect is not even at p of 0.05. But i was a bit unclear on what exactly that p value was referring to and whether they had also tested many other hypothesis after the fact, a p-hacking issue.

There’s many questions I have about the road and locations and regional factors.

First, the comment refuted evidence based on data via personal anecdotes. Second the anecdote’s assumptions were flawed. Unless one believes most drivers are psychopaths, one would not expect drivers to consciously endanger bike riders (especially since a helmet is unlikely to provide any protection from being run over.)

1) discarding individual data points because they disagree with a desired result is fraudulent science

2) Road rage and resentment against bikers is real. There many drivers that act as psychopaths and will yell and haze bikers.

3) had people read the study before downvoting they would realize the study itself state it was a hotly contested topic and was in fact a response to another paper claiming they were wrong.

I don’t think someone asking if there is flaws to that study is someone that should be downvoted.

While I can understand that with something visible and/or obvious like seatbelts, airbags and anti-lock brakes, does the average driver have any idea how safe their car is in a rollover collision? I have a 2003 and a 2020 car, and from the outside, the A-pillars look the same. (from the inside, the 2020 A-pillar looks bigger, but I always assumed that was because it has an airbag). I certainly couldn't tell you which one would be safer in a rollover (and I don't intend to find out)

I have felt the effect between our two cars, but I think it's for another reason. I enjoy driving the older car because it is lighter, it responds, and I feel less shut off. The newer car is heavier, is sluggish (but far more powerful at speed), but feels enclosed. There is a disconnect between me inside the rolling box and the rest of the world. There is less highway noise, and the outside world feels "over there". It's easier to go fast without realising.

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