Stanford students are more likely to wear masks on bicycles than helmets | Hacker News Reader

Stanford students are more likely to wear masks on bicycles than helmets

stanfordreview.org

43 pointsbkohlmann144 comments

The same is true in the Netherlands.

Honestly, if they are biking around campus, they don’t need helmets. Helmets are needed on American roads because of poor biking infrastructure (not an issue on campus or in the Netherlands). The article is taking liberties using nationwide statistics to criticize local behavior.

If they’re biking around campus, they also don’t need masks.

But they probably need to wear it both where they are going and where they come from, so why not keep it on? Whereas they don't need a helmet for anything else in the day.

Any good mask will make it very hard to breathe under strenuous activity. N95 masks also get blocked after an amount of air passes through them so they become ineffective. Best not to wear them if you’re gonna be in the wind.

But we're talking about biking across campus, not biking for sports. So not really "strenuous activity" where you'd notice that. (even just because you don't want to be sweaty at the other end either)

Uw is a bit different than Stanford in that it is built in a hill. So if your next class is on upper campus, you might not have any choice but to sweat.

I wear N95s in india every day and even the slight breeze can definitely start blocking the mask faster. Also even slightly increased breathing starts producing more aerosols and that starts blocking the masks as well. Unless of course even while cycling your heart is at resting rate, then kudos to your health.

People fall off bikes or flip over handle bars and land on their heads without the infra straw man everyday. The simpler conclusion is, if other people are doing it in my group and I don't want to think about it, I'll do it that way too. Wear your helmets to protect all that Stanford learnin.

Are you sure? Just falling over on the bike while stationary (I admit I've managed this before) without being able to partially break your fall. could outright kill you if your head hits the pavement. (An uncontrolled fall from standing height to concrete such as by fainting can kill.) Even if you don't die, head impacts are really bad for the brain.

You could also hit your head after tripping while walking, but people don’t wear helmets on walks. I think the point was that there is a comfortable level of risk people are willing to take. If you remove cars from the equation, then the perceived risk is much lower while biking.

Falling on a stationary bike is a lot easier than you'd imagine. And the extra foot off the ground that you will be, can easily add to the damage.

I remember when I first started using clipless peddles, you free the foot on the wrong side, and odds are high you are hitting the ground. Stupid easy to do.

This is a trivially small amount of people. If it wasn’t - people wouldn’t even bother with learning how to clip in. They’d be like, “oh no, clipless pedals is what killed my pa back in ‘04.”

I have yet to meet anyone that hasn't at least come close to falling on clipless peddles.

Falling != death.

This seems a bit of a non-sequitur. Falling from a bike is enough to cause head trauma. The claim here is that a helmet is useful and effective, not just from a moving bike, but from a stationary one. Adding to that, merely mounting a bike is already a greater risk of falling than most folks do.

Is it a certainty? Of course not. But, by that same argument, seatbelts are useless the vast majority of the time. Indeed, on most moving vehicles I'm on (busses/trains), I don't wear them. Not even offered in many cases. I still support and recommend them where they are available. Same for helmets.

Who's using clipless pedals to putt around their school campus?

If you're doing some sort of recreational/sport biking, then ya, a lot more people are going to agree you should be wearing a helmet.

Fair, though my point was more that experienced riders that use clipless are still prone to falling.

Around campus, problems from not balancing with a backpack are more likely.

Though, I do mean to say I don't think it is a certainty. Just that it is more likely than you'd think. And helmets are good at low speeds. They are not just a high speed protection.

I don't think I can underline this point enough. Helmets are just as effective on the slow/no speed fall as they are on the high speed ones. In many ways, I wouldn't be surprised if they are more effective there.

Humans have evolved reactions to protect their head when they fall at running speeds. For example, you instinctively throw out your arms to break the fall. It's when you are biking faster than a fast human can run that helmets become really necessary.

Appeal to evolution is silly. First thing you learn when skating or any real parkour like things is how to properly fall.

So, I can't say you are wrong, but I would love actual studies to settle this.

The statistics don’t lie. Biking in the Netherlands is incredibly safe even without helmet wearing.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09257...

Turns out there are other ways to make cycling safe. One could argue that helmet wearing might make it even safer, but we are talking about optimizing a number that is already very low.

I’ve been to Stanford before and the campus is pretty car free. It is big and mostly flat, so most students have bikes to get from one building to another, but you aren’t speeding around or anything, it’s a very Dutch biking experience.

But the Dutch have experience, from a very young age.

Biking could indeed be even safer in the Netherlands if people wore helmets:

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/neur.2020.0010

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...

Arguing that it’s a small optimization is one thing, but that doesn’t mean it’s “not needed”.

But you look like a dork. And what about your hair?

The discouragement of biking is a big deal in the Netherlands. They’d rather have everyone biking casually than a few dedicated speedsters decked out with the right equipment.

We have these boomer speedsters wearing helmets now, on electric bikes racing through traffic like they were boomers.

We hate 'em.

I presume you meant discouragement of helmets.

> I presume you meant discouragement of helmets.

I assume he didn't - the point is asking people to wear helmets discourages biking. In practice it's overall healthier to not ask people to wear helmets.

Ah, along those lines. Yes, I can confirm there is no discouragement of cycling. Like ever, not even when you are totally drunk.

Having visited Amsterdam once, I'm honestly a little surprised there are so few cycling accidents. The number of bikes is huge and the flow of it looked a bit like a controlled chaos.

The Dutch seem to have understood the street smarts and the unwritten rules of cycling (as applies to their environment) really well, so that probably explains it, along with a cycling-friendly environment.

Remember we learn as very young kids, not only to properly cycle, but also the limits while playing.

I'm sure it's something that becomes instinctive, and that develops best at a young age even if it can be learned a bit later as well.

I don't know if the environment regarding play is somehow different to other European countries so I'm not sure what you mean with that. I believe engaging in play that tests one's limits without risk of serious injury makes a person more aware of one's body and limits, though, and I find it a good idea, too. I wonder if the Dutch have a different culture somehow in that respect.

I also learned to ride a bike as a child, and so do most others where I live, but the culture regarding what's considered safe or typical cycling is somewhat different here.

Is your argument that any small optimization is needed?

Any form of transportation could be made safer with helmets, presumably cars far more so than bikes. Hell, surely some number of people suffer brain injury after falling out of bed. Should we all wear helmets to sleep?

No safety steps are needed. The criteria should be whether the cost of the intervention results in more benefit than if that cost was spent elsewhere. If you're going to have no defined ceiling on additional safety measures, the obvious step is to stop bicycling and choose a safer form of transport, or to stop traveling.

Virtually everything can be made safer, including sleeping and breathing. You don't have to prove it. You have to prove its cost-effectiveness.

Traffic and road infrastructure for cycling and cars is radically different from the US. Has anyone attempted to compare cycling injury and death data while controlling for street design, relevant laws, and driver behavior?

> we are talking about optimizing a number that is already very low.

In the US, we have almost zero change of optimizing the factors that are better at reducing not only bicycling but traffic injury and fatalities generally. Americans are so enamored with the personal automobiles that fixing the roads and infrastructure is basically a non-starter. Holding that factor constant, the safety of wearing a helmet starts to become quite significant.

It's difficult to compare it if you also don't compare the culture. If you look are /r/idiotsincars, most of the commenters from the US would be treated as murderous psychopaths, as they can't comprehend people can ride bikes for anything else than sports and they are considered to be "blocking" 4 lane highways.

Yeah, I alluded to that with "driver behavior", which is determined by culture. Those murderously psychopathic car-centric attitudes are part of why the US transportation infrastructure is how it is and why it's so hard to change it. What is it with Americans willingness to allow the most extreme selfish points of view harm the public good?

Bike helmets are mainly for falling off a bike by yourself, not being hit by a car, generally.

it's why bicyclists don't wear the same helmets as motorcycle riders.

The risk remains the same

Then you would expect the Netherlands to have a lot more injuries than the USA, since the number of miles biked without helmets is a lot higher. For some reason, it isn’t. They actually found in the 70s that yes, the problem is cars.

The standards for biking in Netherlands are very different... people treat it more like walking than like driving, as far as I can tell. Everyone's upright on a comfy bike and going pretty slow... the distances are shorter so you don't need to be a spandex cyborg to commute, and there are so many people it's probably hard to pass anyway. You don't wear helmets or carry poles walking, even though you could easily trip (someone I know got injured accidentally stepping off a curb).

I've only been to Amsterdam a couple times but my favorite snapshot of biking there was a lady biking hands free fiddling with her eye makeup (I think?), being passed by a hands-free dude wearing a suit, talking on his phone with one hand and other hand just kinda hanging alongside his body ;)

Thought experiment: what if we looked at wearing a helmet as a choice the same way that anti-vaxxers would say the COVID-19 vaccine is a choice? If so, should people who choose not to wear a helmet while bicycling be subjected to the same social and economic consequences as people who "choose" not to get vaccinated?

Not wearing a helmet does not affect people around you.

True, but the potential for needing medical care, hospitalization, or funeral services which could result in someone else being unable to receive care is similar.

Ah yes, the famous bike crash pandemic of 1954.

It's a thought experiment, not a statement of fact.

"the potential for needing medical care, hospitalization, or funeral services which could result in someone else being unable to receive care is similar" reads as a (patently false) supposed fact.

There is no plausible future in which medical care needs to be rationed due to an overwhelming number of bicycle accidents.

The best thought experiments start with what may appear to be, or are in fact, false premises.

If you include indirect effects, lots and lots of our actions and choices become morally charged. It's a good thing to include that in one's thinking, at least if you want to get higher than average in terms of ethical thinking, but it quickly becomes untenable if taken as an absolute.

Opting for not taking the stairs and using an elevator instead probably has some kind of a statistical relationship to needing hospital care. Choosing a sport or physical activity that includes a greater risk if injury is, in some sense, ethically worse than choosing one that gives the same benefits with a lower statistical risk of causing strain on the healthcare system. Technically, if you live in an area where snow and ice are present in winter, wearing wrist braces (or maybe even a helmet) while walking would reduce your risk of needing medical care in case of a fall. (The need for medical care for injuries to limbs due to falls is an actual thing.)

It turns out most of these are actually social or personal choices. You can analyse the statistical risk and the expected cost to healthcare and end up with different costs for various activities, but just the fact that there is a statistical or potential cost matters little.

To extend it to covid, the vaccine doesn’t fully prevent transmission either. It reduces it (likely, I don’t think we’ve seen a robust study in this department), but since it’s not enough to reach herd immunity this point is moot

The argument has now become you’re taking up hospital beds because you didn’t get the vaccine. The same logic applies to not wearing a helmet.

And to take it further: are we ok with unvaccinated covid patients taking resources from those not wearing safety helmets, or vice versa?

The rate at which people catch covid and get hospitalized is incomparably higher to the rate that people are getting brain injuries from riding a bike.

You can use the same "philosophical experiment" to ban being fat or drinking alcohol.

> to ban being fat or drinking alcohol.

No, you can't. At least not unless you ignore research and still believe that weight gain and addiction are purely choices and can be morally condemned. See e.g. Addiction is a brain disease, and it matters: Leshner, A. I. (1997). Addiction is a brain disease, and it matters. Science (New York, N.Y.), 278(5335), 45–47. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.278.5335.45

Your amount of social interaction is also a choice that will dictate your ability to get Covid. Should be obvious that this is comparable to your example from the lockdowns that have been ineffective.

> the lockdowns that have been ineffective

In the US they were ineffective half-measures with little to no real teeth. In other countries they mitigated the pandemic within weeks by having lockdowns that sustained the people and organizations affected and were strict enough to mean something. Saying "amount of social interaction is also a choice" is only true when the lockdowns were performative and the choice was given. And now the US, which is less than 5% of the world population, accounts 14% of all deaths due to COVID-19, not counting excess deaths.

My point was more about social interaction - not the lockdowns. It's an example of how social interaction is clearly a choice as much as being fat, drinking, cycling, etc.

Almost everything is a choice but we have a system setup to incentivize people to do certain actions more than others... making certain choices easier to take on than others. That's the problem I'm having with your argument. Present better and easier options for people and they will take them.

> being fat

That is not a choice. The causes of obesity are complex.

That’s a valid point. How did you decide which rate crossed the line? A defined rate is needed to enforce this fairly.

To get ahead of this, I’m probably going to respond we should focus on combatting obesity over anything you can propose. The rate it’s consuming both hospital and other resources dwarfs nearly any other condition aside from old age.

Others can see you.

To the extent you mean "others will see your behavior and possibly emulate it as part of a social norm", you're correct. If a critical mass of bicyclists wears helmets, the social pressure to conform to helmet-wearing would result in higher rates. Conversely, saying, "I don't see anyone else wearing a helmet, why should I?" is also a consequence of social norms; norms can override rational risk/reward choices.

I'm pretty sure it's just that they need their mask wherever they're going and it's easier to hop on and hop off with it than stow it away.

I bike with my mask on for that reason. As a bonus, it also helps with my allergies. (I do wear a helmet -- as much out of fear of getting hit by a bike on campus as by a car off.)

This is the most likely reason. I've taken to just wearing a mask as soon as I walk out my door, since everywhere I'm going requires one anyway. It's more of a pain to keep taking it off and putting it back on than to just leave it on. I also wear a shirt the whole time I'm out even though it's technically not required while I'm in my car.

Here in Japan you’ll literally see people alone in their cars with a mask. Maybe half the cars that pass have a masked driver. Obviously it makes no sense, but again if you need a mask where you’re coming from and going to, it just fades into the background.

Oh sure, look at you, showing up with a reasonable interpretation.

Here we had a near-perfect right wing clickbait article, attacking college students, the California left, mask wearers, and cyclists. And you had to come in and ruin it...

Definitely that and not virtue signaling.

Yeah, most likely.

For those who say "you don't need a helmet on campus," there's a simple science-based way to test your theory:

Look at the stats on brain injuries for bicycle accidents on campus. [1] has anecdotes, but no stats, unfortunately.

You have other bikes to collide with, you have people crossing the path, and yes, there are cars on campus. I've driven there.

[1] https://transportation.stanford.edu/bicycle/learn-about-bike...

And you have bike thieves screwing your wheels loose for whatever reason. Bike theft was a big problem at least when I was at Stanford years ago, and my front wheel once came off when I was biking (thankfully I was wearing a helmet). Guy at bike shop speculated that it was the handiwork of a thief, who might have been interrupted mid act.

Strange anecdote: I once organized a workshop on reasoning about uncertainty and one of the attendants was a health official working on bike accident statistics. According to her, if going solely by the statistics, helmets would have to be prohibited in our country because people riding bikes with helmets had a significantly elevated risk of grave traffic accidents in comparison to those without helmets. Of course, she also said that you really couldn't use the statistics in this way and we agreed that it seemed likely that helmets could prevent serious head injuries.

Still, it was an odd finding. Presumably, people with helmets drove faster or more carelessly but she did not have any evidence for that at the time.

Edit (just in case): 1. I'm not an expert on any of this and it's just an anecdote. 2. I recommend wearing a good, certified helmet.

Or people with more dangerous routes are more likely to wear helmets.

There's also some data to suggest that drivers are less careful around cyclists with helmets, e.g. passing them with less distance.

Somewhat related, specifically in the context of requiring helmets there's also arguments that people dislike them enough that the reduction in cycling happening would have worse overall effects than the injury reduction.

More dangerous routes on a more regular basis (committed to commuting on roads with cars), and mountain biking:

https://www.cyclehelmets.org/1261.html

That's an interesting question: similar to seatbelts causing more dangerous driving. Maybe.

However, we're talking about on campus here, not riding down Mission in the City.

Sure, the subthread here moved to more general helmet statistics.

The lack of bad anecdotes on that page combined with the fact 13k people daily ride their bike on campus would only serve to make me not feel like wearing a helmet there...

Yes that first story is unfortunate but I'd bet she just wasn't that great on a bike

> I'd bet she just wasn't that great on a bike

Literally blaming the victim. Not a good look.

Kali Lindsay? Victim of what? Either way it was her actions that led her to getting brain injuries.

> it was her actions

Actions within a system in which better choices were not available. There's no reason to lay the blame at the feet of the victim in that system.

How was wearing a helmet not available?

Wearing a helmet is one of the choices out of the ones possible within the constraints of the system. By "better choices" I mean ones that would require questioning the limits in which the existing choices can be made.

This is a discussion about helmet-wearing, which is voluntary. The entire discussion is about whether a victim deserves blame. Don't retreat into easy clichés.

"Voluntary" doesn't count for much within in a system in which the individual is held responsible for choices constrained by that system. Absolving literally everything except one person is blaming the victim.

Likely it was her fault - are we not allowed to be realistic and say that anymore? Also, she wasn't wearing a helmet so isn't that her fault as well?

It's not like somebody attacked her and I'm blaming her. She fell off her bike without a helmet on. It's a different situation

Last sentence: really bad look for you there. Even if you're right, that "just wasn't that great" person could run into you, ace bicyclist that you are.

Whenever I talk to private pilots and mention people I know who've gotten killed flying a plane, they invariably say "I've looked at all those accidents and I'm confident I wouldn't have made that mistake."

Right. It's other people who have those accidents.

A couple weeks ago I was on a motorcycle for the first time on a small island in Thailand. I was going slowly and had no incidents.

On the way, two girls on a motorcycle passed me the other direction going way too fast (and they were positively beaming - I was thinking "they are having a little too much fun")

A few minutes later we turned back and happened across them shortly after they fell off their bike going around a turn with nobody else around.

There is a reason they had an accident that day and not me. Yes of course things happen all the time that are out of our control but... Not always, especially when it comes to falling off your bike when nobody else is around.

Another story... I know somebody who got in a bike accident near a college campus somewhat recently. They never maintained their bike and their front tire had basically come apart while they were riding it. That was also their fault.

I know these are anecdotes but so is that story that prompted this discussion. In life it's important to focus on what you can control because those are the things most likely to impact you on any given day.

Flying a small plane is a totally different topic... There are several orders of magnitude more factors outside your control than riding a bike through a college campus

> For those who say "you don't need a helmet on campus," there's a simple science-based way to test your theory:

> Look at the stats on brain injuries for bicycle accidents on campus.

That's not science, that's looking. What you have to do is compare stats of the results and frequency of accidents with helmets and accidents without. There have been very good statistical cases made that the accidents that helmets protect against aren't the accidents that bicyclists get in (unlike the situation with motorcyclists, for example.)

There are some obvious statistical fallacies here:

1) I don't know what you consider "looking" as opposed to "science" so maybe you can help us out?

2) No, you're wrong that "What you have to do is compare stats of the results and frequency of accidents with helmets and accidents without." That takes as a prior that the bicyclist is going to have an accident.

The actual test is "head injuries from a bike accident while not wearing a helmet per units of helmet-less distance ridden." (I said "units of distance" because "miles" might be too big a unit here.)

3) who cares about motorcycles? We're talking bicycles here.

It’s interesting that the OP didn’t also consider that people wear masks on bikes to block out truck and car fumes and other particles that tend to fly in your face. I rarely wear a helmet when biking, but there’s a noticeable benefit when I’m biking around traffic and don’t have to breath in car exhaust because I’m wearing a mask.

If it’s not N95 it won’t be blocking out P2.5 particulates emitted from exhausts.

And if it is, you'll have a much harder time breathing.

I have been wearing N95 when biking in the city for a year now. It is great, it is not difficult to breath at all (I am really incredulous at people making that claim), and it provides a measurable difference in the air I breath (a nasty but efficient way to measure that is looking at your snot if you bike while having a cold).

Thank you, I was repeating something I've heard, I do recall trying such a mask before covid in summer and finding it a bit uncomfortable, but maybe it varies.

I'm quite interested in better breathing when riding my bike when air quality ocassionaly drops so I'll give it a try!

In the particularly hot months I have had to use small piece of cloth under the mask so I can remove it after my commute and not have a humid mask on my face, but that was the only issue I had. Even with the extra cloth I did not have trouble breathing (I specifically try to not exert too much effort when commuting on a bike because the sweat on my back would be a much worse source of discomfort than the mask)

I wear KN95 masks, but I’m not breaking down the level of particulate matter that gets filtered for science. I’m saying I don’t get asthma attacks or sprayed by debris when I keep pace in traffic with a mask on.

The masks they recommend in China are the N95 ones with valves that are banned in the west. My guess why is because they have to contend with both a pandemic and high pollution levels.

not sure if they're banned or not, they're not recommended because the valve lets you exhale unfiltered air, which is rather pointless for covid protection. For particulate filtering they're perfect though.

They are banned on planes and such. You can’t even really layer them since the second mask under would break the seal.

The theories on mask wearing are different there and here, or perhaps there is just more flexibility. Since China has such a low infection rate, the difference between an in-coming or out-going filter probably isn’t going to matter much.

Recent studies show that valved respirators are actually better than or equivalent to surgical and cloth masks for source control:

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2021-107/default.html

However, the "valves bad" mantra has been repeated so long and so strongly that it is unlikely there will be any official guideline change.

Any mask will filter PM2.5 to some level. N95 is just more effective than some (but less than others)

Experience and a basic level of observation would show that you're reaching to find a justification here. It's clear that the masks are covid-related and not pollution related. Gymnastics are for gymnasts not for research.

Why would you ever assume that!? I also wear a mask when riding near traffic. Masks on bikers without helmets were a common sight in Paris in 2009 when I lived there. The mask has a measureable increase in immediate comfort, while the helmet is something that requires thinking ahead. Of course more people will remember a mask before they remember a helmet.

Is helmet wearing on bikes common in Europe anywhere outside of the UK?

German stats are afaik something like 20% (heavily skewed towards kids)

Not for casual riding.

Indeed, before 2019 I would see masks most commonly on bicyclists. UK city roads are polluted.

They wouldn't have been wearing the 2 ply medical masks though if I recall correctly

OP here - I was on the Stanford campus in 2016 and 2017, frequently riding my bike there. Never once saw a mask on a bike rider. Very little car traffic on the routes bicyclists regularly use to get around. Also a frequent bike rider in my new city of Dallas. Very rarely (if ever), have I seen a cyclist (even on roads) wear a mask. Very likely masks on the Stanford campus are in response to COVID.

I also did not wear a mask when biking before COVID. Now, having easy access to masks, I would rarely bike without one, if I am near traffic, because of the better air it provides. Fair point about lack of traffic on campus though.

It’s understandable that you wouldn’t see people wear masks on campus prior to COVID. Mainly because mask wearing outdoors was previously a rare event for any reason in the USA prior to COVID, so you’d stick out as making a statement if you were one of the few who did. But the normalization of wearing a mask outdoors now likely plays a contributing role towards people feeling comfortable about wearing masks for other reasons that aren’t as straightforward as ‘preventing COVID’.

Nobody here wears a bicycle helmet unless he or she is a recreational rider who rides at high speeds. Helmets can help against high speed crash. Most commuters ride at low speeds. Helmets are inconvenient and pressure to increase helmet usage has been suspected to make cycling less safe in the aggregate because less people will cycle and other road users thus won't be taking them into account. If I'm being cynical it's possibly why people keep pushing for it in the first place.

This has been the best proof that intelligence and common sense don't necessarily go together.

Not to single out Stanford students, there is no common sense to be found anywhere lately.

I am not a Stanford student, but I bike with a mask on when near traffic. It has nothing to so with the virus and everything to do with measurable quality of air. Yes, it a N95, no I have no trouble breathing (and I am not particularly fit), no it has not been a problem in the hot summer.

Again, thank you, you've persuaded me to give an N95 a try as I often have the snot problem when riding in traffic. Are some better than others?

The biggest difference between various N95s is fit, but that's going to rely on your specific facial characteristics. The respirator needs to seal well to your face otherwise the polluted air will take the path of least resistance, through the gaps between your face and the mask. Some respirators come in small sizes and different shapes may fit differently.

Once you achieve a decent fit, a secondary characteristic is inhalation/exhalation resistance. Good N95 filter material can achieve the required 95%+ filtration but also achieve very low breathing resistance. The N95 requirements for inhalation resistance are quite easy to achieve, being less than 35 mmH2O. Good respirators test at less than 10 mmH20.

If you are going to use an N95 frequently, it probably makes more sense to invest in an elastomeric respirator, which is made out of a softer thermoplastic or silicone material. They use separate detachable filters which are more durable than the simple folded filter material of a disposable, and do not degrade due to exhaled moisture or sweat.

My common sense tells me not to waste decisionmaking effort on trying to figure out when I can get out of minor inconveniences. For example, instead if trying to figure out when I can get away with not using a turn signal, I'm as likely to put on a turn signal when turning in an empty parking lot or an empty road as I am in traffic.

Introducing decisionmaking makes you slower, and gives you the opportunity to get it horribly wrong. Not constantly trying to get out of doing little things allows me the time to contemplate more important things. I will never be the guy who gets on his motorcycle and goes "Should I wear a helmet? It's only two blocks away." Am I stupid?

Okay, I confess my reading is they are actually doing this either out of worry of being infected while riding (note that authorities have mandated masks outdoors on beaches etc.) or more likely for signaling, and I don't like this very much. I try to do the opposite because I'd like to have a totally free face again.

This is presented as hypocritical, and is taken that way by some of the comments, but masks and helmets are very different, with different situational contexts where their perceived protection varies differently, and different kinds of inconveniences. Being irresponsible about one but not the other may be hypocritical, but that's being taken as a must in order to score political points.

I think a better frame is we should laugh at people wearing masks on bikes the way we would laugh at people wearing helmets when riding an escalator.

(To be fair, some % of people wearing masks on bikes probably just as so used to it they forgot. But I'm sure many are wearing it out of fear or cultural norms, which is depressing if we're talking about highly educated people.)

I mean, sometimes I do wear a helmet on an escalator if I just got off a bike and don't want to bother taking it off.

These are students traveling short distances between indoor classes where they have to wear masks.

If anything, keeping the mask on is the rational thing (less wear and tear, less effort, etc) because they would otherwise have to put it back on in two minutes.

That was the point of the second paragraph of my post.

The point is we would laugh at someone who wore a helmet in an elevator for their safety when riding the elevator.

I assume some students are wearing masks on bikes because they think if they do not they are at risk.

It's not about forgetting or being "too used to it". Wearing a mask while doing a two minute bike ride between buildings is literally the most rational option.

Think about the time it would take to get out your backpack, pull out your mask case, etc, etc.

I don't know why you are assuming they are wearing a mask for safety reasons when there is a much stronger justification right there. Seems like motivated reasoning.

That was the point of the second paragraph of my post.

The point is we would laugh at someone who wore a helmet in an elevator for their safety when riding the elevator.

I assume some students are wearing masks on bikes because they think if they do not they are at risk.

> I assume some students are wearing masks on bikes because they think if they do not they are at risk.

Which is a blind and unjustified assumption based on no data, especially when there are much more legitimate and likely reasons for those students to wear masks when biking between classes.

It’s totally not an unjustified assumption. I was at a farmers market today outdoors 30 minutes from Stanford where nearly everyone was wearing a mask. There are a lot of people wearing masks outside to reduce their risk of COVID.

The choice isn’t between perfect rationality and hypocrisy, it’s between useful norms and harmful ones. People of every intelligence level defer some decision making to the community and culture, it’s how the species moves forward without having to constantly rethink and re-explain.

Right now it’s likely better to have people wearing masks too often than the other way around.

I haven't done this level of research, but in Austin I have observed motorcyclists with mask and no helmet, which is even crazier.

If you're in traffic, the right kind of mask protects you against breathing in pollution, which is an immediate annoyance/harm, vs. helmets and masking to protect against COVID, which are more statistical harms, so it does have some sort of logic.

Masks protect others, not just the wearer, perhaps even with an emphasis on the others. That might create a stronger social pressure for wearing a mask, and avoidance of stigma might compel people to wear one even in situations where it doesn't actually do much.

There may be lots of other factors in play considering that these kinds of choices are largely social, so this might not actually be the reason the students make those choices, but that's a fairly obvious difference.

Optics and appearances affect how others feel.

This could be a sentence summarising the 20s

Well it's not like there's a shortage of Stanford students and graduates in the tech industry so this seems like a situation that will resolve itself organically as well as provide an additional implicit hiring filter for no additional charge.

The author makes the mistake of associating cycling with head injuries. In fact, for young people the risk of head injury on a bike is significantly lower than the risk of contracting Covid on campus.

The risk of contracting COVID at all? Maybe. The risk of harm from COVID as serious as a head injury? No way.

> The risk of harm from COVID as serious as a head injury? No way.

Uhm, what? COVID can kill you and if it doesn't kill you can leave you with what, so far, looks like life-long disability.

Sounds about like what a head injury can do.

We are talking about college students.

What does that have to do with anything? They aren't immune to COVID-19.

You honestly think COVID is more dangerous to a college student than a head injury?

That's not what I said.

I’m sorry, I did misquote you. You said they are roughly equivalent, which still seems completely false for college students.

The one real caveat is that COVID is contagious and head injuries are not, so it is more complicated to calculate the overall effect.

Head injuries are not, but as with COVID, victims of head injuries can take up hospital beds and other health care resources, not to mention the costs to society, both monetary and not.

Is your argument that a cyclist can reduce health risks more by wearing a mask than wearing a helmet?

Helmets mess up your hair.

They don't believe in the science of helmet wearing! /s

We all like to think that Stanford students may not be as bright as they're purported to be (I have fun thinking this too!) but here's my theory:

- Some people who normally wear helmets might not wear one when going slowly from building to building within a campus where there are few/no cars or other dangers around.

- These people might have had to wear a mask at the location they're coming from (e.g., a lecture hall) and the location they're going to.

- So...it may just be easiest to hop on your bike, ride to another building close by, and leave your mask on.

If there is any sense in this I suspect it's more about signaling and conformity than anything else... I wonder if those places still see joggers wearing masks.

> I wonder if those places still see joggers wearing masks.

In Palo Alto it’s definitely possible. A friend of mine who lives in nearby Atherton was complaining about joggers not wearing face masks (so I’m guessing he was while out running).

He's actually still complaining about people not wearing masks at this point, after the vaccine is widely available? I guess some people are going to be stuck in 2020 for the rest of their lives, like people who grew up in the depression and could never stop hoarding food.

Californians are pretty strict about both compared to the rest of the USA.

Or you know, jogging or biking near a dusty smelly road traffic is gross... People have been wearing masks in that situation since forever (or just pulling their t-shirts over their mouths). Now we just happen to have N95s much more easily available.

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