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Comment by alexggordon | Hacker News Reader

Note, these are not normal bikes. From the article:

> A major cause of head injuries is going over the handlebars, which is not possible with a 3 metre long bike. Another thing that makes us unique is our training systems, maintenance systems, and ability to track poor rider behaviour.

Made me curious what they actually look like[0].

Seeing that, I’d tend to reset my presumptions about wearing helmets with these. There’s definitely going to be a different injury profile with these bikes than the bikes you rode as a kid. Without seeing those injury profiles I’d probably say you can’t really deduce anything from this announcement.

[0] https://www.positive.news/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pedal-M...

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This assumes that it's completely impossible to not hit your head when you fall on your side. Which is blatantly not true. This isn't a three-wheeler bike which is much harder to tip over. It's just a two wheeler that's longer. I can attest from personal experience that if you fall sideways, chances are you'll crack the side of your skull open. I got into a bike accident where someone T-boned me and if I hadn't had the helmet on, at the very least I'd have a concussion

The idea that you don't need to wear a helmet cause you won't fall over the handlebars is nonsense

helmets? but then how will you see the rider's little hat?

You have my sympathy for your accident, but you can't very well "attest from personal experience" and then describe a hypothetical that didn't occur.

Have you ever had a concussion?

> A major cause of head injuries is going over the handlebars, which is not possible with a 3 metre long bike.

Disregards that going over the handlebars happens in case if frontal collision, which can definitely happen with a 15m bike. Would you hurt your head? Who knows, because they're not looking at that statistics.

> makes us unique is our training systems, maintenance systems, and ability to track poor rider behaviour

Victim blaming. Assumes that accidents can be prevented by having a safer behaviour. They're lowered, sure, but anecdotally in all the bike accidents of people I know, the car involved did something stupid, and there's no prevention from that, whatever you train people for, short of not going on the road, they're at the mercy of people driving 2 tons of steel whilst texting. Multiply by the extended time they spend out, and it becomes statistics

It's irrelevant how much data and training they have. Accidents happen and an accident with a car and no helmet is a bad time.

I'd like to wear helmet as a passenger as well as a driver on such bike. The helmet doesn't add almost any inconvenience, is reasonably cheap and light. Why not wear it?

I use shared bikes one-way quite often and I usually carry my helmet around, strapped to a backpack. In colder weather I would cycle in a business shirt. No issue with a helmet.

>Why not wear it?

The argument that is mentioned in the article -- "increasing helmet wearing rates make cycling more dangerous per mile... because while helmets definitely help in the event of a crash, that risk compensation results in more collisions. So riders wearing helmets take greater risks, and those driving around them take greater risks too."

Is it that drivers wearing helmets take greater risks, or that drivers in more risky settings opt more often to wear helmets? Who can tell?

Exactly. I've read the article but I don't find the argument very convincing. The helmet is light enough I don't think about it when driving. Does it really alter my driving style to be riskier?

I've cracked two helmets when I was younger. One in a forest, going downhill. Most probably, I wouldn't go there without a helmet. The other one was in a city, while distracted*. In the second case, the helmet definitely didn't have any influence on what I did. In both cases, I wore the helmet voluntarily and I was glad to have it.

The company from the article is definitely in a conflict of interests. Banning helmets, it doesn't have to provide (and check) protective gear for drivers and passengers. Also, it doesn't focus customers' attention towards potential risks.

* Putting a phone back into my bag, I accidentally hit a brake. Silly, don't ask me how I did that. Fortunately, no car was around.

> Why not wear it?

Car drivers often get head and brain injuries if they are involved in a collision with another car or with a tree/building. Do you wear a helmet when you drive? The helmet doesn't add almost any inconvenience, is reasonably cheap and light, as you say.

Unless you're on a racetrack or driving a test vehicle, probably not.

For the record, I do wear a helmet on a racetrack in a car. :-) It adds major inconvenience, but the general risk on a racetrack is greater because you're pushing the vehicle to its limits.

The risk/inconvenience ratio seems OK for me when driving a car without a helmet but not for biking without a helmet. I'm not advocating for mandatory helmets. But I would feel very uncomfortable if they would be banned.

I think most people will disagree with you on how big of an inconvenience a helmet is. At least I will.

In Europe most people didn't even wear helmets when they went skiing (on-piste) until a few years ago. Now pretty much everyone does, but it's one more thing you'll carry with you everywhere you go. And on warm days I sometimes have to take my helmet off in the gondola because it gets very warm.

Yeah when I visited Europe I didn't wear a bicycle helmet either. American cities are a different story, with poorly designed roads and poorly designed vehicles with large blind spots around the A pillars especially.

Sure. It makes the profile slightly different. But is it enough different to eg say the risk of head injury is 99% reduced? I doubt it.

Theres plenty of scenarios left. What about and impact from the side and the rider falling in an arbitrary direction? A car rear ending it? And while a front-flip due to heavy breaking is unlikely, I’m sure if the front tire hits a high enough obstacle at enough speed it would still do it

Cars change lanes and make unindicated turns. All the risks from the side are still there, plus over the handlebars the length from the seat to the front of this bike is not impossible. Even hitting the bike itself isn't some magic protection where a helmet wouldn't help, could even be worse.

I wish more people would see this! Judging by 95% of the comments on here, people think it's just "helmets in general" that they're talking about. The don't seem to realize that these are not normal bikes.

yes these are obviously special physics-defying bicycles where if you fall over you don't crack your skull open.

thats a massive strawnan. tfa is not saying accidents dont happen. theyre saing that their data show that wearing helmets has a net negative affect, all things considered. tfa is about statistics of large numbers of situations, and is not making any claims about individual bikes being magical.

My friend has given me permission to freely use the video of them falling and cracking their helmet. I won't use it....because the internet is a cunt..but, things do go sideways, too.

I changed my mind; I don't think any of the people, the driver/pedaller nor the passengers should have to wear helmets because that would make them look stupid!

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