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Comment by 3bone | Hacker News Reader

I agree, they don't do a fantastic job of justifying the title. However, #1 and #2 are related, and the article does try to explain why they cause less safety. More people biking means both fewer cars, and people driving cars are more aware of bikers.

> Safety in Numbers is a straightforward concept: More people on bikes creates safer conditions on our streets. The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), which represents professional planners from 81 cities from around the United States, pointed this out in their own pushback on NTSB’s recommendations.

If you follow the links in the article you'll come to some actual research about the topic https://www.bmj.com/content/332/7543/722.2.

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As someone that has commuted through urban and industrial environments for years on bicycle I don't care what statistics say about assertions and possible changing circumstances for cyclists safety.

Wear a helmet. Your skull doesn't care about this study.

And titles like could lead to people to thinking that they won't need one. Which is unsafe for cyclists.

I want you to read that a bit more slowly. And then explain to me how this isn't a paraphrase of "I don't believe in science and studying things."

It would help if you ack that the article encourages helmets. They are not trying to say to not wear them. They are arguing that the practicalities of how "mandates" work out cause more issues than they solve.

I, for one, fully accept that "more studies" would be good. I also always wear a helmet. I don't think either of those are good rebuttals. And any blanket statement of "I don't care what evidence there is," is almost certainly the wrong foot to be on.

People are surprisingly bad about reading words and instead reading something entirely different.

It's clear from even the short HN title that we're talking about making helmets mandatory by law, not whether you should wear them.

> And then explain to me how this isn't a paraphrase of "I don't believe in science and studying things."

I think a more accurate description would be "I don't waste my time with bad science and sealioning" (of which I accuse the article, not you).

Take the "dropped precipitously" link from the article. Does it link to an article about the before-and-after effects of the helmet mandates in Sydney in Melbourne? No. Does it talk about a drop in bicycle usage, irrespective of any relation to the mandates? Also no. It's an uninstrumented observational article about the lack of adoption (specifically) of bike share programs in several Australian cities, with no meaningful analysis of policy-based or temporal factors (outside of the changing coverage areas of the bikeshare companies). That study has zero relation to the claim for which the posted article cites it. Trying to pass it off as if it does is entirely in bad faith.

Articles like the one linked in the OP are a dime a dozen, and disregarding them based on simple heuristics is a good use of everyone's time. If one has a bold scientific claim to make, they should either present the data alongside the article in which they make the statement, or accompany it with a peer-reviewed article that does.

I am sympathetic to the concern here. But you would do a much better task by attacking the stats, not by blanket dismissal of the ideas.

Following a few links from the main article easily gets to https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2017/09/01/missing-the-fores..., which has https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/06/13/wapo-is-wrong-head-in..., and ultimately points to there being something with just getting more folks on bikes. Especially for short trips that are likely the norm for bike share systems.

There is some intuitive sense to this. Is why short bus rides don't require seatbelts. (Though, I confess I can't remember the rules for cross state busses. https://www.cga.ct.gov/2016/rpt/2016-R-0318.htm has some info on school busses, but I'm not entirely clear that is applicable here. Except in as much as it is clear that comparing helmet laws to seatbelt ones is... dubious.)

Again, if you have legit complaints, make them. If you feel safer wearing safety gear at a personal level, you are correct. If you think that safety gear at a society level is a no brainer, I challenge you on that assertion.

I don't believe I ever dismissed the idea. I dismiss the bad-faith article about the idea.

Fair. I mostly read the dismissal as only based on the headline, which I feel is still unfair. But, I can take responsibility on that uncharitable read. Apologies.

Cracked bikehelmet this morning due to black ice, still f'd due to hurting my foot badly when going down but honestly... without a bike helmet I would be in hospital for sure.

Without a bike helmet perhaps your confidence would better match your surroundings eg: black ice. If I biked all winter in full hockey gear I’m certain I would fall more often because I would not be scared to death of slipping on black ice and getting running over by the truck behind me

the point here is very simple: have you ever crossed a street on bicycle alone? and have you ever crossed the same street in a group of bicycles?

THIS is the real difference.

I don't see your point. If I cross the street in a group, I pay more attention to others in my group as opposed to approaching traffic. That would be less safe in my opinion because I'm relying on someone else's judgement who may also be distracted by the group.

> I don't care what statistics say about assertions and possible changing circumstances for cyclists safety.

Why not? Shouldn't we want to increase cyclist safety? Wearing helmets does that, both the data and common-sense concur here. But article was making a different claim. We shouldn't have laws MANDATING helmet use due to unintended side-effects actually producing more net-harm than the whatever deterrence impact the laws have in increasing helmet use. This is really not an obvious conclusion and requires reviewing the empiric data - but I suspect it is right.

> And titles like could lead to people to thinking that they won't need one.

Yes - the title is badly phrased. They are trying to present a subtle, nuanced argument that is not-obvious to a casual reader scanning headlines or even an article summary.

So absolutely everyone should wear a helmet, and absolutely nobody should be required to wear a helmet. There must be a name of this sort of paradox.

Yes, it's called reality. It's only a paradox for obsessive right brains, pushing their glasses up their noses, pointing their fingers in the skys, grunting smacking noises, semantics!

Multiple things can be true at once. MHL hurt cyclists, and having a helmet on makes your head hurt less when you fall.

Cyclist safety is _not_ an individual responsibility. It's a collective one. Mandatory helmets promote a state of affairs where cycling is considered a leisure opt-in activity, a fig leaf for shameless victim blaming when drivers do run into a cyclist (should have worn a helmet har har). The collective psychology of drivers, - reckless, inconsiderate, entitled - combined with a street design that actively encourages speeding and reptile-brain fueled jostling for position is what is hurting cyclists. This is why mandatory helmet laws are harmful, they are actively nurture a deadly collective mindset.

Plus, we are not making drivers where helmets. In a crash, having their head packaged inside a helmet will benefit drivers too. So maybe let's start there.

I agree with your collective argument - but safety is _also_ an individual responsibility. People should still wear helmets for their own safety, if they determine that it makes sense for them.

Yeah you're right, it's an individual responsibility as well, I was writing a little too cavalier. The true danger, death and mutilation, the one that is scaring people of riding altogether, is coming from drivers mostly though.

No:

1) Everybody SHOULD, for their own benefit, wear a helmet.

2) Nobody should be REQUIRED BY LAW to wear a helmet

There is no paradox, unless you assume that every good thing thing should be mandated by law and every bad thing regulated. I was actually surprised to read this article and discover the arguments against the helmet law mandates. Usually the argument is something like: "yes mandates save lives, but freedom is more import." But this argument was different -- do to complex system interactions removing the mandate saves lives on net. So, with or without laws most regular riders are going to wear helmets. However, just one example from the article, with the laws there are fewer people riding which makes the roads less safe for bikers. Lots of bikers promotes awareness of bikers by drivers, and encourages infrastructure investment, and prevents thus prevents accidents. We have data that shows this happens in practice. It also encourages both helmet and non-helmet wearing bikeshare adoptees, which in-turn also creates ridership, and a culture of bikeriders, which in turn reduces accidents. So even while you have more non-helmet wearing riders (which is a small fraction of riders) it reduces the _conditions_ that cause accidents sufficiently that there are on-net fewer accidents.

The society with the most cyclists disagrees with you. I'm confident their bike safety record is better than countries with mandatory helmet laws.

https://www.google.com/search?q=dutch+cyclists+don%27t+wear+...

Your argument that you're safer with a helmet might be true but you're probably being hypocritical in that there are plenty of things you do in life where you'd be safer with a helmet were you don't personally wear a helmet. Apparently you'd be ok if the government forced you to where a helmet at all times except sleeping because by the same argument, it's safer to walk with a helmet than without therefore there should be a law requiring it

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