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Comment by shwestrick | Hacker News Reader

You seem to be interested in this question: "If I bike without a helmet, how much more likely am I to be injured than if I bike with a helmet?". And of course, the answer is that you are safer with a helmet.

But the article is interested in a different question: "If I bike, how likely am I to be injured?".

This question is very heavily influenced by the ratio of bikes to cars on the road. More bikes leads to lower chance of injury for bicyclists.

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I would put it this way: the article's information might be useful if you are trying to decide whether or not to bike.

But if you have decided to bike, the article's information in no way means you should not wear a helmet.

Unfortunately, the clickbait headline mixes up these two very different things.

The article isn't for either of those things. Mandatory helmet laws are a matter of public policy, they have nothing to do with individual people making individual decisions.

The article's information is useful if you are a voter or a politician trying to decide whether mandatory helmet laws will help to make your city a safe place for cyclists.

> The article isn't for either of those things.

You'd never know it from the clickbait headline.

> Mandatory helmet laws are a matter of public policy, they have nothing to do with individual people making individual decisions.

Public policy doesn't do anything by itself; all it does is determine the incentives that people face when making individual decisions to do or not do things. So correctly describing the effects of a public policy is very important to individual people trying to make individual decisions.

> You'd never know it from the clickbait headline.

What headline are you seeing? At the time of this comment, the clickbait headline is:

> > Mandatory helmet laws make cyclists less safe

Which is clearly relevant for:

> a voter or a politician trying to decide whether mandatory helmet laws will help to make your city a safe place for cyclists.

and not clearly relevant for individual people making individual decisions, whether about biking at all, or about wearing a helmet when they do. (It's obviously possible (even likely) that relevant information might show up, but the clickbait headline isn't actually claiming that.)

It's easy to interpret the headline as telling you what the article is actually saying...if you already know what the article is actually saying.

But my initial reaction on reading the headline was: "Huh? They're saying wearing a helmet makes you less safe? That doesn't make sense! A helmet protects your head." I suspect I'm not alone (at least one other poster in this discussion has called the headline "deliberately deceptive clickbait", which is an even stronger claim than just "clickbait").

What would be the correct article title, that wouldn't be like a paper abstract?

How about "Public policy on helmet laws has unintended consequences"?

> all it does is determine the incentives

You say that like it's not a HUGE thing. Incentives will determine the entire transport ratios of a region.

Biking on freeways is for misfits and weirdos :)

> You say that like it's not a HUGE thing.

I said no such thing. Obviously incentives are important.

I'm just pointing out that incentives act on individuals making individual decisions. So to claim, as the GGP (not you) did, that public policy has nothing to do with individual decisions is simply wrong.

As I see the title (just in case it has been changed), it is "Turns Out, Mandatory Helmet Laws Make Cyclists Less Safe".

This simply doesn't indicate that wearing a helmet makes cycling less safe. Perhaps someone might misread it that way, but that would be a mistake in terms of both logic and rhetoric.

The choice to ride with or without a helmet is different for different people. It depends on where you are going, how many other bikers take that route, how fast you will bike, to what extent is it biking in traffic and what just bike trails, and also have you been there before, and do:you think:you should always wear a helmet. One weird factor is that people (car drivers and bike riders) have a certain tolerance to risk, so cars will get closer if you have a helmet on.

https://www.bicyclelawyer.com/cycling-law-blog/study-shows-c...

I bet that people also drive with a bit more risk tolerance when they are wearing a helmet than otherwise, and of course more likely to get that helmet for a fast, risky, fun ride than a quick trip to the grocery store.

Interestingly, if you are seeking to reduce your personal odds of dying, it is a no brainer to bike. The cardiovascular health benefits outweigh the chance for getting hit by a car.

Edit: add the link

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2031394/Cycling-w...

If you have already decided to bike, the article's information means that passing a mandatory helmet law is expected to make you less safe, because the effect of having less bikers causing less safety outweighs the effect of motivating you to wear the helmet more often.

> If you have already decided to bike, the article's information means that passing a mandatory helmet law is expected to make you less safe

You can change your decision of whether to bike or not based on information about the effects of mandatory helmet laws. Some people might choose not to bike any more based on that information.

But if, taking the effects of those laws into account, you still decide to bike, the article says nothing to contradict the obvious common sense that you'll still be better off wearing a helmet than not.

The title is a little misleading in common language, but is technically correct.

There are multiple aspects that lead to mandatory helmet laws causing in lower safety for cyclists.(many laws have a side-effect of making some group of people less safe)

Read the title three times and tell me where it says that helmets make cyclists less safe?

But that problem can be addressed in other ways - primarily better infrastructure (though I'd like to see better driver education too, e.g. as per the Netherlands where drivers are encouraged to open doors while parked in a manner that ensures they see any oncoming cyclists before doing so). We have MHL where I live and while I think there's a good argument for relaxing them at least for certain cases, I am grateful for having grown up in a culture where wearing a helmet is expected/ normal while riding a bike - they've certainly saved me from more serious injuries multiple times (including cases where I've hit the top of my head on branches etc. while riding!). But the fact that so few places in the world do have such legislation is telling - if a law truly is effective with limited downsides it tends to get adopted far more universally.

The infrastructure doesn't get built until you have large demand from existing cyclists.

Building out better infrastructure is usually the most effective way to increase the number of people cycling (and to make it safer for those already doing so).

Politicians usually don't do anything unless they see a demand for it on their citizenship. Just hoping they will build better infrastructure is naive. And if you want to increase the number of cyclists, laws that make it harder, like helmet requirements, will of course slow the demand.

Politicians have access to the studies showing that such infrastructure when built has the desired effect, and studies showing that the number one reason people don't cycle more is that they feel unsafe riding among traffic, regardless of helmets. Governments have the job of providing infrastructure to enable cities to function, and in many cases better bicycle infrastructure is the cheapest way to achieve it.

There also studies about how car on-ramps can be built, how sidewalks should be routed, how schools should be organized, etc. etc.

And money has to be split between all those things. A government has to provide for its people’s needs and if its people show no interest in cycling, some other more pressing problem is going to take priority

They ignore it as long as there is a vocal contingent of people against cycling infrastructure because of cost or because it may create a slight disruption to a car.

Some do, sure. But thankfully at least where I live governments (both state and local-level) have seen the benefits of improving cycling infrastructure and are continuing to do so. A good many car drivers are quite happy to not have to share roads with bikes too! Well-built cycling infrastructure makes roads better for all users, esp. if it can reduce the number of unnecessary car trips.

They do build bridges for cars even where no one is swimming across, though.

but would you have hit your head if you weren't wearing a helmet? maybe you would have been more cautious! maybe people are slightly more careless/risk taking when they take certain safety measures?

Cars in the 1950s had what amounted to spikes in the middle of the steering wheel and it didn't cause people to be more careful.

> And of course, the answer is that you are safer with a helmet.

I'm not claiming you're wrong, just that it's not a home-run "of course": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation

"overall traffic safety" is not a goal for MHLs for bikes, or motorcyclists; or seatbelt laws for car riders. Your first paragraph's question is the only relevant part of that.

But, that's not correct either.

MHLs could increase my overall risk of cycling accident enough to offset any gain from wearing the helmet.

There are studies that show drivers go faster and closer to cyclists wearing helmets (vs those without helmets). That alone could increase the risk of deadly car-bike interaction enough to offset the gains from wearing the helmet.

https://www.bicycling.com/news/a25358099/drivers-give-helmet...

Edit - either way, I'm all for separate, protecetetd bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. That's the "real" solution here - get bikes and cars onto different roads and what drivers do or don't do ceases to be a problem (almost, we still get drunken idiots driving down our protected bike paths outside DC).

That's not a useful perspective. It doesn't matter what the goal of the law is; it matters what effect the law has.

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