Comment by seadan83 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seadan83 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Ah, another car vs bike culture war filled commentary section. Sadly a place where HN is not even immune.

To sum up the article, the effect of lots of bicyclists leading to careful driving is greater than the protective effect of wearing a helmet while biking. Because helmet laws do cause a drop in ridership, it's counterintuitively a net negative for cyclist safety. That is the claim of the article.

To refute this, one must show that the "critical mass theory" is not significant and that driver attentiveness to cyclists is not a function of the number of cyclists.

The claim is not refuted by giving studies showing that when cyclists crash and hit their head, then helmets are (incredibly) significant for reducing head injuries. Nor is the claim refuted by saying cyclists should not be in the road, or saying (without evidence) that there is no reduction in ridership from helmet laws (the article cites examples demonstrating that reduction).

So again, the car centric here need to focus on whether the critical mass effect is actually a real thing, or need to find the evidence that ridership is not a function of helmet laws (the data, generally and from this article, indicate that both are the case).

The most frustrating thing about people focussing on cycle helmets is that they have very little effect on cyclist safety. PPE should be the last thing that people consider when looking at road danger.

From https://road.cc/content/news/111258-chris-boardman-helmets-n...

> Talking about helmets had become a time-consuming distraction, he said. “We’ve got to tackle the helmet debate head on because it’s so annoying,” he said. “It gets a disproportionate amount of coverage. When you have three minutes and someone asks ‘Do you wear a helmet’ you know the vast majority of your time when you could be talking about stuff that will make a difference, is gone.”

> He said the focus on helmets had made cycling seem more dangerous than it really is.

> “We’ve gone away from the facts,” he said. “We’ve gone to anecdotes. It’s like shark attacks - more people are killed building sandcastles than are killed by sharks. It’s just ludicrous that the facts aren’t matching up with the actions because the press focus, naturally, on the news stories, and [the notion that cycling is dangerous] becomes the norm, and it isn’t the norm.

> car centric here need to focus on whether the critical mass effect is actually a real thing Anecdotal evidence: in my country in the summer there are less accidents between cars and motorcycles per miles ridden than in early spring or late autumn. Why? Because in the summer car drivers expect some motorcycles to be on the road and pay more attention, while outside the season they are surprised to have motorcycles still on the streets and cause accidents (80% of the car-bike accidents are caused by car drivers).

> To refute this, one must show that the "critical mass theory" is not significant and that driver attentiveness to cyclists is not a function of the number of cyclists.

Not quite. The critical mass theory could be real and significant, and ridership could drop from a helmet mandate, but the question is how it stacks against the reduction of head injuries from the helmet mandate

Reply on news.ycombinator.com