Safety vests and helmets make cyclists look ‘less human’ to other road users
Bike riders wear helmets and high-vis vests to reduce their vulnerability on the road. Problem is a new study finds this dehumanises cyclists, putting them more at risk of aggression from drivers.
"Around 30% of respondents also perceived cyclists to be less than fully human."
What the fuck is wrong with people
As someone who drives almost every day I can confirm that I perceive motorists to be less than fully human just based on their behaviour.
Some people need to lose their licences.
You must live somewhere with good cycling culture. Here in central Iowa, we have a yearly event where a bunch of cyclists ride across the state. Instead of using the very available and maintained trails, they really like to try to cross the highways without looking and get drunk at the bars so they can stumble in the middle of the roads some more.
Person wearing a helmet and vest: not human
Car: definitely human
…Wait, what?
Safety concerns are definitely the major reason I've never got into road cycling, despite being pretty interested in the sport. I'm happy to ride my little folding bike to the shops and stuff cause I can use the footpaths, but there is no fucking way I am riding on the road with the type of people out there. Both cyclists in my family have been hit by inattentive drivers and were lucky to avoid major injury/death. This is before we even get to the psychos mentioned in this article.
There is a sustained push to separate cyclists from motorists. It’s easier to invest in infrastructure than to educate motorists.
what
There's a long term debate about the effecacy of helmets. this article from 2014 summarizes it pretty well. All the studies, both in favor and against are relatively weak compared to what we might expect, but this is epidemiology, not biology.
The biggest indicator is simply that countries with heavy helmet use have more head injuries per 100,000 miles ridden than those with low helmet use. Even that is a correlation, but causality is unclear.
All I can say is I've hit my head hard enough to get a concussion while wearing a helmet. Pretty sure I would've died without the helmet.
So I'm glad I was wearing one, and I will continue to do so every time I ride.
I've never understood why people get so upset about being forced to wear helmets. Why take a risk when it comes to what is arguably the most important part of your body? Even if you're a perfect cyclist who will never fall over (and will never suffer any kind of mechanical failure, like the seat on my bike that broke off while I was riding down a hill) it's still a sensible precaution and worth some minor inconvenience like having to bring a helmet with you or leave it attached to the bike.
Can confirm I fell off my bike in my own Street, going about 15kph after a night at the pub. Didn't even notice I'd smashed my helmet until the next day. Glad I had it on.
This may be the case, but may also not. Concussions are pretty tricky... If we look at common causes, many are activities done without helmets, and people do survive them, and conversely, many of them happen in spite of the presence of the helmet.
So it's harder to link concussion safety to helmet use, and as the summary mentions, head injuries are currently more common in walking and driving than in cycling, so, again, it's quite difficult to study and most conclusions have quite a bit of uncertainty.
Surely that's like what happened in WWI (I think) where they found making soldiers wear helmets created more head injuries than before. They almost stopped using them before realising that less soldiers were returning dead so they just increased medic capacity to handle it.
Wearing a helmet is going to result in a head injury in an accident which would otherwise have caused death.
Naw, all injuries go down. It's not survivor bias, it's a solid inverse correlation.
Places without helmets tend to have a better cycling culture and infrastructure
That's quite true. And they get it because enough people are cycling that there is demand for it. Mandatory helmets laws actually discourage cycling. The data on that is clear. The data on whether mandatory helmets laws increase safety is much less clear, however.
When it's a matter of public policy, one should consider both these factors... A clear cost for an unclear benefit, and change policy as our knowledge continues to evolve.
I think the debate around helmets is beside the point. Why? Because it's not really up for debate that helmets prevent brain injuries.
If danger from road users increase because of wearing a helmet, that's an issue with the drivers and the non-separated infrastructure.
As a daily commuter riding a bike, I say we keep the helmets. It's like wearing a seat belt and should be mandatory as long as we have a semblance of socialised healthcare.
Except that mandatory helmets discourages bicycling which causes disinvestment in safe infrastructure, and keeps drivers unfamiliar with cyclists. This makes cycling much more dangerous. Note again that the mass cycling cultures do not have mandatory helmets laws and are also much safer than Australia.
Also, it's weird that cycling is singles out for mandatory helmets. Fully half of all head injuries from individual transport happen on automobiles, yet nobody is suggesting mandatory helmets for car occupants. Even walking creates a larger number of head injury hospital visits. The arguments for mandatory bicycle helmets apply there too.
Ultimately, at a time that we need greater investment in mass cycling than ever, for individual safety and for the environment, mandatory helmets laws are counterproductive
is not really up for debate that helmets prevent brain injuries
Not if you don't read the research, as you apparently haven't. As the poster above pointed out there really is a lot of debate and the research supporting helmets is of very poor quality.
countries with heavy helmet use have more head injuries per 100,000 miles ridden than those with low helmet use.
Now compare that to fatalities. There's the answer to your second sentence.
Yup. When cycling on a road I only wear high-vis vest to look like a construction worker, not one of these fancy cycling ones, for this exact reason. Full Decathlon gear cyclists look like cartoon aliens.
They say you should only wear a helmet if you have something in your head worth protecting.
