Would not having cars in the small centre actually clear up smog in a couple of hours? I would suspect that changes in weather (wind/rain) would have a far greater impact on air pollution. Along with the notes of happy people, I'd imagine this is more a psychological effect. Cities do seem pretty neat without cars (judging from when I've been out during crises and there's been no other traffic).
Also: "emboldened to cycle in from the eastern edge of the city without a helmet" - I'm not sure, but are cars a massively dominating factor in bicycle safety? I'd imagine there's still risks, like hitting someone, or a curb, where a helmet might come in life-saving.
There is a lot of controversy on whether helmets save lives. First, "it is impossible to build a cycle helmet that will offer significant impact protection" [1]. In Australia, 80% of cyclist death happen with a helmet.
Second, countries which have made the helmet mandatory have seen a decrease of cyclism and an increase of obesity and heart diseases, to the point that it increases the global mortality [2].
This may sound very disturbing if you come from a country where helmets are mandatory. In France, they are not.
In case you wonder, there are also stories (albeit probably less than unanimous) that cycling at the red light is safer. It is my personal belief that I'd never go ahead when it's green for the cars in my city (Lyon), but it's much more controversial. Some cities (like Paris[3] allow jumping the red light).
Finally, many European countries, including London and Paris, have developed bike stations (take a bike, 1.50€ for a 24hrs card, with deposit). Making helmets mandatory would be a problem.
Just to save everyone else the time and effort as well as repetitive strain injury I am going to summarise the entire crux of how these responses will go:
Someone will kick off with an anecdote about how they or a friend's life was supposedly saved by wearing a helmet.
This will be followed by a post saying it isn't much use wearing one when getting driven over by a HGV.
Someone else will then link to the University of Bath research.
Following again with another anecdote where a helmet was ineffective or lead to more injury.
Now someone is going to come and call everyone else morons and telling the other posters to stop pressing for mandatory helmet wearing- despite the fact no one has done so.
Someone else will now make an observation about why car drivers or pedestrians don't have to wear them.
Mr "Stop-making -me-wear-a-helmet-despite-no one -actually-calling-for-it-to-be-law" will then quote the Australian experience before again insulting those imaginary posters no one else can see who want to make it illegal to ride without a helmet.
Someone who hasn't read the previous comments will again post a link to the University of Bath research.
A sensible post will then mention Chris Boardman but this will be ignored as the pro and anti-helmet debate hots up.
Someone makes a reference to "noddy hats".
Someone makes another sensible statement about not forcing anyone to wear one, that it should be personal choice and they choose to wear one. That will then be ignored as the rest of the posters get nasty and call into question each others moral and intellectual standing, again despite NO ONE ARGUING IT SHOULD BE COMPULSORY.
Another person again posts about making pedestrians wear helmets.
These same comments will then be repeated ad nasueum until suddenly there are hundred of posts all saying the same thing and mirroring the exact same helmet threads that seemingly appear every few days which no one then reads because once you have read one, you have read them all.
IMO, almost all cycling accidents are avoidable, also those where the fault is with others (pedestrian, cyclist or car driver) you have no control over.
Problem is, to do that, you need to pay attention whenever there is potential for danger. Good cycling infrastructure decreases the fraction of the time that that potential is present from close to 100% (for example, if you are riding a 1m cycle lane next to a row of parked cars, you _must_ look forward to check whether there are drivers in those cars that might open a door into the cycle lane, and stay in that 1m wide lane, and check for cars making a turn into your lane) down to 10% or so. That makes it a lot safer to ride when you aren’t in the physical and/or mental state to pay attention 100% of the time (which is almost always)
Oh, and “Chris Boardman”. I like making sensible posts, and accept that ‘being ignored’ sometimes is the price for it.
You forgot someone noting that since the statistic is for Australians they were most likely falling from their bikes into a pit of venomous wildlife anyway.
The 80% figure is useless without knowing the proportion of people cycling without a helmet: if 99% of cyclists use a helmet then that would be a an odds-ratio of 24.75, which would be huge (by comparison, most "big" public health effects which aren't smoking-related are around 5-10).
My own personal experience would suggest that it is quite a bit higher than 80%.
>In Australia, 80% of cyclist death happen with a helmet.
Do more or less than 80% of cyclists wear a helmet? That stat is worthless without qualification (in my experience the vast majority of people in Australia wear helmets, especially when cycling on the road).
Not that I disagree with your general point; for the moment I am undecided.
It mostly means cyclists also die from other causes than head injury. I just wanted to point out that there is controversy, I don't however have the definitive answer about red lights and helmets.
If 95% of cyclists wear helmets (that would be my guess, at least when cycling on the road) and only 80% of fatalities happen with a helmet then it would seem to me that helmets are very effective - which is why you need to qualify the statistic.
That's an idiotic stat. I bet 100% of the cyclist die in wrecks that occurred while they were breathing as well. Does that mean that they shouldn't breath?
> Second, countries which have made the helmet mandatory have seen a decrease of cyclism and an increase of obesity and heart diseases, to the point that it increases the global mortality.
Sorry, but I have a hard time beleiving this.
Please note that this article from The Guardian is 14 years old, and doesn't link to any source.
so... I just scanned that, and apparently the thesis is that most people would rather not ride a bike at all if it involves, you know, looking like the sort of person who wears a helmet.
Wow. uh, that plays into all my negative stereotypes about "normal people."
I mean, it's your head, and I think you should be able to decide for yourself what an acceptable level of risk is, but don't pretend that a good helmet won't help make injuries in a crash less severe.
That's a personal choice and you are mixing the sport of cycling with the activity of biking from A to B. In the Netherlands (massive biking culture) 96% of people do not wear helmets yet they have the least head trauma in the world. For biking, you create segregated space.
>First, "it is impossible to build a cycle helmet that will offer significant impact protection" [1].
At this point I am not sure. The problem seems to be that current designs are based on ancient studies of how much acceleration it takes to cause skull fracture. It turns out that it is extremely unlikely that you will get a skull fracture while riding a bike. The energy justisn't there. Hence, current bike helmets are pretty much useless for preventing brain injury. The energy absorbing foam is too stiff to crush in actual accidents so no energy is absorbed.
Concussion on the other hand does happen a lot in bike accidents and is now known to be a fairly dangerous injury. That has caused a current idea that it might be worthwhile to design a helmet that works against the lower acceleration that causes concussion and doesn't work against skull fracture. Unfortunately such a helmet would not meet current safety standards and as a result could not be a commercial success.
> There is a lot of controversy on whether helmets save lives. First, "it is impossible to build a cycle helmet that will offer significant impact protection" [1]. In Australia, 80% of cyclist death happen with a helmet.
The problem is that most people think helmet is there to safe lives. It is not. It is there to protect you from head injuries.
If you are in a bike accident, you are more likely to be seriously injured from other damaged such a broken leg or serious bruising to the torso. I wear a helmet when commuting to work, but I have my doubts if it will save my life if have a big accident with a car.
The 80% number is useless. The first thing to do is to remove deaths where there was no trauma to the head or damage to the helmet, then you have a more fair comparison. I am certain that helmet do save lives, question is how many of the deaths would have been preventable by wearing a helmet. I don't think all the ER nurses and doctors are biased to such an extend that they are 100% wrong, when saying they see plenty of examples where a supposedly "No protection helmet" actually made a difference.
I have yet to see anything other than broad statements and useless repetition of statistics the author fails to understand properly. Btw, from you second link
> The Committee is appreciative of the fact that bicycle helmets, that meet national standards and are correctly fitted, provide some protection against head, brain, and facial injuries and is therefore of the view that the use of helmets should be encouraged.
Removing non-helmet related deaths fails to take account for any changes in attitude from helmet wearing. Could it be that little hunk of plastic makes people feel safer and thus helps lead to a small increase in the number of accidents?
It's entirly possible that's bullcrap but it's the kind of thing that's missed if you're only compare head related injuries.
This doesn't make any sense, mostly because no one reports crashes that did not result in cyclist death because they wore a helmet. I fell of my bike going 30mph and hit the curb head first - the helmet split in half(which is exactly what it's supposed to do) and I was absolutely fine. If I wasn't wearing it, I wouldn't be writing it - I would be dead. But I never reported my "life saving accident" anywhere,and I'm sure millions of people never report theirs either. While I wouldn't want to make helmets mandatory, I would certainly like to ban headphones while riding bicycles - it's so dangerous not knowing what's behind you based on sound that I literally can't understand how people can be so careless.
No, the helmet is not supposed to split in half. It is supposed to crush, absorbing the impact's energy.
And you would most likely not suffer serious question injury from such a fall. The horizontal speed is not so important if you hit your head on a flat surface. The vertical speed is essentially the same as if you've fainted standing still.
by curb he probably meant the edge of the curb in which case the helmet splitting in half makes sense, and also that probably would have done quite a bit of damage without a helmet
There is a lot of this post-hoc analysis, the main line of thought being that if the helmet broke then maybe your head would've been the one to break instead had it not been for the helmet.
This is completely false and not based on any science. Bicycle helmets are meant to crush, not to break. When they break, they absorb very little of the impact's energy.
What a loads of bollocks. I've been personally in the incident where not having a helmet would have a high probability of me dying on spot, or at least have a massive frontal fracture of my skull in forehead, with god knows what consequences.
I've flown head-first over the bike, fallen head-first too, have a 5-10 second memory loss of the details from the head impact, but when coming back together, big spiky rock was sticking out of the ground in front of my eyes, touching my helmet on my forehead.
Had a bruise in my forehead for a long time (from inside of helmet), some sort of sun shield on helmet went off, but if I didn't buy my first ever bike helmet couple of weeks before that accident, I am damn sure my life wouldn't be the same, and probably not at all anymore. I was shellshock-like for quite a while after that.
You don't want to wear helmet? Sure, just in case of incident and head trauma, you'll pay all the medical bills for your head treatment, if you actually survive. And if you don't buy a helmet for your kids, social services on you (how the heck did I survive my childhood without it is still a mystery to me)
Almost nobody in The Netherlands cycles with a helmet. There's been various studies that cars are not as careful with cyclists when cyclists wear a helmet.
You're talking about one example where this helmet would've saved you. However, requiring helmets would mean a massive decrease in cycling. Further, the studies that a cyclist seems safer with a helmet, so more risk is taken by others in traffic.
> You don't want to wear helmet? Sure, just in case of incident and head trauma,
Why be all dramatic about this? Millions of people cycle without a helmet, including kids. It's nice to be over protective but society is actually worse off. Helmets are more common on racing bikes of course.
It's better to have separate clearly marked cycling paths, make cars responsible (basically: car responsible for anything more fragile than them, same for a cyclist), etc.
Again, you hardly see anyone with a helmet in The Netherlands. Though strangely, in Denmark everyone seems to use it. Number of cyclist related injuries is pretty small.
Your case is literally the only case helmets are tested for.
Helmets are tested, from a standing height, falling forwards at no higher speeds than 7mp/h (this is the UK safety requirement).
to me, that sounds like a pedestrian helmet.
I'm glad that your helmet saved your life, but there is a very simple fact that it's not anywhere close to the safety people expect from helmets- and additionally, people who are forced to use protective gear are likely to give up cycling in the first place.
I know personally, if I'm cycling for 40 minutes with a helmet (on a hot summers day)- or I can take the car.. I'd take the car.
without a helmet, the trip would be enjoyable on a bike.
Cars are a massively dominating factor in every traffic safety situation.
The number of deaths from bicycle and pedestrian collisions (so, any collision not involving a ton of metal) is on the order of a single death every few years, and it generally involves people that (for lack of a better description) are at a point in life where any injury, just a fall, is very much life-threatening.
The key to reducing traffic deaths is to not have multi-ton cars with power in excess of 50kW crash into squishy humans. There is no amount of polystyrene in the world to diminish the forces involved here.
All biking accidents that I've heard of involve cars.
In the city, the most dangerous things are driving next to parked cars (people open doors without looking) and crowded intersections (cars turn without looking).
On the country side, the most dangerous thing are cars passing cyclists without sufficient distance. Drivers are really bad at estimating the distance of their side mirror to cyclists.
Anyway, that's anectotal evidence from the handful of serious accidents that people I know had. Personally I've been lucky so far.
>In the city, the most dangerous things are driving next to parked cars (people open doors without looking) and crowded intersections (cars turn without looking).
fucking hell, I remember I was cycling to the gym in London.. CS2 on whitechapel road going west from Bow to Queen Mary university (uni gym) and as I'm cycling, in the cycle lane, with my lights on.. some lads open the rear door of their Mercedes just in time for me to crash into the edge of it.
traffic was stalled so it's not like just he was stopped.. that hurt.. please look when you open your doors drivers.
I used to work with someone in London who was on a motorcycle just as a cabbie opened his door right into the road right in front of him. According to witnesses (he has no recollection of this himself), he flew over the door, went head first into the road, stood up and started yelling abuse at the cabbie, and then promptly fell unconscious and collapsed. He got away without any serious injury thankfully.
Cycles are scary enough for me here - I don't know how anyone dare ride motorcycles in London.
I agree that doors of parked cars in cities may be a frequent and painful source of cycling accidents. They are not, however, the most dangerous.
The most dangerous source of accidents for cyclists in cities is from passing turning HGVs (trucks) on the inside. The majority of cycling fatalities in London are caused this way every year.
Fortunately these accidents are avoidable through education of both cyclists and drivers, which is more important than wearing a helmet.
Cars are absolutely a dominating factor in biker safety. In NYC in 2012 and 2013 there were 7766 injuries and 30 fatalities of bikers reported which involved cars as compared to 537 injuries and 3 fatalities of bikers which did not involve cars.
I was recently in Delft, NL - I saw hundreds of cyclists - only 5 or so with helmets and they were children / in lycra.
Nor gloves. In the UK I always wear both. It is the environment that makes the difference. People in Delft are not going 20mph like I do. They are casually cycling from one part of town to another in their normal clothes.
>Also: "emboldened to cycle in from the eastern edge of the city without a helmet" - I'm not sure, but are cars a massively dominating factor in bicycle safety? I'd imagine there's still risks, like hitting someone, or a curb, where a helmet might come in life-saving.
There are still risks, but serious cycling injuries and deaths are massively dominated by bycycle-car interactions. Theory being that on a bike... I'm usually going under 20mph, So the force involved in a single-vehicle crash is whatever energy that 20mph imparts to my 200lbs of flesh, rubber, carbon and aluminum. Yeah, it can kill you, but usually doesn't.
If you are hit by a car, first, the thing is quite often going faster than 20mph, and the mass involved is at least one order of magnitude greater. That's a lot more energy to dissipate into the soft and crunchy cyclist.
cars make the roads very dangerous for anyone not in a car.
All that said, I personally wear a full-face helmet on my commute, even though nearly all of it is on a nearly empty mixed-use path that prohibits cars. Yes, without cars, helmet or no, I'm a lot less likely to die. But even if the energy involved is all my own, I'd much rather crash while wering a serious helmet than with a bare head.
I use a bell super 2r mips, and I keep the chinbar on. I've already had one accident (as a child, colliding with another bicycle) where I landed on my helmet and my front teeth. Fortunately for me, I kind of had a bugs bunny thing going, and so the Dentist just evened out the jagged bits of my front teeth, and my mouth probably ended up looking better for it, but yeah, I'd rather not repeat that.
I don't think the chinbar is likely to save my life; the jaw provides a reasonable crumple-zone to protect the brain if the jaw hits first, but the chinbar will save me, in case of a crash where I land on my chin, a whole lot of pain, medical expense, and possibly missed work.
My general attitude is that a helmet isn't that big of a deal to wear, and it significantly decreases the seriousness of injuries I might receive while cycling. Further, if I am going to bother to wear the helmet (most of the cost is in the inconvenience of carrying it, for me. For most people, there's a cost in terms of style, but I'm wearing cargo shorts already.) I don't see any reason to buy any but the most protective helmet that I can get that doesn't interfere with my cycling (for example, it needs adequate ventilation; thus you don't see me busting out my arai) - You can get a real top-end bicycle helmet for two hundred bucks; Considering what medical care costs, one crash is gonna pay for a lifetime of really nice helmets.
To be clear, this is what I do to protect my head, (and my face) - I don't mean to tell other people what they should do with their head.
Regarding the speed at which cars hit cyclists, a lot of accident happen when a driver is exiting a connecting road, or making a turn, they are generally going less than 20mph in those situations.
There are a lot of low-speed minor accidents with minimal injuries, sure. There are probably more of those than serious accidents with serious injuries.
However, I don't see how that challenges my assertion that cars make roads more dangerous for everyone who is not in a car. Am I missing something?
As a cyclist in Paris, yes, I'd say the presence (and domination) of cars is a BIG reason I feel less safe. I have friends from other cities who grew up biking but who don't dare get on one the excellent bikeshare Vélib bikes to get around because they're afraid of being hit. But cars are just one piece in the puzzle; I think what's worse is the psychological atmosphere: the stress, the having to always be on the lookout and, oddly, the lack of civility.
I've approached trucks and cars parked on the bike lane to ask them if they could move just a little to the so bikes don't have to swerve around them and enter the flow of car traffic. I do so politely, making sure to not adopt a defensive/aggressive attitude. In a few rare cases, the driver had been genuinely unaware and apologized and moved. In most cases though, I'm insulted and told, "vous me faites chier !" (something along the lines of "You're pissing me off!"). I was once even told by a genleman on a scooter that, "If you want to ride your bike, why don't you just go to the countryside?"
If you're on a bike, cars, scooters and motorbikes will constantly remind you that you're not welcome. Try explaining to a car that he's parked on the "sas vélo", that little space reserved for bikes in front of traffic lights. Or explaining to cars that when they turn right and through a bike lane, that it's common courtesy to signal the turn (instead of suddenly turning and shouting at bikes for being in their way). It's a problem of education, too.
Cyclists aren't all innocent, either. I've seen people on bikes not stop for pedestrians even when they have right of way. Pedestrians, who are understandably annoyed and probably used to no one looking out for them, also do stupid things like cross when it's red even as they see a bike approaching fast downhill. (This actually happened to me; she apologized when I had to slam my brakes, as did the car behind me. What was odd was that she actually stopped before crossing, saw that the light was red for her and green for cars and bikes, that we were approaching and started crossing anyway. And this isn't an isolated incident, I experience this at least two or three times per week).
So, it's a very unhealthy environment where everybody feels no one respects their rights. But cars are by far the biggest reason Paris feels unsafe (even though it really isn't once you get the hang of it).
I ride without a helmet but recently got a Hövding (the portably bike airbag from Sweden) to test in the city and wrote a review of it[1]. Mine actually went of accidentally, but I thing they're very, very promising. Not least because of how much more effective they are at oblique, non-perpendicular impacts.
As a pedestrian in paris I'd say the presence of bicycle is a BIG reason I feel less safe.
Most of the cyclists are unaware of the rules. pass on red and on pedestrian way carelessly. worst ones are the users of the free bikes (mostly tourists who never biked since they left the 90s and listening to nirvana) who are the most dangerous drivers on paris streets.
I'd rather have a city center as it is now than the one i experienced during free car day where it was like the far west with cyclist not respecting any rules and biking between buses and pedestrians
I think you meant "unsafe", and I agree with you. I too am very annoyed when I stop at a pedestrian crossing (or at a red light) only to have the bike behind me zip past me, creating a VERY unsafe situation for people trying to cross. (I sometimes feel I betray pedestrians at crosswalks without red lights when I stop--they thank me, they start crossing, and are almost hit by a passing bike or motorbike that didn't stop! In this case, I have created an unsafe situation... in a weird way).
I think a lot of people on bikes disrespect pedestrians. I find it reflects very badly on cyclists who do respect other people with whom they share public space, and on Parisians in general. People have priority, not least because I as a cyclist have a machine to help me move about and pedestrians don't. There's also civility and just being nice to one another in general.
I actually think words like "pedestrian", "cyclist" and "motorist" create unnecessary conflicts of interest between people who live in the same city. Everyone is at some point a pedestrian -- we're pedestrian by nature!
Having said all this, I think people on bikes would be less likely to be as aggressive if cars were less aggressive towards them. (It's a vicious cycle, and in the end nobody wins and everybody is stressed).
I'm actually working on an article on this for the French press, to look at this situation from a UX pov.
> People have priority, not least because I as a cyclist have a machine to help me move about and pedestrians don't.
On the other hand, it's much more demanding for a cyclist to emergency stop (presumably at high gear) and then start again than for a pedestrian. When I'm on foot I try not to make cyclists stop for no good reason when I can just wait a few seconds more.
At low speeds bikes also often have a longer stop distance than cars (especially since they often go faster), which sometimes makes it difficult or impossible to stop in time once you notice that the car on your left is stopping for the pedestrian waiting on the right. It actually happens to me not unfrequently, especially since most often cars will not stop, so it makes no sense to stop every time as a cyclist. I try to apologise to the pedestrians when I'm not able to stop in time, they usually seem more amused or impressed by the skidding than angry at me.
I bike daily to work in New York, and I don't buy the argument that it's that hard to stop. Assuming your bike has gears it's almost no effort to get started again from gear 1. I fully stop at every light. I have very little physical endurance (I can't jog for more than 1 minute without panting), but doing this repeatedly doesn't cause me to even break a sweat. I bike at roughly 10-12 MPH on a heavy bike.
Not yielding for pedestrians is common among bikers here, but very rude and dangerous. I've had a lot of close calls as a pedestrian with bikers blowing through red lights. I wish the police would crack down on it.
> Assuming your bike has gears it's almost no effort to get started again from gear
I specifically mentioned "emergency stop (presumably at high gear)". Unless you have a very sophisticated bike, you can't change gears once stopped.
Obviously I never talked about going through red lights, since for red lights you always have time to switch to a lower gear beforehand, and stopping isn't optional anyway.
> Obviously I never talked about going through red lights, since for red lights you always have time to switch to a lower gear beforehand, and stopping isn't optional anyway.
Sorry, I misunderstood you since this isn't obvious in New York: plenty of bikers don't slow down to go through red lights. They trust that the cars are going slow enough that they'll stop for them -- it's a fairly safe assumption, but very rude.
Personally I walk and cycle a lot in Paris, I don't drive myself but do get Ubers fairly often.
Pedestrians: what's wrong with half the people, it's almost more common to see people walking into each other than stepping around each other, constant lack of what I'd consider in England to be common courtesy when walking near other people on pavements.
Cyclists: what's wrong with half the bikers, they ignore lights, wriggle around cars, go shooting past pedestrians too fast, etc. Actually some cyclists are like that most places I think. Some of us aren't idiots, though.
Drivers: what the fuck, the fuck, is wrong with Parisian drivers. Never seen such bad average driving competency in Europe before. Only slightly less crazy than I've witnessed in China. Doesn't matter whether you drive a smart car, land rover, bus or taxi, it seems if you drive in Paris you are constantly trying to edge ahead of anyone you can, overtake if there's a tiny gap, honk your horn all the time... wow.
My personal experiences: when I'm in a taxi I find poor driving (often of my driver just as much as other vehicles) annoying as hell but only a couple of times a little scary.
As a pedestrian I don't really have issues... if I step into the road I look first, simple.
As a cyclists I'm constantly dealing with cars to my left and people on the pavement to my right, mostly people who are more than happy to take two steps backwards onto a road without looking while stood chatting to friends. And on top of that you have the really dangerous car drivers, of which I've been seriously frightened quite a few times now...
All in all, I get pissed off by idiots in each group, but it's when I'm cycling that it affects me the most by far.
Another perspective:
Parisian traffic has a high tolerance of bikes and pedestrians in general. As other readers will attest, some countries are down-right hostile (US, UK, Australia..)
The recent advent of allowing bikes to run through certain red lights is an official acknowledgement of what has happened for a long time.
Personally, the tolerance that the traffic has for the Velib' / Tourist bikes is part of what makes the city welcoming. It's a good thing, not a bad thing.
Not sure about UK being hostile to cyclists. Is it as good as the Netherlands or Denmark? Certainly not. However we do have an extensive cycle network that continues to grow:
You totally overlook the most disrespectful users of all : pedestrians, they do cross whenever they want or wherever they are, but it is a long held social norm, cyclist are newer here.
Also, it is important to mention the scandalous denial of cars refusing to let bicycles pass in one way streets with both ways authorized to bikes. It is supposed to be authorized by law since 2009 or 2010 in streets with a special roadsigns and most of the time a special corridor. I am constantly fighting with cars who don't respect the corridor, because some car drivers just hates bicycles (especially in this kind of situations where bicycles are authorized to use the one way street and not them).
Also: "emboldened to cycle in from the eastern edge of the city without a helmet" - I'm not sure, but are cars a massively dominating factor in bicycle safety? I'd imagine there's still risks, like hitting someone, or a curb, where a helmet might come in life-saving.