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Amused to Death posted:I don't wear a helmet but god drat is this a terrible statement. You can go to the bicycle commuting thread in YLLS and see more than a few "Thank god for my helmet" posts. In fact, one was today. It's people from noted terrible country ~the Netherlands~, you know, the one with the highest modal share of bike use, claiming that helmets are pure shite.
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Nov 20, 2013 06:25
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FISHMANPET posted:Don't worry, we're trying to take that title back... My experience is that when strip malls get tossed up somewhere, it takes a good decade to add any other infrastructure that its new demand load actually eventually needs. Often the strip mall in question ends up dead before the unincorporated county land or small town it was built in for low property tax rates brings up the effort to do such things. Some times they actually add a break in the double yellows to formally allow turns into it from the other travel direction!
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Nov 20, 2013 06:26
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Koesj posted:It's people from noted terrible country ~the Netherlands~, you know, the one with the highest modal share of bike use, claiming that helmets are pure shite. In Holland maybe they are poo poo, in the US/Canada, you should really wear a helmet. Not even just because of having to meander through traffic with little to no bike infrastructure, that isn't particularly fond on cyclists, but even for the weather. In Amsterdam, the average low is 33 degrees, 31 over in Groningen, here it's 22, and we're on the coastline in southern New England, the continental states can get much colder. You have substantially more chance of eating poo poo on ice in a lot of the country compared to Holland,(or secondary cycling utopia Denmark) and honestly in winter ice is a far greater danger than cars.
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Nov 20, 2013 06:39
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Cross-country ski to work then! But seriously yeah with a shitload of ice on the road I'd rather wear a helmet as well. VVV while this is probably not the thread for it, there's more to it than you might think? PS you don't get to end the discussion 
Koesj fucked around with this message at 10:58 on Nov 20, 2013 |
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Nov 20, 2013 06:47
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Encouraging people to not wear bike helmets is foolish and irresponsible, enough said.
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Nov 20, 2013 09:14
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Koesj posted:Cross-country ski to work then! I really do think he has a point. As the authors of the study you linked said: quote:Thus even if the analysis suggests there is no net societal health bene t to a I'm sorry if I brought up a touchy subject, but I was honestly interested in London policy on bike helmets. Which I could have googled, instead, I guess.
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Nov 20, 2013 11:43
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I feel like de Jong ducks the question there since he clearly chooses to only engage the subject on a macro level. Plus I can think of at least one situation where I wouldn't recommend wearing a helmet: when it would lead to social stigmatization.  Hippie Hedgehog posted:I'm sorry if I brought up a touchy subject But you didn't?
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Nov 20, 2013 11:54
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smackfu posted:Roads aren't safer, cars are. Imagine if we had safety standards for bikes.
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Nov 20, 2013 12:18
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Snell has some great information on why bicycle helmets are different than motorcycle helmets. Its not to save money, it's because bicycle accidents that result in head injuries tend to happen in completely different ways than motorcycle head injuries, and thus drive a different design philosophy. Wear your loving bike helmet! http://www.smf.org/helmetfaq
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Nov 20, 2013 12:23
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Install Windows posted:My experience is that when strip malls get tossed up somewhere, it takes a good decade to add any other infrastructure that its new demand load actually eventually needs. Often the strip mall in question ends up dead before the unincorporated county land or small town it was built in for low property tax rates brings up the effort to do such things. Exactly right. Often they are picking the site that doesn't require them to do required infrastructure upgrades to save money (and time.) Although it doesn't help when the locality wants the developer to upgrade the road way more than the town ever would either.
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Nov 20, 2013 13:38
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Hahaha oh man, they're seriously advocating bike helmets! I think we Dutch people should just roll our eyes and stay out of the discussion because this never goes anywhere.
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Nov 20, 2013 13:57
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Bike helmets are a bandaid solution for countries with inferior cycling infrastructure.
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Nov 20, 2013 14:01
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Gonna need more than a bandaid (or a helmet) when you get crushed by a truck because you were in its blind spot.
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Nov 20, 2013 14:06
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I don't think anyone's saying a bike helmet will save you if you get run over by a truck, but sure.
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Nov 20, 2013 14:27
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Wear a helmet because if you biff on your own accord even on a separate bike path you should still protect your brain. I cycle to work during the spring and summers (though this is going to change soon) and I have to deal with some high-traffic areas, and while I'd love to have dedicated bike lanes to work, the reality is that it's not going to happen any time soon. It would be foolish of me to not have lights and a helmet. Yeah, it won't save me be from being run over by a truck, but I can survive with a broken arm, but not a broken head. I'm not sure if I'd make a law for adults to wear helmets, but from a personal safety standpoint, I won't ride my bike without one. kefkafloyd fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Nov 20, 2013 |
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Nov 20, 2013 15:53
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Dominus Vobiscum posted:I don't think anyone's saying a bike helmet will save you if you get run over by a truck, but sure. Yeah being hit by a truck is the least of my worries on a bike, my usual main concerns are: 1. Being doored 2. Eating poo poo on ice(in the cold months) 3. Random large objects/potholes that might make me lose control Hey Cichlidae, are you privy to any information on what's up with the State St bridge repair in New Haven? It was supposed to be done by 2011/2012, but I heard this morning the end date was pushed back again till 2015. Amused to Death fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Nov 20, 2013 |
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Nov 20, 2013 16:44
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Here's a story from today about it: http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/bridge_repair_money_pit_deeper_than_expected/ There's a lot of detail of all the various issues they ran into, after the part at the start where locals are complaining. My summary is that replacing a bridge underneath a highway overpass is a pain in the neck. And that any project that runs into contaminated groundwater is doomed to years of delays.
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Nov 20, 2013 17:01
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I worked with a guy who went on a bike ride on an off-road asphalt path after it had rained. His wife went looking for him when he didn't come back - and found him unconscious, having fallen from his bike, not wearing a helmet. He had brain damage, and a year after the accident was able to walk again, and a couple years after he was able to drive short trips in the car. But he will never be able to work as an engineer again. I went through college not wearing a helmet, but after seeing how it can ruin your life, I sure as hell do now.
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Nov 20, 2013 17:16
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Koesj posted:there's more to it than you might think? PS you don't get to end the discussion Entropist posted:Hahaha oh man, they're seriously advocating bike helmets! I think we Dutch people should just roll our eyes and stay out of the discussion because this never goes anywhere. Jeoh posted:Bike helmets are a bandaid solution for countries with inferior cycling infrastructure. As you can see, the Dutch have a cultural stigma against wearing bike helmets, largely because their bike culture developed without access to them. As a result, adoption rates in the Netherlands are extremely low - even during relatively dangerous recreational biking activities such as mountain biking. Statistical studies routinely support the fact that bike helmets are effective at preventing injury (particularly difficult to treat brain injuries), including this one by the Netherland's own Institute for Road Safety Research (SWOV): SWOV posted:One third of the cyclists who are admitted to hospital with serious injury after a road crash are diagnosed with head or brain injury. Approximately three-quarters of the head and brain injuries among cyclists are caused by crashes that do not involve motorized traffic; as many as nine out of ten young children who sustain head/brain injury, do so in crashes not involving motor vehicles. These are mostly cyclist-only crashes. This type of crash is difficult to prevent, but it is possible to limit the severity of the head and brain injury by wearing a bicycle helmet. According to the most recent estimate (Elvik, 2011), the risk of sustaining head injury is 1.72 times higher for cyclists who do not wear a bicycle helmet than for the cyclists who do, with a 95% confidence interval of 1.33-3.45. For brain injury, the risk seems to be 2.13 times higher (with a confidence interval of 1.33-3.45). If all investigated head and neck injuries are considered together, the risk increase appears to be smaller but still present (factor of 1.18, 95% confidence interval: 1.02-1.35). Research in other countries has shown that the bicycle use sometimes decreases, particularly during the first few years after the introduction of mandatory helmet use. The longer-term effects or the significance of these results with regard to the situation in the Netherlands are not known. ... Annually, 190 people die in the Netherlands and more than 9,200 sustain serious injury in a bicycle crash. Kaal fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Nov 21, 2013 |
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Nov 20, 2013 18:38
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This might have come up in this very thread before, but mandatory helmet laws in Australia destroyed the local bike commuting communities: http://ipa.org.au/publications/2019/australia's-helmet-law-disaster quote:Importantly, helmet laws severely reduce the number of cyclists on the road, leading to increased risk among those who remain through reduced safety in numbers, a researched and acknowledged influence on cyclist accident and injury rates. Requiring helmets might be safer, but most people just choose to stop instead. I can't find it off hand right now, but I want to say that after the law passed head injuries did drop but other injuries went up as a decreased ridership meant drivers were less expectant and prepared for bikers. Opals25 fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Nov 20, 2013 |
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Nov 20, 2013 18:47
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Entropist posted:Gonna need more than a bandaid (or a helmet) when you get crushed by a truck because you were in its blind spot. About those blind spots, from Transport for London https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzL0Kyk4m-8 
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Nov 20, 2013 19:06
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I can definitely see how a helmet law might destroy a public bike hire scheme. Do you know what the Australian helmet usage ratio was prior to the law? I imagine that the reaction to such a law would be very different in a society of 10% helmet usage, compared to one with 40 or 60% usage (where people are presumably positively disposed to helmets in general). Edit: That blind spot video is scary! Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Nov 20, 2013 |
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Nov 20, 2013 19:09
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Here's another source. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8870773 quote:saw increased helmet wearing from 31% to 75% of cyclists in Victoria and from 31% of children and 26% of adults in New South Wales (NSW) to 76% and 85%. However, the two major surveys using matched before and after samples in Melbourne (Finch et al. 1993; Report No. 45, Monash Univ. Accident Research Centre) and throughout NSW (Smith and Milthorpe 1993; Roads and Traffic Authority) observed reductions in numbers of child cyclists 15 and 2.2 times greater than the increase in numbers of children wearing helmets.
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Nov 20, 2013 19:15
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Amused to Death posted:I don't wear a helmet but god drat is this a terrible statement. You can go to the bicycle commuting thread in YLLS and see more than a few "Thank god for my helmet" posts. In fact, one was today. People don't know what the result would be if they didn't wear a helmet, i've read that thread and their attitude to helmet use is one of the reasons i stopped reading it (along with their over the top bicycles and gotta have all the gear attitude). Don't assume that just because you fell and hit your head it would have been a fatal or even a serious injury. I've fallen and hit my head once in 25 years of cycling, the effect was less than hitting my head on a low ceiling (which hurts a lot more). People fall on the sidewalk and the shower as well but few people wear a helmet when they go for a walk. Wearing a helmet reduces the already small chance of head injury and i respect your right to be as safe as you want to be but don't make it out to be like a helmet absolutely required and cycling is extremely dangerous without a helmet. And a motorcycle helmet with a full motorcycle suit (spine protector, pads, all that good stuff) would be even safer.
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Nov 20, 2013 19:28
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Opals25 posted:This might have come up in this very thread before, but mandatory helmet laws in Australia destroyed the local bike commuting communities: That's pretty funny that people are so pigheaded that they'd refuse to wear a helmet. It's not like people refuse to drive when seat belts are mandatory.
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Nov 20, 2013 19:49
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Install Windows posted:That's pretty funny that people are so pigheaded that they'd refuse to wear a helmet. It's not like people refuse to drive when seat belts are mandatory. That's probably because there is often no alternative to driving. Also because you don't need to lug your seatbelt around with you when you get to your destination.
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Nov 20, 2013 20:13
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Eh, helmetchat. I found this article describing a local journalist interviewing international cycle planning experts at a conference in Vancouver. He keeps trying to push them on helmets, and they keep pointing out that helmet laws are bad for cycling and a waste of energy which cycling advocates could be putting into more important issues like building safe infrastructure. Other than the two points that adult helmet laws are actively and measurably harmful to cycling safety, but that you as an individual may want to wear one depending on how you ride and where, helmetchat is invariably a huge waste of energy.
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Nov 20, 2013 23:40
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Especially for the traffic engineer thread.
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Nov 20, 2013 23:42
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NihilismNow posted:People don't know what the result would be if they didn't wear a helmet, i've read that thread and their attitude to helmet use is one of the reasons i stopped reading it (along with their over the top bicycles and gotta have all the gear attitude). I do know that I would probably still have the missing jaw muscle bundle on one side of my head if I was wearing a helmet when I ate poo poo commuting to class a decade ago. Fortunately it's just cosmetic (there's a dent in my head near my ear that you can feel on that side) and I was lucky to not have greater injury. Volmarias fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Nov 21, 2013 |
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Nov 21, 2013 15:00
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQdwlNkirKg Cool video on dutch cycle intersection with people/pigeons not following the rules to the letter circled. It all works quite nicely though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA This video shows how the dutch build intersections vs north america. The dutch design seems a lot better/safer. Why haven't we adapted? Baronjutter fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Nov 22, 2013 |
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Nov 22, 2013 20:52
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Man, this week has been RIDICULOUSLY busy. Just imagine this, times dozens: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByQzqtNM0WuFV2xpamtGNmtRb1E/edit?usp=sharing (PDF)
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Nov 22, 2013 23:02
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Baronjutter posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA I don't think I've actually seen those protective things in the corners in practice, though.
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Nov 22, 2013 23:56
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I see.them around in Amsterdam quite a lot, here's one: http://goo.gl/maps/wIfqE I think they recently reworked that one to make the protected bits bigger.
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Nov 23, 2013 14:41
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Baronjutter posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA That looks brilliant. The only problem I can see with it is how you get heavy vehicles around the corners. By tightening the intersection, you make things a lot tougher for them, especially with left turns. Regardless, I'll share it at work. I'm sure the bike guys will be intrigued.
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Nov 23, 2013 16:26
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Cichlidae posted:That looks brilliant. The only problem I can see with it is how you get heavy vehicles around the corners. By tightening the intersection, you make things a lot tougher for them, especially with left turns. Usually, the intersections are still wide enough. Really really long vehicles sometimes go over the curb with one of their wheels, but that shouldn't normally be necessary.
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Nov 23, 2013 19:09
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I don't know if this was posted before (it's an old blog post), but it's hilarious so here it comes anyway. A list of some of Britain's stupidest cycle lanes (and a couple of international examples, at least one of which looks like grafitti). http://www.anorak.co.uk/375360/sports/britains-worst-cycle-lanes-photos-of-that-olympics-legacy-in-action.html/ My favorite is the bike lane running straight into a bus shelter.
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Nov 24, 2013 19:24
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:I don't know if this was posted before (it's an old blog post), but it's hilarious so here it comes anyway. A list of some of Britain's stupidest cycle lanes (and a couple of international examples, at least one of which looks like grafitti). I will never complain about the design of bike lanes around here again. 
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Nov 25, 2013 04:38
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Who the hell built those??? Actual humans designed and implemented those "lanes" ?? They aren't just procedural content generation errors of some sort? Although that dutch example is just humorous graffiti. Maybe that's it, this is all just graffiti to mock the general incompetence of English traffic engineering.
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Nov 25, 2013 07:57
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:I don't know if this was posted before (it's an old blog post), but it's hilarious so here it comes anyway. A list of some of Britain's stupidest cycle lanes (and a couple of international examples, at least one of which looks like grafitti). I'd be tempted to park an exercise bike in one of those 5m bike lanes. Traffic engineers make mistakes, just like everyone else, but you have to be truly brainless to produce that kind of work.
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Nov 25, 2013 13:25
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I have the feeling that this is "insert square peg into round hole" politics, where bicycle lanes are now mandated for some reason, but there's no place to put them, so this will have to make do. I doubt an engineer had a hand in this, unless it was one particular finger responding to the request.
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Nov 25, 2013 13:44
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