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Bike Helmets Work

2007-05-16 16:00:21.282075+00 by ebradway 4 comments

Sometimes bike helmets actually work:

"I didn't see it coming, but I sure felt it roll over my head," he told The Capital Times newspaper. "It feels really strange to have a truck run over your head."

[ related topics: Machinery Bicycling ]

comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: made: 2007-05-16 19:42:43.343388+00 by: Dan Lyke

It's been fun to watch the helmet/anti-helmet flame wars on some of the biking mailing lists: "It didn't roll over his head, it rolled over the top of his helmet, look at how it's crushed", and so forth.

But the main lesson here: Bike paths will kill you if you travel at bike speeds. Get on the road where cars and trucks will see you and treat you like traffic, rather than on a multi-use path where they'll see you as a pedestrian.

#Comment Re: made: 2007-05-18 01:15:14.763621+00 by: warkitty

I have this argument with a friend of mine all the time. He's a big fan of dedicated bike paths, and I hate them with a passion. He thinks they're safer for bike commuters, I think they're only "safer" if you're traveling an average of 8mph or below.

#Comment Re: made: 2007-05-18 01:58:29.169978+00 by: Dan Lyke

They're safer if:

  1. You stop at every intersection, get off, and walk across the road as a pedestrian.
  2. All pedestrian traffic is banned from them (over in the East Bay the path that runs below BART is divided into two sections, bike and pedestrian, clearly marked, but people wander all over the bike side all the time).
  3. They have enough side visibility at intersections that you can see other cyclists approaching from the side (ie: narrow alleys marked as bike paths? No go.).

Actually, I guess the real lesson is: If it's actually a "bike path", great, then it meets those criteria. Otherwise it's a "multi-use path", and cyclists at 20MPH (and even inline skaters at circa 10MPH) don't mix well with pedestrian uses.

#Comment Re: made: 2007-05-19 01:26:48.855063+00 by: Mars Saxman

Cyclists don't mix well with automotive uses, either...