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Comment by M_Grey | Hacker News Reader

When I was in single digits, my mother and I were coming home from an international flight and the plane was struck by lightning. We lost a bit of altitude (felt like a TON of altitude subjectively), and yeah... it was a damned good thing we'd all been told to keep those seatbelts on. It was literally the difference between seconds of terror, and someone being seriously injured.

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What likely happened is that you hit a wind shear at the same time as being struck by lightning. Planes are struck by lightning frequently without passengers even realizing.

I flew into Dallas during a storm once, plane was struck by lightning many, many times. It was pretty spooky, but that was all. The lightning simply passes through the exterior of the plane. However if there is a gap in the exterior, then damage could occur.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-happens-when...

Using that philosophy, then anyone riding a bicycle, even if they aren't going at high-speed on road, should wear a helmet "just in case" there is an accident to protect their skull?

There is a balance between annoyance and utility. I personally have no problem wearing a belt for the entire flight, including while sleeping. But I'm not to dismayed by those who leave it off, walk around the cabin, go hang out near the cocktail lounge in business class, etc...

Yes, you absolutely should wear a helmet, just in case -- no quotes required. I have been hit by a car on my bike, and trust me, my helmet absolutely saved my life. No high speed required.

Yes, you should absolutely wear a helmet when riding a bicycle at low speeds.

Your skull is vulnerable to impacts at speeds that are relatively low compared to full-speed cycling.

On a few occasions I've witnessed a cyclist panic and wobble after being passed far too closely by a car traveling far too fast for such a manoeuvre. This has caused such cyclists to wobble, inadvertently clip the curb and mount the pavement, fall off sideways and subsequently strike their head on a nearby wall whilst falling.

The resulting injury can be very harmful.

Another example of slow-speed head injury: off-road biking down a very steep incline with a loose surface. I've seen people fall and tumble at almost stationary speeds.

Yours are anecdotal evidence of an extremely low risk. There are some bike accidents, which are already rare; Very few involve the head; and even fewer would be saved by a helmet. Whereas, requiring a helmet is a sufficient disincentive to biking that studies have shown that it increases the number of deaths in countries that made it mandatory, by making people drive instead and later die from cardiac diseases and obesity.

So yes you should wear a helmet while biking, but we should not make it mandatory.

In other counter-intuitive statistics about biking, passing at the red light is good for you.

Please don't turn this into yet another debate on whether making helmet use mandatory is a good idea.

"Thinking is pointless, just like motorcycle helmets!"

"Rafi, how many of your friends have died in motorcycle accidents?"

"Pfft, nine. Buy NONE of them were from head trauma, they all died from massive spinal trauma."

Be honest... are you just playing the reference game, or do I need to be really worried?

To be clear - any cyclist crazy enough to ride a bicycle on the same road as cars definitely needs all the protection they can get, I think that goes without saying. But now you've moved from the "extraordinary low risk of accident" that comes from cycling to the "Probably one of the most dangerous things I can do" risk factor.

And, pretty much 100% of the time I go snowboarding, I wear a helmet.

What I'm trying to surface (apparently poorly) is that life, to some degree, is about managing risks. And we often respond carte blanche scenarios with exactly the same response, regardless of whether it's proportionally required.

Cycling - on road, moving fast, around anything else moving fast, at all treacherous conditions - sure, yes wear a helmet. But, casual cycling on a nice day, protected path - probably not required.

Another area of proportional risk response - portable devices on planes. At one time, end of the world if you had one on during takeout (seriously, other passengers would freak out if they thought yours was on) - and then, all of a sudden - every airport/airline in the United States lets you read your kindle, play games on your phone. People realized their responses were not proportionate to the risk.

Huh? Over here at least, people (me included) cycle on the same road as cars all the time. Not freeways, of course, but normal city roads with a speed limit of up to 50 km/h. It's actually illegal to cycle on the sidewalk unless there's an explicit traffic sign allowing bicycles.

Netherlands doesn't count, it's a place where cars respect bikes and vice versa. Try riding a bicycle in a country where there's hostility between the two.

You could not pay me to rid a bicycle on the road here in Singapore. Or in many places in Northern California. I can't tell you about Dubai, because I've never seen a cyclist on the road there. My "Risk Mitigation" strategy in these scenarios is to say, "No, Hell No."

Regarding the law - it's illegal in Redwood City to ride on the sidewalk, but almost 100% of "Utility" cyclists (that is, people taking short trips who aren't decked out in "cyclist" gear) almost always ride on the sidewalk; and the police certainly did not make it a priority to ticket them - and given the density of police cars in Redwood City, any given cyclist traveling a few kilometers was likely to be seen by one, if not more police officers.

When I lived in Boston, it was certainly legal to ride bicycles in the road (and illegal to ride them on many sidewalks), but cyclists still got hit by cars all the time. Riding with cars (whether in your own "lane" sandwiched between parked cars and moving cars, or in the same lane as the cars that want to bolt ahead at 40 mph whenever they have the chance) is the only legal option to get around by bike, but is absolutely not safe. It's one of the places where I think our legal code is absolutely bats--t crazy.

Where the fuck are you supposed to ride them, then? Sure I'd love it if cities built separated bike paths everywhere people want to commute, but that's far from reality currently

Boston has bike lanes, so... that would usually work.

Washington DC as well.

> the "extraordinary low risk of accident" that comes from cycling

No, bicycling is fairly high-risk in general, like skiing, or any other sport that involves a human body travelling faster than the average set of legs can walk it around. Even just going around the block a few times there's always the chance of some random events leading to an unfortunate encounter with a tree.

Of course, it's not skydiving either. And life is a series of risks, I'm not saying don't do it.

That happens to be the justification that my country uses to make bicycle helmets mandatory (though there's significant debate about whether it's actually helped reduce injury rates, and it fairly clearly depresses overall rates of cycling versus other modes of transport).

I think the cost of wearing an aircraft seatbelt while you happen to be seated is rather lower than the cost of having to wear a bicycle helmet, though.

What's the cost? Helmets aren't that expensive. Having to carry it around? Could always lock it to the bike. Helmet hair?

People being afraid their bike helmets make them look like goobers, maybe?

Well, they do. Better to be a goober with an unfractured skull, though.

I always thought the statistic that mandatory helmets reduced cycling was a bit pathetic myself. It really isn't that hard. Yes, I have come off my bike and hit my head, while wearing a helmet. Unfortunately, I landed on a tooth rather than my helmet, which wasn't a lot of fun.

Regarding helmet hair, I had a colleague who had the most amazing hair spikes (think coffee cup sized), who would very carefully put a cycle helmet on every day before cycling home.

Locking it to the bike isn't a good solution if you live in a place where it rains or snows a lot. So you end up having to carry it with you on errands. If you bike a lot, those small inconveniences add up.

I can't imagine fashion sense is much of a reason, that seems like a strawman argument commonly conjured up by helmet laws advocates.

Would you be ok with a mandatory helmet law for car drivers and passengers? The risk of a head injury that a helmet would prevent is much higher in a car, and carrying a helmet around in your car is more convenient than on your bike (e.g. it's much less likely to get stolen). Nevertheless, we don't have mandatory helmet laws for people in cars; why is that?

> The risk of a head injury that a helmet would prevent is much higher in a car

What is this based on? My own intuition is that the risk is many times higher on a bike.

I don't remember the source, take that as you will. Cars go faster which means a higher risk of collisions (less time to react etc.), and also a higher risk of head injury per collision.

Maybe I'm just a shitty cyclist but I've wiped out way, way more times on a bike than in a car. You can crash without it being a "collision".

Did you hit your head though? Even "low" speed for a car can be 20mph; you can hit a stationary object and be thrown around pretty severely.

That said yeah if you're "wiping out" more than like once every few years you're doing something seriously wrong (or at least taking an unnecessary risk). I've only once had any kind of incident on my cycling commute.

The hardest I've wiped out on a bike was where a bike trail intersected a road. Everything was super wet and slick from rain. Despite bikes having right of way and my bright bike light being on, a truck with no headlights barreled across it without stopping.

Once I saw it, I had to slam on the brakes so hard my rear brake cable popped out of the handlebar, disabling the rear brake completely and I was putting full pressure on the front brake. I didn't have time to react and avoid going over the handlebars, and I hit my helmet on the pavement. (Thankfully, I did stop in time to avoid the truck hitting me).

Was I doing something seriously wrong? Yes -- I was riding a bike without a properly adjusted rear brake cable. However, this sort of mechanical issue (and any number of others) could happen to any riders who aren't much more hyper-diligent about maintenance than average.

Who knows if we'd even be having this conversation had I not been wearing a helmet that night.

From a public health perspective, evidence suggests making helmets mandatory is counter-productive, and so I don't support those laws. However, I still maintain that anyone who cycles without a helmet is fucking stupid.

Cycling in the rain is a risk. Cycling in the dark is a risk. Cycling across badly-designed intersections (and if it put you as a cyclist in the kind of danger it wouldn't have put a car in, it's a badly-designed intersection) is a risk. Being on the road without a helmet - indeed doing anything in your life without a helmet - is a risk. In all of these cases one weighs up the risk of doing it against the inconvenience of not doing it.

Maybe we're all "fucking stupid", but by the stats someone cycling without a helmet is less stupid than someone driving, at all. There's this weird, disproportionate cultural obsession with helmets for cyclists and cyclists only.

There are were 42000 brain injury-related hospitalizations for motor vehicle occupants per year, though this data is from before 2001.

https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/13379/cdc_13379_DS1.pdf (Table 10)

Sure but you have to normalize it somehow. Americans drive way more than they bike. I imagine if you calculated this per-time or per-distance, driving would still come out much safer for the brain than cycling without a helmet.

Again just from memory, driving is a lot worse per-time and per-commute, though a small factor better per-distance.

Wouldn't work if you're using a bike share.

It's actually the reason why I don't use the bike share program, even though I have a station right next to my apartment building. I could ride it to/from the train station or the grocery store, but I'm paranoid about not wearing a helmet, and hauling the bulky thing around all day is a massive inconvenience.

There's an argument that mandatory bicycle helmets are worse, not better for the overall health goals: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/aug/12/mandato...

Mandatory helmets protect cyclists from injury - but make cycling less popular. Fewer people cycling means they get less exercise and increase other health risks. On average it's a health benefit to cycle without a helmet, compared to driving - and of course people are still welcome to add helmets if they don't mind them.

I think the bicycle helmet comparison is valid here - one big point is, that the typical bicycle helmets are not protecting your head well, you would need a motorcycle helmet for good protection.

I don't think one needs to be confined to the seat for the whole flight duration, but when sitting down, there is no good reason not to wear a belt either.

Bicycle helmets are a compromise of course; a heavier helmet would give better protection but would be very cumbersome. But even light helmets give a lot of protection against very simple, silly accidents, like not noticing a bump on the road, or failing to unclip when slowing down.

And there are ofcourse better or worse bicycle helmets around. And the way you wear them is also important. I have helped a large number of kids around my block put them on correctly after seeing them mostly hanging on the back because the parents don't know how to set the length and angle of the strap...

There is a pretty good statistical argument for wearing a helmet anytime one is near roads, sidewalks, moving walkways, bike lanes, or anywhere else objects are moving more than 0.5m/s, whether you are moving or not. You can even die relatively simply from falling from an otherwise motionless standing position and hitting your head on the paved ground. The brain is remarkably fragile.

I kind of want the helmet-in-public fashion trend to kick in.

Here in Australia, where they're mandatory, us 'hipster' types get around this by wearing helmets that look like the sort of 'crash hat' that skateboarders wear: very dome-like, skull-shaped things rather than the traditional swept-back-vents-all-over helmets that your racing cyclist would wear.

Hotter in summer, but they look cooler. ;-)

FWIW, I thought it was weird at first having to wear a helmet. I'm from the UK. Now, though, it just seems bizarre that I wouldn't. It's my skull! My brain is in there. It only takes one idiot, and knocking my head off concrete from 6ft up at even 10km/h sounds like a terrible idea. Anything that cushions the blow, even if that blow is unlikely, now seems like the most obvious idea in the world.

Indeed. I feel naked if I start to cycle without a helmet (even though they are not strictly mandatory here, the law says you should wear one but there are no penalties for not wearing it.)

But a skateboard helmet doesn't work as well as a bicycle helmet when bicyckling. They are made for different falling types. They are better than nothing but not as good as the better bicycle helmets.

Sorry, thought about it at the time but didn't write it - they are actual bicycle helmets styled like skateboard helmets. They're fully rated for bike riding.

If the cops stop you (which they do, occasionally) and you are actually wearing a skate helmet, not rated for bike riding, that doesn't count as 'wearing a helmet' and you'll be fined.

(I'm sure the idea of being fined for wearing the wrong helmet will horrify some people but remember, that's the law here. The law also says you need a bell on your bike. It's rare, but the bike police do random stops and if you don't have a bell, strictly speaking, you'll be fined. Never happened to me, but it can.)

((Which, by the way - and sorry for the errata with the double-brackets - I actually support. I ride through central Melbourne. Pedestrians are a nightmare. Having a working bell is actually important. They cost $5. The law is a public service which, in this case, works. Get a bell.))

Keeping the safety belt on protects other passengers too. A person weighing 80kg has surprisingly high amount of kinetic energy when the plane trashes around.

Kinetic energy is also the reason why the flight attendants try to lock as much as possible of the loose items to the overhead bins or under the chairs.

> Using that philosophy, then anyone riding a bicycle, even if they aren't going at high-speed on road, should wear a helmet "just in case" there is an accident to protect their skull?

Having personally done a header over the handlebars onto my helmet, resulting in a dented helmet and an un-dented head: yes, I'd recommend it.

    > anyone riding a bicycle, 
    > even if they aren't going at
    > high-speed on road, should 
    > wear a helmet "just in case"

Is this a trick question? The answer is yes. In many places it's a legal requirement.

Thank you!

I'm probably heavily influenced by the fact that I live in one of these places (where helmets are a legal requirement).

All I could think while reading this is "yes, you definitely should always wear a helmet!!"

Out of curiosity, is cycling a common mode of transportation where you are from?

I recall seeing studies showing that helmet-laws generally coincided with low use of bicycles. Places where cycling is extremely common (like Denmark and Holland) never seem to have them, and it's uncommon to see cyclists using them unless they're doing something particularly dangerous (riding in traffic, off-road, etc).

I would guess in places where biking is extremely common (like Denmark and Holland), it's also a lot safer to bike (dedicated bike lanes, etc.)

Using that philosophy, then anyone riding a bicycle, even if they aren't going at high-speed on road, should wear a helmet "just in case" there is an accident to protect their skull?

Speed only makes a difference if your head hits something whilst moving at that speed. Or you can just fall off at a walking pace, and the acceleration between the top of your head to the ground is enough to kill you. Happened to a guy on the local trail a few years ago, as happens elsewhere as well.

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