1. they both been riding outside the door zone - 3-5 feet away from parked cars 2. they has felt comfortable in the middle of the street b/c no one would have expected them to ride in the door zone 3. the drivers learned to drive with the rule that you look behind you for cyclists. I forget with country, Netherlands?, where car drivers are taught to look for cyclists when getting out of parked cars. They are taught to always open their car door with their left hand. That way, they have too look behind them for cyclists.
There's the well known Australian study that found that helmet laws increased fatalities and injuries. Why? Fewer people rode bikes, cars drove more recklessly around helmeted riders believing they were "safe". With fewer cyclists on the roads and more things signaling "It's safe to drive faster or more recklessly!" (i.e., helmeted riders won't get hurt as badly so take that risk, driver! Take that risk, cyclist!) you get worse behavior and less safety.
At 07:25 AM 5/11/2012, Andy wrote:
>On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 2:52 AM, Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com> wrote:
> >> Ah, helmets. The subject banned from many a bicycle listserv.
> >> Jordan's reaction demonstrates why.
> >
> >
> > I can only talk from my own experience. I have a friend who I practically
> > grew up with, and with whom I've shared many experiences. One thing I
> shared
> > with him was an nearly identical bicycle accident. Within 8 months of each
> > other, we both had the exact same stupid thing happen: someone opened their
> > car door right in front of us. In both cases, the door was without a
> frame,
> > and in both cases the window was rolled down. In both cases we went ass
> > over teacups, somehow biassed to the right, and rolled over the hood of the
> > car. In both cases we had multiple significant lacerations on our arms and
> > legs. In both cases we finished our crash by slamming our heads into the
> > curb. My Bell helmet was cracked in a way that made it need to be
> replaced.
> > Alex, alas, didn't need to replace the helmet he wasn't wearing.
>
>So what happened to him?
>
>I haven't paid much attention to the recent research on helmets -- at
>some point I decided I'd wear mine most of the time, not make a fuss
>about those who didn't, and worry about helmet laws as they came up --
>but their effectiveness seems really hard to tease out. Anecdotes
>like yours (however it turned out) are at best a starting point. The
>best I think anybody has been able to do is show that they seem to
>provide some *net* benefit toward head trauma in low speed cycle-only
>crashes, but that the overall safety benefit it swamped by proper
>riding technique, which includes staying away from car doors. Which
>should illustrate a problem with most bicycle lanes.
>
>The interesting thing about the helmet debate is how much invective
>gets poured on anybody who suggests that bicycle helmets are less than
>all that, or opposes mandatory helmet laws. This appears to be one of
>those Anglospheric things, most everywhere else only roadies wear
>them. One unfortunately effect of the emphasis on helmets is that
>practically every news report of a cycling fatality will mention
>whether or not the cyclist was wearing one, effectively shifting the
>blame for the results onto the cyclist, regardless of the
>circumstances.
>
>
>--
>Andy
>
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