This will send a few people into meltdown.
https://twitter.com/ratracecycles/status/1486334108947324937?s=21
People that are taking risks that are sufficient that they feel they need to wear helmets are not welcome to work for us - because our vehicles are heavy and could cause harm, and because we carry small children on our bikes.
Instead - we systematically work to reduce risk.(1/n)
EH ???
So if they are knocked off by a vehicle and hit their head, which is the fault of someone else, company policy has made the potential for injury to be worse.
That is all kinds of wrong.
Can you give more info.... what vehicles are they talking about?
Is it a bike taxi?
Can you give more info…. what vehicles are they talking about?
Is it a bike taxi?
Bakfiets (Urban Arrow afaik)
Taxi + cargo
tj to the forum
Just been watching them on YouTube . One thing that stood out, was when they were carrying cargo, some of them had it stacked up higher than the rider and must be obscuring their view. I get that the bike will be pretty stable when you have people in there as the centre of gravity will be low, but as above what happens if you are hit, or slip on something ?
Wow, I would have thought having an “it’s up to you” would be risky business wise if there was a head injury accident but that’s a bit bonkers.
tbh it’s the autonomy/choice issue that bugs me most. The argument of helmet-safety and risk-assessment is like a red-herring here imo.
Well PPE is the last resort in the hierarchy of control measures.....
Well PPE is the last resort in the hierarchy of control measures…..
Please don’t be talking about the face-masks during a pandemic? Say it ain’t so? If so, then just change the lyrics to ‘helmet’ and call it good?
It could be argued that the operator shouldn't have greater protection than the occupant. Would you like to see your pilot checking their parachute before take off 🙂
So if they are knocked off by a vehicle and hit their head, which is the fault of someone else, company policy has made the potential for injury to be worse.
Because 300g of polystyrene is proof against everything on the road. </ Sarcasm>
It's interesting. There is a lot of nonsense talked about cyclist's PPE in general. You don't need to wear safety equipment for a safe activity and you certainly shouldn't need to dress up like a Christmas tree just to get noticed. It rarely gets suggested for other similar activities. Gets people talking about it, might even get some people thinking about it.
Sure enough
Interesting one!
It could be argued that the operator shouldn’t have greater protection than the occupant. Would you like to see your pilot checking their parachute before take off 🙂
I'm in agreement with this.
See the opposite though - the water taxi/launch of a super yacht transporting the great and good in party frocks but the crew in (descrete) lifejackets. I guess as they involvedi in mooring up etc they have a greater risk of slipping but even so...
You don't see taxi drivers wearing helmets. In fact if I got in a taxi and the driver was wearing a nomex suit and had a 5 point harness I think I'd be getting out again.
You don’t see taxi drivers wearing helmets. In fact if I got in a taxi and the driver was wearing a nomex suit and had a 5 point harness I think I’d be getting out again.
Not sure that's a great analogy. Most (all) drivers of cars don't wear a helmet on the road so taxi driver wearing a helmet would be an outlier. I guess it depends where you look but I'd say the majority of cyclist wear a helmet so the pedalmeapp would be in the minority.
See the opposite though – the water taxi/launch of a super yacht transporting the great and good in party frocks but the crew in (descrete) lifejackets. I guess as they involvedi in mooring up etc they have a greater risk of slipping but even so…
If you are within the handrails on a super yacht drinking a G&T there is no significant risk of falling overboard. SO no need for a lifejacket.
If you are leaning over the to catch lines etc. then there is a risk, hence lifejacket.
If you are within the handrails on a super yacht drinking a G&T there is no significant risk of falling overboard. SO no need for a lifejacket.
If you are leaning over the to catch lines etc. then there is a risk, hence lifejacket.
Not on the superyacht - but it's launch going to/from a pontoon and the crew of said launch vs passengers. Same applies to some extend though as I said in my post. But....back from the super yacht after a party back to shore tanked up and in stilettos and not familiar with boats I'd still fancy my chances of not taking a dip as the crew more mind.
majority of cyclist wear a helmet
Do they?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but that’s not my (entirely non-scientific) experience at all.
I sometimes ride my own bicycle without a helmet....
I've no idea either and as I said, I guess it depends where you look. In a similarly non scientific way to you, where I look its nearly exclusive lid wearers. In Amsterdam it would be exactly the opposite. I'm aware I don't live where this firm operates; it could be more Amsterdam than I appreciate. I don't know.
the water taxi/launch of a super yacht transporting the great and good in party frocks but the crew in (descrete) lifejackets
They will I assume be wearing them as part of their job will be to jump in to rescue guests who have somehow managed to throw themselves in the water.
I don't actually think this is a helmets and cycling discussion, it's an employee rights and employer duty of care one.
Whether or not helmets are effective, act as a deterrent to would be passengers or encourage risk taking by operators, they exist as PPE specifically for the type of activity they're employing someone to do. If I told someone at work not to wear an item of PPE because it's not aesthetically pleasing, I'd be duly bollocked and and possibly fired for endangering them...
While it might be argued the company actually has a duty of care to provide a lid in the first place and at least give the employee* a choice, to actually preclude the use of PPE in the terms of someone's employment, and then claim you can mitigate head injuries "systematically" says a lot I would ask for the risk assessments that helped them settle on this policy, and maybe nudge the HSE their way...
This is of course what you get when tech-bro bellends get into real world businesses (because they thought of a good name for the app?) Plus Torys are in power chipping away at employment rights...
*Their website says they are actually employees not gig-ecconomy, contract slaves, not sure if that's better or worse.
I'm genuinely interested in TJ's opinion on this. An advocate of non helmeted riding AND employee rights, welfare and protection. This one seems to be a flag in the sand right between the two.
I think they cover it fairly comprehensively in their reply. From their analysis, wearing helmets increases risks through risk compensation (both from riders and from drivers) and helmets don't provide enough protection to make it worth the increased danger from using them.
Presumably if it ever gets brought to court they'll have to show their working in detail but I don't see too many issues with proving their point.
I'm just happy that a company is actually looking at the big picture rather than forcing their employees to perch an ill-fitting bit of polystyrene on their heads and calling it 'risk assessed'.
So if one of their riders had previously expressed a wish to wear a helmet, and then someone drove into him and caused life changing injuries, and the standard expert witness said a helmet could have mitigated... In what world is the employer not going to get utterly ****ed.
"If I told someone at work not to wear an item of PPE because it’s not aesthetically pleasing,"
But that's not why they're doing it.
If a bus driver wanted to bring a welding mask and gauntlets from home and wear them while driving, because it arguably could help during some crashes, would you want the bus company to intervene? Or to give the driver free choice to wear whatever PPE they want?
Do they?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but that’s not my (entirely non-scientific) experience at all.
Dunno about anyone else, but I always wore a helmet when riding, even just into town, and the only time a had a significant off was at walking speed, where the impact to my knee has left me with osteoarthritis, and I also hit the side of my face, causing quite a graze, because my helmet took most of the impact on the visor, saving my head from a likely severe impact.
Not sure that’s a great analogy. Most (all) drivers of cars don’t wear a helmet on the road so taxi driver wearing a helmet would be an outlier.
Yet there are more head injuries to car drivers, so if you wanted to reduce head injuries 'on roads' then wearing a helmet is sensible when driving.
Yet there are more head injuries to car drivers, so if you wanted to reduce head injuries ‘on roads’ then wearing a helmet is sensible when driving.
Per mile ridden/driven or just blunt figues? And would the typical head trauma suffered by a car passenger be mitigated as effectively (I know, can of worms just ripped open with gay abandon) as a typical cycling head injury by a flimsy bike helmet or are you thinking they wear motorcycle style lids?
If a bus driver wanted to bring a welding mask and gauntlets from home and wear them while driving, because it arguably could help during some crashes, would you want the bus company to intervene? Or to give the driver free choice to wear whatever PPE they want?
A welding mask is hardly a usual bit of protection in a motor vehicle so a silly example. A better analogy would be a bus driver insisting/requesting a seat belt be fitted in his seat when the passengers aren't provided with them and the company saying no, it's a bad look when the punters don't get one and if you think you need one you are obviously planning to drive our bus like a bellend.
Still don't know where I stand on this tbh.
So if one of their riders had previously expressed a wish to wear a helmet, and then someone drove into him and caused life changing injuries, and the standard expert witness said a helmet could have mitigated… In what world is the employer not going to get utterly ****.
Who is the standard expert witness and what qualifies them to determine if the outcome of the crash would have been different if the rider had been wearing a helmet?
Unlike a motorcycle helmet or car seatbelt, it's pretty much impossible to say how much less severe the injuries would have been had the victim been wearing a helmet given how little protection a bicycle helmet actually offers.
I think they cover it fairly comprehensively in their reply. From their analysis, wearing helmets increases risks through risk compensation (both from riders and from drivers) and helmets don’t provide enough protection to make it worth the increased danger from using them.
"their analysis" seems like a tenuous argument doesn't it?
I mean they set a limit of 150kg of people or goods on the bike (plus up to 300kg on a trailer) you can't tell me that with the extra mass the limits of control don't reduce, what about when it's wet? Plus they operate in central London the home turf of Addison Lee drivers. I reckon at least one of their riders is hitting the deck or the side of an enthusiastically driven airport shuttle each week, whether or not it gets reported back...
My issue isn't really with their reasoning TBH, risk compensation is a real thing, just that it would make better sense if their policy was simply no compulsion either way. Letting their riders choose, essentially preserving the individual choice that exists for all bicycle users outside of their employment...
I’m genuinely interested in TJ’s opinion on this. An advocate of non helmeted riding AND employee rights, welfare and protection. This one seems to be a flag in the sand right between the two.
I'm interested too, but my take on his opinions is less advocate of non helmeted riding and more anti helmet compulsion, I don't really recall him ever telling anyone they shouldn't wear a helmet, more that it's an equally valid choice if they chose not to, and that helmets aren't a panecea, often in the face of some quite entrenched ideas about the capabilities of plastic hats.
And that's the real issue here, a company removing that option from their employees because they heard about a particular study on risk compensation(?) Or because they don't want to discourage customers who might perceive a bit more risk if the rider has a lid on(?).
Arguably they have so little control over their employees working environment and with a combined weight of rider/bike/cargo/passengers pushing 250kg(?), really they need people with a baseline risk appetite above the norm to start with. It's not a job I'd want and I like riding bicycles, I'd certainly appreciate having the option of wearing a lid...
If a bus driver wanted to bring a welding mask and gauntlets from home and wear them while driving...
Whatever...
“their analysis” seems like a tenuous argument doesn’t it?
Huh? Are you saying they don't analyse the data they gather from their riders? They actually show a breakdown of the accidents and assaults in the twitter thread.
https://twitter.com/pedalmeapp/status/1489598941326974976
Their breakdown shows 5 on-bike accidents (one of which resulted in a concussion), 38 cases of assaults, and 30 off bike accidents.
So sure, it could be argued that the concussion case may have been less severe (or it may not) but overall they seem to have a very low accident rate, at least for on-bike accidents. It's impossible to prove conclusively that the rate of accidents would be higher if the riders wore helmets but it's also impossible to prove that the severity of injuries would be less if the riders wore helmets.
Should bouncers be allowed to wear any type of PPE they want or is it reasonable for bars to say they don't want the people working the doors to be dressed like Judge Dredd?
So if one of their riders had previously expressed a wish to wear a helmet, and then someone drove into him and caused life changing injuries, and the standard expert witness said a helmet could have mitigated
if what I read is to be believed, then the flip-side of that kind of ruling is that cyclists receiving injuries without helmets are usually found to be ‘negligent’:
UK courts take the view that wearing a helmet makes a significant positive contribution to a cyclist's safety.
Can I still claim compensation if I wasn't wearing a helmet?
Yes. If you were injured on your bike and someone else was to blame, we can help you claim cycling injury compensation.If you were not wearing a helmet and you suffered head injuries, the defendant may argue that you contributed to the severity of your own injuries. This defence is known as 'contributory negligence'. Even if this defence is upheld, you should still receive some compensation, albeit a reduced amount.
What is 'contributory negligence'?
If you were not wearing a helmet and you suffered head injuries, the defendant will probably argue that your injuries would have been less severe if you had been wearing a helmet.
Insurance companies routinely adopt the default position of contributory negligence when informed that you were not wearing a helmet - even if you didn't suffer head injuries.
The courts will usually agree with this reasoning - especially if the medical evidence supports it.
So in order to get fair compensation for a head-injury received from a vehicle-collision while not wearing PPE then be a motorist or a pedestrian instead. Being a cyclist seems to carry extra legal baggage. Not only that, but beingg a cyclist WITH a helmet puts you at greater risk.
a traffic psychologist from the University of Bath revealed that, bizarrely, drivers gave helmet-wearing cyclists less room when overtaking; forcing them to deal with potholes and drain covers, potentially increasing the likelihood of accident and injury.
‘Can’t win for losing’, as our old bloke says.
Huh? Are you saying they don’t analyse the data they gather from their riders?
Well It's not "analysis" is it as such, it's a simple table categorising incidents mainly to draw attention to the amount of abuse their staff endure (I did mention the Addison Lee factor). I can't see the period it covers, was that a week, a month or a year?
And anyway I'm talking about their policy, written into the rider's contracts, presumably before they had any incident stats to fall back on to justify it.
If you do want to analyse it five injurious collisions (although I do wonder how many of those 57 damage equipment/item reports might be misreported collisions), one a concussion, TBH in most businesses that alone would actually be enough "near miss" events to at least re-examine the no helmets policy. But then the 38 road user assaults, could those not spill over into deliberate road rage "collisions" we know not everyone is above a little punishment pass and when you're on a wider heavier cargo bike how easy is it to avoid a nudge from a van? They cannot control or mitigate all the risks in the work environment, so ruling out an item of PPE because you don't want to encourage risk taking by your employees, who clearly handle substantial risks quite regularly, is basically nonsense.
Ultimately though I'm not saying they should compel their riders to wear helmets, I'm saying they should allow them the choice, there is a difference.
As has been said, by actually prohibiting their riders from taking a simple, cheap and universally accepted mitigation against head injury, they are hugely susceptible to a lawsuit. They are rolling the dice anytime one of their riders gets knocked off.
I'm not saying that their argument doesn't have merit, but I wish them luck arguing it against somebody who they prevented wearing a helmet, suing them after falling off/getting knocked-off their bike and hitting their head.
I suspect the reason that they don't want the riders wearing helmets, is that they don't want the punters thinking about the possibility of a crash. The bus driver / seat belt analogy above is a good one
Because 300g of polystyrene is proof against everything on the road. </ Sarcasm>
No of course it isn't. But then, nobody is suggesting it is.
But its going to help many of the impacts to protect the brain
Ever walked into a lintel ? thats a pretty much no speed impact, but bloody hell does it hurt like ****
Same applies with wearing a lid. In the even of an accident, especially where the lid is seriously damaged or split, it would be idiocy to surmise that the skull wouldnt have suffered the damage the lid had on it if it wasn't there. But even small impacts that dont damage the lid, which I think we can all agree equates to a pretty big impact, can still cause the fracturing of the skull, and bleeding on the brain and complications therein.
The forces acting in an accident can be to carry the momentum forward, and like it or not, one of the first things to impact anything is the head. Arms usually fail to support or arrest momentum in these scenarios.
So while it isnt going to help in a serious serious accident, for the most part it will be a case of damage limitation.
Perhaps this is why we have a term 'Head first' 😉
The protective effects of helmets are small when viewed across populations and secondary effects like risk compensation do occur. From an H&S point of view PPE should be the last resort not the first step so a no helmet policy backed by a proper risk assessment is fine. I think the company would find it harder to justify sacking someone who wanted to wear one. that would be an interesting argument
AS ever decent somethingion of the data on cycle helmet wearing
https://www.cyclinguk.org/campaigning/views-and-briefings/cycle-helmets
One of the things that can be pulled out of the data is that helmeted riders crash more often. Why this is is still very much up for debate. Thus if you want to reduce the number of crashes banning helmets can be a reasonable H&S step. Of course this is a massive oversimplification but the data is there to back up their position.
Risk compensation, it exists but I'd hazard to guess that for cargo bike style riding its going to be minimal (versus trying to reach 40mph on your road bike/red light jumping on a normal bike/offroad MTB)
Getting more protection than passengers - someone used the bus example. Drivers did get seatbelts whilst their passengers didn't. Pedalme cargo bike...is the cargo not going to be often packaged to avoid damage? And if carrying passengers, the operator spends more time on the bike than passengers so the exposure to risk is higher.
Behaviour from other drivers...I tend to see cargo bikes more as traffic than cyclists and I'd have thought they are less likely to trigger the close passes that lycra clad helmet wearing riders are liable to?
One of the things that can be pulled out of the data is that helmeted riders crash more often. Why this is is still very much up for debate. Thus if you want to reduce the number of crashes banning helmets can be a reasonable H&S step. Of course this is a massive oversimplification but the data is there to back up their position.
Has that been tested in a court yet?
The truth is that the HSE would probably see tangible PPE as trumping a psychology paper on driver behaviour or even survey data saying helmeted riders crash more. The risk appears to diminish with the absence of the PPE intended to mitigate it, but can it actually be quantified, given a probability? Is it true in all environments by what degree do outcomes differ? And can that choice be defended legally by PedalMe if the worst does happen?
PPE might be a last resort, but it's one of the first mitigations you put on a risk assessment (often before training), and they've ruled it out in their terms of employment it seems. I don't know of many industries where that is the norm. I don't actually reckon they've done a real risk assessment...
I suppose this comes down to actual risk Vs the perception of risk and where an insurer or court would draw the line, right now PedalMe are handing an easy win to any would be ambulance chasers.
Spooky - the point is the protective effect from helmets is so small mainly because serious head injuries are so rare- with thousands of riders its going to be thousands of years of riding to save one rider from death. So small effects over the years working in the other way - cocky riders, close passes, adverse effects especially from ill fitting helmets can easily cause more deaths.
Is this the argument that removing seat belts and air bags from cars, and sticking a steel spike in the centre of the steering wheel would make people drive more carefully?
