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CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
THE Helmet Thread
(895 posts)-
Posted 7 years ago #
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Article in the Sunday Times suggesting hi-viz could lead to more accidents as wearers assume they can be seen and act accordingly.
Behind a paywall but here it is.
The researcher warns that the study is small though and a Danish study apparently finds the opposite . The pro-helmet person in the article Mark Wilson makes the rather ludicrous suggestion that if you knew you were going to get hit on the head with a fire hydrant, you'd wear a helmet. Also says previous research showing drivers are more careless around helmet wearers has been debunked but does not elaborate.
Posted 7 years ago # -
mandatory helmet compulsion for cyclists
it somehow reminds me of when gurdjieff's disciple, peter ouspensky, saw a truck loaded with artificial limbs on its way to the front during the great war
they were for arms and legs that had not yet been blown off, but it was be calculated that they surely soon would be
the insanity of the situation was thus revealed in all its horror.. if those limbs had not yet been blown off, then why did they have to be ?
Posted 7 years ago # -
"Make sure to wear your helmet!"
The Helix Glow Ride
http://www.thehelix.co.uk/all-events/helix-glow-ride/
Backdoor helmet compulsion in a safe traffic-free environment. RRRRRAARRRRG
Posted 7 years ago # -
The Telegraph had a helmet compulsion article yesterday. This is definitely A Thing now.
It started with ten paragraphs with pictures of smashed up children and then said that the counter arguments were;
1) Libertarian personal choice, and
2) Car drivers give less space to helmet-clad ridersThose two aren't even in the top five for me.
The people who benefit from helmet compulsion are helmet manufacturers in that some income is guaranteed even if cycle use is diminished, but mainly the motor trade. Cyclists seem to be a real problem for autonomous cars and there will be attempts to remove us from public roads by whatever means seems least resistable.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Libertarian personal choice
The way the Telegraph has gone, that will probably be the clincher for most of the readership...
Posted 7 years ago # -
"Cyclists seem to be a real problem for autonomous cars"
Not something I had clocked - why is that?
I would have thought that in terms of overall mass and how cyclists appear on their "radar" that we are not that different from a bog standard pedestrian - although usually considerably slimmer ;-) - and they will have to have learned to cope with them?
Posted 7 years ago # -
@Nelly
Cyclists are, it seems, harder to spot and harder to predict than pedestrians.
There is a theory doing the rounds that streets will have to be made off-limits to anything not carrying a transponder in order to allow autonomous vehicles. Pedestrians will need to be confined to crossings.
Similar to the ways that roads were given over to driven cars by the invention of 'jaywalking', road safety for children, the road tax myth and all that stuff.
Posted 7 years ago # -
they have learned to cope, nelly
by ploughing headfirst into the ped or cyclist to protect their autonomous car occupant
in the event of an unavoidable collision
that's how bmw and audi see it playing out, anyway
and if you were buying into it, wouldn't you also
Posted 7 years ago # -
Interesting.
My car - audi - has some witchcraft stuff built into it, pre-sense they call it, and it is supposed to "sense" via a couple of mini cameras if there is an imminent collision and do something about it.
I was sceptical.
However, it does work - I was driving past meggetland one day and a bunch of schoolboys were larking about. One ran in front of me, and although I was going pretty slow (having seen the situation emerge as I am, if nothing else, very aware of pedestrians and cyclists etc) and was about to hit the brake anyway......but the car did it for me, marginally before I did.
Magic!
What this says to me is that there is decent technology already available in production which means cars can take action to avoid collisions with unpredictable humans.
So I am still perplexed as to why autonomous cars would not be forced to take this technology a few steps further before taking to the road in anger?
Posted 7 years ago # -
well the scenario is this
unexpectedly you're about to collide with something significant !
do you take the hit, or
swerve/plough into the cyclist/ped over there on the left ?
collateral damage, i believe its called
Posted 7 years ago # -
Did you see the guy Martin robot car program?
A car company was crowd sourcing what a AV's response to different scenarios should be I.e. kill passengers or pedestrians in various permutations
Refreshingly Guy's response was the car's passengers should bear the brunt as they chose to be in the 'killing machine'
Posted 7 years ago # -
"well the scenario is this
unexpectedly you're about to collide with something significant !
do you take the hit, or
swerve/plough into the cyclist/ped over there on the left ?
collateral damage, i believe its called"And you believe that car manufacturers are building collateral damage into their autonomous cars?
I genuinely dont know, so I am interested to hear the facts.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Guy's take on most things is refreshing. Proper eccentric.
Posted 7 years ago # -
I’d be interested to know if that Tesla that ploughed into the back of a cyclist recently on a straight road was in “autopilot” mode or not
In the US it’s mandatory for all AV producers to compile lists of crashes & provide to government authorities - I wonder if it’s the same here
Posted 7 years ago # -
And you believe that car manufacturers are building collateral damage into their autonomous cars?
certainly the debate is as if the decision is still to be made
https://www.inverse.com/article/32621-ford-industry-has-to-decide-whether-to-kill-drivers
but of course the manufacturers must have a distinct preference
Posted 7 years ago # -
I am interested to hear the facts
Given that this is software we're talking about and VW-Audi couldn't even be trusted to write non-hooky engine management programmes....chances of ever properly disclosing all the rules in every autonomous car? Zero.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Plus... Imagine if you could hack it?
ETA well I mean of course someone will. Now thinking about efforts to hack nuclear power plant systems...
Posted 7 years ago # -
"but of course the manufacturers must have a distinct preference"
Well, you might think so but I dont think its as cut and dried as some think.
In that article, the German transport chap said that one of their rules for AVs would be that the manufacturer was always liable.
Liability tends to focus corporates - so, if we examine the first question re Ford "10 pedestrian deaths v 1 driver death", using the liability rule required by the Germans, the car could be programmed to kill the driver !
This is excellent stuff and will have their lawyers tied up in knots for years.
Posted 7 years ago # -
I don't know the legal basis but presumably swerving into a soft body would be regarded as a deliberate act and therefore someone is liable. Driving into a solid object in the road, well that's just an accident...
I think we've said it before that whatever the cars are programmed to do they are likely to be far in this situation far less than human controlled ones.
Posted 7 years ago # -
I would be very surprised that a self driving car would ever find itself in a situation where the only choices were to endanger either the person in the car or another party.
Posted 7 years ago # -
If car was driving down the street and a child ran out 3 feet in front of the car but there was an OAP on the sidewalk would the car veer on to the side walk using the NHS nice QALY principle. What if the queen ran out in front but was 9 people on the sidewalk.
There is likely to be some "trolley problem" at some point where driverless car has to choose who to run down but be a lot less accidents.Posted 7 years ago # -
Cory Doctorow has looked at this from the software perspective:
"I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard this question posed as chin-stroking, far-seeing futurism, and it never fails to infuriate me. Bad enough that this formulation is a shallow problem masquerading as deep, but worse still is the way in which this formulation masks a deeper, more significant one.
Here’s a different way of thinking about this problem: if you wanted to design a car that intentionally murdered its driver under certain circumstances, how would you make sure that the driver never altered its programming so that they could be assured that their property would never intentionally murder them?"
The problem with self-driving cars: who controls the code?
Cory DoctorowPosted 7 years ago # -
On the subject of "something in front v something on pavement to kill" my thought is this.
AVs will be driving at speed limit or less in town (20mph in most spots), so they will in all likelihood hit the brakes very hard and not be veering anywhere.
Allied to many camera/radar thingies sited all over the vehicle, I suspect they might even detect danger before a human would.
All of this needs tested, of course - and stats need to drive out the truth - are AVs are more dangerous, less or somewhere in the middle v's conventional vehicles as that's the key.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Here's a beeb story today. This guy suffered brain injury in a violent street assault some years ago in Livingston, during a night out. Now he uses his experience to give school talks for Headway on the dangers of cycling. He could do a great S6 "Look what happened to me" anti-violence talk.. but no, it's cycling and helmets.
No wonder they talk about making the bonce hats mandatory.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Wow, I never knew that had happened to him. We lived in the same street as kids, he was a few years older, I ran about with his wee brother. His dad became an alcoholic after his wife died (this may have been contributory).
Another chap on our street, Michael, about the same age as Colin there got his face slashed on a night out, he moved to London as a result to get away. Neither of them were what you would call troublemakers.
A lot of that sh*t used to go on in Livingston at that time, remember watching someone being slashed outside the local nightclub, and people were set about on weekly.
Didn’t seem out of place at the time, think things are better now.
Posted 7 years ago # -
I can't watch the video at work, so I don't know what it says (although the title makes her thesis clear). I sympathise with the plight of the girl. However, how does the view of a 12 year old get such prominence on the front page of the BBC website?
Posted 7 years ago # -
How willful is the misunderstanding in the debate? I don't think anyone's saying that if you put someone in a crash, a helmet offers no head protection in any circumstances. So why is the media framing the debate in that way?
Posted 7 years ago # -
My concern is that there is a creeping normality to helmet use that absolutely avoids the point that the main danger in cycling in the UK is not falling off and banging your head, but instead is the danger posed by motor vehicles.
I saw a striking picture a few weeks ago of the young princes William and Harry (taken, I guess, in the early 90s). They were being watched by their doting parents as they posed on bikes together. Neither wore a helmet. Today they would, and it would generally be perceived as crazy if they didn't. Objectively, has the risk of them falling off and banging their heads changed much since then? Nope.
Posted 7 years ago # -
Chris Boardman on the case:
https://twitter.com/Chris_Boardman/status/941594306477002752
The girl was ran over by a car and had her pelvis crushed....and this what you take from it? Wow
Posted 7 years ago #
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