Interesting Information

[Pachyderm]

Just thought I'd post a quick note to say that there was a similar experiment in England a while ago.

An experienced touring cyclist went out in his normal gear: no helmet; ordinary clothes etc. Then he went out again in helmet, luminous jacket and all the safety gear, and found that vehicles gave him a lot less room when overtaking, pulled out in front of him and generally gave him much less respect. He took it to be because other road users took him to be "safe" and so didn't have to worry about being respectful.

He then went out in the cycling policeman's uniform. He had no trouble then!

[Geonz]

http://www.helmets.org/walkerstudy.htm has an interesting analysis of that study, which notes some of the same issues I thought of, primarily the whole assumption that helmets are "the factor" - and also that 3 inches closer actually means more likely to be hit.
Our recent fatality was riding off the road on the shoulder, if my information is correct, and a phone-impaired driver swerved enough to take him out. So, most traffic was passing with all kinds of distance, but partially *because* that distance was enough to put him out of the "attention range," he's gone.
That article points out also that the roads are *very* different in the UK.

[LisaB]

Wow -- looks like I'm a day late to this party. Helmets do not "improve safety." This seems to be the basis for the guy's argument, and, as most daily-riding cyclists know, all helmets do is protect your head. There are ancillary effects (getting called a dork, having a place to mount your light, etc.), but helmets only do one thing: protect your head. Helmets don't improve safety. These things do:
• Being an aware and experienced rider
• Riding on a low-risk facility
• Riding with aware and experienced facility co-users
• Communicating with your facility co-users with your voice, bell or horn
• Signaling to traffic and obeying traffic laws while behaving in a predictable fashion (i.e. "like a car").

Wearing a helmet just reduces your chances of severe insult to the organ you keep in your skull -- NOTHING MORE. Further, the connection of "bicyclists who wear helmets are more likely to be hit by a motor vehicle" and "I really doubt if it’s necessary to wear a helmet while riding my bike to work on the bike trail" when cars are a factor in the former and are not in the latter... okay, soooo not gonna go there.

The study is spurious at best (the results are observed, not causal). YMMV.

[Kitsune06]

I know cycling police/security officers are far more common these days. Has anyone considered buying a couple unlabled 'official-looking' jerseys and/or jacket (yellow on top with black down under) for commuting?

I know you can legally (in the States) buy clothes that read 'Security' because it's such a general term (and security officers have few or no rights the general public doesn't have)

It might make life a little safer for us out there.

exDH and I had matching jackets that looked a lot like bike-officers' jackets, and we had a *lot* of respect, biking together. ...and we had one drunk student yell "F***ing Pigs!!!" out the window of a BMW. We only wished we could be... then we'd write her smart *** a ticket (or so)