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news
Pedal Me (Twitter)Pedal Me bans cargo bike riders from wearing helmets for safety reasons
E-cargo bike and pedicab company Pedal Me confirmed rumours it has banned staff riders from wearing helmets, citing safety reasons for the rule.
The news was first reported by Carlton Reid for Forbes after the firm posted a series of tweets on Friday explaining the decision.
The London-based cycling logistics provider said it believed riders and other road users take more risks when a helmet is worn, and that the "vast majority" of injuries sustained by staff occurred off the bike.
Instead, Pedal Me says reporting near miss incidents, properly training riders, maintaining its fleet of cargo bikes, as well as tracking poor rider behaviour is more effective.
In response to a question posed by the owner of a bike shop, Pedal Me clarified the company's stance in a detailed Twitter thread.
"People 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," it began.
"We do this by: 1) Thorough risk assessment. 2) Extremely high level of training, on an ongoing basis. 3) Near miss reporting - we track near misses, and minor injuries, and tackle the causative factors.
"We know that increasing helmet wearing rates makes cycling more dangerous per mile - although there are confounding factors here, this indicates that overall they do not provide a strong protective effect in the round - otherwise the opposite effect.
"Extensive reading of the literature suggests that this is because while helmets definitely help in the event of a crash, that risk compensation results in more collisions. So riders wearing helmets take greater risks, and those driving around them take greater risks too."
Pedal Me suggested a "major cause" of head injuries are crashes where the rider is thrown over the handlebars, something it says is "not possible" when using one of its three-metre long cargo bike.
The company also reported seeing worse behaviour from competitor firms that use helmets, saying the protective equipment seemed to make riders "much more likely to jump red lights and take risks in general".
Overall the vast majority of injuries to our riders occur off the bike, which we know because of our near miss and incident reporting - and that's our focus for tackling danger.
As @Chris_Boardman says: "Helmets not even in top 10 of things that keep cycling safe"
— Pedal Me (@pedalmeapp) February 4, 2022
Pedal Me currently employs 70 staff riders, who together cover around 50,000 miles per month. The firm says it has not had any third-party or passenger injuries since it founded, although there have been minor collisions.
Bungee cords were the biggest cause of injuries, but have since been phased out. The most common source of injury comes "mainly off the bike", when loading and unloading the bikes, or when at a customer's premises.
Pedal Me also outlined its internal safety strategy, including training concepts "hammered home" and repeated passenger qualification every 18 months. Additionally, "near misses get reported and investigated, allowing us to systematically tackle real safety issues based on data rather than fear".
This reporting system is credited for "major changes" to training, bungees being phased out, upgraded brakes, and changes to the maintenance process, which is undertaken by in-house mechanics. All Pedal Me bikes and riders are also tracked through nameplates and GPS.
And finally, here are our incident logs.
We're particularly keen to help @metpoliceuk crack down on harrassment and assault on the street as this is something that is not common, but does happen and we don't think it's acceptable.
They have not appeared particularly interested. pic.twitter.com/EfEMkzhDDh
— Pedal Me (@pedalmeapp) February 4, 2022
Since 2017, one rider reported suffering a concussion in a collision, which may have been mitigated by wearing a helmet, but Pedal Me stressed: "Potentially [a helmet may have helped]. But likely would have also increased risk taking and therefore increased the number of incidents overall."
Co-founder Ben Knowles told Forbes: "We once had an incident where a member of staff was assaulted with a machete, but that doesn’t mean we would equip all riders with stab vests."
The thread prompted much discussion, including questions of the legality of denying a rider work because they choose to wear a helmet.
Pedal Me responded to this concern, saying: "We've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and it's our legal responsibility to look after the safety of our staff, and the safety of those who might be impacted by our operations. We're legally obliged to put in rules that will keep our staff and third parties safe."
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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92 comments
I'd be very surprised if Pedal Me have gone down this route without a clear, documented, risk assessment and clarity on their liability insurance position. As one of their investors, I certainly hope they have taken those steps (and if they have, then I am very happy to support their stance).
All it will take is one employee to fall and hit their head for a lawsuit to occur; I would put money on the employee winning a liability case.
well it seems that one eployee has fallen and hit their head, according to the records.
Concussion and stitches to the chin, neither of which are protected against by the helmet. Of course if they had been wearing a hemet in this fall, it would be another "bike helmet saved my life" story.
Concussion and stitches to the chin, neither of which are protected against by the helmet
What is this nonsense?! 'Concussion' doesn't exist- it's just an obsolete term in ancient films when the hero grits his teeth, gets on with the job and shrugs off 'a touch of concussion'. It's really varying degrees of traumatic brain injury and they're all going to show up as white (usually) blobs on brain MRI. They don't do you any good and the more of them you have, and the bigger they are, the worse it is. It is my hope and expectation that any TBI I receive from bashing my head on the road will be reduced by my invariably worn helmet. That's very difficult to prove, so I'm happy for others to disagree where their own brains are concerned. 'Concussion' is exactly what helmets are intended to reduce in severity
Not an expert, but I thought that brain injuries ('concussions') are caused primarily by the brain sloshing against the inside of the skull and bike helmets don't currently help with that significantly. Skull fractures are more likely to be prevented by cycle helmets.
Not an expert
Exactly! We have to resort to common sense.
I was hoping for someone more knowledgeable to give some insight as I'd rather be corrected than continue to believe something that's false. Must say that I'm not a fan of common sense as it leads to all kinds of wrong conclusions (e.g. closing roads creates more traffic)
Common sense tells you to do a proper methodical study otherwise you are simply stating something that matches your existing position and claiming it equates to common sense.
https://www.bicycling.com/training/a20009168/injury-prevention-what-helm...
https://helmets.org/concussionhelmet.htm
https://www.rei.com/blog/cycle/the-complicated-story-behind-bike-helmet-...
https://www.cpsc.gov/safety-education/safety-guides/sports-fitness-and-r...
"Does this mean that helmets prevent concussions?
No. No helmet design has been proven to prevent concussions. The materials that are used in most of today’s helmets are engineered to absorb the high impact energies that can produce skull fractures and severe brain injuries. However, these materials have not been proven to counteract the energies believed to cause concussions. Beware of claims that a particular helmet can reduce or prevent concussions."
still, you have "hope and expectation" on your side, so I'm sure any court case by the one rider who suffered concussion would be a straightforward finding for the plaintiff..
A thoroughly logical, fact-based analysis by Pedal Me, so extremely rare these days that I had to come here to make that comment.
Except.......""Extensive reading of the literature suggests that this is because while helmets definitely help in the event of a crash...." Not sure where they got that from; does anyone know? There is no definite about it, given the increase in risk of the most damaging injury, rotational.
Incidentally, not wishing to stoke the fires of the helmet inferno, but I came across a fb advert by Sustrans, which has teamed up with a helmet manufacturer to run a competition. I wrote to them suggesting that this was a bad idea as helmets didn't work and promoting them depressed cycling levels, and they responded with a link to their helmet policy, which as far as I can see is based on a newspaper report of some very dodgy helmet "research". I put research into inverted commas, because it consisted of "....computer reconstructions of all the fatal collisions to determine whether headgear would have changed the outcomes." That strikes me as up there with Thompson, Rivara and Thompson for reliability. https://www.sustrans.org.uk/our-blog/policy-positions/all/all/our-positi...
After which you thereupon stoke up the fires of the helmet inferno.
Litotes; not necessarily my least favourite figure of speech.
Excellent!
(I had to look up what that meant)
Chapeau.
Their intention is good, but they are wrong. All of the above + wear a helmet because a broken bone in the head usually means brain damage whereas a broken bone anywhere else means a month of Netflix. It's just not worth the risk. However, helmets must not be made compulsory by the Government, because dickheads like Loophole will get drivers off killing cyclists if the rider wasnt wearing a compulsory helmet.
I appreciate the honesty of your comment but I feel you might have just not read the article fully.
If it is purely a provable game of numbers I would take my chances with no helmet if it reduced my overall risk of a serious injury KSI etc.
Australia has mandated helmet use but if a motorist hit a cyclist and is found responsible, the matter of whether the cyclist was wearing a helmet or not is immaterial.
Brave move from Pedal Me, I wish them luck
A nice detailed justification, although there is a bit too much reliance on 'may have increased risk-taking' for my liking. However, I fundamentally agree. I've found that the safest headwear for cycling is a brightly coloured (I have one with reflective stripes!) bobble-hat. It makes you very obvious but also very clearly 'not a cyclist'.
I've never been close passed (I cycle in city-centre Cardiff!) in a bobble hat and it probably provides about the same level of protection against the HGV that will probably one day kill me as a helmet, i.e. none whatsoever.
Ridiculous. We all know that a helmet isn't some magical device but I would far rather have it on than not. When knocked off by a car suddenly veering into my lane (no helmet that day) I was rather fortunate that it was my dislocated shoulder that took the brunt while my head only had a small knock on the ground. If my head had taken most of the impact...
Concentrate on training your staff to be sensible on the bike while at work rather than taking away something that could save their life.
Wow. this is brave.
I always felt that with the infrastructure in towns with kerbs, bollards, posts, poles, signs, pedestrians (!!) that a helmet would be useful and speed would be within the design limits.
I have the same sort of thoughts as secret squirrel when going down hill at speed.
Also... machete... wtf.
They're entirely right, as Mark Treasure explains here:
https://aseasyasridingabike.wordpress.com/2018/03/28/from-the-specific-t...
Hats off* to them for a detailed and thorough consideration, regardless of whether you agree with them or not. They probably need the rule to show their insurance company they are in control. And fair play, it's free publicity
I usually wear a helmet whilst on my bike despite my own experience suggesting that motorists give me more space when I don't wear one. My reasons for wearing them are:
-I have small kids and I would like them to wear helmets whilst their skulls are still developing so I need to walk the talk.
-I have a hi viz cover over my helmet that looks ridiculous, like a fluorescent knob which amuses me no end*
-When the inevitable happens and some prick flattens me, I don't want the insurance company to have a ridiculous excuse to attempt to reduce the pay out.
*Puns intended
Question: If your kids were able to ride only or nearly only on segregated infrastructure, or on occaional town roads with mostly super courteous drivers - so I am clearly referencing Denmark/Netherlands here - would you still insist they wear a helmet?
I have 3 boys who all started cycling and continue to with no helmets and its just normal for many where I live where the environment is safe.
We should fully focus on changing the roadways environment, not putting plastic hats on the most vulnerable.
Fair question. Yes I would. At the moment they are very much at the stage of slow speed falls off the bike with no one else involved and I suspect they will soon graduate to sudden braking and flying over the handle bars.
When they are older, probably not so much. Also, when they are older I doubt they would listen to me anyway given they have 50% of my genes.
See also my reply to Grog.
Why would you conflate those issues? if wearing helmets are a good idea for low impact accidents, I would most certainly use them with segregated bike infrastructure.
Do you fall off your bike a lot? People using segregated infrastructure tend not to, and so don't need helmets.
Efficacy of helmets is disproved by this chart which shows no correlation between increased helmet use, and lower occurance of head injuries
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