Wearing a bike helmet might make you more dangerous | Science | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2016 ... ite-danger

If you look and feel like a penis chances are you'll act like one

This is not the first study to make similar observations. The last one I heard of was more about how other road users perceive a cyclist depending in what clothes were being worn. The more safety and professional cyclist looking gear was worn, the narrower the margins given by motorists. So if you were the full Lycra outfit, it's more likely you are to have a car clip your handlebars when it passes you than if you are in normal civvies.

The premise of the article has nothing to do with car drivers, it's about the cyclists perception of their own safety. I do think there's a degree of truth behind the 'all the gear no idea' maxim.

I suspect in a lot of cases people ride for a while wearing whatever they have handy, then they decide they're now a proper rider, buy all the gear and bomb about the place, not realising their limitations are actually still quite significant. They end up taking risks their skill levels won't always get them out of. It's basically Dunning-Kruger in action. If they survive that stage they become pretty competent urban riders and know much better how to avoid and/or mitigate the situations they're in to reduce risk.

Course it's hard to tell from the outside how well someone has assessed the risk they get into, and how lucky they were to get out of it in one piece...

The same is true of pretty much everyone on the road but everyone else is less likely to end up as a lycra bag full of mince.

No, going through red lights makes cyclists more dangerous.
The last time I drove through Cambridge I nearly hit three different cyclists...... All three because they'd cycled straight through red lights an into the flow of moving traffic.

The bloke in the hosptial bed next to my father-in-law when he was having his kneee done was there because he'd gone through a red light on his bike and been hit by a car.
Cyclists need helmets. It's the only protection for bad car drivers and themselves that they get.