Why the NEED to Lecture Gearless stranger on an EUC?

[Underskore]

@Patton250maybe you should hear this, it might help you understand the argument from @LanghamPor others.

You really seems to be a nice guy but with such strong ideas you don't even want to consider them as partially wrong or relative. I can't stand people who just repeat what they were told without even considering it partially biased or interested. It's a clear lack of critical mind leading to cult, religion or false believe.

I encountered that kind of mindset so much in religion or cult believing as a Mentalist who uses tricks to make people believe in extraordinary capacity that I know for a fact they're just tricks. I don't say that it doesn't exist, but I can show you a non-magical way of reproduce almost every experience people claims to have witness. So those experiences are not proofs of what they trying to make people believe.

In the case of helmet, it's kind of the same situation. You have been told since you were young that helmets saves lives, and it's irresponsible to not wearing them. But it's not entirely true, whole countries strongly disagree with that, but your ethnocentrism blind you to see that. Your mind is trying to bound those cognitive dissonances by rejecting argument, ignoring them and focusing on exemples you feel strong and not yet debunk. But you clearly defend a position rather than aknowledge the facts and conclude on you own opinion. You serving a system that told you what to think rather how to think, and this is a very concerning kind of behavior.

Considering that, I would add my own experience about protective gear. I start with nothing for 3years on a NB1E+, never fell except for one car hitting me on a crossroad (he was passing red traffic light for him). But since I tried to get my GF into euc and bought a Gotway Tesla, I wear some gears. The main reason is the speed and environment I'm in now. I ride slightly faster than before (15-20km/h before and now up to 30km/h) and more importantly I'm commonly more surrounded by cars than before where I was only using bicycle lane and pavement. But I actually measure the risk from the distance I'm going too, if I go to the shop near my apartment, I only put my kevlar jacket with built-in protection and a jeans of the same kind. But no helmet. If I have to go far away and riding around cars, I would put a helmet. But it's not because I'm affraid of my euc or insignificant low risk of mechanical failure (as long as you respect the mechanics) it's because I'm affraid of cars putting me in bad situation where I can't fall correctly. 

So I'm not a guy who tell you not wearing a helmet is a good idea or not, I'm just telling you that what ever you do, please think about it on your own. And if you don't have enough knowledge, just search and confront differents opinions, ideas, studies and research from different part of the world and try to make sense of it on your own understanding. You'll may have the same position as before but at least you would received others arguments for what they are and not trying to throw them away and argue that they're wrong and irresponsible to don't have the same opinion as yours.

 

 

Ps : pardon my English, it's not my first language. Feel free to correct me or ask more precisions on sentences I might have poorly written.

[LanghamP]

6 hours ago, Binh Nam Vu said:

This from someone that goes max 12mph and 9mph on average?  I was doing 30mph+ completely gearless in shorts, t-shirt, and flip flops for over 2000 miles before getting a helmet I now wear whenever I ride. The helmet didn't increase my max speed because the wheel still beeps at 31mph, so 32-33 is my limit. I also didn't ride more dangerously. I don't know about cars getting closer, but they always went into the bike lanes because they're shit drivers even when I didn't have a helmet.

When I go faster, I don't wear silly half measures like motocross armor, or slide on knee and elbow armor. Or downhill helmets (although I do have one). 

I wear this for the body (the one piece).

I wear this for the head.

I wear this for the gloves.

And I wear the heavily padded all stars for the feet, as they go over the ankle bones.

What's your excuse for not gearing up properly? If you're not wearing at least motorcycle levels of protection at 27 mph plus, then you're not wearing protection (yet lecturing others about protection). While having ridden at 30+ with no protection...

There's hilarity when a guy with no protection who goes 30+ mph lectures the guy with no protection who goes 12 mph.

[ir_fuel]

What shoes are you using? I would love shoes with more protection, but all the motorcycle ones have a heel. I want flat soles.

[ir_fuel]

2 hours ago, Darrell Wesh said:

Very bias days because those are the people that actually wanted to talk to you. Think of all the mothers, elderly, and females you scare being that visibly geared up.

And you forgot the Onewheel crowd, who all think we look like lame anyway, gear or no gear.  

 

For me it doesn't matter if I am geared up or not. People who are curious will always say the same thing:

- that looks difficult! You have to be able to keep your balance! (yes, as every 6 year old can on a bicycle ....)

- how fast does it go?

- how far does it go?

And it's always the same end: they go  when you tell the speed and distance, and they end with "it must be dangerous riding one of those".

Doesn't matter if I wear motorcycle attire, or my G-form stuff completely hidden under my normal clothes. 

[LanghamP]

5 hours ago, ir_fuel said:

The only conclusion I see from these last couple of pages is that the safest thing to do is to ditch our gear, ditch our euc, and get back in our cars.

I didn't see anything above you wrote that I can take issue with. It seems entirely correct.

However, your conclusion I disagree with under very specific circumstances.

According to the NHTSA (I'm too lazy to look up the specific articles), per mile driven car passengers die slightly more often than bicyclists; presumably per hour driven they die 2-4 as often (~10 mph average compared to 20-40 mph for cars).

Why?

Because of the stroad,  a high speed street that's the exclusive domain of cars and motorcycles, and which are designed to kill about 80-90% of US drivers.

Here's a bicyclist who foolishy rode on one. Don't do that.

Driving a car would be safest (your conclusion) if you could avoid stroads. Stroads is where people go to die (my car was struck on a stroad a few months ago, which totaled three other cars and required three ambulances).

I also very much agree with the general statement that EUCs are probably much more dangerous per mile than bicycles, and that one should wear protective gear at all times (I don't, but then I rarely ride above 12 mph, usually on sidewalks with no driveways, or on rough trails, down steps, up grass hills, etc...where crashing is high but falling is low).

[LanghamP]

31 minutes ago, ir_fuel said:

And you forgot the Onewheel crowd, who all think we look like lame anyway, gear or no gear

I feel my inner snobbiness rising up, along with a tiny bit of bile duct fluid, whenever I now see the OW rider (without exception geared up) riding his 12 mph stead for seven miles.

And I've seen lots of them. Forest Park is popular, and they now allow electric scooters on their wonderful trails.

What does a OW crash at 12 mph even look like? 

 

[Kens]

1 hour ago, LanghamP said:

What does a OW crash at 12 mph even look like? 

 

Not 12mph but gearless.

[ir_fuel]

3 hours ago, LanghamP said:

According to the NHTSA (I'm too lazy to look up the specific articles), per mile driven car passengers die slightly more often than bicyclists; presumably per hour driven they die 2-4 as often (~10 mph average compared to 20-40 mph for cars).

Strange. We had a similar discussion some time ago on this forum and the numbers we found showed that cars are the safest way of road transportation per mile, even safer than walking.

This for instance are the numbers in the UK:

[Patton250]

6 hours ago, Underskore said:

@Patton250maybe you should hear this, it might help you understand the argument from @LanghamPor others.

You really seems to be a nice guy but with such strong ideas you don't even want to consider them as partially wrong or relative. I can't stand people who just repeat what they were told without even considering it partially biased or interested. It's a clear lack of critical mind leading to cult, religion or false believe.

I encountered that kind of mindset so much in religion or cult believing as a Mentalist who uses tricks to make people believe in extraordinary capacity that I know for a fact they're just tricks. I don't say that it doesn't exist, but I can show you a non-magical way of reproduce almost every experience people claims to have witness. So those experiences are not proofs of what they trying to make people believe.

In the case of helmet, it's kind of the same situation. You have been told since you were young that helmets saves lives, and it's irresponsible to not wearing them. But it's not entirely true, whole countries strongly disagree with that, but your ethnocentrism blind you to see that. Your mind is trying to bound those cognitive dissonances by rejecting argument, ignoring them and focusing on exemples you feel strong and not yet debunk. But you clearly defend a position rather than aknowledge the facts and conclude on you own opinion. You serving a system that told you what to think rather how to think, and this is a very concerning kind of behavior.

Considering that, I would add my own experience about protective gear. I start with nothing for 3years on a NB1E+, never fell except for one car hitting me on a crossroad (he was passing red traffic light for him). But since I tried to get my GF into euc and bought a Gotway Tesla, I wear some gears. The main reason is the speed and environment I'm in now. I ride slightly faster than before (15-20km/h before and now up to 30km/h) and more importantly I'm commonly more surrounded by cars than before where I was only using bicycle lane and pavement. But I actually measure the risk from the distance I'm going too, if I go to the shop near my apartment, I only put my kevlar jacket with built-in protection and a jeans of the same kind. But no helmet. If I have to go far away and riding around cars, I would put a helmet. But it's not because I'm affraid of my euc or insignificant low risk of mechanical failure (as long as you respect the mechanics) it's because I'm affraid of cars putting me in bad situation where I can't fall correctly. 

So I'm not a guy who tell you not wearing a helmet is a good idea or not, I'm just telling you that what ever you do, please think about it on your own. And if you don't have enough knowledge, just search and confront differents opinions, ideas, studies and research from different part of the world and try to make sense of it on your own understanding. You'll may have the same position as before but at least you would received others arguments for what they are and not trying to throw them away and argue that they're wrong and irresponsible to don't have the same opinion as yours.

 

 

Ps : pardon my English, it's not my first language. Feel free to correct me or ask more precisions on sentences I might have poorly written.

 I’m not sure why you brought me back into this but I’m not gonna participated in it anymore.  It reminds me of when I was in my early 20s and a friend of mine told me that it’s safer to drive drunk because your pay more attention out of paranoia. Lol

 Or when I was a teenager and a friend told me he did better on tests when he was stoned. 

 It’s safer to drive cars without seatbelts because if you do get in a car accident the seatbelt can keep you locked in the car and it catch fire 

 While using personal watercraft like waverunners and jet skis it’s much safer to not use a life jacket. .

 

 You see what I’m talking about? This entire conversation makes my brain hurt. Maybe I should put a helmet on. Lol.  Anyway thank you but I can’t and won’t do this. :-)

[LanghamP]

7 hours ago, ir_fuel said:

What shoes are you using? I would love shoes with more protection, but all the motorcycle ones have a heel. I want flat soles.

It pains me to admit I wear the yellow, white, and grey chuck Taylor all stars, at the atrociously high price of $80 for a damned pair of sneakers.

Now I tried to find these for you on Amazon, as they used to have them, but no longer. I found mine at DWS shoe warehouse.

Flat hard sole, the heel is the same height as the front.

Rubber sole with smooth edge as to not get caught on sandpaper during a runoff. Exactly like skater shoes.

PADDING on both ankle bones, with the rubber logo on both sides where the ankle meets the wheel. Be careful there are TWO versions of the shoes...the YELLOW (cringe) had the rubber logo on the inside, which lets you grip the wheel.

Cotton and nylon, I think, with nice abrasion resistance.

No other shoe comes even close for EUC, but the what's worse than white sneakers I swore I'd never wear? Yellow and white...dear God...

But they work.

[NoRo]

Face planted at 45/h . Skateboard helmet on , scratched my chin and nose and helmet saved the day for not allowing to scratch deeper. 

What have I learned? I need a full face helmet ! (thinking ruroc rdx-3 or smth) . 

I don't always wear gear ofc but if I I know I do long distance and push harder then at the very least the helmet on. 

[Arbolest]

1 hour ago, NoRo said:

Face planted at 45/h . Skateboard helmet on , scratched my chin and nose and helmet saved the day for not allowing to scratch deeper. 

What have I learned? I need a full face helmet ! (thinking ruroc rdx-3 or smth) . 

I don't always wear gear ofc but if I I know I do long distance and push harder then at the very least the helmet on. 

Glad you're ok, that's a fast fall!

[NoRo]

It is indeed, but not near as fast as my Motorcycle crashes lol .

[Dan NYC]

On 9/5/2019 at 7:43 PM, NoRo said:

Face planted at 45/h . Skateboard helmet on , scratched my chin and nose and helmet saved the day for not allowing to scratch deeper. 

What have I learned? I need a full face helmet ! (thinking ruroc rdx-3 or smth) . 

I don't always wear gear ofc but if I I know I do long distance and push harder then at the very least the helmet on. 

Glad you are good.  Small note that Ruroc is not a full face helmet.  The chin part is just for wind and not rated for actual falls.

[NoRo]

2 minutes ago, Dan NYC said:

Glad you are good.  Small note that Ruroc is not a full face helmet.  The chin part is just for wind and not rated for actual falls.

Oh but it is, I think they had a video showing how strong it is . Check it out !