Originally Posted by
njkayaker
There are other much-more-likely unconcious decisions that would explain the behavior. If you are going to guess at a hypothesis, guess a reasonable one. jputnam's "theory" is pretty wacky.
The "drivers choose to get close because there's no problem running into cyclists if you don't kill them" "theory" is really wacky.
I wouldn't express it that way but this one is more likely (as I said earlier).
I don't particularly like the original theory to begin with.
I've seem some news articles suggesting that the effect was real and others suggesting that it wasn't. I'm certainly not going to ride without my helmet because of it.