The faster we bike, the fewer times we interact with motor vehicles so it's potentially safer to ride at 20 than it is at 15. Riding faster also causes less disruption to the traffic flow which reduces risk. If I could ride easily at 30 or 35 mph in traffic I absolutely would do so, and I think it would be much safer than riding 15-20.


At the extreme where we're fatigued, oxygen deprived and our coordination suffers due to maximal effort sure that will increase our risk of crashing but anything below that, not necessarily. You could say that reaction time is diminished at higher speeds, but we're talking about a span of several seconds, not tenths of seconds, so I believe that it is no particular factor either. In traffic that is, where the surface is mostly predictable and traffic mostly moves in predictable patterns. On a sidewalk or MUP, that's a different story.


So in short, the speed I'm going is not a big factor on whether I want to enjoy the no-helmet ride, because I don't see a whole lot of extra risk. It's more about ambient conditions, and where I'm riding.

I was going to say, because not everybody's in a hurry, but reading the rest of your post more carefully, I take your meaning to be more like "If more people were involved in racing activities in organized racing events, they would get it out of their system and more likely to commute more carefully."

That's fine as far as it goes, but cycling racers are gonna train on public roads, that's pretty unavoidable. And cycling racers who also cycle-commute will probably want to leverage their commute into training.

Combatants who wear a helmet in combat zones are roughly 20 times more likely to get hospitalized than people who stay away from combat zones.

funny

although in general you don't want to come into the bike commuting subforum and advocate that bikes should get off the roads...

i disagree.

i typically roll around 17mph, which calcs out to an overall average of ~14 mph when stop lights are included.

if i rolled at around 12mph, that would calc out to an overall average of ~10 mph.

if i rolled at around 10mph, that would calc out to an overall average of ~8 mph.

on my 8 mile commute route, those times would come to 35 minutes, 48 minutes, and 60 minutes respectively.

that's an appreciable difference in my book.



also, some of us have routes with timed light cycles, and riding faster or slower can alleviate getting caught by too many red lights.

in my specific case, i have one stretch along my route with 5 super-annoying lights each spaced 1/2 mile from each other. if i can ride ride at >17mph, i typically only get pinched by one of them. if i'm slower, i get pinched at 2 or 3 of them, which can add up to an extra 5 minutes, because they'e the really long type of light cycles with left turn arrows for both directions and all of that.


also also, going fast is fun!!!