I almost forgot to post my reaction to the “Bicycle Helmets Put You at Risk” article from last weekend:

For years, cyclists who ride on city streets have cherished an unusual superstition: if they wear a helmet, they are more likely to get hit by a car. “I belong to an e-mail list for cyclists, and they complain about this all the time,� says Ian Walker, a psychologist at the University of Bath who rides his bike to work every day. But could this actually be true?

Walker decided to find out — putting his own neck on the line. He rigged his bicycle with an ultrasonic sensor that could detect how close each car was that passed him. Then he hit the roads, alternately riding with a helmet and without for two months, until he had been passed by 2,500 cars. Examining the data, he found that when he wore his helmet, motorists passed by 8.5 centimeters (3.35 inches) closer than when his head was bare. He had increased his risk of an accident by donning safety gear.

Several issues jumped right out at me:

1. Risk is related to the countermeasure to vulnerabilites and assets, not just threats (e.g. likelihood of being hit by a car). Your head is, in fact, more protected from a proper helmet than without. Having survived many crashes myself, I can attest to this fact personally. So whether or not the likelihood of an incident decreases, your brain is far more likely to survive an actual incident in a helmet.
2. “Risk of an accident” is misleading. What percentage of all bicycle accidents are related to being hit by a car? I found some really old data that suggests only 17.5% of all bicycle accidents involve an automobile. Of course it depends, right? If you ride desolate dirt mountain trails, would you remove your helmet to reduce the chance of being hit by an automobile? So the study should clearly exclude the 80% or whatever number of bicyclists are not at risk from autos, even if a threat reduction were possible.
3. If the theory is that “helmets change the behavior of drivers”, then why should the answer be to remove helmets (significantly increasing risk related to vulnerability — see #1) instead of mandating helmets for everyone and reducing the chance of special treatment from drivers? If everybody wears them, then after a settling period helmets could not be accused of changing behavior.
4. Did the study control for other factors like time of day and road, type of clothing and bike, and/or gestures from the bicyclist to the motorist? The study could just as well prove that wearing hot pink socks or a “one less car” jersey makes drivers more likely to side-swipe you than putting on protective gear.

I know I’ve completely destroyed (foam cracked all the way through or seriously dented) at least two, maybe three, bicycle helmets but I have yet to make contact with a car. Perhaps that colors my perspective. Anyway, might be worth a read to see if/how the more complete risk picture is addressed.

I just ran into the findings recently reported in a LiveScience article:

…a new study finds teens spend more time weighing risk than adults and in fact often overestimate the odds of a bad outcome. But the desire for acceptance among peers wins out in the decision-making process of a young mind.

Cornell University researcher Valerie Reyna and Frank Farley of Temple University conducted a review of scientific studies on the topics.

Compared to adults, teens take about 170 milliseconds more weighing the pros and cons of engaging in high-risk behavior, the researchers conclude. Adults scarcely think about risk, perhaps because they think they recognize risk intuitively. Teens, on the other hand, take time to mull the risk vs. benefit equation.

My guess is that the difference is relative to experience. I suspect that if you measure the risk aptitude of someone who has been through a number of experiences directly related to that risk, then you will find they spend less time thinking about it than someone new and more “open” to persuasion. I see that as different from “scarcely thinking about risk”, but rather becoming a proficient (perhaps even intuitive) thinker. In other words, when comparing white-belts to black-belts in martial arts, does it help us to say white-belts think more and black-belts less? Are white-belts more susceptible to “pressure”, particularly in groups, about how to react to risks? Of course, but can someone find an inverse law that says how susceptible we are to influence relative to wisdom or some other form of experience? Maybe that’s the conclusion of the actual study. Hard to tell from the article alone.

According to the BBC:

Mobile phone giant Vodafone has been fined 76m euros ($100m; £51m) by a Greek privacy watchdog.

The Greek agency responsible for privacy said Vodafone had failed to protect its network from hackers who monitored 106 mobile accounts.

The accounts targeted included those of Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis as well as senior military officers and journalists.

[…]

Vodafone is planning an appeal after describing the punishment as “illegal, unfair and totally groundless”.

Many Greeks believe that the bugging of the prime minister, other politicians and senior military officers was carried out at the behest of the United States because it was concerned about security at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

“Failed to protect” is an interesting phrase. It hardly says they invited the hackers in, or were responsible for the wiretap. Instead it implies a lax or deficient response, which now begs the question of whether the Greek agency will tighten the privacy belt and outline new requirements?