09-12-2019, 12:33 PM
(09-12-2019, 11:55 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: Whether the helmet affected the injuries is unknown (nobody knows if a head injury was even involved), but it did not affect the collision itself.
Reporting the lack of a helmet absolutely DOES have an effect on readers intrepretation of the story. So given that the reporter doesn't even know if a helmet is relevant, but reported it knowing it WOULD affect how people interpret the story.
Exactly. Wearing a helmet may be good advice in the event of a crash, but it seems unlikely to affect whether or not a crash occurred. So the story should be that yet again a motor vehicle has injured a cyclist. If the cyclist was making some crazy illegal maneuver, that would be much more relevant.
Although even then, the motorist could be a factor — imagine if a cyclist does some technically illegal move such as riding on a crosswalk and gets run over by a motor vehicle blowing through a red light at full speed. For example, I’ve even been known to cross Erb and Caroline diagonally, parallel to the LRT tracks, while the gates are down. Technically, I’m violating railway crossing protection devices; but in fact I never get anywhere near the tracks, and cars are supposed to be stopped by the gates, so it shouldn’t be dangerous (really the protection and indeed the whole intersection is just badly designed — what I do or something similar should be explicitly allowed). If I were to get hit, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the emphasis being on my harmless violation rather than on a motorist who drove right through a crossing arm.