Remember kids... always wear a helmet. (The almighty bikeradar helmet thread)

Yes, I knew sub conscience looked wrong when I typed it but I was being lazy!

What I mean by hanging on, is relying on. Hoping that a driver is more careful around you because they have spotted you are wearing a helmet (consciously or subconsciously) is probably not a good thing to bring into any objective safety discussion.

I would also think that any sort of data to suggest helmets wearers were on average given a wider birth is questionable as the drivers giving the wider birth are different drivers, i.e the same driver may give the same birth to the same rider regardless of helmet status.

'berth' :)

Or we're into an altogether different dimension of road user relations.

Thanks for clarifying. I agree.

Ian Walker actually found that he was passed more closely when wearing a helmet, as measured by his bike-mounted device, not given a wider berth. The counter-intuitive finding is one of the main reasons why the study is quoted so widely, I think. (As I said, I remember finding problems with the study, but I can't remember what they were, and maybe I was wrong.)