Study Finds Stanford Students Are More Likely To Wear A Mask While Riding A Bike Than A Helmet

stanford students mask no helmet biking

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  • A recent study at Stanford University shows students are more worried about wearing a mask than a helmet while biking.
  • Students don’t seem to be too concerned with protecting their skulls.
  • Check out more stories from BroBible here.

Bike riding students at Standford University are more concerned about spreading or contracting the virus while whipping around campus than protecting their own skulls in the case of an accident.

Student Maxwell Meyer recently had an op-ed published in The Stanford Review that found that more students were seen wearing masks while riding their bicycles than wearing a helmet.

After observing 400 cyclists, Meyer, to no real surprise, found that 49% of students weren’t wearing a mask or a helmet while riding their bikes. Just 10% of students wore a helmet without a mask, while over three times that (34%) were seen wearing a mask but no helmet. The double-protectors, those wearing a mask and a helmet, made up only 7% of observed cyclists.

In total, this means there was a masking rate of 41% and a helmet-wearing rate of 17% on Stanford’s 99% vaccinated campus.

After Meyer laid out his mind-boggling numbers, he took some direct shots at his fellow Stanford students.

“Is it a delusion? Do students actually think that wearing a mask on a bicycle to prevent transmission of a respiratory virus they’ve been vaccinated against is a good idea,” Meyer wrote. “Maybe it’s just laziness — easier to keep the mask on for five minutes then take five seconds to take it off. I think a combination of laziness and signaling is probably the right answer.”

“But it won’t be viewed as a scientific failure, because science is dead; idiocy and innumeracy have won a total victory,” he later continued. “And though I will continue to be deeply confused when I see masked bicyclists on campus, I have realized that there is an ironic logic to their decision: after all, there’s no point in protecting your brain if you don’t plan on using it. At Stanford, nobody expects you to do either.”

Seeing The Mask-Wearing Cyclists First Hand

While living in Philadelphia earlier this year, seeing cyclists wearing masks while zooming down the streets of Center City became the norm for me. I’d guestimate that of the 20 cyclists I’d see a day, at least half would be wearing masks while maybe three of the 20 would be wearing helmets.

Philadelphia isn’t a college campus in California, but you get the point. Cyclists wearing masks and no helmet is a thing in 2021, and the optics are truly bizarre.