Safety Improvements to 🚴 Cyclist and 🚲 Bike

[Crissov]

https://github.com/Ranks/emojione-assets/issues/9 https://github.com/Ranks/emojione/issues/362

The mountain biker is wearing a helmet, the normal bicyclist is not. The street bikes also don’t show front and rear lights which are required in many jurisdictions to participate in general traffic.

If 🚴🚵🏇 are considered Activity emojis (-ing, -er, i.e. hobby, sports) and 🚲🐎 the respective Transport emojis, the former probably do not need lights. The motorcycle 🏍 is ambiguous, because its name suggests Activity (i.e. should include rider), but it’s usually sorted with Transport vehicle emojis (which usually don’t show the human driver).

[spacehobo]

Please do not put helmets on the people riding bikes. Plastic hats are not required by law in most jurisdictions, and have been proven to reduce cycling in the areas that have legislated them (most famously Australia, but also areas such as King County in Washington State, USA).

Lights are a good addition, particularly for the road bike, but helmets have not been proven to increase safety in any real sense. Research into American Football helmets shows that they turn light surface abrasion damage into brain-altering concussion damage through whiplash. Putting a helmet on the people cycling will merely send a false message that cycling is somehow dangerous and people should be afraid to do it.

https://cyclingfallacies.com/en/29/people-should-wear-helmets-when-cycling

[spacehobo]

Per our conversation in twitter, I think we agreed the best option for this was that if a helmeted glyph is created, it should be bound to a ZWJ combination such as 🚴+⛑️ and not made the default.