Simplification to cut through the mis-perceptions?

[Steady rider]

Two conference paper gave some details.

Evaluation of Australia's bicycle helmet laws, The Sports Science Summit, O2 venue London UK http://www.cycle-helmets.com/au-assessment-2015.pdf Presented 14 January 2015.

The Case against bicycle helmets and legislation, VeloCity cycling conference, Munich 2007. A detailed report presented at the world’s leading cycling conference providing details showing how helmet use and legislation has reduced both health and safety in general terms. http://www.ta.org.br/site/Banco/7manuai ... helmet.pdf

The research to cover all aspects of helmet use i still needed. It may be worthwhile for say the York Cycle rally or any cycle rally, to have presentations on the helmet topic, so that cyclists could question researchers and raise any questions they had. I think presenters would try to put there views as simply as possible. It may have some interest or benefit?

[Bez]

Cycle helmets: they don't work but we don't know why not!

Again, just as people will insist on extreme caution in your cycling but not their walking, they will insist on rigour in your argument but not their own. At the end of the day, this retort just boils the debate down to gain-saying.

[horizon]

There is only one way to get the public at large to take the view that cycling doesn't warrant using a helmet, and that is to provide environments where they're happy to ride without one and aren't continually brow-beaten into doing so. Because then they have to apply a stance on helmets to themselves.

It's the precise reason that the Dutch take that view.

Helmets aren't just unnecessary on so-called safe routes: they are also unnecessary (or in effect insufficient) on what people perceive as unsafe routes (i.e. roads with traffic). It isn't a helmet that keeps us alive in these circumstances but a whole load of other factors - by the time the helmet comes into use it's almost certainly too late. If it's too dangerous to ride without a helmet it's almost certainly too dangerous to ride with one.

Which brings me onto my next slogan:

If you're wearing a helmet you shouldn't be riding.

[horizon]

Cycle helmets: they don't work but we don't know why not!

Again, just as people will insist on extreme caution in your cycling but not their walking, they will insist on rigour in your argument but not their own. At the end of the day, this retort just boils the debate down to gain-saying.

It's not my slogan but that of Ruadh495 (above). No, of course it is tongue in cheek but I think that it does encapsulate things nicely (so thanks to Ruadh495 for that). If you think of those Dragons' Den moments when one of the pompous twits who have the cash pull something apart (physically even) and demonstrate that it doesn't work - well, I would like to see them do that with a cycle helmet. I doubt they could.

[Steady rider]

horizon wrote:
Cycle helmets: they don't work but we don't know why not!

There are a range of factors involved. Some have a negative effect and some a positive effect. There is overall safety, head protection aspects, brain injury aspects, accident rate aspects. Different types of cycling and helmet consideration. In addition there is cycling levels and consequences from helmet legislation. Understanding how all these interact is not simple. Because helmets and legislation has some negative aspects we do know to some extent why they 'don't work' in providing the benefits expected. The more you explore the negative aspects the better the understanding of why they don't work. Some negative aspects can apply nearly all the time whereas some positive aspects may apply rarely, e.g say 6 million ride bikes in the UK, say 110 die per year, say 10 times suffer severe head injury, 6,000,000 / 1100 = 5454 years of average cycling to suffer a severe head injury, riding for 54 years on average say, one in 100 lifetimes of cycling may encounter a severe head injury. On the other hand, the accident rate per km cycled may increase as reported, by 14% or higher. The 110 deaths could increase to 125 by having the 14% extra.
Using simple maths can half explain why they don't work.

[Ruadh495]

The apparent reasons for wearing a helmet are simple: Wear a helmet to save your head. No one wants a head injury. The reasons for not wearing a helmet are complex and can be difficult to understand. Unfortunately, to effectively campaign against compulsion we need simple answers to the question "why wouldn't you wear a helmet?" That's the problem.

It also occurred to me why this is such an emotive issue for helmet promoters. It should be "your head, your risk assessment" but it's not. Part of this is the idea someone is going to have to scrape your brains off the road surface (nasty job) and that society in general ends up paying for your treatment / disability, thus diverting resources which could be used to save someone else's life. Those are justifications though. I think the real issue is that some of those who chose to wear helmets find others not wearing them a challenge to the ego. An individual who takes a precaution which others do not regard as necessary can appear foolish or cowardly, something many people fear more than they do actual injury. So for some of those who chose to wear helmets to feel comfortable with their choice, helmets have to be essential and anyone who choses otherwise deranged. Ideally (for them) helmets would be made compulsory then the issue would go away.

[Bez]

It should be "your head, your risk assessment" but it's not. Part of this is the idea someone is going to have to scrape your brains off the road surface (nasty job) and that society in general ends up paying for your treatment / disability, thus diverting resources which could be used to save someone else's life. Those are justifications though.

Funny how that's never applied to cars, though, which are the main contributor to people being scraped off the tarmac and have the added effect of reducing physical activity.

Obesity-related diseases result in NHS costs of over £10bn per annum and rising rapidly, if I recall. And I've seen the costs of traffic collisions as being in excess of £30bn per year.

I don't mean this callously, but cyclists' heads are loose change at most.

As ever, people's emotional responses don't get on well with hard facts.

[Mick F]

How would you like us to get the answer?

Like I asked.
How many head injuries are sustained with car occupants, and with cyclists?
ie car occupants when travelling and cyclists when cycling.

Seems like I have my answer of a sort .......... at last.

It seems to me that Bez has laid out a pretty good argument above, if I'm right the bullet points are...........

1) Of all traumatic brain injuries of every cause (building work, falls, fights, sports, accidents of all types not just road accidents) half of the injuries happen to occupants of motor vehicles.
2) Among road accident victims who sustain serious or fatal head and/or other injuries, cyclists are no more likely to sustain head injuries than pedestrians or motor vehicle occupants.
3) Road accidents cause four times as many pedestrian fatalities as cycling fatalities. Number of fatal road accidents per mile cycling and pedestrian are comparable.

Thanks.

[Ruadh495]

Funny how that's never applied to cars, though, which are the main contributor to people being scraped off the tarmac and have the added effect of reducing physical activity.

Most people are happy (emotionally rather than logically) that the benefits of motoring outweigh the risks (because a lot of the risk is imposed on others, perhaps?). Elucidating the benefits of not wearing a cycle helmet in such a way that they clearly outweigh the risks is proving difficult. That's not to say the benefits don't outweigh the risks, I believe they do, just that they are difficult to state clearly.

[Bez]

Yeah. People, and that pretty much means all people, drive and walk. That's how they get around. It's normal. Normal things aren't dangerous.

Whereas people, and that generally means other people, ride bikes to go wheeeeeeeeeeeee down hills and to smash the Strava segments and to try to hide under HGVs and to have stupid arguments with drivers on YouTube. That's, ooh, risky. Not normal. Need a hat.

[Steady rider]

http://www.cyclinguk.org/campaign/cycle ... s-evidence

However Cycling UK is not only concerned about the harmful effects of mandatory helmet use. By creating exaggerated perceptions of the risks of cycling, even voluntary helmet promotion campaigns have been found to deter some people from cycling. Given that the health benefits of cycling outweigh the risks by around 20:1 (one recent study put it at 77:1), it can be shown that only a very small reduction in cycle use is needed for helmet promotion (let alone helmet laws) to shorten more lives than helmets themselves could possibly save, regardless of how effective helmets might be

.

The 20 to 1 factor was criticised by some extreme supporters of helmet laws in Australia.

To oppose helmet laws one approach;
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... nate-hears

To explain why they do not improve overall safety is more difficult. Lowering the proportion of head injury is different to improving overall safety.
http://crag.asn.au/history-of-helmet-law-in-australia/

[The utility cyclist]

The apparent reasons for wearing a helmet are simple: Wear a helmet to save your head. No one wants a head injury. The reasons for not wearing a helmet are complex and can be difficult to understand. .

No, really they aren't, I've never worn one (in 33 years of road cycling since a teen) and the reason (singular) is that I don't need one, it's never crossed my mind for a split second that I need to wear one much less because others want to dicatate that to me. I never dictated that to my own son as a 10 year old on his first day to high school by bike as my mother didn't to me, nor my nan to her (she still rides helmetless at the age of 66) ...how we are all still alive/uncrippled through head injury i'll never know tbh

[pjclinch]

The apparent reasons for wearing a helmet are simple: Wear a helmet to save your head. No one wants a head injury.

People don't actually mind the sorts of head injury EN1078 lids are designed to protect against (minor ones, that is). They don't like them, certainly, but they don't really mind. And that they don't mind them is shown by the way that, e.g., the standard procedure for very common minor head injuries in primary schools is a sticker and a bit of TLC from the school nurse along with a form letter home that wee Billy banged his head at lunch-time break. It's not nice for wee Billy, but it's forgotten soon afterwards.
What nobody wants is permanent facial scarring or brain damage, but your cycle helmet has no track record of helping there, and the sorts of helmet that will help against that could be worn in the motor vehicles that are the biggest source of that kind of injury but nobody does because that's different! (The difference being that people fell that driving/being driven is generally safe, and cycling isn't).

The reasons for not wearing a helmet are complex and can be difficult to understand.

They are typically exactly the same reasons for not wearing a helmet as a pedestrian or car driver/passenger. Specifically, the person concerned doesn't feel that the benefits outweigh the faff.

Unfortunately, to effectively campaign against compulsion we need simple answers to the question "why wouldn't you wear a helmet?" That's the problem.

The simple answer to that is the sort of danger we face (being totalled by a tonne or more of metal travelling at considerable speed) isn't the sort of thing where an inch of polystyrene designed to prevent a bump and nasty headache has any relevance. Where helmets are relevant is where people fall a lot with no motor vehicles involved (often sport), but there the real point isn't saving lives: not many people were getting dead in races before helmets, and there hasn't been obvious reduction in that already low number since we've had them.

Cyclists get killed in similar ways to pedestrians. The same things kill them, the same measures that help help both groups (e.g., evidential breath testing, lower speeds). For pedestrians the whole approach is "don't get hit by a moving motor vehicle, you'll lose". That should be the same for cyclists. Giving a cyclist some head protection against minor injuries and putting it up against a truck at speed is like showing up to an artillery duel in a stab vest: you might feel a bit more protected but you're not.

It also occurred to me why this is such an emotive issue for helmet promoters. It should be "your head, your risk assessment" but it's not. Part of this is the idea someone is going to have to scrape your brains off the road surface (nasty job) and that society in general ends up paying for your treatment / disability, thus diverting resources which could be used to save someone else's life. Those are justifications though. I think the real issue is that some of those who chose to wear helmets find others not wearing them a challenge to the ego. An individual who takes a precaution which others do not regard as necessary can appear foolish or cowardly, something many people fear more than they do actual injury. So for some of those who chose to wear helmets to feel comfortable with their choice, helmets have to be essential and anyone who choses otherwise deranged. Ideally (for them) helmets would be made compulsory then the issue would go away.

I think rather simpler than that, if you've made an "informed" choice and someone else makes another choice, presumably with the same information, it's natural to think they've got it wrong. The trick is it probably isn't the same information, and what information there is isn't nearly as hard as most people think.

Pete.

[Jon Lucas]

The apparent reasons for wearing a helmet are simple: Wear a helmet to save your head. No one wants a head injury. The reasons for not wearing a helmet are complex and can be difficult to understand. .

No, really they aren't, I've never worn one (in 33 years of road cycling since a teen) and the reason (singular) is that I don't need one, it's never crossed my mind for a split second that I need to wear one much less because others want to dicatate that to me. I never dictated that to my own son as a 10 year old on his first day to high school by bike as my mother didn't to me, nor my nan to her (she still rides helmetless at the age of 66) ...how we are all still alive/uncrippled through head injury i'll never know tbh

+1. Quite.

There may be a generational issue here. Those of us who have been riding all our lives, since before helmets were ever seen let alone promoted, and feel quite comfortable cycling, whether on main roads or segregated paths, never give the idea a split second thought. To me it just feels like an inconvenience. Do I worry about getting a head injury while cycling? No, I've had a few collisions with vehicles and with pedestrians and the parts of my body which have felt vulnerable were nowhere near my head.

Those who have taken up cycling in the last 20 years have had a torrent of misinformation thrown at them, which can be summarised as "cycling is dangerous, you would be stupid not to wear a helmet". Personally I feel sorry for them.

[Phil Fouracre]

Jon - exactly sums up how I see it