Steady rider wrote:I am concerned about helmets and discussions because it may well be the focus turns to highlighting dangers and risks, that the public takes to mean cycling is dangerous
CUK have long (and I think reasonably) highlighted the effect of "dangerisation" of cycling in the usual victim-blaming approaches to road safety (wear PPE and dayglo or you're a statistic waiting to happen, kind of thing).
And I think it's entirely likely that Steve300 has been caught up in the idea that cycling is far more dangerous than it is. Back before the 90s nobody worried very much about hitting their heads aside from sport cyclists who'd sometimes wear hairnet-type helmets really as a way of improving one's chances of getting back on rather than seeing stars and nursing a lump.
But these days there's lots of people in countries where helmets are pushed who feel that not only is the occasional fall reasonably likely (in itself, fair enough) but if you do go down you're practically certain to hit your head, and in turn if you do that there's a high chance of death or brain damage resulting. And from pre-helmet days we know that it simply doesn't work like that, but we've persuaded ourselves it's all different now and these things are a solution.
I was at high school in the 70s/80s. Lots of pupils rode in from all over the borough, no helmets (didn't exist), no "facilities" (didn't exist), and they
might have done Cycling Proficiency. So hundreds of journeys every week undertaken by 11-18 year olds on their own on busy roads in an outer London borough, and nobody really worried about their heads (and I don't recall any of them being broken). Conditions aren't directly comparable, but I don't think anything has changed in a way that a lightweight helmet would make much difference.
Pete.
Often seen riding a bike around Dundee...