Mick F wrote:Cunobelin wrote:You have every right to wear a helmet, but the question will always be why just on a bike.
Yes.
Spot on.
Most head injuries by far per mile travelled is from car occupants, yet you wouldn't even consider wearing one driving or being a passenger.
48% for car occupants and 1% for cyclists ........... per mile travelled.
(or that's the stats that I have read)
This is simply not true
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... t-2017.pdfThe casualty rate is 5604 per billion passenger miles cycling, and 238 per billion passenger miles in a car.
The death rate is 30.9 per billion passenger miles by cycle, and 1.9 per billion passenger miles in a car.
As noted, cyclists have a similar (only slightly lower) risk of casualty to motorcyclists, but much lower risk of death - slightly lower than a pedestrian. This presumably reflects speeds, etc., and does suggest analogies with motorcyclists are not wise.
In terms of 'serious injury' these are about 1/5 of the total for cyclists, i.e. 1120 per billion miles
To put it another way, if you did 52 * 50 mile weekly rides for 20 years with 12 people, that would be 624,000 passenger miles cumulatively, and you would expect to see a SI in that time.
Or to put in terms of your own personal risk, if you cycled 5000 miles per year you'd expect a serious injury every 180 years or so. And a death every 6660 years.
I think around 40% of SIs are with head injuries? But clearly with a large cycle club with many rides head injuries are statistically inevitable every so often. If you had 200 weekly total riders, then they'd happen every 4 years, and people would make lots of conclusions about helmets based on them.
My view is that injuries DO occur to cyclists, to those with and without helmets, and the current prevalence of helmet wearing means that there is a lot of 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' anecdotes arising as a result - if your friend suffered a horrible injury 10 years ago (and chances are in a cycle club this WILL happen) and he was wearing a helmet, then you may well become an evangelist for helmets.