iRider wrote:And I thought Brexit was a divisive issue...
I get the point that there is and will always be debate on the question does wearing a helmet offer any safety benefits to the wearer. So to that subjective question I believe the answer should be, it’s your choice, wear one if you think you will benefit from doing so, and don’t bother if you don’t.
What I can’t get my head around (No pun intended) is the argument that professional bodies showing people wearing helmets, in some way makes them less safe or in some way shifts blame for an accident onto one party or another.
As per my original thread title, it normalises something that has a massive detrimental effect on cycling. It sends the message out that helmets should be worn, that one of the big organisations is happy to show that when introducing people to cycling or back to cycling, women particularly that wearing hi-vis and helmets is pretty much the done thing.
So much so that it's accepted that this is how things should be (normalising), from that you have essentially given the green light to shift the onus of responsibility to the vulnerable persons (and nowhere else in society do we do this to the extent we do for people riding bikes if at all). Not only does this shift in responsibility not work to increase safety (as we've seen over millennia in all walks of life), because of that shift, if you do not follow the pattern/normal procedure (of wearing a helmet) then if an incident occurs then you are blamed for not doing so. Even if the incident itself was caused by a motorist and the resulting incident and/or injury would still have occurred whether you were wearing one or not.
Michael Mason was killed by a motorist Gail Purcell who mowed him down from behind, he was well lit and in a street with more than excellent street lights, in fact many pedestrians saw him from the side of the road, his killer apparently did not see him and drove straight through him flinging him into the air, he subsequently died from massive trauma.
The MET police response, no charge and used the lack of wearing a helmet as part of the absolving of blame of the killer. Never has this been applied to a pedestrian despite how many suffer from death and serious injury by trauma to the head, this is never applied to the victims of crime who are occupants or drivers of motor vehicles despite four times as many motorists dying solely from head traumas than people on bikes (25% of all motorist deaths die from head injury as a partial cause). This is unlawful discrimination, and yet it occurs on a regular basis and to the detriment to people riding cycles, their safety and the application of the law against those that kill and maim when a cyclist is the victim of that crime.
The whole normalising means children are forced to wear helmets during cycle training, quite how this is allowed beggars belief. The stats clearly show us that more children die solely of head injuries in England and Wales alone when in a motorvehicle incident than the total number of child cyclists by all causes in the whole of the UK. It's another part of blame/responsibility shifting, get killed and it's your own fault for not wearing something that by design cannot save you anyway.
It's precisely the same if women were told to wear anti rape devices all the time they were out knowing that the stats showed that they did not work, that they encouraged men to rape them more or the incidence of rape was higher with those that wore them and if they didn't wear the device (despite it not working to protect from rape) that they would be blamed nonetheless for being raped and the rapist given a slap on the wrist and told stop being careless and don't do it again and left to rape again, and again and again.
You think that's extreme, it's not, it's PRECISELY THE SAME as what has happened with cycle helmets and the normalising of them.
Yes it's a massive thing, yes it's as big as Brexit as it removes innate freedoms, cycle helmets are used as a tool that encourages unlawful actions by authorities who swear oaths/attestations to be fair, be unbiased and to uphold laws (but don't). They create a massively worse environment and pressure on people just wanting to go about their lawful business to conform or be victim blamed in the event of injury/death and constantly being in fear of harm due to the responsibility to not be harmed placed on your shoulders that you know cannot change because those causing the most harm are being absolved, are not punished and so have no cause to modify their behaviour in the slightest.
cycle helmets and the normalising/promotion of such is the singularly worst thing to happen to cycling since the motor car could go over 10mph
If you don't understand how normalising certain things in life can be really, really bad then I might suggest you do some reading/ask people who know about these things to explain it to you in depth.