mjr wrote:mikeymo wrote:One particular poster seems to think:
The utility cyclist wrote:... and as CUK normalises the wearing of helmets and hi-vis with their continual displaying of helmets in their photos and events and by not condemning helmet wearing are also socially irresponsible and complicit.
Whereas actually:
https://www.cyclinguk.org/campaigning/views-and-briefings/cycle-helmetsThis is the second time I've pointed that out. Strange that he hasn't deigned to reply.
Whereas actually, if you look outside the helmet ghetto, where normal people will look first, there's one photo of a rider without a helmet and eight with. Even most of the non riders are wearing helmets! And it seems incredible that they couldn't have chosen even free non hard hat images of the stock shots like touring, or ones from past issues of Cycle.
Well, this "abnormal" person googled "Cycling UK helmets" and that was the first page that came up.
Yes, I see what you mean. That Cycling UK often have pictures of cyclists wearing helmets on their website and in their social media. Even though their declared policy is to oppose mandatory cycle helmet laws and helmet promotion campaigns.
Not that it bothers me, as I wear a helmet. And I'm a casual recreational cyclist who does a few hundred miles a year (at most). So if there was a law imposing helmet wearing, I'd carry on cycling.
On the other hand if there was a law actually banning helmets I would stop cycling.
You talk about "ghettos". This place feels like a ghetto to me, with a small number (a very small number) of people with some rather strange views. I cycled as a kid, then not for 30 years, then started again recently, recreationally.
If people, like me, who aren't deeply engaged in the world of this particular ghetto, the cyclinguk forum ghetto, were to happen across it, by accident, heaven knows what they would think.
I was thinking about buying a new helmet. And maybe asking for opinions about which to buy. Having seen the sort of stuff that gets posted here, the sometimes bizarre views, the rape comparisons (for god's sake), the stridently expressed opinions, the "it's all been talked about before - just search the forums", all adding up to, pretty much, "you must be an idiot to wear a helmet", I won't bother.
The atmosphere here is actually putting me off cycling now. I'm perfectly well aware that a helmet won't save me if I get run down by a truck. And maybe I'm a naive fool to wear one. But the effect of the constant anti-motorist tone of some of the more strident posters is just to make me think me that I am surrounded by murderers in cars (despite the fact that the vast majority of them give me plenty of space and seem to drive carefully around me).
I've bookmarked most of the links that people have supplied to the various studies, thanks to those who supplied them. I've enough to go on and to do more research. Pretty soon the helmet sub-forum will just be an echo chamber of anti-helmeters agreeing with each other, which I'm sure will be better for all of us. I won't be here again.
Last night I was wondering how much I could get for my bike, as I thought about how sad my wife and kids would be at my funeral. I never thought like that when I started cycling again.