Briefing paper added.
A cycle helmet Bill in Parliament on the 7 June https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3472/stages provided brief reasons to support a helmet law. https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2 ... leHelmets)
is referred to after he suffered a head injury.Back in November 2015, my then 15-year-old constituent, Oliver Dibsdale
One reason stated,
The Jake Olivier and Prudence Creighton study claimed a lower benefit.In support of mandatory wearing of helmets, a 2016 review and analysis of previous research, undertaken by Jake Olivier and Prudence Creighton, drew on data from 64,000 injured cyclists. They found very large protective effects from helmets, estimating 85% and 88% reductions in head and brain injury respectively for helmeted cyclists relative to unhelmeted.
The 85% and 88% figures came from a unreliable 1989 USA Seattle study https://www.cyclehelmets.org/1068.html.Helmet use is associated with odds reductions of 51% for head injury, 69% for serious head injury, 33% for face injury and 65% for fatal head injury.
In 2015 the 85% and 88% claims were reported to overestimate their value by 400%, see, https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... _warrantedFurther Postscript – support for study withdrawn by Government agencies
In June 2013, US federal agencies The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) decided that they could no longer justify citing the claim by this research that bicycle helmets reduce the risk of head injury by 85%. The agencies had been challenged under the Data Quality Act to show why they ignored later research, none of which had produced such convincing results. (GGW, 2013)
Research for the UK Department for Transport had previously decided that the claims made by this research could not be justified. (Hynd, Cuerden, Reid and Adams, 2009)
In 2017 published research found the Jake Olivier and Prudence Creighton claims to be unreliable.
https://trid.trb.org/view/1491227Weaknesses with a meta-analysis approach to assessing cycle helmets. Feb 2017
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... le_helmets
The Bill presented used claims that the USA and DfT do not consider suitable.
There are also good reasons to oppose a helmet law with some details will be added below. Hopefully Cycling UK can consider the best approach and the MPs supporting the Bill take steps to advise other MPs the claims made are not reliable.