Helmet Bill and reasons to oppose it

[Philip Benstead]

Go to Road Safet GB website to see the debate about cycle helmets.

I tried to post the information but was censored for copyright breaches.

[Steady rider]

Effects of bicycle helmet wearing on accident and injury rates

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... jury_rates
Presented in 2019 at the GB Road Safety Conference

https://www.cla.asn.au/Article/081125Bi ... Policy.pdf

[Bullsnut]

Discussing cycle helmets someone once said to me “Put a helmet on and run into a wall. Then take your helmet off and run into a wall.”

I always wear one.

[Mike Sales]

Discussing cycle helmets someone once said to me “Put a helmet on and run into a wall. Then take your helmet off and run into a wall.”

I always wear one.

If you trouble to read other peoples' thoughts on cycle helmets you will find that the question is a little more complicated.
I have never worn one.

[pjclinch]

Discussing cycle helmets someone once said to me “Put a helmet on and run into a wall. Then take your helmet off and run into a wall.”

I always wear one.

If that's the extent of your reasoning then unless you're very careful to only hit the wall with your head, that sound like a similarly good reason to wear full downhill mountain biking body armour (and a full face helmet) too.

So you wear the full body armour every trip on a bike too, right?

If you're like practically everyone else and don't, maybe that line of reasoning isn't quite as good as you'd told yourself.

While you're mulling that over watch this video of the safest country to ride a bike, where the walls are typically just as unyielding as the walls in the UK.


Pete.

[Mike Sales]

Here are some cyclists in a country which has two or three times the British casualty rate for cyclists.

[mattheus]

Discussing cycle helmets someone once said to me “Put a helmet on and run into a wall. Then take your helmet off and run into a wall.”

I always wear one.

OK, game on - if you run into the wall first. After all, you suggested this game!

(and just in case you cheat, I'll be pushing you to ensure an adequate impact speed ... )

[slowster]

Discussing cycle helmets someone once said to me “Put a helmet on and run into a wall. Then take your helmet off and run into a wall.”

If it were so simple and so unequivocally clear cut, the statistical evidence for wearing cycle helmets would be overwhelming. There is evidently a great deal of difficulty and complexity involved in assessing the benefits or otherwise of helmets. That such difficulty and complexity exist is itself telling, because it suggests that benefits are probably relatively marginal.

Assessing risk is about making decisions with incomplete information. It's perfectly reasonable to make a personal decision to wear a helmet rather than not wear one. But trying to convince yourself and others of its efficacy based on a glib reductive analogy which bears little relationship to the actual science involved, suggests wishful thinking.

[cycle tramp]

Discussing cycle helmets someone once said to me “Put a helmet on and run into a wall. Then take your helmet off and run into a wall.”

I always wear one.

And no doubt on that very same basis you wear one when travelling in a car - where I believe the odds of sustaining a head injury may be greater than that compared with cycling?

[Stevek76]

Depends on how you measure it but generally no, in GB at least, on aggregate driving is somewhat safer, though less than a whole order of magnitude so it's a relatively fine line to draw in risk terms to use such trite analogies about running into walls for one mode but not the other.

Walking, however, is more dangerous on some metrics and that's on walking stats which are not like for like. If you fall off on public roads on a cycle you are considered to be a casualty for the purposes of road collision stats but if you trip over a wonky paving slap and faceplant you are not.