pwa wrote:Thinking about the idea that wearing a helmet sends out the message that cycling is dodgy, does the same apply to using oven gloves for getting stuff out of the oven, or my wearing of gardening gloves for handling hedge clippings, or using a RCD when I plug the lawnmower in?
Oven gloves are usually a simple, cheap and relatively long-lived tool that protects against a 100% chance of burns, so they're a rather different case. Imagine if you had to strap them on and replace them after every time they protected you? They'd be much less popular.
Not everyone wears gardening gloves or uses RCDs for garden tools and there's much less scaremongering about them. If there was promotion of them in proportion to that for cycle crash helmets and the relative risks, it would be shocking and laughable to most people. Why have cycle crash helmets become a special case?
There are nervous types out there who are put off by protective paraphernalia for things we do, but surely they are already put off cycling by the more direct and graphic message of stories in the media about real accidents where people have been injured or killed. That is what really puts some people off, not the sight of cyclists wearing helmets.
Media coverage is disproportionate and biased, but almost no-one will see a real cyclist being killed or seriously injured. However, almost everyone has seen loads of armoured cyclists, to the point where many people think that it's normal and some think it's a legal requirement!
Me wearing a helmet is not a response to problems with traffic. It is a response to me occasionally managing to crash all by myself, with no other road user involved. If there were no cars and lorries on the roads I would still wear a lid. For me, traffic and my wearing of a helmet are not connected.
It would be better to remove the causes of those crashes if possible, rather than don a crash helmet in the vague hope it may save one.
You didn't crash into an A-barrier did you?