Does helmet abuse vary where you live in the UK?

[Steady rider]

Some fair points.

Most cycle accidents result from falls, so understanding balance, how much it is affected by pot holes, rough surfaces, irregular surfaces means having a good appreciation of road surface defects and acceleration levels. It is one of the fundamental aspects to reducing cycle accidents. Which type of bicycle/design/wheels etc are best to cope and minimize falls.
ps https://icycleweather.wixsite.com/iceandcycling/5-2-1-1

There are other issues, such has clip on pedals, toe clips/straps with cleats, both pose an added risk when not quickly getting the foot out. My own preference is for toe clips/straps without cleats, plus added small angle sections, allowing for a plate-form so that the foot can slide out quickly and offers extra support to the shoe, not just a bar across, digging into the shoe. This allows for using most shoes with a flat sole, not ridges.

[pjclinch]

Most cycle accidents result from falls, so understanding balance, how much it is affected by pot holes, rough surfaces, irregular surfaces means having a good appreciation of road surface defects and acceleration levels. It is one of the fundamental aspects to reducing cycle accidents. Which type of bicycle/design/wheels etc are best to cope and minimize falls.
ps https://icycleweather.wixsite.com/iceandcycling/5-2-1-1

"I've got an accelerometer and I'm going to use it!"

While on the one hand greater accelerations of the head traversing rough stuff will very plausibly correlate to more falls I really don't think you need to measure them to tell a rider that. If a rider tries some MTB and goes over rock gardens and drop-offs in a fairly rigid stance they'll get well shaken and probably feel like it could easily go wrong, while if they go over then in a flexible hinge position that decouples them significantly from the bike's motion it's a whole lot more controlled and a whole lot more fun, and that tends to feed back very directly with a feeling of being in control
Riding over potholes in the seat on a road bike with 23 mm tyres at 100 psi feels a lot less controlled than riding over them on a full-sus MTB with 50 mm tyres at 25 psi. You won't need to measure that with an accelerometer on the rider's head to tell them Option B was a whole lot more in control.

What is fundamental in reducing crashes is the experience to know the limits of yourself on whatever bike you're riding in whatever conditions. It really isn't news that lower pressure wider tyres are less horrible to ride over rough surfaces than higher pressure narrow ones (but also that you'll get dropped from the chain gang on a good road). It really isn't news that heavy mud tread tyres aren't your friend on hard roads and even less so on wet ones (but in off-road gloop they're the only things that will get you traction). Nobody is much surprised that going through a series of big holes is less likely to derail a rider who is stood up with their weight on their feet to decouple themselves from the bike rather than sat down taking every bump directly up the seatpost and through the bars (but stand up all day and you're a lot less comfortable). If you put heavy luggage on the handling will probably suffer so take more care (but you can get your shopping done). And so on.

People understand this through empirical experience (if they're lucky, somebody else's!), not from measuring accelerations. You don't need a number to tell you that you do/don't feel in control.

There are other issues, such has clip on pedals, toe clips/straps with cleats, both pose an added risk when not quickly getting the foot out.

While on the other hand one's feet are less likely to get bounced off the pedals hitting a bump, with subsequent loss of balance. SPuD keel-overs happen at 0 mph which mainly end up with wounded pride. Feet coming off the pedals unexpectedly at speed give far more scope for injury. You choose, you lose...

My own preference is for toe clips/straps without cleats, plus added small angle sections, allowing for a plate-form so that the foot can slide out quickly and offers extra support to the shoe, not just a bar across, digging into the shoe. This allows for using most shoes with a flat sole, not ridges.

But it's horses for courses. People ride bikes for all sorts of reasons. Lots of them ride bikes in such a way to deliberately test the limits of their ability to do stuff which tends to result in falls. People select equipment according to the ride they want to do. If they wanted to minimise falls as their #1 priority over all else everyone would be riding ICE Full Fat recumbent trikes. They're not...

Pete.

[Cugel]

In an idle moment or two (rare, these days) I are been reading a little Michael Oakeshott stuff that discusses the notion of "rational conduct". The essay on this matter has several rather unfashionable propositions, one of which is that the ability to form both cogent questions and practical answers about the specifics of a particular kind of human conduct depends on an acquired familiarity (knowledge and skills) with that conduct. One cannot start with no knowledge or experience of such conduct and somehow employ nothing but a supposed (but illusory) rational mind to form ends and the means to achieving them them concerning some particular doings within that kind of conduct.

In the matter of cycling and its particular skills, gubbins and understanding thereof, one cannot employ some "magical" particular such as a helmet or an accelerometer to understand how to ride a bike and the particular means to do so. One has to already be familiar with cycling to be able to judge what actions, techniques and equipment are likely to lead to a successful or improved kind of cycling endeavour.

So, its impossible for one unfamiliar with cycling to make a cogent judgement about how to do so safely, especially if such a judgement takes the form of some simplified proposition such as, "A helmet will always make cycling safer for anyone who wears one whilst cycling in any fashion".

But there's a long-standing fashion within our culture, in believing that if one "thinks scientifically" then any problem can be defined, analysed and solved with no experience of the activity and the human conducting it needed. This is nonsense and has lead to a vast raft of SNAFUs in every domain where such purely academic "expertise" is applied.

To know, one needs to first do. Experience, including the many errors and failures, is what defines a solution, not some theory dreamt up by those ignorant of and unfamiliar with the activity involved, in a grove of academe, on a restaurant napkin after a liquid lunch or whilst writing some opinion piece for a gutter press reader-exciter column.

[pjclinch]

^^^^

Yes, though I get the impression that Steady rider has considerable experience of riding bikes and has a lot of detailed practical knowledge of doing so. It looks to me like more a case of getting carried away with a Pet Idea that, while not devoid of merit, isn't quite as universally useful as hoped for.

If one is e.g. designing suspension then I can see accelerometers would be very useful: it'll be a pretty deterministic system where minimising peak accelerations in the suspended mass will be a Good Thing, but where a human is the suspended mass and can interact with the bike it's much less useful: send me over a rock garden on a full sus XC MTB and a rigid MTB and I won't need an app to tell me which felt smoother. Put me over that rock garden on the full sus bike and Nino Schurter over it on the rigid bike and if you've kidded yourself it's all about the bike you'd come out thinking suspension makes things worse...

Pete.

[Cugel]

^^^^

Yes, though I get the impression that Steady rider has considerable experience of riding bikes and has a lot of detailed practical knowledge of doing so. It looks to me like more a case of getting carried away with a Pet Idea that, while not devoid of merit, isn't quite as universally useful as hoped for.

Pete.

Given that the notion that we humans can do "rational thinking" as the best means to finding answers to problems is part of the currently dominant episteme (body of unconsciously assumed truths commonplace in a culture) even those who're active participants in a particular kind of conduct - such as cycling, woodworking or being a parent - can fall into a habit of latching on to the "scientific" opinions conjured entirely from "thinking rationally" whilst ignoring or dismissing the lessons of actual experience of conducting oneself in a particular activity.

Many cyclists have spent years accepting erroneous opinions about tyre pressures and widths ignoring their personal experiences of riding with variations of tyre widths/pressures, for example. Woodworking is full of irrelevant theories imported from working other materials that have been disproven time and time again yet are still adopted by some woodworkers as "my belief". The various academic opinions about child rearing are infamous for being counterproductive because full of pseudo-scientific theories churned out by highly imaginative psychologists, that have been served up as "what a good parent should do" by officialdom.

This isn't to say that inquisitive enquiry and truly scientific investigations of various actually measurable element of cycling, woodworking or parenting are of no use. Every tradition needs to be dynamically improved by intelligent considerations. But such considerations do have to be formed and tested against the wider or whole body of a particular activity's skillset, understanding and traditions. It seems, though, a commonly found inclination to go-reductionist, latching on to one aspect, type of measurement or singular element of an activity and promoting it to be the be-all and end-all in determining what works best for any particular activity of that kind.

There's also the issue of "cross-contamination" in which an enthusiastic practitioner of one kind of activity assumes that the modes and techniques discovered from experience to work well in that are somehow transferrable to any and every other kind of activity. The most egregious example, these days, is the assumption that the modes and techniques of a commercial and capitalistic business enterprise are appropriate for every other activity in life. As a result, we now have degraded medical and educational services because some fool threw out all their long-honed traditional ways of achieving their objectives and turned them into pseudo-businesses.

In cycling, the modes and techniques of sports science and competitive cycling have been inserted into many other kinds of cycling activities, to their detriment. The techniques, equipment. postures and many other aspects of cycle racing are not really the ideal model for other cycling modes such as commuting, touring or unicycling. Yet we find weight weenyism, obsessive data gathering and racing garb adopted enthusiastically by many for whom such things are a minor or even irrelevant matter.

A case can be made for a cycling helmet whilst road racing or MTBing rapidly down a forest trail, as falling and/or a blow to the head is a frequent risk. Unless such a frequent risk can be demonstrated as the norm for, say, riding to work across The Fylde or going for a tour of North Yorkshire then assuming a cycling helmet is always needed for any cycling is, for many cyclists, going against their experience of never falling off and banging their head (as opposed to hip, shoulder, elbow and ankle).

[Steady rider]

There is leaning by doing, leaning by instructions, leaning by experience, learning from other peoples actions, learning by applied science and accident information. All of these and perhaps more, road safety in general and motorists behaviour, relate to cycling and then helmets add extra layers and complications. It could be helpful to list equipment, make, model, price, that can be applied to cycling, cameras, distance measures for passing vehicles, acceleration devices and any other bits and pieces, speed cameras.

[Nearholmer]

I’m losing the plot here.

Is what you are suggesting the creation of a heavily instrumented bike in order to gather data about what happens when riding in the real world on the road, or something else?

And, whatever it is you are suggesting: why? As in, to what end?

[Steady rider]

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... _stability

It links to research about balance aspects, if you example a person fall off on a section of bridleway, an instrumented bicycle could ride over the section and see the levels of disturbance due to pot holes or ridges and at any time a person falls off due to poor surface conditions , reading could be taken to see how bad the surface is for cycling. The link above shows levels of accelerations affecting helmets. If the surface conditions were below a safe specification level, requirements could be made on local authorities to improve the surface.

https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/18/3/914 provides extra details.

[Nearholmer]

You don’t need an instrumented bike to assess how rough a path is.

Bridleways are a bad example here BTW, because about the only obligations touching upon surface condition say “safe and fit for the expected use” and that it shall be such that “it is reasonably convenient to exercise the right of way”. I’ve yet to encounter measuring instruments that can cover either of those points.

[mattheus]

You don’t need an instrumented bike to assess how rough a path is.

... and you don't need a ruler to tell how long a thing is.

But it has some advantages!

[Nearholmer]

The more I think about it, the more I think that an instrumented bike and rider are actually really poor tools to measure the roughness of a path, because they introduce so many variables between the path and the sensors. Vehicles used to do the job on the roads have to be fitted with fancy gubbins to mitigate that possibility.

Trad method would be a beam and pole, which is a slow old game; more high-tech, and quicker (maybe) approach would probably use some sort of laser scanner.

But, Im still not sure why you’d want to do that when simple “eyeballing” will tell you whether or not a path is, say, in a fit state to support heavy use by cyclists or pedestrians safely.

[Cugel]

You don’t need an instrumented bike to assess how rough a path is.

... and you don't need a ruler to tell how long a thing is.

But it has some advantages!

And disadvantages.

If, when woodworking say, one measures one part agin' other parts with which it will interface, in making and assembling the whole piece, mistakes in dimensioning are less likely. Some woodworkers create a story-stick as the only ruler, which has customised markings that set the initial dimensions of a piece and, once a certain stage of making/assembly is reached, also becomes redundant along with the standardised increment measurers such as rulers and tapes as next-parts are fitted to previously made/assembled parts.

The disadvantages of using rulers and tapes with standardised measurement schemas on them are numerous:

* One can easily misread the scale.
* The scale can be difficult to see when the increments get small, and ....
* Parallax errors are easy to make when not viewing the ruler aright agin' the workpiece
* Values transferred for one ruler to another (e.g. steel rule to table saw fence scale) can introduce errors.
* And various others.

Please allow me here to mention my current obsession with learning and doing: the only genuine knowledge is knowledge applied by doing something (riding a bike in various circumstances, in this instance). No amount of data, especially data that needs meanings and consequences interpreted from it, can substitute for that.

In fact, such data and its misinterpretation can be a preventative to learning how to ride a bike in various circumstances. It introduces a filter between reality and one's apprehension of it. Such filters are a main-cause of confused human understandings and subsequent attempts at doings based on them.

For extreme examples, see think-tank / focus group data as interpreted and acted upon by politicians. But even relatively clear and less ambiguous data can be a trap if its interpretation or translation into what-should-be-done suffers a loss-in-translation or a loss of affecting context that gives low level data itself a variety of possible meanings.

And all data/facts tend anyway to be constructed by a pre-existing schema or taxonomy, many of which introduce a skew between the data/facts and derived actions performed in reality.

[853]

It links to research about balance aspects, if you example a person fall off on a section of bridleway, an instrumented bicycle could ride over the section and see the levels of disturbance due to pot holes or ridges and at any time a person falls off due to poor surface conditions , reading could be taken to see how bad the surface is for cycling.

Really?

And how would the instrumented bicycle know the exact X and Y co-ordinates of the front wheel, and the exact X and Y co-ordinates of the rear wheel, and the exact speed of the bike, and the exact centre of mass of the rider at the time they reached the 'defect' that might have caused the fall?

Totally ridiculous statement, that doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

[Steady rider]

In many cases the rider will be able to identify the location and have recollection of events.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/19 ... ic-expense
It details bridleways have to be maintained.

There is very little in the Act to detail the suitable standards and specifications. I think the Act is inadequate and needs revising with input from cycling groups.

My view is in any serious accident where the rider considered the surface may have contributed to causing the accident, the Highway Authority should be required use equipment to measure the surface deflects or note any circumstances that may have contributed.

[rareposter]

There is very little in the Act to detail the suitable standards and specifications. I think the Act is inadequate and needs revising with input from cycling groups.

That's because a bridleway is not a "thing", it is a right - specifically a right of passage for those on foot, horseback or bicycle.

It does not have to meet any particular standards or surfacing or gradient. I've seen bridleways that are steep narrow rocky tracks across a hillside and bridleways that are effectively roads (or at least passable by a standard car).

And you reckon that if someone comes off on a bridleway in the middle of a forest that someone (landowner, local council?) should run a bike equipped with accelerometers and other sensors across it?

Sorry, but none of what you're saying is remotely practical, even if you only applied it to the road network, never mind the off-road network.

It also completely ignores the major variables such as type of bike, ability of rider, ground conditions (which can change depending on weather, time of year etc), tyre pressure...

If I rode my road bike down a steep rocky bridleway, no-one would be in the slightest bit surprised when I fell off. If I did the same track on a full suspension mountain bike, it'd be a completely different prospect. You don't need a sensor-equipped bike to tell you that.