Recent comments

It'll be interesting to see how you fit the front 'guard without any eyelets....

perfect. couldn't have put it better myself, (so i wont bother trying either).

The tiresome argument about whether bike helmets make a difference misses the point entirely. I have a simple test for those who want to quantify in detail whether a helmet makes a difference at 10mph, 20 mph, 30mph - or being hit by a car, bus or meteorite. Come around to my house and let me whack you on the head with a heavy wooden mallet - once wearing the helmet and once without and you can decide whether helmets protect the head at all.

I suspect that most of the time - especially in accidents involving larger, harder, faster vehicles a helmet makes no difference at all - but if I'm out on fast rides I wear one as even tiny odds in my favour are better than nothing and I'd rather meet the road head first with one on than not. I met the road without and I don't want to repeat that experience.

Illogically when I pop to the shops I don't wear one and I will defend everyone's right not to wear one.

Illogically I also defend people's right to smoke and drink themselves to death as well - even though the cost to the NHS of those two habits are hugely more than dealing with head injuries from people not wearing helmets.

If I were that cyclist, I wouldn't have agreed to have my photo taken, and published by the Manchester Evening News. Inevitably, as proved yet again by the comments posted on that web site, a great many people will side with their fellow driver, despite irrefutable video evidence that he is a maniac. They'd rather do that than entertain for one second that a member of that other tribe, the cyclists, could have been wronged by one of their own. And if they see this cyclist, with his camera on his helmet, they could take revenge. After all, he banged on the poor motorist's car, and what could be more insulting than having a lowly cyclist touching the shiny car you work so hard to buy, feed and care for?

Still, I cannot fault the cyclist for trying to make a stand. He (Neil Chatterjee) is quoted in the article as saying "As far as I'm concerned there are good road users and bad road users." Noble sentiments but, sadly, while logically you'd think filming bad driving would help break down the barriers, by allowing motorists see things through our eyes for a change, I think on balance it is having the opposite effect. It is seen as another in a series of "attacks" on motorists which, along with fuel price rises and speed cameras, are part of the "War on the Motorist" we keep hearing about. Of course, none of these things are half as bad as the stuff cyclists have to put up with on a daily basis (I'd list them, but I don't have time, and many of them are things it would be best not to tell motorists about, because some of them would start doing them on purpose.) But it is a well known sociological phenomenon that when a group believes itself to be under assault, or surveillance, from outside forces, it brings that group together. It helps form groups that didn't exist before. It's probably why many of us cyclists visit sites like this, to read and comment on the latest transgression against members of our group.

The same thing has happened throughout history, from Neanderthals versus "modern" humans, to most recently the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda only murdered as many people as are killed on US roads by cars every couple of months. But in that context road deaths are internal, merely one of the costs of doing business, while terrorism is external. So it forever created the grouping in people's minds of "us", the western countries, against "them", the Islamist extremists (or for some people the whole of the Islamic world.) Another way to look at it would be "us", the ordinary people of the entire world, against "them", anyone who wants to tell other people what to do or think, which includes both terrorists and our own politicians - the global equivalent of "good road users" versus the "bad road users", if you will.

But each individual deciding for him or herself which politicians are ego-maniacs, which terrorists are freedom-fighters, and which road users are bad and which are good, is too much work for most people. Far easier to go along with what your leaders (currently David Cameron in the case of the UK, Jeremy Clarkson in the case of the petrol headed motorists) tell you to think (even if they change their minds as the West has with Gaddafi.) In other words, my tribe good, your tribe bad.

At what point does a helmet cease to be a safety device intended for the good of the wearer? Some say 12 mph, some 20 mph. I say when it becomes compulsory by law. Then it is transformed in to something else entirely. That will be when I stop wearing mine.

New guy here... stoppin in to say hello! - hello. Safe riding all!

while a certain contador tests positive and continues to ride ummm!

Good thing too as the roads are cluttered by insecure and aggressive t**ts, a disproportionately large number of whom seem to favour BMW cars.

It is rather surprising, seeing how many people viewed the camera footage, that the man in the car hasn't yet been identified by police.

Perhaps he should have tugged at his forelock and apologised for being in the poor driver's way???

No, I'm in favour of the nanny state... sometimes. In the case of cycle helmets the evidence to support the case for compulsion is not there. It has some value in low speed falls onto hard surfaces but is totally ineffective when hit by 2 tonnes of car at speed.

The answer is: Education, education, education.

So I was annoyed when as part of the Sustrans Bike It involvement my kids' school sent home a "design your own helmet" drawing. Of all the safety-related things they could have done.....

I am not sure sure is that this is an argument to force ALL cyclists to wear a helmet. Most casual cyclists do not reach 30mph. My wife barely gets above 10mph, my kids too. People riding where there is a high proportion of bicycles sharing the road rarely fall off, are rarely knocked off by anything and we have a reflex action that prevents the head hitting the floor in a fall.

For driving a car I'm sure a seat belt is a good idea. My Dad knocked the windscreen out of our VW Beetle in one piece after a head-on at 15mph in fresh snow. He had a sore head.

I would most definitely NOT ride a motorcycle (except tootling around the streets in 1st gear) without a top quality helmet and invariably good quality handmade leathers. My Arai helmet saved me from a concrete fence post. There's absolutely no doubt I'd be dead if I had been helmetless.