Helmet Debate

ALIHISGREAT: The "serious injury" part of KSI is defined in the road safety report, available at the link I gave. It is given on page 233 as:

"Serious injury: An injury for which a person is detained in hospital as an “in-patient”, or any of the following injuries whether or not they are detained in hospital: fractures, concussion, internal injuries, crushings, burns (excluding friction burns), severe cuts, severe general shock requiring medical treatment and injuries causing death 30 or more days after the accident. An injured casualty is recorded as seriously or slightly injured by the police on the basis of information available within a short time of the accident. This generally will not reflect the results of a medical examination, but may be influenced according to whether the casualty is hospitalised or not. Hospitalisation procedures will vary regionally."

See also pages 86 and 94 for discussion and comparison of different data-sets available. My understanding from the above is that the figures in the report use the police assessment - not categorisation from clinical data-sets.

Anyone can come off a bike with no help from a car, pedestrian, other road user etc. Yes, yes we all get the 'freedom' argument but I simply dont understand why you would choose not to have the possibility of an extra layer of protection between your brain and the concrete.

The argument of segregation scares me, why should we ride on cycle paths and proper cycle routes etc - they wont always go where we need and I quite like riding on the road as is my right. Get a good helmet, light enough to not know you are wearing it and enjoy the ride.

Helmets are not proven to help you yah de yah but I would still wear one and I would still emplore others to. Ive seen plenty of experienced cyclists come off while not wearing helmets and be quite badly hurt, likewise Ive seen kids come off while wearing helmets and the helmets have been cracked in two. If the helmet wasnt there it may not have caused death but it would have caused much greater discomfort to the child - please explain why that is better (due to freedom to choose)

If people dont want to wear one so be it, it's their choice and in this country of ours there still is personal choice as an option, however, can i just add this one point:

The UCI made pro and semi pro's wear helmets. People have said that they travel at greater speeds so the helmet is required as if they come off it's going to cause greater injury due to the speed etc.

With that in mind if your travelling slower (which will be 99.9999999% of us) the helmet will offer greater protection as the blow to your bonce wont be as hard.

No doubt people will disagree.

I fell off the sofa last week, cracked my head on a chair and gave myself concussion...

(I wear a helmet for racing, don't for pottering about town. I like freedom of choice.)

Jon Burrage: So you think cycling should be for the 1% of the population that is the confident & fast MAMIL brigade, and fsck every one else?

FWIW, I'm sometimes a MAMIL who likes to be able to speed along the road. Sometimes I'm a cyclist in normal clothes, just pottering along. I'd like to be able to do the latter with my family, Sadly, that's rare cause my wife doesn't feel safe cycling here in the UK, because of the lack of segregation.

Also, it's depressing when you meet UK cyclists who are actually happy with the sad state of cycling in the UK. Sometimes I think I should move back to the Netherlands.

I don't force anyone to wear a helmet. Children who would rather not wear a helmet can still come to school without a helmet. Our club does a lot of work on road awareness and expanding cycling experiences, improving children's cycling skills and ability to take to the roads.

Incidentally, sustrans work in our school and support our club and they insist on the wearing of helmets too.

Segregation is pie-in-the-sky, especially in the current economic climate. What is needed is a campaign which convinces other road users that cyclists have a legitimate right to be on the roads and for other road users to modify their behaviour to ensure the safety of all road users.

"What is needed is a campaign which convinces other road users that cyclists have a legitimate right to be on the roads and for other road users to modify their behaviour to ensure the safety of all road users."
The place to look is, from my experience, Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden. I know from experience that bike safety in these countries is all about getting the drivers to take responsability around cyclists.
In Sweden, for instance, there were times when I was astounded at the deferentiality of drivers towards cyclists. I gather that Netherlands can be even more so but have not riden there enough.
It is important for the whole question of bicycle safety to learn from these countries.
Sweden, interestingly, has tried to encourage helmet use but the word from the people is that all that has happened since helmets became more popular is that bike speeds have increased and hand signaling, a staple of Swedish bike safety, has decreased.
After 4 trips to Sweden in a decade, I have observed for the first time cyclists wearing flouro jackets, a clear sign that cycling is being dangerised, no doubt by the increasing use of helmets.

im a roadie. I dont want no bike path. What would I be called then?! Pathie? No. Bikes are for roads, hence the name road bike.

In the Netherlands, bicycle paths often are mandatory - always when they run alongside fast roads. Cyclists simply are not allowed on such roads (oversized bicycles, like the old cargo bicycles tradesmen often used, excepted). Though, a dutch road bicyclist group was trying to get this changed. Other groups, e.g. general cyclists and pedestrians, back them, as they don't like fast pelotons coming past on paths either. I think the situation is different in Belgium. There they have some kind of exception for pelotons of roadies, to allow them on many roads, I vaguely recall.

However, there are still plenty of slow, country roads and very wide paths for roadies. Just as how in the UK you might have to endure 30 to 60 mins of awful cycling on roads with fast, scary, motor traffic to get to the nice quiet country roads, in the Netherlands the roadie might have to cycle 30 mins on bicycle paths, dodging slow granny cyclists, in order to get to the nice open country roads.

So the situation in the Netherlands is still *much* better than in the UK, even for a roadie. It's certainly much, much, much better for their children, wives, friends, etc. It's just tragically fascinating that there are still cyclists in the UK who prefer that cycling be confined to 1% odd of the abnormally confident, who would prefer that their children don some polysterene before being sent out into 30 to 40mph car traffic. Indeed, if they even allow their children to cycle much at all.