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Chris Boardman at the Get Britain Cycling InquiryChris Boardman: "Helmets not even in top 10 of things that keep cycling safe"
British Cycling policy advisor Chris Boardman says it’s time for the cycling community to put the debate about mandatory cycle helmets to bed and get across the message that helmet use is one of the least important cycling safety measures.
Even talking about making helmets mandatory “massively puts people off” cycling, Boardman said, and likened the culture of helmet use among keen cyclists to people wearing body armour because they have got used to being shot at.
Talking to road.cc at the London Bike Show, Boardman said, “I think the helmet issue is a massive red herring. It’s not even in the top 10 of things you need to do to keep cycling safe or more widely, save the most lives.”
You’re being shot at, put on body armour
Boardman returned to an analogy he has made before, and which even he admits is a bit melodramatic, though it gets the point across
“It’s a bit like saying ‘people are sniping at you going down this street, so put some body armour on,’” he said.
Government encouragement to wear helmets was therefore “a big campaign to get people to wear body armour, by the people who should be stopping the shooting.”
Widespread use of helmets, he said, sends the wrong message.
“Once you see somebody wearing body armour, even if there’s no shooting, you think ‘Christ I’m not going down there if they’re wearing body armour to go down that street.’ It scares people off.”
There’s a better solution to the problem of cycle safety, Boardman said. In the Netherlands, just 0.8 percent of cyclists wear helmets yet the Dutch have the lowest rate of cycling head injury, thanks to segregated cycling infrastructure. Thirty percent of journeys in the Netherlands are made by bike, he said, and 50 percent of children’s journey to school.
”The best way to deal with [the head injury issue] is what the Dutch have done,” he said. “Where you have the Highest rate of helmet use, you also have the highest rate of head injury: us and the US.”
Yet there’s also an almost-fanatical, knee-jerk devotion to helmet use among enthusiast and sporting cyclists.
Boardman said: “People who are wearing body armour get used to being shot at, when it’s the getting shot at that’s the problem.”
A distraction
Talking about helmets had become a time-consuming distraction, he said. “We’ve got to tackle the helmet debate head on because it’s so annoying,” he said. “It gets a disproportionate amount of coverage. When you have three minutes and someone asks ‘Do you wear a helmet’ you know the vast majority of your time when you could be talking about stuff that will make a difference, is gone.”
He said the focus on helmets had made cycling seem more dangerous than it really is.
“We’ve gone away from the facts,” he said. “We’ve gone to anecdotes. It’s like shark attacks - more people are killed building sandcastles than are killed by sharks. It’s just ludicrous that the facts aren’t matching up with the actions because the press focus, naturally, on the news stories, and [the notion that cycling is dangerous] becomes the norm, and it isn’t the norm.
“You can ride a thousand times round the planet for each cycling death. You are safer than gardening.”
Cycling’s image
Like many cycling advocates, Boardman wants to see cycling presented as a normal, everyday activity.
“I saw two people riding down the hill to my village. One person coming down the hill to go for the train in high-viz, helmet on.
“A few moments later another guy came down, in shirt sleeves, with a leather bag on his back, just riding his bike to the station.
“Which one of those makes me want to [ride]?”
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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198 comments
Edster, you do a lot of speculation. If you want to inform yourself about what evidence there is, take a look at http://www.cyclehelmets.org/
This site looks at all the studies they can find, and discusses them. Though their conclusion is clear, it does list pro and anti evidence.
Figures for miles cycled are typically taken from government statistics as are deaths. The method of collection is given. The method does not change so any errors will be consistent.
For fairness I would refer you to http://www.bhit.org/ but perhaps the comparison is unfair.
A superb example of what CB is saying.....
What action was taken about the Council worker?
Was he reprimanded for his stupidity, failure to "exercise a duty of care" what steps are being taken to prevent him doing the same again?
.. and of course lets look at a different scenario....
As a complete coincidence today an incident came in whereby a council worker, without looking, grabbed a spade and hoisted it over his shoulder and turned around from the side of the wagon. The blade of the spade caught a pedestrian across his forehead as he passed by and caused a nasty injury..... silly pedestrian should have known better and worn a helmet
Off-road, especially stuff like forest runs etc I wear a skid-lid - figure I might whack my head off an overhang or a slow fall onto rocks or stumps. Makes sense.
On-road the biggest hazard if one is a competent cyclist is ing hit by motorised traffic. A skid-lid will do little at the speeds/energies imparted in a bad collision. Yet research shows drivers are more careful around non-helmet wearing cyclists.
On that basis I don't wear a helmet that often on road. That's my choice and I'd prefer it to continue to be my choice - mandatory helmet-wearing is just an easy fix for politicians who don't want to pay for making the roads safer/separating traffic and instead wish to shift the blame for safety onto the cyclist . Rather unfair imo.
What happens is that the politician is faced with demands to make cycling safer, looks at the need to spend money and to do something about drivers' tendency to kill and realises that a helmet law would be much cheaper.
"Something must be done.
This is something.
Lets do it."
Does not matter that laws have never worked, except to reduce cycling.
I've just re read the article. Perhaps he's not as sensible as I first thought. Is he seriously suggesting that people in the UK would be safer if they didn't wear helmets? More people would cycle if they didn't wear helmets and highly visible clothing?
He sells the bloody things!
I understand what he's getting at but this is the UK and not Holland
He seems to be making dangerous leap of logic and confusing cause and effect.
Or perhaps he's been quoted out of context. There is a strong anti helmet spin to this article and I am aware that the author is not a helmet supporter, based on previous articles
I'm against mandatory helmet wear but I wear one whenever I'm on the bike because it keeps my wife happy, and anything that adds to the brownie points bank ultimately means more road miles for me.
The reality is I have two young children so I think making myself visible (reflectives and lights at night and bright colours (not necessarily fluro) by day) and protecting my head for the 0.0001% likely event is the least I can do, along with being as proactively safe as I can by "good riding", even if the helmet is effectively a placebo for my family.
If you do decide to wear one, a lightweight, well-ventilated helmet is hardly a major discomfort.
Each to their own.
Boardman is totally right as usual. Neither he nor anyone else is disputing that a helmet might offer some degree of additional protection. However the range as shown on this forum is that it goes from "it saved my life" to as "much use as a chocolate teacup". Ooozavered's statistics say it all 75 joules of protection vs 200,000 to dissipate in a small car collision.
CB is right because lot's of people already choose to wear them, so what is the benefit of compulsion ? Evidence from Oz is that it's detrimental. As has been pointed out above, it's mums, children, potterers etc that we need out there and I'd go as far as saying that the helmet argument is like that political strategist's dead cat thrown on a table; a total distraction.
We have to move on and shine the spotlight on badly driven vehicles and lack of safe infrastructure which cause far more accidents than anything else on our highways and address this with far greater urgency.
I've posted elsewhere about acting as a witness in a hit & run but what was shocking that here was an open and shut case where a driver was prepared to lie all the way and didn't see he'd done anything wrong. What does that say about the primacy of our car culture and our justice system ?
More power to your elbow Mr Boardman.
WHY?
a very very simple question, why can't the UK follow the Dutch? the Danes? and actually improve the environment for cyclists.
Given that more drivers die of head injuries than cyclists, maybe we should be calling for drivers to be forced to wear them first. It's only fair, after all
Rather than really muddy the waters here i've started another forum topic entitled
Why there is no money for safer road infrastructure....
Its an eye opener and would lead on quite well from CB's comments.
Chris Boardman is my hero, if only he was given the column inches Clarkson has.
thanks for that... I will
Edit : I just did. fascinating. That particular site seems to have also been interested in exactly the questions I was asking myself.
Some stats from the NHS from those that like that sort of thing. In the majority of head injuries they deal with (65%) alcohol is a factor. I don't hear anyone baying for mandatory helmets for drinkers...
http://www.patient.co.uk/doctor/head-injury
Each road fatality costs about £500,000 to the UK's economy overall. Investing in road safety intelligently would save losses to the UK's GDP. When you start explaining that to politicians they start taking note. A lot of the time, the safety measures are really cheap.
And the helmet debate in Road.CC rolls on into it's 6th year. Zzzzzzzz.
In other news: Chris is right. If only he was bigger than Clarkson we would live in a better country.
I'm sure the we have more tubbies - in terms if entire populations over 20 - than the Danes and Dutch put together.
Thank you for looking. I sometimes feel that I am banging my head on a brick wall asking people to look at the evidence: few are open minded enough, most want to confirm their prior conclusion. But occasionally someone does follow the science, and changes their mind.
I'm not saying we can't aspire to something 'Dutch', just that it would be foolish to stop wearing PPE until we have the infrastructure. Currently the UK's roads, particularly at rush hour, are very busy and not always safe.
Saying that more people should ditch the PPE to encourage cycling as a hassle free, accessible way to travel, BEFORE we've sorted out the infrastructure and culture is bonkers.
Like I say, I really think this has been taken out of context. Why would a helmet manufacturer, such as Boardman, be saying 'ditch the helmet'? Can I sue him once I've come off my bike having shelved my Boardman helmet?! Or should I sue now for selling me an 'unsafe' product?!
Answer - he's not saying that, but so many here have an anti helmet agenda that they're prepared to believe that this backs up their choice.
Cognitive bias. There are plenty of cases where helmets have not saved cyclists from death or head injury. Should they (the survivors) sue because they were told that helmets work? In fact you will find that helmet manufacturers are very careful not to claim that helmets will save you.
In the case where you decided on advice to not wear a foam hat you would have to prove a helmet would have saved you, which is impossible, of course.
The most convincing studies are whole population studies, as in a country where the law has produced a large increase in wearing. As I have repeatedly written, there is no state where a law has produced a change in cyclist head injury rates.
I respect Boardman for his truth telling. I am not so keen on his selling helmets. Perhaps he thinks that as helmets are mandatory in competition he is justified in selling them, whether or not they work.
Compare him with Cracknell, who endorses helmets on the back of his accident (wearing a helmet) and gets money from a manufacturer.
Clarkson certainly has a lot more inches around his waist. And his mouth is bigger too. But in terms of common sense and intelligence, Boardman wins out. It's just a pity so many hang on Clarkson's words. He's an ignorant oaf.
So he said the truth, how many didn't like that?
As usual, the truth of the matter is probably more complex and simpler.
In Holland, no one who uses his bike for simple day to day short distance transport wears a helmet, even the most foul weather. Equally, almost no one who rides a bike for sport goes without a helmet, even in the brightest sunshine. The difference? Speed.
Now try to legislate (and implement) that. The answer? Common sense and education and... an infrastructure, both physical and mental, geared to bike mobility.
Cheers.
@felixcat I was being facetious about suing him! Just pointing out the apparent contradictions between Boardman the helmet decrier and Boardman the helmet purveyor!
I suspect his valid points about mandatory helmet law and using helmets as an excuse to be lax about safety had been spun to meet anti helmet views of the author
Although the Netherlands is probably the safest country in the world for cycling, helmet wearing among Dutch cyclists is rare. It has been estimated that only about 0.5 percent of cyclists in the Netherlands are helmeted.
However, according to Dutch Government data (Rijkswaterstaat, 2008), 13.3 percent of cyclists admitted to hospital were wearing helmets when they were injured. Why does wearing a helmet appear to increase the risk of being injured so substantially?
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1261.html
So helmets do not seem to make the sports cyclists as safe as the utility cyclists. It is their right to choose.
I did take your suing remark as a rhetorical device, not a threat.
I cannot believe that the reporter has spun his report as much as would be necessary to produce such a distortion.
Perhaps he will enlighten us.
Well done Chris, by telling people not to debate helmets you have created road.cc's longest helmet debate thread since.... the last one.
Just to highlight the one area which nobody really wants to talk about: risk compensation.
Nobody accepts that actually wearing a lid may increase your chances of getting into a crash in the first place. This may be partly because of the less careful behaviour of other road users, but mostly because of a slight, subtle, but nevertheless definite reduction in your own level of care.
This would apply to those who swear blind that they will never cycle without one, possibly the gentleman who thinks that WRITING IN BLOCK CAPITALS will make us believe his case and happens to have smashed 3 -4 (which is it? 3 or 4?) helmets in recent years. Could this rather high rate of head (or what's on it) collisions have something to do with his level of care?
To take one example, if as the wonderful Chris Boardman points out, 0.8% of Dutch cyclists wear helmets, and 13% of hospitalised cyclists were wearing lids - even allowing for more mileage done by these (presumably racing) cyclists , doesn't it suggest that wearing helmets is associated with a higher rate of collisions?
Not that (IMO) you shouldn't be allowed to wear a helmet and crash about as much as you want.
But please do think of the red herring role the helmet plays. it gets in the way of dealing with motorists do to cyclists (and other road users) and makes it more difficult to reduce danger on the road.
If I may take the liberty of referring you to my explanation of why the helmets law in New Zealand had the effect it had: http://rdrf.org.uk/2013/12/27/the-effects-of-new-zealands-cycle-helmet-l...
This is how we (in NZ) ended up with mandatory helmets.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4031829/Aarons-tragedy-spurred-Helmet-La...
She went round the country in an Andrew Wakefield-style fervour and pushed for helmets.
I'd love to ask her why she didn't do the more obvious thing and go round the country campaigning to ban cars? After all, a car could still have killed her son, even had he been wearing a helmet.
Ok, I can guess why, but the utter failure of logic still irritates me.
Stumps,
Some things are facts. They are true regardless of who says them, they are true regardless of who argues against them. We don't always have time to evaluate what is and what is not fact from first principles and ground truth, in all cases. So, very often we take the authority of people making a claim into consideration when evaluating something. Normal thing to do.
Doctors and surgeons are authority figures, not without good reason. They're relatively well educated in a certain field, and they have an appreciation of science - though, many don't have a full appreciation. That authority however comes from having studied knowledge acquired from, largely, scientifically evaluated results.
So when doctors and surgeons say "I've seen many cyclists in my hospital, and I am sure helmets save lives" or - worse - someone on a forum says "I went to the hospital and my doctor said my helmet saved me", other people may be inclined to believe this is meaningful. However, it isn't. It fails some obvious scientific and statistical criteria. It's an anecdote. It's not been systematically analysed to control for biases, in the environment, the people, etc.. Doctors are subject to biases like any other humans - including scientists, hence why you need to control for these things! We need rigorous, scientific analysis precisely because long experience has taught us how often we can be led badly astray by our feelings.
A doctor reporting their anecdotal view is far from a scientific fact. When a doctor reports these things and claims certainty, they are straying far from science. They really should know better, but they're also human. Just because they're an authority figure, it doesn't make their anecdotal views any more true.
On the other hand, when someone reports an easily verifiable fact, you don't need to care who they are. You can just verify that fact for yourself. It doesn't matter who Chris Boardman is, or what his education is, because you can look up the official statistics for yourself. You can verify his claim about helmet use in the NL just by visiting the country, hell, or just by looking on Youtube.
That the Netherlands has very low helmet use, with very high rates of cycling (particularly ordinary, non-sport cycling), while the US and UK have the opposite; and that the Netherlands has much lower rates of death and injury are uncontroversial facts. You don't need to take it on trust from Boardman.
Indeed, it's precisely *when* someone claims something and expects you to take it on trust because of the position/status/education of the person making the claim, that you should be suspicious!
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