Aussie advert calls for end to Queensland's compulsory helmet laws for adults

Well I believe in helmet wearing , my girlfriend who works for the ambulance service has seen first hand what happens when you dont wear a helmet and it is not a pretty sight.
Should it be mandatory, well if you can safely say you wont get hit on the head by a passing gazelle or a road surface then no.. there are plenty of helmets out there to choose from and you should be safe.

BMLH - you dont need to be hit by a car to have a head injury , but falling off a bike at 20 - 25 mph onto a pavement or even off roading I am sure a helmet offers more protection than none, its about common sence after all not common nonsence... If you choose not to wear one and you come off your bike and end up with a long term injury that the state has to look after you then I think thats a bit selfish to be honest. We should all have a rsponsibility to be safe and not just lucky..

Most road deaths are of car occupants (835/1850 in 2010), followed by pedestrians (405/1850). Surely, if helmets are a good idea for cyclists (111/1850 deaths), it would be an even better idea for motor vehicle occupants and pedestrians? It'd save far more lives in absolute terms!

I think we need a campaign for compulsory full-face helmets and HANS devices for motor vehicles! Also, roll-cages in cars makes their passenger compartments much much stronger and would save many lives. Sure, it makes cars less practical, but if it saves one life!

Leon Rushworth: Common sense sometimes turns out to be wrong when tested scientifically. When it comes to helmets, then, yes they provide some protection to your head, however the latest top-tier meta-study says the effects are a lot less strong than thought before. Further, while protecting the head, they *increase* neck and facial injuries, such that the net overall benefit of helmets may actually be negligible.

Next up, helmets make cycling seem unusually dangerous (peds don't wear them, car occupants don't wear them - even though far more of them die on the roads), which likely discourages people from cycling. Low cycling rates mean there's less political motivation to spend on cycling infrastructure (which would make cycling more attractive to non-cyclists), etc..

Next, wearing a helmet changes people's behaviour. Both of motorists - who take more risks around cyclists if they wear helmets, and/or are male. Also, almost certainly, of the cyclists, who may take more risks because they feel they're safer from the consequences.

Finally, you have to balance the very low risks of cyling & not wearing a helmet, against the very definitely positive health effects of cycling, and the potential increase in cycling rates across the population (which could make cycling safer through safety-in-numbers) if we would stop singling out cycling as being some extreme-sport that requires special safety equipment.

See my blog for references for some of the above claims: http://pjakma.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/the-case-against-bicycle-helmets-...

WOW .. why is it about they dont do it so why should I , it is a selfish justification really.. not about deaths but possible brain damange and the implications not just to yourself and way of life but the people left to pick up after you and pay for your wellbeing. You fall off your bike, bang your head, if you dont show yourself any respect and not be protected and you end up having to be nursed by your family for the rest of your life at the cost to the state . As a person you should have a duty to protect yourself and not fall into the poor selfish attitudes of benefit scroungers and nhs tourists, jay walkers , bad motorists. The arguments for not wearing one .eg i want to look cool does not have any mileage at all. Its not all about fact and figures, deaths but just looking after yourself to remain healthy.

Leonrushworth: I don't have any problem with people making their own informed choices about their own safety. If you feel a helmet is the best trade-off of risk/convenience/etc for you, then great! I fully support your choice.

I am against the blind *advocacy* of bicycle-helmet wearing - often based on unscientific, anecdotal evidence & an incomplete assessment of the trade-offs involved (e.g. not considering the overall societal public health impact).

PS: Given you seem very concerned about road safety risks and how injuries to you would affect loved ones, I do hope you also wear your helmet when walking near roads and driving.

anyway spout as many stats as you like ... at least my head is kept safe.
As long as the missus does not have to pick you up or spend £500k using the air ambulance to collect you when you go head of wheels on a dirt path onto a brick, tree root or a pavement then thats all good. You looked cool and before you fell off.

Well BMLH I am sure that as you are so precise in your posts I will google the word "shoten" and see what it means . As for a Berk, well glad you can spell it. If you want to start to be personal then fine but that is always the sign of uneducated morons.

Sven never ridden a Marin Mountain Bile either... so dont throw stones in glass houses.

Anyway , i will probably see you both at number 1 on Silly Cyclist some time soon.

Helmet wearing should be a choice. I wear a lid soley because I am going much faster than the average leisure cyclist. The forces involved if I came off would actually mean a lid will provide some vague form of protection BUT there is the risk of rotational injury. It should be noted that the average cyclist's speed is below 10mph. If they come off, they are more likely to break an arm in the fall. Meanwhile NOTHING will protect you from being hit at 40mph by a distracted, inattentitive driver in a one ton box of metal!! When I have come off my bike it has been slow speeds and the only injuries have been sprained wrists, grazed knees and bruised ego.

I am fed up that vunerable road users are continually being told to take percautions for their safety - bright clothing, helmets etc. Yet, if you tell drivers to slow down, stop using mobiles, wear a seat belt regards road safety, you are waging a war on them. It is the motorist that kills not the cyclist or pedestrian. Interesting quote below...

Coroner at the inquest into the first UK death of a pedestrian in a car accident (1896): 'I hope such a thing will never happen again...' 

Until the authorities robustly address the behaviour of many of the motorists our roads will continue to be dangerous.

life's full of danger, leon. in the grand scheme of things, cycling isn't one of the things you should be worrying about. DIY and walking places are much more dangerous. Why should cyclists be forced to wear helmets if DIY enthusiasts and pedestrians aren't?

this isn't about whether wearing a cycle helmet can mitigate against injury. It can, in some instances. There's evidence to suggest that in other instances it can make things worse. And the large scale data suggests that the effect on head injuries of a mass helmet uptake is statistically insignificant. The large scale data also suggests that helmet compulsion leads to a fall in cycling. So the sum of those two would appear to me to be that helmet compulsion has little effect on overall injury rates and leads to a fall in cycling, from which it's not hard to infer higher obesity rates and preventable deaths.

And why are you insisting that anti helmet compulsion is to do with 'looking cool'? So far as I can see, the only person that's mentioned that is you. Argue if you want, but don't ignore the counter arguments.

Oh and Leon - thanks for reminding me to be responsible. I'll now be wearing my lid when walking the streets in case a tile falls of a roof or I trip on a paving stone. Afterall the forces generated their are the same as falling off a bike at 10mph

There is s a reason why the UCI imposes rules that the BEST road cyclists in the world has to wear a helmets when racing.

And they wear it on "closed" stages with no other dangers than other riders, the occational crowdee, and the pavement.

And its not because they think it looks cool..

Here:
http://www.bhsi.org/stats.htm

"Head injuries accounted for 62.6 percent of bicycle fatalities."

So yes - a plastic piece on you head can save your life, and/or your dignity.

But I am unsure whether it should be ILLEGAL to cycle without one - perhaps it only should be if you are cycling on the road.

The UCI probably has a fair case for insisting on helmets in racing - the risk there is from inter-cycle collisions where the primary risk is from the fall to ground. In a similar vein it makes sense to wear a helmet for off-roading - a slip on gravel or a tip on a tree root could likewise lead to head making contact with ground, at a speed within the deisgn norms for cycle helmets (ie about 12mph and a fall-height of 1m).

If anyone thinks that a helmet is going to do much good in a collision with a cement truck they are deluding themselves. The sheer momentum will crush their head like an eggshell, and in any case body crush injuries are far more likely. As someone else above says, there is no statistically meaningful evidence to support helmets in these circs. Simply saying "a helmet saved my life" or "my wife is a nurse, and she sees better outcomes for helmet wearing casualties" lacks any scientific validity.

I have suffered head injuries 4 times in my life. None of these were on a bike.
The incidents occurred once whilst running in a fell race, once slipping in the gym, once as a passenger in a car and once as a pedestrian being hit by a car. Should I have been wearing a helmet during these activities?

It's crazy to say that all cyclists should always wear a helmet. Most head injuries actually happen in the home (some even falling out of bed!) - should we wear helmets whilst going around our houses? Of course not.

There are risks in everything we do and as adults we should be free to make our own assessments of those risks and act accordingly.

I wear a helmet because i want to, not because i'm told to.

I wear a helmet because i had a broken cheekbone and concusion after coming off my bike and was in hospital for 5 days getting an operation. I wasn't wearing a helmet then.

Would wearing a helmet stop that happening again? I don't know but i wear a helmet because i don't want to go through that again and if wearing a helmet gives me a chance, well that is good enough for me.

Most of you are old enough and ugly enough to make your own decisions. Make your own mind up and live by your actions.

Let's just hope that the Government don't try to enforce this in the UK. As you all know that once you are told to do something, you go on the defensive. I don't want to see you on the tv sleeping in a tent somewhere...

just wondered what people thought about seat belts?

When they brought that in in the seventies there was big opposition to this, notably from people like Michael Foot, on libertarian grounds. Essentially the same range of viewpoints that people are expressing here. But am I right in thinking that now, 30 years on, we just accept it as a fact of life / common sense? Or do people see it as state oppression?

Personally I've come off my bike twice. First time I buggered my hip, second time - at 30mph - I did my collar bone. But both times the helmet did its job and protected my head, so I'm sold. But do I really give a monkey's if you wear one or not? 'fraid not.

I wear a helmet because a lot of the time it seems sensible to do so. I wear one most days on my five-mile commute, and i wear one on longer rides and off-road rides.

but riding to sainsbury's 300 yards away from my house? riding into town when i know i'll have to carry my helmet around because it won't fit in the lock shackle? i can't see how the state needs to intervene in those decisions for the good of society. If, like today, i was prevented from riding into town at lunchtime because i didn't have a helmet with me (i drove in), who does that benefit?

Seat belts are a different proposition because there's unequivocal scientific data to back up their efficacy. That simply doesn't exist for bike helmets. No large scale study that I've seen shows a correlation between increased helmet use and decreased incidence of cycling head injuries. If anyone knows of such a study, I'd really like to be made aware of it. I'm happy to be persuaded, I really am. But as far as I'm concerned for now, helmets are a red herring that diverts attention from the real causes of road deaths.

Seatbelts were made compulsory because cars were getting faster and drivers were becoming less responsible in their driving. Do you really think a seatbelt would have been necessary in a vehicle doing 10/15 mph?? The only thing these 'safety' features do is create an illusion of being indestructible!!

Go to a theme park, are you issued with a neck brace and helmet? NO. Yet, you are on rides that throw you around and subject you to similar forces of a car accident and present you with the risk of whiplash and brain damage!!

It does not matter how much you wrap your noggin up. All it will do is prevent the skull being pushed into the brain. NOTHING will stop the actual brain being thrown against the skull in the case of sudden deceleration.

The majority of people who take up cycling are those who take a leisurely pedal round the park or a wee tootle to the shops/work. They are not interesrted in building up their mph or what max speed on a descent Many are put off cycling because they have to deal with dangerous drivers. To be told you have to wear a helmet for your safety will further enforce the perception that cycling is a dangerous activity!