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news
Bradley Wiggins on the podium at London 2012 (copyright www.britishcycling.org.uk)Sir Bradley Wiggins: Cycle helmets should be compulsory, and iPods banned while riding bike
Sir Bradley Wiggins says that cyclists should be required by law to wear helmets and banned from listening to music through headphones while they are riding a bike.
The four-time Olympic gold medallist and first Briton to win the Tour de France was giving his opinion on an interview shown on the BBC children’s news programme, Newsround.
Speaking on the subject of cycle safety, the father of two said: “I think certain laws for cyclists need to be passed to protect us more than anything.
“Making helmets compulsory on the roads, making it illegal to maybe have an iPod in while you’re riding a bike, just little things like that would make a huge difference.”
Trott, winner of Olympic gold medals in the Omnium and team pursuit at London last year, repeated an appeal she made in May for a Briitish Cycling video in support of the Get Britain Cycling petition, saying that regular cycle training in schools would lead to improved safety.
“Not all cyclists are that safe on the road either, and I think that would help young kids especially if we could get it in the National Curriculum once a week,” she said.
It’s not the first time Wiggins has spoken about cycle helmets.
Last year, when he was told at a press conference that London cyclist Dan Harris had been killed when he was struck by a media bus outside the Olympic Park, he said: “Ultimately, if you get knocked off and you don’t have a helmet on, then you can’t argue. You can get killed if you don’t have a helmet on.
"You shouldn’t be riding along with iPods and phones and things on. You have lights on. Once there are laws passed for cyclists then you are protected and you can say, ‘well, I have done everything to be safe."
"It is dangerous and London is a busy city. There is a lot of traffic. I think we have to help ourselves sometimes."
Later that day, Wiggins said on Twitter that he wasn’t calling for compulsory helmet laws: "Just to confirm I haven't called for helmets to be made the law as reports suggest. I suggested it may be the way to go to give cyclists more protection legally I [sic] involved In an accident. I wasn't on me soap box CALLING, was asked what I thought."
His latest comments, however, suggest that he is in favour of compulsion.
Mark Cavendish is another high profile cyclist who has said that cyclists shouldn’t listen to music while they ride.
Asked in 2011 by TV personality John Inverdale at an event hosted by the charity Right To Play whether he liked to do so, Cavendish gave the firm reply: “Don’t cycle with an iPod in, it’s dangerous!”
Cycling organisations such as CTC opposese helmet compulsion, saying that it should be a matter of individual choice.
Yesterday, talking about the case of a teenage boy left brain damaged after being struck by a van while out riding - he wasn't wearing a helmet because he didn't want to mess up his hairstyle - CTC's Campaigns Director, Roger Geffen, said: "My heart goes out to Ryan Smith and his family.
"What they are going through now must be unimaginable.
"However, faced with heart-rending stories like this, decision-makers need to remember that the only known impact of helmet laws is to drastically reduce cycle use, typically by over 30%, with much deeper reductions for teenage cycling."
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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152 comments
You should care if people CHOOSE or don't choose because this gives us an insight into the fact that perhaps it ought to be a CHOICE and not forced. I agree with you that it should be a choice - I choose to wear a helmet too. But if folk don't want to then leave them be.
(I think it could be enforceable though, if it were compulsory. Motorbikes made the change (although the risk is far higher etc so not entirely comparable - but an established behaviour change none the less))
You are right that a double-blind trial isn't possible and that does mean that the most stringent scientific research isn't possible. However, science works for different levels of certainty. It is still possible to draw conclusions from injury statistics, with 4 major caveats. The lack of controls means that:
1. You need big sample sizes
2. You need to account for effects that distort the results (people who wear helmets take fewer risks than those who don't, for instance)
3. You need many independent studies with the same findings before you can really draw conclusions
4. The uncertainty means that only large effects are truly significant
These studies are completely different from the n=1 anecdotes that unscientific people use to defend mandatory helmets. That nonsense is on par with the claim that a cold winter means that climate change isn't real.
Anyway, these studies were done for motorcycle helmets, seat belts and bicycle helmets. For the first two, the positive effect on survival was huge, so there is little doubt that they are hugely beneficial. With bicycle helmets that just isn't so. At best the positive effect is rather marginal.
I regularly fly combat planes in various wars and a parachute has saved my life several times. So I always wear a parachute on my bike too....of course this is completely nonsense, just like your claim that your kayaking experience has any validity here when the helmets are different and the accidents that happen there are completely different too.
The man is entitled to his opinion.
Opinions are (hopefully) formed from experience.
His experiences are of a life in high intensity bike racing where crashes are common and high speed.
His experiences of cycling arent the same as mine and many of yours.
In my experience a helmet seems superfluous and therefore it is my opinion that i am not going to wear one.
Its a shame Bradley's opinions on bad infrastructure, general contempt of cyclists by motorists and bad driving arent made widely known.
The biggest problem i see is that helmet wearing shifts the balance of culpability onto the cyclist ("Its your fault you've got brain damage from being hit by a lorry") when really we should be looking at shifting the external factors that can make cycling safer higher up the agenda
If you want to presume to somehow know the full extent of Wiggins' experiences, perhaps, just perhaps, you might have overlooked experiences of others close to him. Someone like, oh, Shane Sutton, who was hit by a car at the same time as Wiggins last Nov, and who said in an interview that the helmet saved his life (quoted his hospital doctor on the subject). Sutton had head injuries if you recall.
Now personally I believe in freedom of choice when it comes to wearing a helmet. I happen to wear one, but if you want to go without it doesnt matter one toot to me.
But this knee-jerk reaction to people in the public eye who voice a pro-helmet opinion, and claiming that somehow they're ill-informed and dont know what they're talking about because they race bikes, and so OBVIOUSLY only ever go on a bike at high speeds...well...that's just silly. And patronising.
NEWSFLASH! Wiggins and Cav are both entitled to their own opinions.
Yawn, yawn, people. Wear one if you want. Dont wear one if you dont.
Stop getting so worked up about who and what is quoted in the media.
While trawling the internet on helmet safety I did find this:
https://sites.google.com/site/bicyclehelmetmythsandfacts/
I believe cycle helmets should be a matter of personal choice and not a dictate of the nanny state
Pjrob, have you any evidence for your claims? I suspect not.
3 incidents in the last 5 years, all 3 included hospital visits, 2 in an ambulance, still using the same helmet as it is completely undamaged.
I still wear a helmet, it is just doing better than my elbows and shoulders as far as wear and tear goes...
am also deaf in one ear - should I cycle or not? maybe if I just use a single earbud in that ear?
If you head hit the ground in any of these accidents you should replace the helmet. There may be no visible damage to the outside however the internal structure will have been damaged by the accident. Which mean that although the helmet was rated to 12mph that can no longer be guaranteed.
regardless of hiting th ground, how do you know you didnt hit your head on anything else, eg a vehicle.
quite often you can scrape the side of your head or helmet without knowing it, and of course, you focus on th worst pain - which was your shoulder/elbow.
i crashed at 20-25mph and didint realise i had scraped my left ear until i saw my left headphone was scratched (only wear it in my left ear). in this instance the helmet was not scratched or hit, but just goes to show you dont realise which bits of you get damaged when you fall off
Helmets and earphones have a similarity in that they both reduce the sense of risk for the wearer allowing him to be more reckless.
However, I would only ban earphones as, similarly to alcohol, the individual is numbed to his environment and they provide no apparent benefit.
Whether the helmet makes the rider safer is somewhat beside the point too, as risk-compensation no doubt kicks in to counter whatever benefit there is.
Nevertheless, could it also be true that with those wearing earphones, similarly as with cyclists when we are a motorist, we are just annoyed by someone in our environment who we have to take more care around?
Is he still smarting from being dropped as team lead for this years TdF that he now has to have a crack at utility cyclists?
Brad: build a bridge and get the fuck over it!
Unfortunately wearing a quality helmet didn't save my dad in July. It comes down to personal choice, everyone knows the risks but if I ever get back on my road bike again I wouldn't consider riding on the roads without a helmet these days.
Still never seen or heard a valid argument against the listening of music whilst riding. But, let's all bring it up again.
He is talking to an audience of 7 to 15 year olds and what he says has some validity. Lets not tear a strip off him because he has told a kid's TV programme that he thinks helmets should be worn and the iPods shouldn't.
If you want a good, Clueful, evidence backed summary of the cycle helmet debate that includes particular thought on how it affects children then the Annex of Tim Gill's "Cycling and Children and Young People" is an excellent go-to.
Free download at http://www.ncb.org.uk/media/443203/cyclingreport_2005.pdf
Though Gill wears a helmet himself he still says, "the case has not yet been convincingly made for the compulsory use or promotion of cycle helmets".
It's widely assumed that the arguments are very different for children, but when you drill down in to the evidence it turns out they're not. They still don't appear to save lives and they still appear to put kids off.
Wiggins is sounding off on an important issue with no sign that he's done any research (compare and contrast with Boardman), so yes, we should be tearing him off a strip.
ooh look, a helmet debate
.
hey neildmoss, cyclehelmets.org has some good analysis of studies.
Easy to do experiments yourself that confirm both.
Bang your forehead on a table with and without a helmet, which hurts more? There's your answer to b). Now repeat, but move back to make sure the set up is such that the table will catch the top of the helmet but not a bare head. There's your answer to a)
Next you want to look at c), which is how much riskier cycling (at least utility cycling) is than, say, being a pedestrian or using stairs, and when you've found that the answer to that is "not appreciably riskier at all" then answer d), which is why prioritise cycling as a special case for head injury?
There's four major types of studies in that direction:
1. a possible increased risk of rotational injuries (see TRL.co.uk Reports > Road User Safety > Assessment of current bicycle helmets for the potential to cause rotational injury, for example);
2. the increased risk of strangulation by the straps of helmets which are often worn incorrectly (no helmet, no straps, no strangulation risk - see Byard RW et al, Bicycle helmets and accidental asphyxia in childhood, Medical J Aust 2011:194(1):49);
3. a possible "risk compensation" effect - people think they are better protected, so they take more risks than they would if they were "naked";
4. an inverse of the possible "safety in numbers" effect - the most strongly demonstrated effect of cycle helmet compulsion is to cut numbers cycling and as riders become rarer, the accident rate increases.
Of course, only the rotational and strangulation risk increases would not "have resulted if the rider was not wearing it" as the other two depend on what society in general does - but I feel the question is slightly unfair, so I'll mention the other two drawbacks of helmets anyway
There are, but the ones that show strongest effects are limited to a particular type of low-impact accident: a person falling from a stationary bike to a flat floor.
There are some general studies, but there seem to be as many showing no or negative effect. A round-up of the studies is in Appendix B of the evidence summary, a download near the bottom of http://www.ctc.org.uk/campaigning/views-and-briefings/cycle-helmets
to answer A) - i have heard that SOME people who wear protective equipment can SOMETIMES become complacent and rely too heavily on the protective equipment they wear
"These are all arguments about making the victim culpable for the acts done to them by the carelessness/recklessness of other road users"
This kind of argument misses the point, in the face of non-ideal conditions (that aren't changing any time soon) it simply makes sense to maximise your own personal safety (however you see best). Not doing so because any accident is likely to be someone else's fault is pretty silly. You can do your best to highlight the wider issues at the same time.
So you'll be donning helmet, hi-viz and body armour as soon as you get out of bed then. Because most accidents happen in the home. What you are doing is to cherry pick your safety concerns and focussing on a minority group - cyclists! Shame on you.
Where can I get one of Brad's helmets that protect you if you are run over BY A BUS?
From my experience living next to a national cycle route (East Burton, in The Purbecks, Dorset) I'd hazard that 95% of drop-bar riders wear lids, but only about 40% of the more 'pedestrian' cyclists. Would be interested to find out the accident/injury split between the 2 groups.
sidesaddle,
I don't have the stat or link to hand, but I gather that in the Netherlands helmeted cyclists are over-represented amongst admissions to hospital by a factor of 10 or so.
Please find and show the link as I have searched and found nothing.
I would suggest you pulled this "factoid" out of your a**e but that would be rude
How about this one?
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1261.html
Explains the stat too...
Thank you
I see and as you stated it explains the reason for the discrepancy:
"The answer is probably related to another statistic. Of the injured cyclists wearing helmets, 50 percent were riding mountain bikes and 46 percent were riding racing bikes (Rijkswaterstaat, 2008). In other words, most helmeted cyclists in the Netherlands are engaged in a competitive activity, with very few making utility trips on the traditional style of Dutch bicycle."
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