Helmets

Jimmy Ray Will wrote:

Morat wrote:

What I will say is that the anger towards helmet wearers from the anti-helmet brigade is divisive and unhelpful. If I choose to wear a helmet, that’s my choice. I don’t inflict my decision on anyone else and I expect the same courtesy in return.

This, this is exactly why there can be animosity aimed at helmet wearers by those choosing not to wear a helmet. 

I couldn’t care less if someone chooses to mitigate against the perceived risk or not, but I certainly do care when they try to force their opinions on me.

I wouldn’t mind if the evidence of risk was demonstrated, and helmets demonstrated as a truly effective solution, but its not… its opinions based on perceptions and the marketing of those set to make money from wider helmet use. 

I have honestly never heard or read any animosity from the bareheaded towards the helmeters, except perhaps in the circumstances Jimmy Ray Will mentions.

Perhaps Morat can find some on this website, though I doubt it. It seems possible to me that helmeteers mistake reasonable disagreement for animosity. It may be they feel their dearly held beliefs are under attack.

I have been known to react vigorously to those who tell me what I should wear on my head, but I always try to do so in a civil manner. There is not always time to react with a rational retort to an inane comment shouted from a passing car window.

Mr. Will’s last point may be explained by this quote from a British Medical Journal editorial by Ben Goldacre, Wellcome Research Fellow in Epidemiology and David Spiegelhalter Winton Professor fot the Public Understanding of Risk.

They could find no evidence that cyclehelmets reduce injury risk.

“In any case, the current uncertainty about any benefits from helmet promotion or wearing is unlikely to be reduced by further research. Equally, we can be certain that helmets will continue to be debated, and at length. The enduring popularity of helmets as a proposed major intervention for increased road safety may lie not in their direct benefits- which seem too modest to capture compared with other strategies- but more with the cultural, psychological and political aspects of popular debate around risk.”

http://www.badscience.net/wp-content/uploads/Screenshot-2013-12-13-17.12.05.png

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

L.Willo wrote:

I always wear a cycle hemet.

How do you wash your hair?

Go for a ride in the rain. That is what the holes in the lid are for. Drainage.

Its a simple choice really,

Its a simple choice really, you dont wear a helmet and run the risk of causing splits, abrasions cuts (or possible fractures) etc to your head if you come off or you wear one and run the risk of muscular damage from neck twists, throat burns from straps.

Either way its your choice, no one else, and ultimately no one has the right or privilege to decry someone else’s choice in the matter.

It would be interesting to know if any people who decry the use of helmets are in a club which allows them to cycle without wearing one ?

Also as far as any future legislation is concerned it would be way way down any cops list of priorities to try and stop a cyclist without one as we are to busy eating dohnuts

I always wear a cycle hemet.

I always wear a cycle helmet.

a) I am pain averse. If my head is going to hit anything solid and unyielding, I’d rather a lid took the blow than my skin.

b) Modern helmets are so light, easy to carry and well designed, you barely notice they are on after a few minutes.

c) In the unlikely event of suffering a serious head injury or worse due to someone else’s stupidity, I would not want to see the compensation paid out to my family slashed due to my “negligence”.

The Reynolds case is the first occasion where the courts have reduced a cyclist’s compensation in this way, but it seems to be part of a wider trend in the law’s attitude towards helmets. The Cyclists’ Defence Fund have suggested that deductions for not wearing a helmet are now common in out-of-court settlements of head injury claims brought by cyclists. And when cases have reached the courts in recent years, the courts have held that cycling without a helmet is negligent (at least for the purposes of contributory negligence), largely because it involves ignoring the Highway Code’s recommendation that “you should wear a cycle helmet which conforms to current regulations, is the correct size and securely fastened”.

This conclusion was first expressed by Mr Justice Griffith Williams in the 2009 case of Smith v Finch, and has now been adopted by the High Court in its last three decisions on the issue.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2011/sep/08/helmet-legal-status

d) I cannot hold drivers to account for ignoring the Highway Code re: safe driving practices etc if I decide to pick and choose which parts of the code apply to me. Without looking like a hypocrite, that is.

matthewn5 wrote:

@adamthekiwi, seat belts saved the lives of people in cars, but the evidence suggests that drivers drove faster afterwards and took more risks and killed more cyclists, children and pedestrians.

PACTS is the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Traffic Safety. They have always been advocates of a seat belt law.

John Adams writes on his site.

“Four prominent road safety experts who describe themselves as being “among the leadership of the Pacts” – Richard Allsop, Oliver Carsten, Andrew Evans, and Robert Gifford – published an article in Significance, a journal of the Royal Statistical Society, in which they advanced a much more modest claim for the number of lives saved by the seat belt law: not 2400 per year but 164.

Also intriguingly, for the first time of which I am aware, serious, statistically-qualified, advocates of seat-belt legislation acknowledged a risk transfer effect:

“The clear reduction in death and injury to car occupants is appreciably offset by extra deaths among pedestrians and cyclists”.

and

“the best estimates from both the analyses summarised here are that extra deaths to vulnerable road users did accompany the introduction of mandatory wearing of seat belts.”

PACTS figures show an increase in pedestrian deaths of 8% (150 deaths) and of 13% of cyclists (38 more deaths.)

Even if they are correct that seat belts reduced motorist casualties (which I do not accept) I find it unacceptable that more safety for the dangerous and already well protected, is gained at the expense of the vulnerable and unthreatening road user. Particularly when the measure increases my own risk.

A medical intervention which helped some patients at the expense of others would be regarded as unethical.

http://www.john-adams.co.uk/2013/02/08/1061/

adamthekiwi wrote:

The key difference between those two forms of safety equipment is that there was solid evidence that wearing a seatbelt reduced deaths and injuries for drivers and passengers before the law was passed.

I would be interested to see this evidence.

Before our seat belt law was passed the Dept. of Transport commissioned a report on seat belt efficacy.  J.E. Isles concluded that laws making them compulsory “has not led to a detectable change in road death rates”.

John Adams wrote about this (and a great deal more on seat belts and on risk compensation) on his website. If anyone is interested in the subject, and not merely in confirming the beliefs thet already have, I recommend the websit and his book Risk.

http://www.john-adams.co.uk/2007/01/04/seat-belt-legislation-and-the-isles-report/

“However within the Department of Transport, the promoters of the seat belt bill, my study had raised concerns. The Department commissioned a critique of my report by J E Isles. His report examined evidence from eight European countries (a subset of the 18 examined in my report) that had passed seat belt laws. He concluded that a law making the wearing of seat belts compulsory “has not led to a detectable change in road death rates”. For promoters of the bill this was an inconvenient truth. The Isles report was dated April 1981, more than three months before the parliamentary debate that led to the passage of the legislation. But it was suppressed. It was not published, and was not allowed to inform that debate. The Isles Report did not see the light of day until its existence was disclosed by New Scientist in an article published on 7 February 1985 – more than three years too late.

The helmet debate is often
The helmet debate is often far too narrow in focus.

There are obviously certain situations in which a helmet will reduce your risk of injury.

That is true for cyclists, pedestrians, construction workers, office workers etc etc.

Whether you choose to wear a helmet on your bike or even on the bus is entirely up to your individual perception of the risks involved.

However, if we are to legislate to make helmets compulsory we have to consider the wider impact of the legislation.

If compulsory helmet laws reduce the number of people cycling and those people instead travel by car or bus then those people will actually be placed at higher risk of death/serious illness.

This is because even a small amount of light-moderate intensity cycling (approximately 100 minutes a week) has been shown to reduce All Cause Mortality by around 10%.

Those who are discouraged from cycling by compulsory helmet laws will therefore lose this protective effect and be more likely to suffer heart disease, diabetes, cancer etc.

There is also the effect of pollution to consider. Outdoor air pollution contributes to approximately 40,000 deaths in the UK every year.

Every journey by car/bus/train etc contributes towards this death toll.

If compulsory helmet laws lead to people choosing other, more polluting, modes of transport over cycling then they will, in effect, increase that death toll.

In conclusion, even if helmets were effective in preventing injuries, is a small reduction in such injuries worth the increase in deaths and illnesses that will occur when people choose to reduce, or even stop, their cycling as a consequence of compulsory helmet laws?

I would argue that the overall harm to society caused by such compulsory laws far outweighs any asociated benefits and as such they should not be introduced.

I like helmets… my current

I like helmets… my current helmet is an absolute beauty… lovely quality of build, exquisite fit, and I look proper boss pro in it as well.

There is no real reason not to wear a helmet, you look more pro, its comfy, means your hair doesn’t blow around in the wind… etc.etc.etc.

However, and this to me is the killer one, statistically, there is no need for me to wear it… so generally I don’t. The statistical chance of me falling off a bike, and in doing so, falling off in such a way that my head impacts something with suitable force that could damage my head, but not so hard that its beyond the limitations of the helmet, is really rather slim. 

As I’ve said before, the moment I start to believe its dangerous out there is the day I stop riding a bike… its not dangerous, its something kids do perfectly safely every day. As a grown adult with 30 years experience, I am fairly confident that we are talking about mitigating against risk that sits firmly in the freak event category. 

I don’t mind a good helmet debate, ok thats not true, I find them tiresome… but only because of the lack of willingness to look at why we need a helmet in the first place.

We can talk about injury reduction, relative effectiveness, bigger picture repercussions all we like, but what is the fundamental requirement for a helmet? Really… like, deep down really?