A Coventry school which told pupils their bikes would be confiscated if they did not wear a helmet when riding to and from the school claims it has seen an increase in cycling. “Cycling to school is not being made more difficult, but it is being made safer for all,” said Finham Park assistant headteacher Chloe Buckenham.
The school’s policy reads: “Students who cycle to school must wear a helmet and will not be permitted to leave school with their bicycle if they do not have one.”
It adds: “If you arrive at school with a bike that is not roadworthy or you do not have a helmet you will not be allowed to lock it up in the bike sheds.
“Your bike will be stored securely and you will not be able to take it home until you arrive with a cycle helmet.
“If your bike is not roadworthy your parents or carers will have to come and collect it for you from school.”
Speaking in December, David McKeegan, whose son attends the school, said: “As a responsible parent, I did my research and decided to allow my son to ride without a helmet.
“Now that Finham has overruled my decision by making helmets compulsory, my son no longer cycles to school.”
However, the school itself claims more McKeegan’s son is in the minority.
Buckenham told the Coventry Telegraph: “We do not seek to restrict students’ cycling, but promote it through our healthy ‘bike safely’ campaign that is supported by the community as it is promoting cycling with due care and attention to other road users and pedestrians.
“We and other schools have seen an increase in the number of students cycling to school and a reduction in the number of accidents involving bikes on roads as students behave more sensibly cycling to and from school.
“We are supporting the vast majority of parents who want their child to cycle as safely as possible to school. Cycling to school is not being made more difficult, but it is being made safer for all.”
Asked if any bikes had been confiscated in line with the school policy, Buckenham replied: “Students collect their bikes at the end of the day.”
Cycling UK has said that a number of schools are overreaching with regards to their cycle policies.
We’ve previously reported on a Surrey school which told its students they could only cycle to school if they fitted a number plate to their bike; a school in St Albans which said it would suspend children caught riding to school on the pavement or without a helmet; and a Nottingham school that has banned cycling entirely in response to “extremely dangerous” cycling by some students.
In a statement, Cycling UK said: “Despite advice from the Department for Education that schools are not responsible for pupils travelling independently to and from school, Cycling UK has learned recently of at least three schools that are implementing policies directly affecting pupils’ cycling journeys.
“Cycling UK believes these policies will seriously affect pupil uptake of cycling. The charity has since written to these schools offering its advice on how to encourage cycling and make it safer for pupils. Any reduction in pupil physical activity will have health implications.”
-1024x680.jpg "“Clear anti-cyclist bias”: Lawsuit filed against Toronto police after cop doored cyclist… before ticketing rider over incident")
53 thoughts on “School that confiscates bikes if helmets aren’t worn claims more children are now riding to school”
Twats.
Twats.
“We and other schools have
“We and other schools have seen an increase in the number of students cycling to school and a reduction in the number of accidents involving bikes on roads as students behave more sensibly cycling to and from school…”
and
Asked if any bikes had been confiscated in line with the school policy, Buckenham replied: “Students collect their bikes at the end of the day.”
Trainee politician or ex-politician? This headmaster sounds like a right slippery character. I don’t know him but he appears to be very close to telling porkies.
It sounds like a response
It sounds like a response Donald Trump would make.
Lamb Henry wrote:
Ha Ha, best joke yet, they used words with 3 and more syllables, and you think Trump could come up with that (unaided) ????
Asside from that, the concept of a school refusing to allow a child to take home personal property because they do not have an OPTIONAL safety device (helmet) is borderline illegal. I’m all for promoting safe cycling, but this is NOT how to “promote” something.
If safety on two wheels is
If safety on two wheels is all about wearing a helmet and high viz why were there 365 motorcyclists killed in road accidents last year? And remember their helmets are not made of polystyrene.
“If you arrive at school with
“If you arrive at school with a bike that is not roadworthy…” – I wonder which member of their staff is a properly qualified bike mechanic, then?
Sounds like a great idea for
Sounds like a great idea for me. Too many bikes are stolen from bike sheds, if you don’t wear a helmet they confiscate the bike and give it you back at the end of school?!
alansmurphy wrote:
Sounds like free parking to me, and if it is stolen then are liable. not at owner’s risk.
and they say crime doesn’t pay
I’m trying to correlate
I’m trying to correlate
“Students who cycle to school must wear a helmet…”
and
” a reduction in the number of accidents involving bikes on roads…”
Is he saying that drivers who cause their vehicle to collide with a cyclist are targetting those that don’t wear a helmet?
**cough** bullshit **cough**
**cough** bullshit **cough**
Hmmm! I sense an opportunity
Hmmm! I sense an opportunity here. Set up a secure bike park near the school, kids leave their bikes there for a pound or two, arrive at school on foot (no helmet required), leave at usual time, collect bike and ride home while raising (metaphorical,of course) middle finger at headmaster.
Well, I knew helmets were
Well, I knew helmets were magic hats, but increasing the number of cyclists and reducing collisions? When you’re wrong, and know you’re wrong, but can’t admit it, make up stuff that supports you, so much easier than admiting you failed.
If I had a child at that school, I’d be looking for another one pronto. One where the teachers don’t lie to the children.
burtthebike wrote:
I wouldn’t. I’d be sending my brat to school on a bike without a helmet. And when they confiscated the bike, they’d have a letter from my solicitor, asking them to explain how the Education and Inspections Act 2006 authorises them to confiscate property when there is no breach of a statutory provision. And they would be given 24 hours to return the property before a complaint would be made at the local police station, as well as an action before the courts.
And I’d make sure that every other parent whose sprog cycled to school, did the same – or at least, was aware that he or she could so so.
Legs_Eleven_Worcester wrote:
I wouldn’t. I’d be sending my brat to school on a bike without a helmet. And when they confiscated the bike, they’d have a letter from my solicitor, asking them to explain how the Education and Inspections Act 2006 authorises them to confiscate property when there is no breach of a statutory provision. And they would be given 24 hours to return the property before a complaint would be made at the local police station, as well as an action before the courts.
And I’d make sure that every other parent whose sprog cycled to school, did the same – or at least, was aware that he or she could so so.
— burtthebikeUnfortunately, it’s a bit more complicated than that.
1 https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/674416/Searching_screening_and_confiscation.pdf
2 The Schools (Specification and Disposal of Articles) Regulations 2012
3 Education and Inspections Act 2006
S 94 Defence where confiscation lawful
S 91 Enforcement of disciplinary penalties: general
3 (b)is reasonable in all the circumstances.
6 (a)whether the imposition of the penalty constitutes a proportionate punishment in the circumstances of the case, and
(b)any special circumstances relevant to its imposition on the pupil which are known to the person imposing it (or of which he ought reasonably to be aware)
But you are correct that someone needs to challenge it.
Previous road.cc items have quoted cycling uk as saying schools have no powers to stop pupils cycling to school.
hirsute wrote:
And they are probably right, but it would appear that the school is also right in being able to confiscate a bicycle when it arrives on school grounds. Even if it is misguided and counter productive.
I demand they release their
I demand they release their data immediately for professional statistical analysis since this clearly has implications for schools and the safety of young cyclists around the country.
When is someone going to tell
When is someone going to tell these Fuhrer headmasters that helmets are not a legal requirement. They can be considered advisory but it is still up to the individual or their parent/guardian to decide if they wish to wear one. This is imposition of rules that are not legally enforceable.
As for the bicycle being roadworthy, what qualifications do the teaching staff possess to allow them to make this decision?
The social conditining that is being imposed on these children is wrong in so many ways.
Such a crap attitude. It
Such a crap attitude. It should read:
“If you arrive at school with a bike that is not roadworthy, please report to Mr. Turner, the C.D.T. teacher, who will teach you some basics in his weekly after-school bike maintenance club.”
I’ve a three month old at home and am dreading sending her to school. The attitudes of those in positions of authority, as regularly reported here, absolutely stink.
So full of shit, he never had
So full of shit, he never had the pre nazi rule numbers of either kids cycling to school or parents driving like twats injuring kids.
And if he had he’d have seen that the danger wasn’t kids without helmets but parents in big killing machines and asked for a TRO for the area.
No sonshine, you’re yet another lying nazi twat!
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
I call Godwin’s Law on this
Gus T wrote:
Is the action of the head extreme A Yes
Is the action taken unilateral with no option ofr people to have input A. Yes
Is this effectively a dictatorship A: Yes
Does the action infringe people’s rights A Yes
Does the action endanger the vulnerable. A. yes
Extreme dictatorships that wield power over the vulnerable and attack them as this head has done is most definitely akin to the actions of Herr Hitler, in the long run as proven everywhere else that forces helmets on cyclists it costs lives too, obviously not in the same way as Hitler meted out but the actions themselves are in essence no different.
HTH
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
I have suggested the the aggrieved parent invoke the school’s bullying policy against the head. Probably only applies to pupils though, but it might not specify that, so if it was me, I’d give it a go.
Genuine question: can anyone
Genuine question: can anyone explain why a parent would allow a child to cycle without a helmet but not allow them to cycle with one?
I understand that this parent has done research that shows helmets will not neccessarily save a childs life in an acident with a vehicle. I understand that helmets are not magical hats to ward off speeding metal boxes. But is there a reason why we would stop our children from wearing them?
JonRogersUK wrote:
Can’t speak for the individual mentioned above, but I guess one of:
– Not wanting to make cycling seem like such a dangerous activity to indulge in that a helmet is required.
– Wanting to imbue in your child that cycling is just as valid a method of getting around as walking, riding a bus or driving, none of which require a helmet.
– Point of principle; why should the school dictate parents’ choices outside the school gates? Blindly giving in to authority for a quiet life is not a happy path to follow.
JonRogersUK wrote:
As well as the post above, there is also rotational injuries to worry about and the increased chance of actually hitting your head. Never mind the fact that kids generally don’t fit their helmets correctly.
Cycling should be seen as normal, not something you have to dress up in armour to do.
JonRogersUK wrote:
Kids on their own don’t ask to wear helmets, no kid ever when starting to ride a bike said, please daddy/mummy can I have a helmet, this is a simple fact, it’s not parents stopping their kids from wearing it’s parents forcing helmets on their kids.
For me, it never entered my head, I’ve never worn a helmet in my life, I’ve never felt the need to despite commuting in some urban jungles, high speed dual carriageways/bypass roads and slinging myself down some steep stuff at speeds that have topped out at mid 50s mph. None of my younger siblings did, none of my friends did as kids and when my son started cycling around with his mates circa 2009 at the age of 8 none of them had plastic hats either.
At 10 he was cycling to school down the back road (NSL/8% gradient) with me for the first few weeks and I’d cycle to meet him so we could cycle back together, I had cycled wioth him in the summer on road so that he could build up his confidence to do 20+mph down the descent. After that he was on his own, he managed not to die doing this for 7 years. None of his friends managed to die/get injured and 95% of them didn’t wear helmets and probably because their parents were similar to me. It’s the new gen of parents/cyclists who have fell for all the BS and hype and reacting to the fear mongering and emotive driven pictures, add in promotion of helmets by local authorities and government along with fear campaigns and lies by BHIT et al and you have parents thinking their kids need helmets, yet ignore the fact they’re more at risk elsewhere in society. And yet kids still want to just get on a bike and cycle without fannying around with a helmet, that’s what attracted all of us, the unadulterated freedom.
We let helmets take over as it’s slowly done and we end up just like Australia and NZ, absolute shitholes for cycling and police targetting us and fining us for doing something that harms no-one, pushed off roads (a la A63) and yet more victim blaming.
Allowing kids to just ride now is massively important for the future, helmets as I’ve said before are the singular worst thing to happen to cycling since motors were allowed to go much above 10mph, the negative effect they have had on cycling is seismic!
Genuine question: can anyone explain why a parent would allow a child to get into a car without a helmet but force them to cycle with one? You know because more kids die of head injuries alone in motors in the UK than the total number of kids dying on bikes?
Why, because the agenda driven BS magnifies a relatively insignificant figure into a totally massive shit storm.
1.3Million reported head injuries annually in the UK, circa 300,000 hospitalisations and a tiny fraction of that number are people on bikes yet it’s that group that are targetted to wear the body armour and be chastised, blamed and often ridiculed and excluded for not wearing.
It’s total BS
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
Kids on their own don’t ask to wear seatbelts, go to school, do their homework, or eat green vegetables either. Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t though.
mrtrilby wrote:
The problem with your rubbish argument is that you conflate going to school and eating nutritious food, both of which have proven benefits, with wearing a cycle helmet, which doesn’t.
mrtrilby wrote:
Hahahaha, comedy gold, are you related to Rich _cb, he comes up with some pearlers that are total bollocks too?
No really, you don’t see the massive polar opposite between the damage wearing helmets does to your comparisons, jesus wept!
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
If you’re really claiming that helmets only cause damage and have no positive benefits, then you’re simply wrong, and it sounds like you’re arguing from a position of ideology rather than objective fact. There are arguments for and against the wearing of helmets. How you balance those arguments is an opinion, and not a fact. I would suggest that deciding the balance is not a straightforward exercise, and requires rather more nuance than you appear to be applying.
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
Because there is a difference between absolute and relative risk.
Rich_cb wrote:
Genuine question: can anyone explain why a parent would allow a child to get into a car without a helmet but force them to cycle with one? You know because more kids die of head injuries alone in motors in the UK than the total number of kids dying on bikes?— Rich_cb Because there is a difference between absolute and relative risk.— BehindTheBikesheds
Never mind car helmets, why put a child in a car at all?
I strongly suspect that the choice to use a car for the school run is a more serious health risk than the choice to not use a helmet.
Of course, to work out the comparitive effects needs a lot of data. You could start with about 20-30,000 premature deaths a year due to traffic pollution as several studies have found. Then you’d have to somehow work out how to add in the effect of physical inactivity on heart-disease and other illnesses, with particular reference to acuiring a habit of not engaging in such activity early in life.
Then you’d have to work out what contribution each individual school run made to those death rates. And then finally add in the RTA deaths and injuries.
It’s true this would be _very_ complicated, but then so is the attempt to work out the effect of bike helmets, and the complete inability to come up with a definite answer to that doesn’t seem to have stopped them making a rule about that issue.
Personally, I think its overwhelmingly likely, especially given the pollution deaths, that the car use is a bigger problem than the non-helmet use.
So the school needs to address that problem first. So start by banning the use of cars for school runs for anyone closer than, say, 3 miles? Perhaps electric cars could get more leeway?
Of course it wouldn’t happen because there would be too much parental resistence, which demonstrates the point that this is entirely about power, not health.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
Agree that car use is detrimental to the health of everybody.
Mr BS was specifically talking about head injuries though.
So will the school for parity
So will the school for parity sake be impounding the vehicles of parents for parking on the zig zag markings/pavement, engine running for no good reason, possible infractions of speeding/jumping red lights/close passes/failure to indicate and other incidents of careless driving. Not to mention out of date MOT, no insurance or VED and not being licensed.
So the teachers are bike
So the teachers are bike mechanics as well? Interesting. Parents should clamp teachers cars until this shit stops
Barraob1 wrote:
Senior management’s cars. I expect there are many on the staff facepalming this decision. As an aside at our place the head bought me two workstands, tools and a load of consumables to allow me to help pupils fix their bikes. We had a notice in the newsletter home that winter was in its way so fit some lights please. That’s it.
Doing it all wrong on the
Doing it all wrong on the continent …
from https://twitter.com/mamamoose_be/status/956857128802799616
Stupid school. Here’s some
Stupid school. Here’s some footage a local dashcammer uploaded, of a school a few miles away from me in Altrincham.
Who’s causing the problems here – the cyclists without helmets (including the one pulling a wheelie), or the motorists blocking the road and driving on the pavement?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOp9fVdYE6c
This kind of thing is typical, outside a great many schools across the country. And yet the buffoons in the school force the cyclists to be inconvenienced – not the lazy fatarse bone-idle parents who can’t be bothered to walk a mile to collect their kids. The lazy idiots who sit there in the cold, with their diesel engines polluting the air, as they post updates on Facebook.
Peowpeowpeowlasers wrote:
On any rational scale I can come up with, the driver is bottom of the food chain. In a car you are warm, dry, with comforts and entertainment, while you damage the air and roads, and ruin lives.
In no sane society would they be pandered to – and yet that’s what we have.
Thanks for replies to me.
Thanks for replies to me.
It seems to me that the most likely reason for stopping your child from cycling once a rule to wear helmets was brought in was to make a fuss in the local and/or national media, nothing to do with the child.
If you know the area around FPS you’ll know there is no physical space for a protected cycle lane but there is plenty of work to do around encouraging parents of the two schools on the road from driving (both off which are linked into one MAT in terms of leadership). Perhaps suggesting ways of doing this would be more helpful than accusing the staff of lying, of not caring about child safety or of being nazis? Judging from the number of experts in these comments on road safety, education and parental responsibility we should have sorted it by Monday morning!
JonRogersUK wrote:
Like any of these discussions, it will remain one-sided until you do some research into the negative effects of encouraged/enforced helmet wearing.
Your point about the parent preventing their child riding in protest is facile, and completely misses the very essence of the protest. If you really want to understand, and not just pontificate via the poor disguise of feigned innocence, read some pages not too far from here.
If you only want to pontificate, I refer you to Arkell vs Pressdram.
davel wrote:
Thanks for replies to me.
It seems to me that the most likely reason for stopping your child from cycling once a rule to wear helmets was brought in was to make a fuss in the local and/or national media, nothing to do with the child.
If you know the area around FPS you’ll know there is no physical space for a protected cycle lane but there is plenty of work to do around encouraging parents of the two schools on the road from driving (both off which are linked into one MAT in terms of leadership). Perhaps suggesting ways of doing this would be more helpful than accusing the staff of lying, of not caring about child safety or of being nazis? Judging from the number of experts in these comments on road safety, education and parental responsibility we should have sorted it by Monday morning!
— davel Like any of these discussions, it will remain one-sided until you do some research into the negative effects of encouraged/enforced helmet wearing. Your point about the parent preventing their child riding in protest is facile, and completely misses the very essence of the protest. If you really want to understand, and not just pontificate via the poor disguise of feigned innocence, read some pages not too far from here. If you only want to pontificate, I refer you to Arkell vs Pressdram.— JonRogersUK
The research concerning the negative effects of helmets is far from conclusive or thorough. If your concern is focussed on the “it discourages cycling”, bear in mind that “that’s not proven yet”. Plenty of things potentially discourage cycling, so it’s unhelpful to focus on just one. There are plenty of things that a school can do to help mitigate barriers to cycling, including the “I don’t want to wear a helmet” barrier.
mrtrilby wrote:
The research concerning the negative effects of helmet laws and propganda is rather more conclusive and thorough than the research showing their benefits.
It has been proven many times that helmet propaganda and laws discourage cycling, so you’re assertion that it isn’t proven is nonsense.
You’re right, plenty of things discourage cycling, but the biggest one is safety, and the answer to that isn’t helmets, and since they have no proven benefit, but proven disbenefits, any helmet promotion is wrong and just a distraction from measures that do work.
There are plenty of things a school can to to help mitigate barriers to cycling, but a helmet rule isn’t one of them, in fact it puts another barrier up, on totally spurious grounds.
You might not like it, but this rule was brought in by ignorant, dictatorial people who refuse to face the facts, and won’t tackle the real problems, they just want to look as if they are doing something. If they admitted they were wrong, then they might garner some respect, but they just keep digging themselves deeper.
mrtrilby wrote:
Ditto positive effects. And you know exactly where the burden of proof lies, so this is deflection*
*that’s accurate use of ‘deflection’, Richie.
JonRogersUK wrote:
Eh?
https://goo.gl/maps/Yc5Lxghx8QS2
https://goo.gl/maps/H1KTCa1rTgS2
Jitensha Oni wrote:
Looks to me that there are plenty of railings to lock a bike up to.
No need to take then onto school property so the school should be unable to impose it’s odd regulations on those cyclists.
JonRogersUK wrote:
The kids ride on the pavement.
Difficult, eh?
This is good news.
This is good news.
Perhaps The assistant head, Buckenham, will publish the statistics to show that her actions have improved the accident rate.
Other schools will then have to follow suit.
p33mul wrote:
I doubt she will, becuase she doesn’t appear to have any relevant statistics. Or to understand those she does have.
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
I doubt she will, becuase she doesn’t appear to have any relevant statistics. Or to understand those she does have.— p33mul
That’s my point exactly. Perhaps I was being a bit too subtle.
Stats and experts. Didn’t the
Stats and experts. Didn’t the country decide they were all bollocks in 2016?
Yes, that’s a Brexit reference and I’m here to claim my road.cc socks.
Beecho wrote:
You’ve misspelled ‘cuntry’.
Or ‘Gove’..?
Presumably the same trained
Presumably the same trained roadworthiness inspector will also verify that vehicle that comes to pick up the said dangerous bike is also roadworthy, taxed and insured?
If not then it must also be impounded on the school field.