A tweet from the official Highway Code Twitter account stating that cyclists should wear a helmet has drawn a strong response online and been branded ‘victim blaming’ by Cycling UK.
The tweet, posted on Thursday night, quoted rule 59 of the Highway Code which relates to clothing when cycling.
You should wear
- a cycle helmet which conforms to current regulations, is the correct size and securely fastened
- appropriate clothes for cycling. Avoid clothes which may get tangled in the chain, or in a wheel or may obscure your lights
- light-coloured or fluorescent clothing which helps other road users to see you in daylight and poor light
- reflective clothing and/or accessories (belt, arm or ankle bands) in the dark.
These guidelines are not legal requirements. Points supported by the law use the word ‘must’ in place of ‘should’.
The Highway Code wording explained. pic.twitter.com/OesvoBDgK6
— The Highway Code (@HighwayCodeGB) February 1, 2015
A spokesperson for Cycling UK told the Guardian that the recommendation led to a culture of “victim blaming” of cyclists and allowed careless drivers to evade responsibility.
“Helmets are only really effective in low-impact collisions, we need better infrastructure for cyclists and education for drivers,” they said.
“If you look at places like the Netherlands and Denmark, where there are more cyclists, it’s not helmets that contribute to low death rates for cyclists but roadscapes and townscapes that are designed to keep people safe.”
The tweet attracted several hundred replies, most of which made similar points (occasionally employing rather more robust language).
British Cycling policy advisor and cycling commissioner of Greater Manchester, Chris Boardman, said the message was, “like the 1950s healthy people smoke Marlborough messages – we will look back on in years to come and ask what were we thinking.”
49 thoughts on “Highway Code cycle helmet tweet branded ‘victim blaming’ by Cycling UK”
I’ve had conversations with
I’ve had conversations with work colleugues who think wearing a helmet should be mandatory becasue it will save your life. I try pointing out that a lump of polystyrene won’t help when you get smashed into at 60mph by a driving looking on their phone…
I didn’t get far with this viewpoint, obviously they are so hard headed they don’t need helmets!
Helmets should be optional, it is my choice to wear one, but should I feel like popping to the shop without it then that should still be legal and not a reason to let an innatentive driver off.
mikecassie wrote:
The problem that a lot of helmet promoters have is that they don’t apply the same arguments to walkers and drivers. They judge cycling to be an extremely dangerous activity which it isn’t.
HawkinsPeter wrote:
Because there has been a thirty year campaign to sell helmets by deliberately exaggerating the risks of cycling, ably fronted by that bastion of impartiality, the BBC. Then there’s the DfT, lots of do-gooders like BHIT, and safety obsessed individuals and organisations like the BMA, all of whom prefer anecdote, myth and rumour to fact.
Cycling has the same risk per mile travelled as walking, so why aren’t they demanding that pedestrians wear helmets?
mikecassie wrote:
Wrong, sorry you’re just flat wrong on your view on the effectiveness of helmets.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (and again and again…) helmets can and do save lives. Saved my life, no question. I was smashed into by a car doing around 50mph from behind, catapaulted onto a telegraph pole, suffered catastrophic spinal, pelvic and leg injuries which came within an inch of killing me.
My helmet (Kask Infinity) was dreadfully smashed up and even with it I still suffered a severe frontal lobe brain haemorrhage. I have no idea how my head suffered its trauma as I have complete amnesia from the incident but one thing that is crystal clear is that this ‘lump of polystyrene’ saved my head from taking that impact directly and almost certain death. The surgeons told me as much, that had I not have been wearing that helmet the air ambulance that mercifully took me to them would not have been needed.
RTB wrote:
What would’ve happened if the driver had decided to treat you with more respect and not run into you?
[/quote]
What would’ve happened if the driver had decided to treat you with more respect and not run into you?
[/quote]
Yeah. Promise you there is not a day that goes by when I don’t think about that and lament it.
RTB wrote:
While it may be true that you believe that the helmet saved your life, that is a belief, not an objective fact. Likewise, the surgeons may also believe the same thing, but they are not materials specialists or impact analysis specialists and are ignorant about the epidemiological data about helmets, so are not qualified to comment.
Cycle helmets are designed to work up to about 10mph, and since the energy of a collision increases with the square of the speed, at 50mph it has very little protective effect.
https://www.cyclehelmets.org/1209.html
The fact that you believe something doesn’t make it true, especially when all the reliable data shows it not to be.
burtthebike wrote:
You’re listening but not hearing… burt… Looking but not seeing either. To be fair difficult when your head is buried in sand.
Had I not been wearing that helmet, my head would have taken whatever impact came my way directly, isn’t that obvious? Ergo it saved me, beyond dispute.
Nothing to do with ‘objective facts’ versus ‘beliefs’. That’s just foo-foo speak. It has everything to do with what happened out there in the real world. I am firmly in the James Cracknell camp from bitter, bitter experience but then I guess his helmet didn’t save him either in your parallel world did it because the theory says otherwise?
The car was doing ~50mph (that’s what was admitted in court), Garmin said I was doing 24mph at impact before being accelerated into the pole. Again this is not some theory about what is or is not protected and at what speed, this is about that place and that time, what happened and the aftermath.
I find your last sentence ignorant and dismissive at best, offensive at worst, especially as more than a year down the track I am struggling to live with upshot of this disaster that befell me.
RTB wrote:
I appreciate that you believe that the helmet saved your life, but all the real world data shows it to be vanishingly unlikely. You accuse me of burying my head in the sand, and not listening or seeing, but I’ve spent a lot of time and effort looking at all the available evidence, while you base your position on supposition and belief.
As I’ve already said, and you apparently didn’t understand, cycle helmets are rated to work at about 10mph, and the energy of the impact increases with the square of the speed, so at 50mph, the energy of the impact was many times the ability of the helmet to provide protection.
You dismiss facts as “foo-foo speak” whatever that is, and prefer your anecdote to them, but I’m the one with their head in the sand?
I’m sorry you find my last sentence ignorant, dismissive and offensive, but since it is entirely factual, I’m not sure why. I sympathise with you and hope you recover fully and quickly, but that doesn’t change facts.
Did you look at the link I provided?
RTB wrote:
Same goes for you. Except the facts are on burt’s side.
Your posts on the matter seem to have everything to do with belief and very little to do with facts relating to the effectiveness of a cycle helmet. It may be that your holey polystyrene hat helped reduce the force of the impact and therefore the severity of the injury but you can’t prove it.
I know it isn’t easy but if you try being less offended by someone else’s way of expressing their opinion, which is often it’s due to frustration, then you might benefit from it. Sometimes people appear rude but that doesn’t invalidate what they are trying to communicate.
Particularly liked the tweet
Particularly liked the tweet about Sustainable Healthy Active Green travel.
While I agree that helmets
While I agree that helmets are “optional” they are also “strongly advised”.
While most cyclist fatalities involve motor vehicles, and a heavy impact, the most commor reason for minor injuries is simply falling off or “minor bumps” with other road users of any type. In these lower speed collisions a helmet can go a long way in preventing a “cuts and bruises” incident to being “unconsious after a head injury”
StuInNorway wrote:
But all the helmet propaganda tells you that a helmet will save your life, not that it will save you a few scratches or bumps. As far as I know, there is no evidence that a helmet will convert a serious injury into a minor one, but it may be possible. But helmets do increase the risk of the most dangerous injury, rotational (Diffuse Axonal Injury) and all the reliable evidence shows that helmets don’t reduce risk of death, so if they prevent some deaths, they must cause others. Is it worth wearing something which might save your life or kill you in equal measure?
cyclehelmets.org
StuInNorway wrote:
a boxer could very easily knock you out whilst you are wearing a cycle helmet, just by punching your jaw in the right place, because its the resulting sudden movement of your head and your brain impacting the inside of your skull that ultimately is what leads to unconciousness after a head injury, not the externalised head injury itself. and cycling helmets can do very little to prevent that brain trauma from happening
StuInNorway wrote:
If that were true we would see a reduction of recorded head injuries when helmets are made mandatory as recorded “unconcious after a head injury” accidents became unrecorded “cuts and bruises” accidents. That we don’t anywhere that has made helmets mandatory indicates that the effect you are suggesting does not happen in practice.
Tony wrote:
If that were true we would see a reduction of recorded head injuries when helmets are made mandatory as recorded “unconcious after a head injury” accidents became unrecorded “cuts and bruises” accidents. That we don’t anywhere that has made helmets mandatory indicates that the effect you are suggesting does not happen in practice.— StuInNorway
If it were true you might expect to see a small decrease in those countries where helmet use is not mandated but has increased, such as the UK previously. That we don’t see any clear signal could be due to a number of reasons, it’s not a simple thing to evaluate as Goldacre clearly found, but it would probably be safe to say it’s not made a massive difference. In those places where helmet use has become mandatory the change in cycling demographic would almost certainly make any robust conclusion about that case (and many others) impossible.
I assume the people who are
I assume the people who are so vocal on wearing helmets also follow the following should rules:
Plan their route and allowed sufficient time.
Have sufficient fuel before commencing the journey.
Switch off thier mobile phone (note, not use hands free, or not answer, switch off).
Keep well to the left on right-hand bends.
Drive with both hands on the wheel.
Select a lower gear before reaching a long downhill slope.
And the many other “should” rules in the Highway Code.
Time and time again we see
Time and time again we see similar victim blaming messages issued by the authority which is dissapointing.
I think the issue stems from the risk perception principles and the lack of knowledge regarding the risk control hierarchy:
risk perception principles e.g. the deadly risk caused by car drivers percieved acceptable because:
– it is familiar: road injury is the 8th most common cause of death in the world and all the other causes are diseases (source: WHO).
– it is voluntary: you are on the road in a car/on a pushbike by choice
– in control: you are in full control of your choice of transportation unlike when sitting on a bus/plane as a passenger
– have clear benefits: you get from A to B way quicker than by walking
– distributed evenly: there are no preselected specific groups who were meant to be killed on the road; could be me, you, young or elderly, male of female etc.
– mainly affects adults: 21% of the deceased are children however 93% of these casulities were produced by low or medium income countries and more importantly very few sane parent would let their children to cycle on UK roads at the moment.
the risk control hierarchy for this particular case could be:
– avoid/eliminate/design out risk: completely segregated cycle lanes which take you from A to B the shortest/quickest way possible; you are at no point exposed to traffic so the chances of being killed by drivers are practically 0.
– substitute with less harmful/reduce risk: autonomous cars and reducing the available space for cars –> less cars on the road meaning reduced risk
– engineering controls: speed limiter on cars, sensors on cars which sense the vulnerable and control systems which does minimise the harm caused by car drivers if an accident is likely; Seat has such a system on their cars
safe road layout design prioritising vulnerable road users in areas where cars and pushbike are on the same piece of road: junctions, crossings etc.
– administrative controls: legislation (in favour of vulnerable road users, proper sentencing including lifetime driving bans), training (licence process includes riding in traffic on a pushbike), supervision (sufficient police presence on the roads to address antisocial/dangerous behaviour), information (media is not biased towards drivers but provides a balanced view considering the above points) and signage(blue strip on the side of the road named as ‘cycle super highway’, ‘cyclists stay back’)
– personal protective equipment: helmet, hi-viz, white shoes!
Unfortunately the best control measures are the most expensive which means that the decision makers will be more instrested in you wearing helmet rather than redesigning everything.
I found this depressing
I found this depressing reading. Not just for the poor chap who lost his life, but the campaign that is targeting measures that made no difference.
There are so many other things that would be worthy of campaigning for, like more stringent training for tractor drivers (currently anyone 16 and over with a regular license can legally get behind the wheel). But no, it’s focused on the cyclist.
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/local-news/sister-cyclist-who-died-after-2348187
HoarseMann wrote:
Or more training for the judiciary
https://road.cc/content/news/240901-tractor-driver-who-killed-cyclist-due-error-judgement-when-overtaking-avoids
…it gets worse, the tractor
…it gets worse, the tractor driver escaped jail after trotting out a list of unbelievable excuses. The stretch of road where the collision occurred has a national cycle network road sign warning of cyclists.
https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/local-news/cyclist-making-way-home-killed-2007063
Enough conjecture. How many
Enough conjecture. How many of the 92 cycling fatalities detailed on the internet for 2018 would have been avoided if the cyclist had been wearing a helmet? How many were wearing helmets? How many were wearing suitable clothing? How many were under the influence of drugs or alcohol? How many were killed when the lights were green? How many when the lights were red? I am sure the Department of Transport know the answers but are they saying.
The best safety advice is to assume that all drivers are being paid to kill you and take action to avoid them before they get the chance. The next best is to avoid using A roads as 42 of those 92 fatalities were on A roads.
There are far more safety rules that could be implemented before making helmets compulsory.
Bill Tucker wrote:
Well, the TRL report estimated that helmets could save 16% of those fatalities, a figure repeated often in headlines of the msm, so that must be right. Except that if you actually read the whole report not just the executive summary, you found out that that figure was plucked from the air, they literally made it up and had absolutely no data to support it. They could find no evidence that cycle helmets reduced the death rate of cyclists, which is also the finding of other epidemiological studies in Australia and New Zealand, which have helmet laws.
So no conjecture needed; helmets don’t save lives.
burtthebike wrote:
Yes, that TRL ‘report’, no. PPR446.2009 was full of holes and had the square root of fuck all in hard evidence.
In fact the idiots doing the study just looked at the flawed research that has time and again being shown to be flawed/bias with those doing the research already wanting to find that helmets work or had agenda’s like Jake Olivier who is directly funded by NSW state government (that state which is the worst in the world for punishing cyclists for not wearing helmets so has a vested interest in keeping them).
Data on the rate of killed and seriously injured per billion miles travelled shows that from 2002 to 2012 cyclists had an increase of 19% compared with a general reduction for other road users of 35%
So since the huge increase in helmet wearing, KSIs of cyclists have gone up, whereas for everyone else they’ve dropped significantly. That’s how fucking bad helmets have been in terms of safety, this is repeated in every country with helmet laws or big increases in helmet wearing! It’s repeated in the pro peleton, it’s repeated for the weekend warriors who seem to crash massively more than when they weren’t all in noddy hats.
Yet people still think they need to wear helmets for racing/weekend run, yet it’s the helmet that is having a significant negative effect on behaviour (of both riders and motorists) whilst offering next to naff all protection at the higher speeds/collisions with motorvehicles.!
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
Helmets are a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy; wearing one makes collisions more likely, therefore you need a helmet.
Having come off on two
Having come off on two separate occasions at around 25 and 15mph respectively with the helmet hitting 1) the kerb and 2) the road and the much-maligned polystyrene cracking on impact, I’m happy to to wear the noddy hat. My distinctly un-random sample of two is enough statistics for me. And I don’t need to be profane about it either …
macbaby wrote:
Look in the mirror and repeat “Anecdotes are not data” until you understand it. You can use a profanity in there somewhere if you’d prefer.
macbaby wrote:
I’ve only ever experienced car drivers driving into me when I was wearing a helmet. I’ve had no such experience when not wearing one… does this anecdata prove that wearing a helmet causes drivers to crash into me?
macbaby wrote:
I came off at high speed (over 30mph) about 15 years ago after my front wheel went into a massive hole in the road – hidden by dark shadow and off the normal line as I was avoiding a furry critter shooting out, it was not just wide it was nearly 2 metres longitudinally and a fair depth too.
As I hit the front edge and was sliding down sideways as my front wheel hit fresh air I got flipped (I think the left side pedal dug in too) I tucked my head and impacted on my shoulder dislocating it and tearing lots of muscle tissue, ligaments and tendons. IF I had been wearing a helmet I would have struck my head (I missed the road by a very small amount) and at the very least suffered a serious TBI and a severely damaged neck plus being unconscious in the middle of a NSL road, AT BEST!
Xmas day just gone, I slid out at 5mph negotiating the mini roundabout not 150m from home due to black ice. If I had been wearing a helmet I again would have struck my head, this time on the kerb edge of the roundabout. So a sideways fall replicating the speed of an adult skull when tripping whilst walking. Wearing a helmet would have again guaranteed a head strike, to the side of the head, which is not the strongest part of a cycle helmet for a start off, I would have had a concussive force transmitted through my brain, who knows how this might have turned out. For me my only injury was a was a bruised hip and a scrape to the STI plus a large amount of annoyance at LA for not gritting the road when the temps were clearly below feezing!
My distinctly un random sample is enough for me, I’ll never wear a helmet even if government were to force matters and make it compulsary, I’d rather go to prison than wear a helmet.
Please make sure to wear a helmet at all times though, just in case you have another un random event, I’m sure like most others you’ll have bashed your head and statisically you’re more likely to have a serious head injury whilst not on a bike sans helmet than many activities so best to be safe mate!
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
I swear it wasn’t me!
HawkinsPeter wrote:
Sorry, but we need times, dates, pictures, statements from at least two reliable, non-furry, witnesses and your doubtless flimsy alibi. I seem to remember seeing a picture of a squirrel with tyre marks round about then. Confess! Cardinal Biggles, bring on the comfy chair!
burtthebike wrote:
You’ve nothing on me – I was wearing a disguise at the time.
HawkinsPeter wrote:
I had to re-read BTBS after reading this – for a moment, I thought they’d meant the furry critter was 2 metres long
(do we get Womp-rats in the UK, they’re not much bigger than 2 metres…?)
brooksby wrote:
.
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
This 2 minute video posted in the Forums illustrates your point with a large sample of people, none of whom hit their head.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqo4hwnJt6Y
hirsute wrote:
Xmas day just gone, I slid out at 5mph negotiating the mini roundabout not 150m from home due to black ice. If I had been wearing a helmet I again would have struck my head, this time on the kerb edge of the roundabout. So a sideways fall replicating the speed of an adult skull when tripping whilst walking. Wearing a helmet would have again guaranteed a head strike, to the side of the head, which is not the strongest part of a cycle helmet for a start off, I would have had a concussive force transmitted through my brain, who knows how this might have turned out. For me my only injury was a was a bruised hip and a scrape to the STI plus a large amount of annoyance at LA for not gritting the road when the temps were clearly below feezing!
— hirsuteThis 2 minute video posted in the Forums illustrates your point with a large sample of people, none of whom hit their head. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqo4hwnJt6Y— BehindTheBikesheds
So BTBS would have had a concussive force rather than a potential tensile neck stress, or not, the amount and effect of either we don’t have a clue about, there’s a video showing some people not hitting their heads and I can also provide a number of anecdotal data about various head hits and misses, with and without a helmet, on bikes and skateboards to add to those already given and… we’re still no closer to actually making any meaningful conclusion point about anything. There’s a change.
It was the squirell with the
It was the squirell with the big boobies…
alansmurphy wrote:
Oh Lordy, I expect he will be sharing a picture from the “special” folder on his hardrive.
Mungecrundle wrote:
They’re all special
HawkinsPeter wrote:
OK, thats kind of disturbing…
HawkinsPeter wrote:
They’re all special
[/quote]
Quite a piece of tail, as a certain American president might say.
…..I count five in that
…..I count five in that spot the difference picture.
Just a comment to stop this
Just a comment to stop this thread dropping.
No particular reason.
Mungecrundle wrote:
That’s what this forum needs! More pointless posts.
We have better brakes on
We have better brakes on bikes, we have motors with better brakes and more tech that is supposed to make crashes less likely, they have better/wider tyres, as have bikes, better lights, and yes, despite the infra being crap, more infra that is being utilised.
We already know that there have been a reduction in all other modes EXCEPT cycling per mile travelled, in fact a huge increase, the differential is a 50% swing!!
We can say with absolute certainty that whilst helmet wearing has increased massively in the UK, particularly by those doing the most miles, injuries of cyclists has gone up significantly whilst everyone else using the roads has gone down. It’s pretty cut and dried how helmets are a bag o shite, an absolute sham and a massive failure despite all the other positives.
More crashes, injuries and deaths in the pro ranks despite better tyres, despite better brakes, despite better on course H&S, despite more marshals on course, yup, helmets have worked a fucking treat. You see the same thing in cricket, boxing, most definitely in gridiron, horse riding helmets have not changed a damn thing and neither has skiing despite virtually universal wearing. it’s so bloody obvious yet people are still umming and arghing because of ‘other factors’, yet other factors would improve things as we see with the reductions in injuries of other modes, so the only real difference is helmets!
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
Back to just posting made up stuff again I see.
Bb
Bb
We have better brakes on bikes, we have motors with better brakes and more tech that is supposed to make crashes less likely, they have better/wider tyres, as have bikes, better lights, and yes, despite the infra being crap, more infra that is being utilised.
We already know that there have been a reduction in all other modes EXCEPT cycling per mile travelled, in fact a huge increase, the differential is a 50% swing!!
We can say with absolute certainty that whilst helmet wearing has increased massively in the UK, particularly by those doing the most miles, injuries of cyclists has gone up significantly whilst everyone else using the roads has gone down. It’s pretty cut and dried how helmets are a bag o shite, an absolute sham and a massive failure despite all the other positives.
More crashes, injuries and deaths in the pro ranks despite better tyres, despite better brakes, despite better on course H&S, despite more marshals on course, yup, helmets have worked a fucking treat. You see the same thing in cricket, boxing, most definitely in gridiron, horse riding helmets have not changed a damn thing and neither has skiing despite virtually universal wearing. it’s so bloody obvious yet people are still umming and arghing because of ‘other factors’, yet other factors would improve things as we see with the reductions in injuries of other modes, so the only real difference is helmets!
— Rich_cb Back to just posting made up stuff again I see.— BehindTheBikesheds
He certainly doesn’t know anything about cricket.
quote
quote
“appropriate clothes for cycling. Avoid clothes which may get tangled in the chain,”
But surely they should also have pointed out his horribly baggy trousers too?
RTB I disagree somewhat
RTB I disagree somewhat despite a similar incident without the car…
Studies have also proved that drivers pass cyclists closer when they are wearing a helmet, hence the car may not have hit you. The telegraph pole and your head would have been at totally different points without helmet, your head may have missed completely without the added circumference. Also, the time space continuum relating back to the time it took you to fish your helmet out and wear it may mean you’d have been at a different point of the road (ok so I’m stretching it).
I’m not saying that you’re wrong or that you should be happy/unhappy about the helmet. I had an incident coming down Ventoux, hit a crash barrier followed by a ski pole. The pole made a hell of a mess of the shoulder (surgery still due in 3 weeks, incident 18 months ago) and the side of my helmet looks pretty mashed. I’m glad i was wearing the helmet and glad i didn’t die, however I can’t be sure my head would have hit the pole without the helmet on.
I can’t say it didn’t save my life, simply that it didn’t kill me.
BTBS, similarly, you’ve gone for the ergo hoc logic that doesn’t work. The accidents per mile, safety of cars, wearing of helmets do not work together as you think they do. Yep drivers and pedestrians are doing better, drivers are much more protected and on and on. However, the reasons we are being crushed to death isn’t helmet wearing it’s ever decreasing standards of driving backed up by lack of enforcement, sentences and generally giving a fuck.
Helmets are no more murdering than a magic hat…