I may have found a good reason for a bike helmet!

glynr36 wrote:

bashthebox wrote:

, but clearly your life was just saved by a helmet.

pakennedy wrote:

I clearly just avoided a potentially life threatening injury.

Why does this illogical argument always come out?
You don't know the helmet saved your life, unless you want to go test the hypothesis...

The first one is farcical. The second is correct, as the word 'potentially' is included.

a.jumper wrote:

Looks like the damage is mostly above the ear? If so, it might have missed a smaller unhelmeted head.

In the picture i'm looking at there is a large amount of damage at the rear of the helmet as well as by the the right ear. Assuming that rear damage was caused by the impact ("I got hit across the back of the head") I am at a loss to imagine a head small enough to avoid being hit whilst still large enough to control a bike.

Regardless, best wishes to the OP.

pakennedy wrote:

I clearly just avoided a potentially life threatening injury.

Gets hit on head and accepts helmet "saved me a trip to a hospital at the very least". Decision is not to wear a helmet in the future.

That makes not one shred of sense to me sorry.......

andycoventry wrote:

Gets hit on head and accepts helmet "saved me a trip to a hospital at the very least". Decision is not to wear a helmet in the future.

That makes not one shred of sense to me sorry.......

Read it properly. He didn't say he decided not to wear one.

Quiddle, the odds of this happening are incredibly slim, despite what all the fear-mongers say. Using news websites that report RTCs and individual anecdotes is not the way to come to a logical conclusion. For every "I got knocked off" story there are millions of miles cycled without incident (though that's not to say we should be complacent!).

The benefit of a piece of polystyrene saving you from serious injury in the event of an impact is not great.... and yet I still ponder whether it's better than nothing. Would you prefer the wing mirror to hit your head or the helmet? I don't know. But I'm in favour of choice and vehemently against compulsion.

To the OP: have you had a check-up at the GP? Also sometimes injuries - whiplash or something worse - don't surface until after the incident.

And as for making things feel safe, then join CTC and/or be vocal in calling for better road safety, better infrastructure and better driving. The more people stop tolerating the current attitude (that cars rule and everyone else gets screwed) the sooner things will change. Arguing about helmets will not stop this sort of thing happening.

Simon E wrote:

And as for making things feel safe, then join CTC and/or be vocal in calling for better road safety, better infrastructure and better driving. The more people stop tolerating the current attitude (that cars rule and everyone else gets screwed) the sooner things will change. Arguing about helmets will not stop this sort of thing happening.

Well said Simon E!

andycoventry wrote:

pakennedy wrote:

I clearly just avoided a potentially life threatening injury.

Gets hit on head and accepts helmet "saved me a trip to a hospital at the very least". Decision is not to wear a helmet in the future.

That makes not one shred of sense to me sorry.......

He didn't decide not to wear a helmet for ever, just until he gets around to buying a new one I expect. It was a freak occurrence that will probably happen just once in his cycling history. If we take the argument to its logical conclusion the way to really stay safe and reduce the chance of head injury is to sell his bike and stay indoors. Forever.

pakennedy wrote:

I'm not saying they're a daft idea. Wearing one should be a risk assessment that you take for yourself. I'll be riding around for quite some time without one. There's no point in putting mine on is there? I may be a pavement cyclist in some spots where I'd just have taken primary for a while.

I clearly just avoided a potentially life threatening injury. I would like the roads to be safe for my 10 year old daughter to cycle over the 3 miles on her own to my place. They aren't. I just don't understand how to make things feel as safe as they did in the early 80's when I got the start on my road craft

The main thing is that you're ok and you'll be back on the bike in a bit. Secondly, it's good the cops have found a suspect and from the sound of things, the driver is going to get some pretty serious charges (drunk driving, leaving the scene of an accident and probably driving without due care and attention at the very least). A guilty verdict would result in a ban, a heavy fine and an insurance hike once the licence is returned that will make the person think twice.

Regarding how safe things were back in the 80s though, they weren't. The fatality levels on the UK road network peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There were six times as many deaths from drink driving alone in 1979 than there were in 2012. The difference then was that crashes weren't reported on so frequently, largely because they happened so often.

The increase in cycling fatalities in the UK in the last couple of years is worrying and this is at odds with the overall decline in road fatalities in the UK (and which are now at about the same level as in the late 1940s). I see a lot of comment on this website about how dangerous the roads are for cyclists these days, but they were far, far worse in the 1970s and 1980s.

OldRidgeback wrote:

Regarding how safe things were back in the 80s though, they weren't. The fatality levels on the UK road network peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There were six times as many deaths from drink driving alone in 1979 than there were in 2012. The difference then was that crashes weren't reported on so frequently, largely because they happened so often.

The increase in cycling fatalities in the UK in the last couple of years is worrying and this is at odds with the overall decline in road fatalities in the UK (and which are now at about the same level as in the late 1940s). I see a lot of comment on this website about how dangerous the roads are for cyclists these days, but they were far, far worse in the 1970s and 1980s.

It is strange how misinformed people were about casualty rates on the roads in those days. Deaths on the road were reported, rates were covered and anyway the deaths of acquaintances, friends and relatives would have been noticed.
My parents must have been very neglectful to allow me to ride four miles to school at the age of ten in 1960, along a trunk road. Many parents were as careless of their children as mine. We did not wear helmets or hiviz. Its amazing any of us survived.
No, I don't agree that the roads were far far worse.
How long have you been riding? Do you feel safer and safer as the decades pass? I don't.
Death rates are not a good measure of danger. The animal which kills most Australians is the horse. So best avoid riding, but swimming in the shark infested ocean, or the crocodile infested rivers seems to be much safer.

felixcat wrote:

OldRidgeback wrote:

Regarding how safe things were back in the 80s though, they weren't. The fatality levels on the UK road network peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There were six times as many deaths from drink driving alone in 1979 than there were in 2012. The difference then was that crashes weren't reported on so frequently, largely because they happened so often.

The increase in cycling fatalities in the UK in the last couple of years is worrying and this is at odds with the overall decline in road fatalities in the UK (and which are now at about the same level as in the late 1940s). I see a lot of comment on this website about how dangerous the roads are for cyclists these days, but they were far, far worse in the 1970s and 1980s.

It is strange how misinformed people were about casualty rates on the roads in those days. Deaths on the road were reported, rates were covered and anyway the deaths of acquaintances, friends and relatives would have been noticed.
My parents must have been very neglectful to allow me to ride four miles to school at the age of ten in 1960, along a trunk road. Many parents were as careless of their children as mine. We did not wear helmets or hiviz. Its amazing any of us survived.
No, I don't agree that the roads were far far worse.
How long have you been riding? Do you feel safer and safer as the decades pass? I don't.
Death rates are not a good measure of danger. The animal which kills most Australians is the horse. So best avoid riding, but swimming in the shark infested ocean, or the crocodile infested rivers seems to be much safer.

Official data from the European Transport Safety Commission (ETSC):
Since 1965, the number of road deaths in the 27 nations of the EU has fallen by 67%.

And this:
A study carried out by a researcher in the University of Nottingham reveals improving safety on British roads. The study focused on data from England and Wales and shows that fatality levels in 2009 were 41% lower than in 1960.
The annual death rate on the road networks hit its peak in the 1970s and in 2009 this was roughly half of its highest point.

Pretty much the same story applies to all the nations of the developed west. In 2012, road fatalities in Sweden were at the same level as 1944 (and remember there were few vehicles and even less fuel during wartime even in neutral Sweden). In the US, road fatalities in 2011 were at about the same level as for 1949.

I've been riding a long time, not as long as you it's true. But I get a lot of road safety statistics across my desk at work. There is plenty of research available showing how road deaths are declining in Europe and the US (as well as Australia and Japan) and you can find some of that relating to the UK at least on the DfT website, while the ETSC has plenty of stats on Europe.

The death rate in 1979 from drink driving was six times higher than now.

In the 1970s, road fatalities in the UK topped 7,000/year according to data from the pan-European police body Tispol compared with 1754 in 2011.

You may have felt safer in the good old (bad old) days and I know I did, but you weren't.

The death rate on the road network in developing nations is however spiralling. The UN has a Decade of Action for Road Safety in a bid to tackle the problem.

You spend most of your post asserting something I was not denying: that road death rates are declining. I will give you another fact to bolster that assertion. British road death rates were 13,000 p.a. at their height in the thirties, as against less than 2,000 now. In those days you would find children playing in the street, as old photographs show.
My point, and I stated it explicitly, is that road death rates do not correlate with how safe the roads are. You seem to take it as axiomatic that they do correlate.
You say, without any other evidence, that I was mistaken in my childhood about how safe it was for me to ride to school down a trunk road. This road is now so dangerous that I would not encourage a ten year old to ride it. I was not alone in feeling safe on this road. My parents were happy for me to ride it. They were not unusual. It is a fact that children had much more freedom in those days. Lots of other boys rode to school, unlike today's children. Very few are allowed to cycle these days, though children have not changed and many would love to be more independent.
You need to explain why, if your analysis is correct, so many parents felt able to allow their children freedoms which we could not think of allowing to our children. How can this be, if the roads really are safer? We were not fools in those days.
You should not buy the rubbish of the road safety establishment, that decreasing death rates show the roads are safer.
If you are interested in a different view of road safety read "Risk" by John Adams UCL Press, or "Death on the Streets" by Robert Davis, Leading Edge Press. For me these books make a lot more sense than the bland assurances of the official view that the roads are getting safer.

felixcat wrote:

You spend most of your post asserting something I was not denying: that road death rates are declining. I will give you another fact to bolster that assertion. British road death rates were 13,000 p.a. at their height in the thirties, as against less than 2,000 now. In those days you would find children playing in the street, as old photographs show.
My point, and I stated it explicitly, is that road death rates do not correlate with how safe the roads are. You seem to take it as axiomatic that they do correlate.
You say, without any other evidence, that I was mistaken in my childhood about how safe it was for me to ride to school down a trunk road. This road is now so dangerous that I would not encourage a ten year old to ride it. I was not alone in feeling safe on this road. My parents were happy for me to ride it. They were not unusual. It is a fact that children had much more freedom in those days. Lots of other boys rode to school, unlike today's children. Very few are allowed to cycle these days, though children have not changed and many would love to be more independent.
You need to explain why, if your analysis is correct, so many parents felt able to allow their children freedoms which we could not think of allowing to our children. How can this be, if the roads really are safer? We were not fools in those days.
You should not buy the rubbish of the road safety establishment, that decreasing death rates show the roads are safer.
If you are interested in a different view of road safety read "Risk" by John Adams UCL Press, or "Death on the Streets" by Robert Davis, Leading Edge Press. For me these books make a lot more sense than the bland assurances of the official view that the roads are getting safer.

It's an issue of 'perceived risk' and that's why so many parents don't cycle themselves or allow their children to cycle, as they would have done in the past. At the same time, the real cost of running motor vehicles has dropped.

This issue of perceived risk permeates right through society. These days children don't have the freedoms that I did as a child in the 1970s, though in fact the dangers and numbers of child deaths are far lower than they were then. The 1970s were a terrible time for child mortality and overall safety. Remember, back then Jimmy Saville was thought to be a terribly good chap who did a lot for charity, if slightly eccentric. We know different now.

The UK's road network is a great deal safer than it was in 1979. But most people look back and think how great things were, forgetting how many drivers would have 'one for the road' before leaving the pub or how many vehicles were unroadworthy death traps.

It's easy to look back on golden years, but that's with the benefit of rose tinted eyewear.