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Metropolitan Police New Scotland Yard.jpgLondon police stopping cyclists without helmets in "advice & education" exercise
Met Police stopping unhelmetted cyclists to provide “advice and education”
As part of Road Safety Week, the Metropolitan Police is stopping cyclists and lorry drivers in three locations in central, east and south London to offer “education and advice” to cyclists who are seen riding dangerously. Conrtoversially, the police are also stopping cyctlists who are not wearing helmets.
A spokesman for Scotland Yard told road.cc that cyclists were being stopped “where there are concerns about their behaviour - for instance cutting corners, performing other dangerous manoeuvres or wearing headphones while riding.”
He also acknowledged that officers were stopping riders who were not wearing helmets. While there is no legal requirement to wear a helmet while riding a bicycle in the UK, the spokesman said: “If you want to be safe it’s a very good idea to put one on.” That’s an opinion that some in the cycling community might perhaps take issue with.
London Assembly member Jenny Jones told road.cc she had contacted the Met and a superintendent had agreed that helmets and high vis are not required by law.
Baroness Jones said: "The Met’s ‘advice’ on cyclists wearing a helmet and high vis is not based on any scientific research. As an informed cyclist I ride my bike without either. Their efforts would be better focussed on enforcing the laws we have, for example on not driving vehicles while using a mobile, not driving a vehicle into ASLs when the lights are red, which would make our roads much safer.
"Clearing our roads of illegal and dangerous drivers has to be the priority, not hassling cyclists who are obeying the law."
Scotland Yard said that the intention was not enforcement and when asked if, for example, a cyclist riding through a red light would be issued a fixed penalty notice, said that no fixed penalty notices had been issued to cyclists. “It’s about advice and education rather than cracking down,” said the spokesman.
A total of 45 officers are involved in the operation, and police are also stopping lorry drivers. Their vehicles have been checked for any issues and in one instance a lorry was found to have a dangerously over-inflated tyre that left it unfit to continue its journey.
According to LBC, police at one location have stopped 20 HGVs and found a total of 60 offences, including vehicles in dangerous condition and drivers who had been working too long.
Chief-Superintendent Glyn Jones, who is in charge of the operation, told LBC: "If you're going to cycle in London, wear a helmet, wear high-vis, make sure your bike has the right lights, don't wear headphones and obey the rules of the road.
"That way you will be a lot safer."
In a ten-day period to last Thursday, five cyclists were killed in collisions with large vehicles on London's roads. It is not known how many of them were wearing helmets or whether their riding was a factor in the crashes.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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130 comments
I've no problem with the police stopping me and providing me with some sound advice about staying safe but in this case some of the advice they are giving is not necesarily sound.
The advice about headphones is good, advice about being visible (not necesarily high-vis) is also good, as has been discussed on here many times, helmet wearing is a double-edged sword which reduces risk in certain circumstances and increases it in others.
To be fair, its not the police at fault here but the highway code. The advice they are giving is based on the highway code and they don't have anything else to go on.
It does worry me that this enforces the creaping compulsion that we are seeing. If this sort of thing becomes a regular occurance riders will recognise that wearing a helmet = not getting stopped. Although this doesn't ammount to compulsion it could modify cyclist behaviour to some extent.
I've no problem with the police stopping me and providing me with some sound advice about staying safe but in this case some of the advice they are giving is not necesarily sound.
The advice about headphones is good, advice about being visible (not necesarily high-vis) is also good, as has been discussed on here many times, helmet wearing is a double-edged sword which reduces risk in certain circumstances and increases it in others.
To be fair, its not the police at fault here but the highway code. The advice they are giving is based on the highway code and they don't have anything else to go on.
It does worry me that this enforces the creaping compulsion that we are seeing. If this sort of thing becomes a regular occurance riders will recognise that wearing a helmet = not getting stopped. Although this doesn't ammount to compulsion it could modify cyclist behaviour to some extent.
The slight problem with ASLs, as GMP handily revealed last week, is that whilst PCSOs can pull cyclists for all sorts of bullshit reasons including "dangerous weaving", a PCSO can't do anything about a car in an ASL.
It needs to be a proper police officer, and he needs to be able to see that the light was on red and be able to see the driver as he enters the ASL. At the same time.
CCTV footage can't be used.
In short, there is no way of nicking someone for this offence.
Mint!
(This may only apply to Greater Manchester though).
Agreed. Though, just like the lorries, that illegality should see them also prevented onward travel.
Your first link is for a study by the University of New South Wales, which doesn't really help your cause as since as since they have introduced mandatory helmet laws the levels of cycling in Australia have plummeted, I believe NSW themselves saw an almost 50% drop in young people cycling and there are probably just as many studies from Australia that contradict the study you have posted as there are studies to support it. There is no conclusive proof either way.
Cycling in Australia hasn't become safer, however, the mandatory cycle helmet laws have created a whole heap of criminals.
So, rather than calling myself and others ignorant, to go along nicely with your earlier comments of stubborn and stupid, perhaps you could explain to me why you are so keen to turn me in to a criminal for not wearing one of your super magic hats?
Please, take the time to read this bit: I am not telling you that you shouldn't wear a helmet, I'm not telling you that you can't wear a helmet, I want you to explain why exactly you want to take away my right to choose, why is it that you would like to criminalise my daily routine because you have placed all your belief in to something that has not been conclusively proven to be of benefit?
CL but the article is "London police stopping cyclists without helmets in "advice & education" exercise" so it is a relevant discussion in the theme of article, plenty of scope to discuss the other factors leading to this police measure.
There's plenty of people who "get it" long before you waded in but as per usual these comments section divert into a free for all by people who should know better...
Well, shouting and swearing where the police are involved will get you arrested, so I agree its not the best way to respond to this!
But its not about 'paying attention to cyclist safety', because the helmet issue is not what causes road-related deaths. This is about making a show of doing something, but making sure it looks"even handed" so as not to antagonise motorists. It looks like a case of just joining in the victim blaming and looking as if they are doing something.
Good piece. Thanks.
A good test of helmet efficacy would be to make them compulsory, so that the wearing rate went up by a large amount, say 30% to 95%. We could then see whether the cyclist casualty rate went down.
If the claims by helmet enthusiasts are correct, claims of up to 85% efficacy, it would show. there could be no dispute about whether helmets work.
This "experiment" has been tried, in Oz and NZ, on large numbers of cyclists. The result was no change in casualty rates.
You may be sure helmets would save lives but the evidence is against you.
If you want to force me into a foam hat you need better evidence.
To be honest, I'd say 'using a bike to get around' makes you a cyclist. Much more so than using a bike as a kind of sport does. To my mind a 'cyclist' is someone who uses a bike as their primarly means of transport, rather than as a sport, hobby, or weekend leisure activity.
But that's pure nit-picking.
But your point shows the problem - you refer to stopping those COMMITTING OFFENCES. Cycling sans helmet is not an offence. Its akin to 'driving a motorised vehicle', in terms of choosing to create a possible risk of adverse health outcomes. So why are the cops not stopping all those who choose to drive a motorised vehicle and asking them to reconsider their choice to do so?
image_191.jpg
Would you be happy if, at the same time, they also gave out advice to women about dressing appropriately to avoid sexual assault?
Saw a police car drive into an ASL while the lights were red just last week. Third time I've seen this at the same junction in the last couple of months.
When are the police going to 'crack down on' the police?
Your ignorance is displayed clearly in your dismissal of scientific evidence irrespective of it source? FACTS chosen to be ignored unless it suits the anti-helmet debate.
Stupidity is exhibited in the believe that your thick head will be better protected by a merino cap than a engineered protective helmet? And I look forward to probably reading the probable "as many" contradictory scientific studies (not statistical manipulations or anecdotal papers)
My original post was quite benign but I respond with rhetoric relative to the flaming I received. Thank you for validating my subsequent post.
Continue with your choice to not wear a helmet but DO NOT impart your ill informed believe up on others that a helmet will not improve safety or indeed make unsafe.
That'll be the "guide the thinking" bit, and the "get the right resources and actions put in place" bit ;o)
The Ontario study is the most interesting. A mandatory child helmet law doubled child helmet wearing and the child head injury rate fell. But the police didn't bother enforcing it so over the next three years helmet wearing fell back to the pre-law levels. And the child head injury rate continued to fall. In fact a doubling (to almost 100%) of the helmet wearing rate and then a subsequent halving of it made no discernible difference to the long term trend in child head injuries.
That's quite an odd definition and probably the opposite of how I would define a cyclist. A cyclist is someone that appreciates the beauty in cycling, and knows it for the joy of descending 14km down a mountain, the thrill of putting 2 wheels through its paces on a dirt track and has learned the craft of riding in a group.
A cyclist is not some that spent £300 on hybrid to get from A to B. That is the least romantic and enjoyable way to use a bike, and the most perfunctory. Even just using the bike to go to a coffee shop or supermarket is a more romantic and enjoyable. You've made much more of an effort to use your bike in a fashion which isn't workman like.
The problem that 'commuters' (and by that I mean people who only use there bike for perfunctory matters) is that they don't see their bike as much more than a means when actually is it so much more. Also, you lose out on the social aspect, learning from other riders and enjoying the experience in a social way. Have a chat on the club run is far better than the abuse you'll get riding in commuter traffic.
Most people who 'use it as weekend leisure hobby' would love to use their bike all day everyday. Weekends are just the times when you get to express that by getting up early when there's less traffic to bother you and cycling becomes less fraught.
If you are going to make swipes at my intelligence, you should probably learn the difference in spellings for belief and believe.
Secondly, writing the word 'facts' in capital letters doesn't actually prove anything, it doesn't actually confirm the veracity of what you have said or written or make it "more true". At best it's lazy, like putting "end of story" or similar, at worst it makes you look like someone on the verge of a meltdown, like Rafa Benitez when he had his "fact" wibble.
I also noticed that you ignored my asking you to explain what it is that is driving your desperation to make it illegal to get on a bike without wearing a polystyrene hat. Just why is that?
My degree is in mechanical engineering not English, I apologise for my poor grammar. I won't apologise for supporting the use of bicycle helmets in the vain hope of a reduction of injury (not a reduction of accidents which is a different debate and equally if not more important) I thought my posting of links quickly garnered on a google search with positive results of the reduction of severity of impact through wearing of helmets was answer to your question? Why exactly do you think we shouldn't? Answer me that?
Challenging discussion with no right/wrong answer that you and I will resolve and sadly with or without helmet this will not stop the tragic devastation on our roads.
You know, you've completely convinced me. Like you and your brother I will be always wearing a helmet when I undertake activities as risky as riding a bicycle: going down stairs, crossing the road, getting out of bed etcetera.
I hope you will join me in my campaign to awake other head users out of their dangerous state of ignorance? I will be posting links which I don't understand onto pedestrians that I meet in the street (using PostIt notes) and will be assisted in this by similarly educated police officers. I expect that we will meet a good deal of resistance to the SCIENCE FACT which we will be sharing, but that's how it always is with martyrs like me.
By the way, did you know that masturbation makes you go blind?
Risk assessment yields a factor based on severity of injury x likelihood of occurrence x exposure. You work out where and when to wear a lid?
Why such strong flaming towards the support of use of helmets? Lets take away the civil liberty infringement in mandatory wearing and please explain to me why someone would not wear one given choice? Is it believed they are less safe or no percieved improvement in safety? I would welcome a straight understanding without sarcasm, please.
Yes. That's the point. Exactly.
And by the way, where do you and your brother get your pedestrian helmets? Have you ever considered motorcycle helmets?
Ush I'm afraid I'm missing your point?
Exposure at home = low
Exposure cycling = high
I got my cycling helmet @ LBS and I always wear motorcycle helmet on my motorcycle, I find too hot for cycling, not enough vents. I wear AM or DH lid when hitting the gravity muddy stuff if you interested in?
Do helmets make it safer to cycle?
Answer: No one knows.
There is evidence to show that people who feel they are safer take more risks, thus making the chance of an accident higher, there is evidence to say that other road users are more careful around cyclists who do not wear helmets, because they are less protected.
So maybe helmets make the wearer less safe because they take more risks because they percieve themselves as safer.
Maybe Helmets make the wearer less safe because car drivers see them as more protected and so less important to be careful around.
But the evidence isn't really conclusive so well it is as much down to opinion.
What if instead we think; What is the efficacy of a helmet?
First read up the information about helmets you get with one.
A helmet will only help you if it fits, if it is worn correctly, if it is in-date, and if you land on your head (at a velocity within the helmet's ability to dissipate the energy which is not infinite.)
That is a lot of ifs.
It also means that we don't really have any way of telling if helmets are effective.
If someone has a crash dies and was wearing a helmet, is it because helmets are not useful in crashes?
It could easily be because they weren't wearing it correctly. (I see plenty of incorrectly worn helmets every day when I ride) Often it can be because they are the wrong size.
Helmets are good for a few years after that they need to be replaced, how many helmets do you think are in use that are out of date?
And maybe the crash was just not survivable with or without a helmet.
Most of these issues mean that in any accident where a helmet fails to protect the cyclist means that its not the helmets fault it didn't, its because the helmet wasn't used correctly.
How much energy can a bicycle helmet disspate? In a simple impact in the most idealised situation on a flat surface no sharp edges, with a normally massed person, how much energy can be disspated, and hence, what is the maximum velocity that a helmet can absorb the energy from a crash?
Does anyone know. Is this data available somewhere? I guess its defined by the BS standard for bicycle helmets.
In an idealised low speed crash where you land nicely on your helmet, and there are no spiky bits, no corners, then I expect there is a chance a helmet can help.
Is this what the mandatory bike helmet is required for, idiots falling off bikes at slow speeds? No the helmet is being touted as a solution for riding in traffic where speeds of cars are 30 mph+, cars weighing 2 tonnes, busses, and lorries even bigger. That can impart a greater amount of energy to you and your head that a bike helmet will not help you survive. Well maybe I mean maybe your body gets run over but by some fluke your head only has a slow impact with the ground thus saving your brain cage. Alas this is not the kind of safety we were looking for. If you die of other injuries it is no good if your brain is OK.
So what we have then is a bicycle helmet which has no proof that is is actually making cycling safer. Of course everyone knows wearing a helmet makes things safer. Just like we all know the earth is flat, the sun goes around the earth. and all those other patently obvious things we don't need to question.
Plenty of people wear a helmet to be safe whilst simultaneously not wearing them correctly, wearing then when they are out of date, if they've been accidently damaged (they're expensive man) Or in conditions that they don't help.
Helmets are as often a safety placebo as anything else.
What if we consider the likelihood of experiencing a fatal head injury?
Most fatal head injuries happen in the bathroom, more fatal head injuries occur to car drivers and pedestrians than to cyclists.
So our situation is this.
We don't know if helmets are safer.
We do plenty of more dangerous things without wearing a helmet.
We typically do not use helmets in a way which actually allows them to work anyway.
The illusion of safety can cause helmet wearers to take more risks and car drivers to take more risks around cyclists.
We know that many people do not cycle because they feel they should wear a helmet.
Yet we have no proof that helmets are actually beneficial to cycling.
See this is the argument.
There is no proof or data and little chance of it occur, there is plenty of opinion, and poor studies.
In the end the more important thing is to cycle like a small god on wheels, so even if there is a SUV with an person with an attitude problem in it, they wouldn't dare hit you as they can see as you ride, you are a bronzed colossus who stands astride, not only them,but all of mankind, indeed you may in fact be the very personification of god in human form, and so they will completely not run you over and may even give you a thumbs up because you are so awesome.
All you need to do is ride a cool bike, wear a silly hat and smile a lot.
These things will save you from death on a bicycle.
Darran,
Note those studies are of impacts on helmets in constrained laboratory conditions. There is no doubt that helmets can be shown to reduce forces transmitted in lab impacts. Also, there is little doubt that some real-world accidents will be similar to those lab impacts.
However, safety and injury prevention in the real-world is about *much* more than just a head-form striking a flat surface or an anvil in a drop test. There are *many* more factors at play:
- the heads have brains that can control the situation, and also can respond in unexpected ways to perceived changes in risk.
- the environment contains other actors who also have brains, and can show similar odd adaptations to how they perceive others and risks.
So there are quite a few reasons why results seen in controlled, drop-test lab studies need not transfer to the much more complex and variable world of human reality. Indeed, because the humans may adapt in strange ways due to risk compensation, the reliance on helmets can even lead to perverse results, contrary to what would be hoped from the lab studies.
Now, the *real-world* data overwhelmingly shows that helmets DO NOT solve the problem of cyclist safety. Indeed, there is actually an *inverse* correlation between levels of helmet use and cyclist safety, and cycling participation. Helmets laws in particular have a devastating effect on cycling participation, but the correlation exists even in non-law countries (e.g. UK).
That's not to say wearing a helmet, of itself, can make any single cyclist less safe, but certainly at a broad, societal level, strong cultures of helmet use are a clear symptom of *failure* when it comes to cyclist safety. The real-world experiments have been done now, and the results are crystal clear:
Helmets WILL NOT fix cyclist safety problems in a society.
To advocate otherwise is to advocate against extremely clear data from those countries that have tried, be it with helmet laws or with strong cultural pressures on cyclists to wear helmets (e.g. the UK). To advocate for helmet laws is to advocate for a measure that has been *proven* to be useless at saving cyclists, but proven to be excellent at *destroying* cycling.
If they can stand by the roadside and flag a cyclist down to advise then to wear a helmet they can bloody well stand beside a set of lights and give the driver a bollocking for encroaching the ASL.
It's a pity for your argument that cycling rates haven't plummeted in Australia, and NSW didn't see a 50% drop in young people cycling because the study you are presumably, vaguely, quoting from in a kind of folklore way, was done in Melbourne and showed only a minor drop for school age kids (and no study of why that might've been the case) and the other Australian study beloved of anti-helmet activists in the UK was withdrawn by the journal that published it after it was proven to be completely wrong.
As for cycling not being safer in Australia after mandatory helmets the facts say otherwise.
Every working day I see hundreds of people on the London underground, on autopilot, headphones in, iPhone taking their full attention and apparently unaware that standing on the edge of a platform with a 3 foot drop onto 650v rails and big trains coming through is dangerous.
The hazards should be obvious but the everyday routine if it seems to blunt their awareness.
Equating this to cycle commuters is it unimaginable that a percentage of them are equally on a form of autopilot? Does anyone teach you to ride in traffic? Could it not be that a few moments speaking to plod may be beneficial? It should be perfectly funking obvious that riding with headphones is a bad idea but clearly to many people it isn't.
What I'm trying and failing to say is that first of all, common sense isn't all that common, and also that there are possibly many people who use bikes but apply little thought to it. Much the same as the differences between the petrol head speeders, the super straight IAM types and the distracted school run mum type drivers, could there not be the same diversity in cycle users?
Besides, I doubt that plod are as persistent as your average high street chugger if you aren't interested and if you've not committed an offence then I'm sure they'd hardly run after you if you didn't want to stop.
Had plod done nothing then they'd be criticised for that too.
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