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news
Helmet child “We want to make people who don’t wear helmets look the stupid ones”: Sister of teenage cyclist killed in collision with overtaking driver calls for mandatory cycle helmet law
The sister of a teenage cyclist who was killed after being struck by an overtaking driver, causing him to hit his head on a kerb, has called on the government to make wearing a helmet while cycling a legal requirement, telling her school assembly that “I just wish my big brother had a helmet on” the night he died.
A road safety expert, meanwhile, has responded to the youngster’s campaign by noting that, while cycle helmets can lessen the risk of traumatic brain injury in a collision, they “alone do not prevent crashes from happening” and that safer infrastructure is key to preventing fatal collisions.
> Why is Dan Walker’s claim that a bike helmet saved his life so controversial?
15-year-old Riley Ketley was cycling with friends to the shops in the Yorkshire village of Molescroft, Beverley, on 8 April 2021 when he was struck from behind by a motorist who had allegedly “sped up” to overtake the group. Riley suffered a serious head injury in the crash and died hours later in hospital.
“There was just no saving him. He had a head injury to the front of his head and a head injury to the back. He’d hit the car the front ways and he’d hit the back of it on the kerb,” Riley’s mum VJ told the BBC today.
At the inquest which followed the teenager’s death, a friend who was cycling behind Ketley – who had been told he had been accepted into the Royal Marines earlier that day – told investigators that he had pulled out into the middle of the road, as the driver of a Honda Civic “sped up as if overtaking”, leading to the collision.
The motorist, who said he felt “absolutely terrible” about the incident, claimed that he’d moved to the right to give the youngsters as much room as hospital, the Yorkshire Post reported in 2022. He said the group had seen him and moved over to the adjacent cycle lane, when Riley pulled out.
“There was absolutely no warning at all, and I had no chance to stop and avoid a collision,” the driver told the inquest.
After extensive inquiries, the police concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge the motorist, with a forensic collision investigator determining that there was no evidence of excessive speed and that the crash was “unavoidable”.
And this week, Riley’s younger sister Amelia, now 12, has urged all cyclists to wear helmets while riding their bikes, in order to help prevent the serious head injuries suffered by her brother.
“I just wish my big brother had a helmet on that night,” Amelia told her school assembly this week, as part of her campaign, which includes handing out helmets to classmates.
The 12-year-old, who said losing her brother at the age of nine was a traumatic experience, told the BBC that wearing a helmet while cycling should be mandatory by law, in a similar manner to using a car seatbelt.
“We want to make the people who don’t wear helmets look the stupid ones,” she said. “But people don’t wear helmets and you want them to just automatically put them on instead of people having to tell them to put them on.”
> Government shuts down mandatory cycling helmets question from Conservative MP
In December 2022, the Department for Transport insisted that the government has “no intention” to make wearing a helmet while cycling a legal requirement.
Addressing a written question from a fellow Conservative MP, the then-minister of state for the department, Jesse Norman, said the matter had been considered “at length” during the cycling and walking safety review in 2018.
Norman also added that while the Department for Transport “recommends that cyclists wear helmets”, the “safety benefits of mandating cycle helmets are likely to be outweighed by the fact that this would put some people off cycling”.
Responding to Amelia’s campaign for a helmet law, Steve Cole, the director of policy, campaigns, and public affairs at The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), noted that other factors – such as infrastructure – are more critical to ensuring the safety of cyclists on the roads than helmets.
“While everyone has the right to choose whether they wear a helmet, the evidence shows us that they can more than halve the risk of a traumatic brain injury,” Cole said.
“However, it’s important to note that helmets alone do not prevent crashes from happening, and poor infrastructure can often be to blame for collisions.”
Cole also called on the government to “publish its long overdue road safety strategy and to invest in safe infrastructure”.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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130 comments
I for one am very pleased that Oldfatgit survived his awful crash, has recovered enough to get back on a bicycle and hope he can recover more
Thumbs-up.
Saw on a window sticker of a disability-adapted car, asking for consideration from other road users: "We're not an exclusive club - you could join at any time..."
Thank you ktache, much appreciated.
Let's just ignore the fact that cars are killing cyclists.
DRIVERS. Drivers are killing cyclists.
This is what was left of my bike after being hit in 2018. Impact speed was around 60mph as both myself and the car were doing 30mph each.
I suffered life changing injuries in that collision, which have left me needing a stick to walk, and some cognitive impairment following the TBI I received.
I do not owe my life to the helmet I was wearing - I owe my life to the paramedic that gave me CPR every time I needed it and got me stabilised while reinforcements arrived.
I do, however, owe the *quality* of life I have to the remains of my helmet.
The helmet is likely to have reduced the amount of damage my brain received from colliding with the windscreen/roof joint and then - after flying several meters [I'm told, I was out of it by then] - the ground.
I still got a TBi ... but less of one had I not have been wearing the helmet.*
I do, however, support freedom of choice for adults who are old enough to accept the risks involved ... after all, those risks might not come from a car; a squirrel/ cat / dog /small child could run out in front of you at any time and your head could hit the floor.
Next thing you know, your eating dinner through a straw, or can't remember your kids names.. but it's your choice to make, and I fully support your right to make that choice.
* some of you don't like people like me recounting our history.
They call it 'anecdotal' or 'unscientific'.
However ... none of these people have taken up my suggestion of repeating my collision themselves, but sans helmet.
Make of that what you will.
Sadly, helmets are not designed to stop brain injuries.
If you have that much faith that a helmet offers as little protection as not wearing one ... feel free to replicate the collision that happened to me.
And when you've done so, get your carer to let us know the results.
Even if the helmet did nothing, the tester is still going to need a stick to walk, its not a good offer, plus its not fair on the bike!
On the other hand though ...
Because the damage caused by the TBI is likely to have been reduced, at least I *can* walk - albeit with a stick *.
There's every chance that had I not have been wearing a helmet, I might never have walked - or indeed do anything for myself - again.
And yeah, it's really not fair on the bike ...
* the walking issue is physical from having my patella smashed in to 4 peices and then put back together with pins and wires, so it's now significantly larger, uneven and doesn't fit in the groove. Being able to walk as well as I can took 12 months of intensive physio twice a week and a very understanding employer.
So why don't you wear a helmet when you are a pedestrian? - about 1000 people a year in the UK are killed falling down stairs and some more when they trip over and hit their heads on the ground.
Interesting reasoning. We could extend it to show that Formula 1 drivers should also ditch their helmets, since far fewer than 1,000 die from head injuries each year.
If you don't see the differences between F1, Moto GP, ridIng a motor cycle on the roads, mountain biking, road cycling for sport, leisure or utility cycling, walking and going about one's daily life, no one can help you I'm afraid.
Why are you so damned rude? What is your problem exactly?
Helmet zealots' lack of logic and knowledge, as evidenced by your post I responded to, exasperate me I'm afraid.
Bicycle helmets are rated to protect up to 12mph, and since the energy of a collision increases with the square of the speed, at 60mph your helmet is effectively useless.
Inviting people to repeat your damaging experience and then being surprised that they don't take it up is absurd, and your history is unscientific and anecdotal.
"and since the energy of a collision increases with the square of the speed, at 60mph your helmet is effectively useless"
That is a pretty meaningless assertion, since every crash is different. What happens to your skull and brain after a collision is not determined solely by the speed at which you or someone else is travelling.
And yet ...
Here I am.
With a smaller TBI than I would have had, had I not been wearing a helmet.
Please feel free to explain why that would be.
How can you possibly know that, though?
I don't doubt that a helmet is always going to provide some level of protection, but it may well be too small to measure in horrible crashes like your one. Did someone assign actual figures to the with and without helmet scenarios and on what basis where those figures arrived at?
(And I totally agree with ktache and am happy to see you on here even if I don't agree with your helmet statements)
Thank you hawkinspeter ... I'm happy to be here too, and back on a bike.
Given the extent of the rest of my injuries (15 broken bones, punctured lung, and some other soft tissue damage), as well as the TBI, I would suggest that the helmet has done what it was supposed to do.
That the TBI was so small given the rest of the trauma suffered can only really be accountable by two factors:
Luck
Protection
I am not a neuophysoclogist - in fact I probably can't even spell it correctly - and much of what I've read about TBIs, how they are formed, reduction and prevention, goes further over my head than a transatlantic flight at cruising altitude.
I do not fall in to the blind exclamation of "helmet saved my life. Every one should wear one" camp ... and I hope that was clear in my comment.
What I do find rather interesting though, is that the deniers will absolutely not put themselves in the position of proving that the helmet had no place in the reduction of the TBI, by placing themselves in the same circumstances.
If the belief that the helmet had no impact on the size and severity of the TBI, then there should be problem with showing the courage of their conviction.
In the meantime, I'm quite happy to say that the size of the TBI was reduced *because I've been there*. I've got the physical scars, and the cognitive impairment.
I'm also happy to say that adults should be free to choose if they wish to wear a helmet or not... as long as they understand the risks associated with both sides of the fence.
We get hung up on the risks posed by faster, heavier moving motor vehicles, and the 'useless above 12mph' thing gets thrown around like confetti ... but we forget that not all riders do over 12mph, and that not all accidents happen at speed or involve a motor vehicle.
How may of us have suffered the embarrassment of forgetting to unclip at a traffic light ... an easy example of a low speed incident that could easily turn in to someone's head hitting the floor or a kerb stone.
Sorry, but that's the opposite of what makes sense. A helmet denier would not be happy to be involved in a collision with or without a helmet. A helmet advocate, on the other hand, should be prepared to have a collision whilst wearing a helmet, though of course no-one is going to want to be involved in a collision anyway, so it's not really a sensible argument either way round.
Cycle helmets do have their uses (my one has protected me from a few "owies" involving low hanging branches), but again, the problem is that the discussion of helmets and their effects, distracts from sensible discussion of reducing traffic danger and implementing ideas that have been shown to work in other countries.
The BBC is especially problematic as they'll promote (or manufacture) any story that involves focussing on cyclists wearing helmets and won't give the same attention to measures that prevent dangerous driving.
Personally I wear a cycle helmet when cycling, but I recognise that promoting helmet wearing is counter-productive. If we look to other countries that have taken cycling seriously and improved safety, they don't focus on helmets because they're not even in the top ten things that make cycling safer.
I've been in plenty of crashes, including one memorable one in which I fell 50m down a cliff (admittedly ski-ing, not cycling, but still serious). In the majority, I was not wearing a helmet. Slipped on ice while wearing one, and ended up with 3 slipped discs requiring years of treatment. My risk assessments are as valid as yours, and I choose mostly not to wear one. Anecdotes aren't data, but they do inform personal opinion, yes? That's all they can inform.
High Probability Fantasist Alert
And even if the story true, it is irrelevant, since no one is asserting that a lid will prevent slipped discs or stop you falling down mountains.
Perhaps not, but the most famous helmet research (TRT 1989) showed that helmets not only prevented head injuries, they also prevented injuries to the arms, legs and all other parts of the body.
Clearly nothing to do with the fact that the helmet wearing children were riding in the park with their parents, unlike the unhelmeted kids who were riding on the road on their own.
No, it was the helmets.
Here in BC, helmets are mandatory for cyclists, and it doesn't seem to be much of an issue for riders. This law is apparently somewhat loosly enforced, but it is rare to see cyclists without lids. I haven't seen a child riding without a helmet for ages. I suppose that shops and stores selling helmets are happy.
Which is the only detectable benefit from mandatory helmets. Personally, I don't think profit is sufficient reason for laws.
to me the phrase "gave as much space as possible" is problematic. Drivers do not give space to cyclists they are overtaking, they take it from them.
"as much space as possible" also suggests he was closer than he should have been, but something prevented being further away. So of course he absolutely could have left the cyclist with more room, by not overtaking at that moment.
Of course lifting the right foot off the loud pedal and not overtaking NOW, is an anethema to many drivers, and the fact this was not challenged in the court suggests the legal system have bought into the concept as well.
I have 2 very experienced club mates, currently in hospital, who managed to crash without any 3rd party involvement. Admittedly one of them, because of poor road surface. The other, is unknown because the rider cant recall the accident.
In both cases their head injuries would be far worse, probably life threatening, were it not for their helmets.
Accidents come in all shapes and sizes. In many cases the helmet does its job.
The young lass is absolutely right.
How is she right? Just because a helmet can help in a minority of cycle crashes, it doesn't make sense to not be caring about dangerous driver behaviour which is the cause of far more cycle collisions and fatalities. Of course, poorly skilled drivers also hit pedestrians and other road users, so why is it only cyclists that should be getting a message to protect their head? Are pedestrians not worthy of the same level of protection?
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