“Reckless” taxi driver who left cyclist with life-changing brain injury avoids jail

That is interesting (and makes sense too)! But does the rule even bear on cyclist head injury cases? After all, it is not a question of "unexpected frailty" (compared to the average skull).

Would be good if road.cc could write a decent article about how that plays out with helmets/cyclists compared to helmets/pedestrians. Why are helmets a factor for cyclists injury legal cases, but not for pedestrian cases? Is there any legal justification, or has it just been allowed to creep in unchallenged?

And I don't mean in the court of public opinion, but rather in actual court cases. And would the situation be changed if helmet wearing was made compulsory, like seat belts for motorists?

Tom_77 wrote:

There's a legal rule that defendants must "take their victims as they find them" (Eggshell skull rule). So I'd hope the judge wouldn't be swayed by the shameless victim blaming from the defence laywer.

This should be the de facto logical stance.
Unfortunately, victims are apportioned blame, even if they in no way contributed to the collision, due to "contributory negligence" of not wearing a helmet... purely because it is recommended in the Highway Code.

Perverse that this is not also recommended for motor vehcile occupants or pedestrians.

ChrisB200SX wrote:

Unfortunately, victims are apportioned blame, even if they in no way contributed to the collision, due to "contributory negligence" of not wearing a helmet... purely because it is recommended in the Highway Code.

[/quote]There has been a single case where contributory negligence has been found by a court, in such peculiar circumstances that it does not make case law.

Unscrupulous insurance companies will try to reduce compensation paid by claiming it, but they always withdraw if you stick to your guns.

Perversely, wearing bicycle helmets inside a motor vehicle probably makes more sense to surviving an accident than wearing one on a bicycle..

Quite. Helmets aren't designed to cover the results of vehicular impact. Without knowing the trajectory of the person, is it reasonable to suggest that the helmet was able to cope and that the nature and direction of the impact was within scope of the helmet's capacity to mitigate injury. That is an engineering question, not an anecdotal evidence question, so the doctoir should not have been providing "expert" opinion, as no doubt this would have been perceived. 

A helmet is designed for a passive drop head height while cycling. As soon as you impart energy into the head with an impact you are going to create some sort of different impact, energy and trajectory. We might as well say, if the cyclist had been wearing a towel round their head or a bucket full of tennis balls their injuries may well have been reduced.

There are plenty of people who end up with severe injuries wearing a helmet. The only factor here is one of law - did the person suffer a severe injury due to the unlawful driving of another person? Yes. Was the other person riding in  or attired in an unlawful manner? No. Guilty. Helmet irrelevant.

Assessing damages for the insurer as a consequence - was there contributory negligence? Lawyerly argument may now ensue.

Another point to consider is that bike helmets don't provide much help in averting brain damage (typically caused by the brain sloshing against the skull) - they're better at preventing skull fractures. They would need more cushioning to be effective at preventing concussion etc.

But is this really true? A bicycle helmet WILL reduce the acceleration experienced by the head in many lower velocity impacts and so also the brain inside it.
Chose not to wear a helmet because you like the increased freedom and sense of awareness, but it is very wrong to justify it with incorrect statements that may mislead others.

Robert Hardy wrote:

But is this really true? A bicycle helmet WILL reduce the acceleration experienced by the head in many lower velocity impacts and so also the brain inside it. Chose not to wear a helmet because you like the increased freedom and sense of awareness, but it is very wrong to justify it with incorrect statements that may mislead others.

Well, a bicycle helmet will reduce the linear peak acceleration, but the person's head will still need to decelerate from cycling speed to a stop so the total acceleration is the same. Luckily, the peak deceleration is what we're interested in, but the torque effects are also very important when it comes to brain (as opposed to skull) injuries. Newer helmet designs are attempting to address the rotational component with technologies such as MIPS, but the amount of protection is still far too small to help with RTCs.

From: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6928098/

Quote:

Bicycle helmets effectively mitigate skull fractures, but there is increasing concern on their effectiveness in mitigating traumatic brain injury (TBI) caused by rotational head acceleration. Bicycle falls typically involve oblique impacts that induce rotational head acceleration. Recently, bicycle helmet with dedicated rotation-damping systems have been introduced to mitigate rotational head acceleration.

Some other details here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S000145750200012X

Found this article which does some tests of bike helmet rotational systems: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-11559-0

Whether or not people choose to wear cycle helmets (I do wear one), it's important to be aware of their limitations as otherwise there's the unintended consequence of risk compensation - cyclists feel safer with a helmet, take more risks and thus can have more collisions. Arguably, people pushing helmet wearing for cyclists could be unintentionally causing more incidents as cyclists can have an inflated sense of protection.

Acceleration is the rate of change in velocity, not the change in velocity. Your unprotected head hitting the hard pavement is subjected to much higher acceleration than if that impact is mediated by 2cm of energy absorbing foam. As for rotational accelerations, the cradle of the helmet and shearing of the foam allow some mitigation in many circumstances. In my time as a climber we have seen the widespread adoption of improved head protection, both against direct impact from falling stones and more recently from dynamic impacts with the rock in falls. Unlike anti helmet cyclists, who in this regard are very like those motorists in the 1980s who argued vociferously against seat belts, few climbers indulge in spurious arguments quoting the uselessness of the helmet when hitting the ground head first from 30m.

Former climber here.  I do note the change in the growing use of very similar materials to cycling helmets (e.g. more energy absorbtion).  Yes, physics and biomechanics are physics and biomechanics.  However climbing is a very different sphere of activity from cycling though.  Especially "casual cycling for transportation".

Climbing is very much an (occasional) recreational activity - with risk awareness and how much you accept and how you manage it being a distinct part of the game.  And as for "spurious arguments" at least when I was at it there were quite a few climbers who made definite choices about when they did and didn't wear hats.  (opinionated folks, like many current UK cyclists...)

Personally I was almost always (hard) hatted but that was for slightly different reasons than apply to cycling.  I've a tendency to bang my head on things anyway (I don't when cycling).  A non-harmful knock while climbing can cause you to come off. There was also the need for protection against small debris from above - sometimes from "helpful" spectators (or oiks), a clumsy partner dropping gear etc.

Little of that applies to cycling - it's only at the point when we get to "protection during a fall" that the two start to overlap.  In that case your comparison is closer.  However climbing is an activity where in many cases falls are accepted or a relatively frequent event (they're a given in sport climbing).  Not so much in cycling outside of certain sport disciplines (crashes in pro peleton / velodrome, mountain biking, cyclocross...).  See e.g. this Dutch roundabout or this very busy street for how it looks when many cycle.

As noted - in some senses this "casual" cycling is where modern cycle helmets would be most useful.  However the same argument applies to people on foot - that level of fall is all a cycle helmet is rated to protect against.

Again - as for "spurious" I guess you're referring to a "major fall" which is probably similar to "hit by a fast motor vehicle" or "ran into a wall during a 30mph+ descent" - where the PPE is irrelevant as it's far overmatched by the force of impact.

None of that I would disagree with, I am absolutely against the suggestion of cycle (and climbing) helmet mandation, however I was responding to what I consider dangerous misinformation. There are plenty of cycle accidents where a helmet offers sufficient protection to potentially make the difference between a scare and life changing injuries, just as it might in those handful of tragic fatalities where a pedestrian is knocked down by a cyclist; it is irresponsible to deny that is so, particularly on the basis of a serious misunderstanding of even the most basic physics and biomechanics involved.

Agree.  Through observation / my own risk analysis I ended up wearing a climbing helmet as standard for that but have almost binned the cycle one - but I spend a lot of time on safer infrastructure!  (Maybe I'll dust off the helmet again now it's getting frosty though!)

The reason for "contentious" is that - it seems - helmets are (currently) somewhat of a turn-off for getting mass casual cycling.  Statistically the health benefits of mass cycling* far outweigh the additional expected injuries given number of people involved.

Secondly people are easily triggered by this since it is very common to find people proposing to fix systemic road safety issues with with PPE.  Or using "lack of PPE" as an excuse for any number of ridiculous assertions.  The equivalent of "yes, my client admits they were glissading / rolling boulders at the top of an avalanche-prone slope, but when the victim was dug out some hours after the accident they sadly weren't wearing a helmet, therefore they must bear some responsibility..."

* Assuming the conditions necessary for it to happen at all e.g. good quality protected infra.

Robert Hardy wrote:

Acceleration is the rate of change in velocity, not the change in velocity. Your unprotected head hitting the hard pavement is subjected to much higher acceleration than if that impact is mediated by 2cm of energy absorbing foam. As for rotational accelerations, the cradle of the helmet and shearing of the foam allow some mitigation in many circumstances. In my time as a climber we have seen the widespread adoption of improved head protection, both against direct impact from falling stones and more recently from dynamic impacts with the rock in falls. Unlike anti helmet cyclists, who in this regard are very like those motorists in the 1980s who argued vociferously against seat belts, few climbers indulge in spurious arguments quoting the uselessness of the helmet when hitting the ground head first from 30m.

I'd guess that rock climbing involves a significant risk of pebbles/rocks being dislodged above you, so head protection makes a lot of sense. I'm doubtful that a helmet will do much to help a 30m head first drop though.

I'm not disputing that 2cm of material is better than nothing in a crash, but the issue is with the benefits of helmets being exaggerated (also risk compensation can mean the difference between crashing or not). They're not designed and tested to withstand a RTC, but that's what people are proposing that they're used for.

As for misinformation - are you disputing the sources I provided? If you have some credible debunking info, then it'd be good to see it.

87 kph.
Sounds fatal due to neck, spinal injuries.

Falling a decent distance quite often leads to disintegration - you hit things on the way down.

This chap has managed to land some long-ish falls and is still alive.  Legally disabled now apparently though you can't tell by looking.  No comment on whether he was wearing a helmet but if you look at the pictures you can probably draw your own conclusions.

chrisonatrike wrote:

Falling a decent distance quite often leads to disintegration - you hit things on the way down.

This chap has managed to land some long-ish falls and is still alive.  Legally disabled now apparently though you can't tell by looking.  No comment on whether he was wearing a helmet but if you look at the pictures you can probably draw your own conclusions.

I believe the elite rock climbers don't often bother with climbing helmets, but  that may be to do with climbing overhangs as they'll likely have less chance of having rubble land on your head. There's also less chance of climbing equipment being dropped by other climbers if you're the only one there.

You'd be surprised how some people can survive falls that you'd otherwise think were fatal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc8ngiMlCto

hirsute wrote:

87 kph. Sounds fatal due to neck, spinal injuries.

That's what I'd reckon

(sorry, duplicate post - deleted)

Gus T wrote:

The difference between wearing a seatbelt and wearing a cycle helmet is that one is mandatory and one is recommended.

Also, one is designed for collisions with cars and one isn't

Both are mandatory in Australia; makes it easy to spot bogans on bikes, as bogans never wear helmets..

grOg wrote:

Both are mandatory in Australia; makes it easy to spot bogans on bikes, as bogans never wear helmets..

Sounds like the mandatory helmet law is more about class divisions than safety.

The helmet law is also abused to target minorities (e.g. aborigines) and as a pretext for stop and search: https://www.uow.edu.au/media/2019/over-the-top-policing-of-bike-helmet-laws-targets-vulnerable-riders.php

Sounds very divisive to me, but then I do find Australian society to be very divided.

Will sentencing increase as incidents under the new HWC change the law's perspective on vulnerable road users?

No. The 'new' HC has been ignored by the police, which has given all drivers the nod to ignore it too

I had the pleasure of recently witnessing a police van being forced to abide by the new hc by a determined pedestrian and a healthy number of witnesses.