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

French speed limits are
French speed limits are really aggressively enforced. One trip down to the Vosges to ride for a weekend I got 3 tickets, all in 110kmph zones… 6, 7 and 9 over the limit.

fukawitribe: It’s not
fukawitribe: It’s not fallacious. I’m taking the precise logic that commentators have used (“your life was just saved by a helmet, and you’re still saying they’re a daft idea?”, “it’s better than nothing”, “without a helmet you’d almost certainly have [medical details]. … I’d be shopping for a replacement lid.”, etc., etc.) and am simply applying it in another context, where the only difference is “pedestrian” instead of “cyclist”. If it is fallacious to draw the same conclusion, then *bingo* – you’ve got the point!

The question then is *why* is it fallacious? The only possibilities are that there is some significant difference between “pedestrian” and “cyclist” that makes it an error to swap one for the other, or otherwise that the logic is simply inherently flawed. If the logic is flawed, then it must be flawed for *both* cyclist and pedestrian!

You say the error is that the cyclist, in the specific case of wing mirror strikes, is more exposed to this risk than a pedestrian. Though, I don’t know how we could evaluate this as I doubt statistics are kept on the numbers of pedestrians and cyclists hit by wing mirrors.

Statistics are available for head injuries admissions though and, AFAIK, though there are some small differences, there isn’t a large difference in risk of head injury overall between the two groups[1]. Increased use of helmets may have lead to a small decrease in rates in cyclists though, however the decreases in head injury tend to be accompanied by increases in other injuries[2]. It is not clear that helmets actually make cycling safer, indeed there is evidence the reverse may be true – KSI rates have not decreased amongst cyclists in the UK appreciably, and KSI rates in AU and NZ increased after helmet laws. All these high-helmet-use countries have significantly worse safety than low-helmet-use/high-cycling-rate countries like NL.

So here’s the fallacy: If you argue that helmets make a difference to head injuries, and “every little helps”, then, presuming you accept the evidence that pedestrians face quite similar risks, you *must* also argue that pedestrians should wear them.

I just don’t understand people who try claim that “every little helps” and hence cyclists – and *ONLY CYCLISTS* – should wear helmets when on the road. I’d love to hear them explain their logic, or show *evidence* as to how the general cyclist faces different risks to pedestrians to justify the different safety approach (and merely speculating that cyclists might face some risk that pedestrians doesn’t cut it, given we have actual statistics).

Otherwise, it just seems hypocritical and perhaps part of the UK’s “single out the cyclist” culture (usually for hate) that’s so ingrained, even the cyclists themselves propagate it! Even if that is unintentional on the part of the commentator here, and they are well-meaning. Perhaps it’s some kind of Stockholm Syndrome?

1. E.g. see: http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/9/3/266.long and the DoT KSI and mileage figures.

2. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000145751100008X

movingtarget wrote:Statistics

movingtarget wrote:

Statistics are merely numbers. There can be many different reason why road fatalities have decreased that have nothing to do with the relative safety or lack of safety on the road for vulnerable road users. If fewer people ride dangerous/poorly laid out/low visibility roads, the accident and fatality numbers will decrease simply based on decreased potential for interaction, ie there are fewer highway fatalities for cyclists and pedestrians than city streets which mathematically makes sense because if you’re not allowed to be on a highway without motorized transport (most interstate freeways and state highways in the US make it illegal to use them as a pedestrian and some include bikes too), the possibility of a non-vehicular accident is minimized. Does this mean freeways and highways are safer for bikes/peds than city streets? Unlikely.

I used to cycle on a very busy high speed route near where I grew up. Looking back, I was stupid but then I was young and didn’t appreciate the risk. I take a similarly busy route to my current place of work and though the distance (16 miles) isn’t so much, that busy road and the lack of a direct alternative means I use my motorbike for the commute instead. I do pass a couple of roadies regularly on the way to and from work and I think they’re nuts for cycling along such a busy highway.

It’s all about perceived risk.

The death rate is lower now than it was on the UK network in the 1970s and when I was riding along some of those busy routes, which had fewer cycling facilities. But people didn’t think about the risks back then.

felixcat wrote:fukawitribe

felixcat wrote:

fukawitribe wrote:

The case is being hit in the back of the head with a wing mirror. More cyclists will find themselves in a traffic flow than pedestrians, other vehicles may be travelling faster than the cyclist, the cyclist is often alongside the other vehicles. More ?

The particular cause of head injury is obviously different in different modes of transport. Cyclists don’t often smash their heads into the windscreen for instance. The overall rates of head injury from all causes are what are important if we want to assess the usefulness of a helmet in different modes. These are not significantly different.
Yes, more please.

The point I was objecting to was was the extrapolation from ‘people here seem to think the helmet helped’ plus ‘I know someone who got hit in the head as a pedestrian by a wing mirror’ to ‘that first group will surely argue pedestrians need helmets’. That’s fallacious and I don’t personally agree with the conclusion. As for the more general risk assessment, i’m not really in disagreement with you in general – but the original statement by PaulJ came across as antagonistic nonsense.

Statistics are merely
Statistics are merely numbers. There can be many different reason why road fatalities have decreased that have nothing to do with the relative safety or lack of safety on the road for vulnerable road users. If fewer people ride dangerous/poorly laid out/low visibility roads, the accident and fatality numbers will decrease simply based on decreased potential for interaction, ie there are fewer highway fatalities for cyclists and pedestrians than city streets which mathematically makes sense because if you’re not allowed to be on a highway without motorized transport (most interstate freeways and state highways in the US make it illegal to use them as a pedestrian and some include bikes too), the possibility of a non-vehicular accident is minimized. Does this mean freeways and highways are safer for bikes/peds than city streets? Unlikely.

fukawitribe

fukawitribe wrote:

Proportional risk. Get a grip. If you want me to spell it out to you I will, but surely you can get the basics yourself.

Please spell it out for me. As far as I am aware the risk of head injuries for pedestrians and car users is not much different to the risk for cyclists. The risk is not very different in proportions.

You spend most of your post
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.

I find my helmet very useful
I find my helmet very useful for startling juvenile ewoks.