End of debate?

I’ve been similarly
I’ve been similarly dismissive about plastic lids not so much about them as a piece of safety equipment, but as a distraction from the real issue.

They can be debated as a piece of safety equipment. Even in the discipline, it looks to me as though full-face mtb-style helmets are superior. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they don’t help in certain circumstances, but criticisms on their effectiveness and the deterrent factor – they’re not the realm of flat earthers.

But the main reason I disparage them is because they don’t stop what kills cyclists, which is being driven into. Pushing a helmet agenda right now is like standing in 1939’s Poland and being offended by the invading Nazis’ uniforms (there’s the Godwin, if anyone wants it 🙂 ).

davel wrote:

davel wrote:

The danger differs, depending on the type, so is difficult to quantify, isn’t it?

But the bulk of the risk faced by cyclists comes from being driven into by vehicles. A helmet doesn’t prevent that – I’d like to see much more effort and resources spent effectively on stuff that does.

davel wrote:

The helmet debate is a distraction, at best.

Cyclists die in the uk. If that’s a problem worth adressing, why does it happen

 

Davel, your second sentence here says much. If people are dying, does that not suggest that there is danger? Yet some, and indeed yourself in your later post, suggest that we should not put newcomers off by suggesting cycling is dangerous. Don’t you see the ambiguity?

I have noticed a tendency here for people to say cycling is different to everything else, therefore the experience gained in other sports is irrelevant, however I have been involved in a number of other “hazardous” activities where they do exactly the opposite of what people here are doing. In one sport I was very active in we talked about the importance of having a “mature sense of risk”. In other words, the safe guys were the ones who understood, assessed, and managed, the risks, which sometimes mean’t packing up and going home for the day. The brave ones who said there is no risk, were the ones who got hurt. Back to my previous example, I would happily cycle without helmet on the B roads round my area, but they are sadly, linked by A roads. Anybody who says it is not dangerous cycling on an A road being overtaken by 30ft trailers at 60mph, which first disrupt your airflow, and then close the gap as they return to the left hand side due to oncoming traffic, is not cycling the same roads as me.

But back to my question. You say yourself thay cyclists are dying (not to mention being disabled). How then can we justify saying to newcomers :”don’t worry about about a helmet, cycling is not dangerous”?

The helmet debate is a

The helmet debate is a distraction, at best.

Cyclists die in the uk. If that’s a problem worth adressing, why does it happen?

The majority of cyclist KSIs are caused by motor vehicle collisions. We know this (see rospa and uk gov stats). Why?

1. they share the same space, and 2. driver error (see rospa and uk gov stats). We know this.

So what should the energy, resource, government, web pages be set on resolving? What do you do to resolve a problem or fix a process? Treat the cause of the problem (prior to the collision occurring) or give yourself very debatable protection from a post-collision symptom?

I know it’s not binary; it is possible that we can chat about helmets and that helmet wearers might be happy that they’ve been saved from serious injury – and they (we, I do wear one) could well be right. I know accidents will happen and cyclists will still die away from cars and vehicles.

But let’s have proportion. For each of these debates, dodgy ‘meta research’ reports, and articles referencing them, let’s have 10 times the effort put into what is actually the cause of the risks that cyclists face, and not the sideshow of a debate on a topic that ultimately can only make a relatively small difference in the numbers of cyclists killed or seriously injured.

I believe this research gives

I believe this research gives weight to the seemingly obvious argument that helmets reduce the likelihood of injury in certain types of crashes. There is a weight of evidence that cycle helmets are effective in preventing some of the inuries of the type of injury that they are designed to prevent. What this study doesn’t address, as others have said, is that whether the adoption, or even method of adoption (legal compulsion) affects the use environment in such a way to increase the overall risk of the activity.

I’d suggest it’s similar to the H&S law that says you need to wear safety goggles while using a table saw. Very very few people ever lost an eye (or, indeed, their life) to chips from a table saw. However, it is very clear from years of data, that wearing goggles reduces the incidence of minor and major eye injuries from table saws. There was and is a slightly increased risk in the work environment due to limited fields of view and fogging etc. It seems to be clear over the years that use of eye wear reduces the few examples of severe injury, and reduces the severity and incidence of minor injury, and work place behaviour (of the wearer and those around) has adapted to make the wearing of safety goggles a no-brainer. It doesn’t prevent the more common and arguably generally worse issues of loss of limb / digit / life. 

The helmet law isn’t about absolute risk of saving a life or all major injury. It is about reducing the overall level of risk of receiving an injury that may have serious consequences. I’m pretty sure that they achieve this, though it would be a very difficult thing to measure outside of the lab.

What I am not sure about is that the compulsory wearing of a helmet doesn’t add to the overall risk environment of the activity when the behaviour of others is also taken in to account.

Personally I always wear a helmet as I have smashed car windscreens with my head on 2 occasions in bike vs car accidents. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be in full control of all my faculties had I not  been wearing a helmet on those occasions. The helmet didn’t keep me out of hospital, or save me from the cardiac injury or broken digits but it probably did mean I could walk and talk normally afterwards.

Full disclosure: I’m anti helmet compulsion, pro helmet wearing.

Sadly I am old enough to

Sadly I am old enough to remember when the wearing of seatbelts in cars was made mandatory in the UK. Those suffering from testosterone overdose argued that seatbelts increased certain risks such as drowning or fire due to the victim being trapped in the car by the seatbelt. Slightly more recently, there were the arguments against anti lock brakes on cars, suggesting that safer brakes just increased tailgating. Skiing went through the same anti-helmet arguments as cycling, and I have to say in this case I was a late adopter, and only bought a helmet when I saw the damage inflicted on a non-helmet wearer by the hard shell of somebody else’s helmet in a crash. In my working life I have heard similar resistance to safety measures such as the wearing of safety goggles impeding visibility, and the wearing of ear defenders impeding hearing. Sadly there will always be people who look for reasons to justify the ignoring of common sense.

With regard to statements in the article that the wearing of cycle helmets reduces entry to cycling by  conveying the impression that cycling is a dangerous activity, I can’t believe anyone would take such a statement seriously. 

Paul, I can assure you I have

Paul, I can assure you I have literally seen people say that very thing on this site and talk about ‘torsional injuries.’  They appear on a normal helmet debate saying that those polystyrene helmets do nothing and that their skill will ensure their noggins never come into contact with anything harder than a crossword. And why wear a helmet when your guts are under a HGV, because: absolutes.
These ‘helmet deniers’ appear on internet forums and state any pseudoscientific BS to deny the obvious. They see anyone stating that a helmet ‘saved their life’ as an intrinsic attack on their freedom not to wear one, and will say things like helmets cause more injuries, and demand empirical evidence that they work and deny statistical analysis. Well unless they want to drop a concrete block on their heads I don’t see anyone doing that experiment soon. 

They won’t appear here on this forum thread, but in the news. Just wait, road.cc staff love to cherry pick news links out of the forum for click bait posts.