Sussex Police tell us we should be wearing helmets – shouldn’t they be staying out of this?

ClubSmed wrote:

madcarew wrote:

grumpyoldcyclist wrote:

I wear a helmet when I ride my bike, in case I fall off, it may help. If I’m hit by a driver / vehicle it will potentially have negligible benefits.

One issue Sussex police fail to address is that for the occupants of vehicles involved in a crash, the biggest cause of fatalities is head injuries. A lot more drivers than cyclists die on the roads every day and I don’t see the police ‘suggesting’ that drivers wear helmets.

Really that’s kind of silly. They may not insist on helmets for drivers, but they do insist on a large raft of safety implements in modern cars before they can be used on the roads. Head injuries may well be the major killer because we’ve managed to seriously reduce most of the other ways of dying in a vehicle via compulsory safety aids.  All activities carry risk, some of which we simply accept because of social norms and the nature of the activity. Thus we don’t insist on all swimmers wearing oxygen tanks. 

I do not support compulsory helmet wearing because on balance I think it is probably detrimental to the safety of the cycling population. However, there are very real individual safety benefits from wearing a helmet. 

Really, I was not aware that Sussex Police insisted on “a large raft of safety implements in modern cars before they can be used on the roads”.

Ok, fair call on my wording, in a way.

See what the Sussex police insist on if you try driving down the road in a car without brakes, or a seat belt, or collapsing steering column (unless you have a special derogation), or selling a new car with out ABS, EBD, airbag etc etc. Lots of cars get pink stickered all the time, which is effectively the police insisting on a large raft of safety implements / accessories / features before it can be driven.

madcarew wrote:

hawkinspeter wrote:

wknight wrote:

The one key statistic we are missing is how many people saved a trip to The hospital or even calling an ambulance because the helmet saved them. 

 

I witnessed two crashes very recently where the person walked away, but their helmet was a complete shattered mess. That would have been their head and yes it is personal choice, but no one complains about wearing a seat belt. Please don’t say there is data, because the data we need re Helmets has not been gathered. Go visit a&e and see head injuries. 

If the police get involved why not, remember it’s them who have all the paperwork, investigation and having to give the family the bad news

If a bike helmet is a “complete shattered mess”, it means that the energy involved was much greater than the helmet was designed to protect against. The main protection from a bike helmet comes from compressing the expanded polystyrene inside it, not from the thin plastic outer that holds it together, so if the helmet shatters, it means it’s not doing its job correctly and most likely provided only very minimal protection.

Real life impacts are very complicated actions, and it’s entirely possible that the inital ‘killing’ impact deformed the helmet and protected the wearer, but also ruined the integrity of the helmet such that subsequent smaller impacts destroyed the now substantially weakened helmet, but those impacts were not capable of doing serious damage to the encased skull. So, a destroyed helmet does not mean either that it was subject to impacts outside it’s design envelope, nor that it offered skant protection. Just because an air bag is a torn bloody, muddy floppy mess and the vehicle didn’t stop when it deployed doesn’t mean that the air bag offered no protection at the time of impact. 

I get your point, but does that mean you support the opposite view, that if a helmet is destroyed it means that it provided a high level of protection? That’s what I was arguing against.

grumpyoldcyclist wrote:

I wear a helmet when I ride my bike, in case I fall off, it may help. If I’m hit by a driver / vehicle it will potentially have negligible benefits.

One issue Sussex police fail to address is that for the occupants of vehicles involved in a crash, the biggest cause of fatalities is head injuries. A lot more drivers than cyclists die on the roads every day and I don’t see the police ‘suggesting’ that drivers wear helmets.

Really that’s kind of silly. They may not insist on helmets for drivers, but they do insist on a large raft of safety implements in modern cars before they can be used on the roads. Head injuries may well be the major killer because we’ve managed to seriously reduce most of the other ways of dying in a vehicle via compulsory safety aids.  All activities carry risk, some of which we simply accept because of social norms and the nature of the activity. Thus we don’t insist on all swimmers wearing oxygen tanks. 

I do not support compulsory helmet wearing because on balance I think it is probably detrimental to the safety of the cycling population. However, there are very real individual safety benefits from wearing a helmet. 

srchar wrote:

Do you really think a (cheap? old? crap?) piece of polystyrene is stronger than the human skull?  I think you’d be surprised.  I’ve had two massive crashes when not wearing a helmet, but wish I’d been wearing wrist guards, then my left one might actually still work as a wrist. So that’s two all on anecdotes.

So the words “crumple zone” mean nothing to you then?

nextSibling wrote:

The only way to know if a “helmet saved my life” would be to have exactly the same crash twice, once with a helmet and once without.

Which would discount the predictive effects that modelling gives us, which enables us to predict an awful lot of things rather accurately as it turns out (that’s why they train pilots in simulators, run computer modelling stress tests on critical components for all sorts of things, and have computer modelling in side CPR dolls to predict the effects of someone’s actions.) It is not difficult to demonstrate the effectiveness of many life saving devices (bullet proof vest) without having to run exactly the same ‘accident’ twice. 

Look at an NCAP crash test. The dummies have recording devices which accurately predict the likelihood of failure of certain human parts, in a less technical way we drop heavy weights on helmets  in such a way that we know that that force applied to a skull would generally cause damage to the skull, we also know that a certain amount of deformation associated with an impact implies damage to a skull. We can know these things with a certain degree of confidence. So, I’m not arguing that helmets save lives on a regular basis, just that your argument ignores an enormous amount of work and data that has been accrued over the years in safety research, and is used to accurately predict the outcome certain actions without having to kill people just to make sure it’s right. 

Personally I went all the way through a car windscreen some years ago (from the outside to the inside) and although knocked out briefly, my skull and all the skin on it was intact. The helmet was badly deformed and then broken by a later impact. Research shows that people who penetrate windscreens with their head with the amount of force that I did (buried up to my shoulders) rarely escape a broken skull, and with it all the concommitant dangers. So, although I wouldn’t claim my helmet saved my life it is undeniable that it saved me from some fairly serious injuries (I didn’t need a single stitch on my head, other parts of my body which weren’t protected in the same way needed dozens) including the high likelihood that it saved me from a fractured skull. Considering a large proportion of people who contact a car at the closing speed that I did die as a result of the collision, and the majority of those deaths are the result of head injuries, it’s not a long bow to draw to say that on the balance of probabilities the helmet may have been instrumental in saving my life.

brooksby wrote:

daturaman wrote:

srchar wrote:

The thing I don’t understand is, why aren’t helmet advocates all wearing full-face downhill lids? Ones that might actually do something to protect their beautiful faces and massive brains if they have a high-impact off.

I certainly advocate wearing a full-face downhill “lid” for downhill mtb.

I’d think most people would.  But its a question of risk assessment – downhill mtb at speed is *way* different to riding in town to go to the shops or a recreational path along a riverside, isn’t it?

Cycling on a road shouldn’t be, and isn’t inherently, dangerous.

I didn’t realise Sussex police had a remit to police what people wear when they are going about their own lawful, harmless business.

srchar wrote:

The thing I don’t understand is, why aren’t helmet advocates all wearing full-face downhill lids? Ones that might actually do something to protect their beautiful faces and massive brains if they have a high-impact off.

I certainly advocate wearing a full-face downhill “lid” for downhill mtb.

Related to the original story

burtthebike wrote:

I always used to think that the police investigated things and made decisions based on the evidence

No, they are here to police YouTube and protect the fragile feelings of thin-skinned Twitter users who have piles of chips on their shoulders.

A driver tried to deliberately knock me off my bike this evening, as I wasn’t cycling in the (obstructed) cycle lane and didn’t respond to his stream of expletives. I reported it to the Met as an assault, but they’ve told me it’s a “traffic incident” and pointed me in the direction of an online form.

I used to be a huge supporter of the police, but I’ve absolutely no idea what they are for these days. Fuck ’em.