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Chris James.
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June 9, 2012 at 10:16 pm #16041
Bob McCall
😕 Glad to read of Spokes, Edinburgh stance on the growing pressure to make the wearing of cycle helmets compulsory. There are too many complexities and dishonest reporting on this subject to make the wearing of helmets a legal requirement. It would be much better to provide safer cycling conditions for all, and let each cyclist decide what safety aids he or she should adopt. Please let us dispense with the insidious nature of brainwashing and nanny politics. Such measures will do little, if any, to make cyclists safer. 🙂
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Paul J
paulfg42: I don’t want to ban
paulfg42: I don’t want to ban people from wearing helmets, if they really want to. However, I think people who, through some authority they have, force others to wear helmets then are damaging cycling participation rates, and hence are damaging the political impetus that would be needed for the *proven* cycling safety measures to be implemented – i.e. segregation through a comprehensive cycle path network. Hence such people are damaging both cycling safety in the long-term and public health overall. Those people may be doing so with the best of intentions, however my reading of the evidence makes me believe they are misguided – however sincere.Honestly no offence intended with that, but that’s my view.
Raleigh
ALIHISGREAT wrote:
I likeALIHISGREAT wrote:I like how you work the stats.. you’ve presented it in a
elegant way… (which might have fooled some haha )Presumably he has taken us for a walk 😐
ALIHISGREAT
Paul J wrote:There are some
[quote=Paul J]There are some obvious differences between pro and ordinary cycling, as I detailed.Anyway, we have aggregate data over a large data set, from which to judge somewhat the risks in cycling on the roads (which covers a gamut of cyclist types, from those in ordinary clothes about town to those in lycra charging down A-roads as fast possible – potentially in competition on open public roads). From this we know:
Normalised to distance travelled, the risks of death or serious injury (KSI) are:
Pedestrian:
37 fatalities per billion miles
518 KSI per billion milesCyclist:
36 fatalities per billion miles
889 KSI per billion milesCar occupants:
3 fatalities per billion miles
40 ksi per billion miles.Motorcycle:
138 fatalities per billion miles
1775 KSI per billion milesBased on distance travelled. Cycling doesn’t significantly more dangerous than being a pedestrian. However, distance can be misleading. Different modes of transport have different speeds, can take place on different kinds of roads, and many journeys are not inter-changable with another mode of transport. A lot of road safety people seem to like to normalise to equivalent journeys, but I don’t like this – it requires arbitrary guesses at what can and can not be considered comparable, and allows a great deal of selection bias to creep in. I prefer normalising to exposure time – it makes more sense to me to think about the risk of 1 hour of walking versus 1 hour of cycling. On that basis:
Pedestrian: assume 2 to 4mph average:
0.074 to 0.148 killed / million hours of exposure
1.036 to 2.072 KSI / Mhours of exposureCyclist: assume 9 to 18mph:
0.324 to 0.648 killed / Mhours of exposure
8.001 to 16.002 KSI / Mhours of exposurecar occupants: assume 30 to 60mph (DfT figures suggest average speeds are ~55mph):
0.090 to 0.180 killed / Mhours of exposure
1.200 to 2.400 KSI / Mhours of exposureSo, by this, cyclists are at a 4.37 times greater risk of death and 7.72 times greater risk of KSI than pedestrians, and 3.6 times fatality risk of car occupants, and 6.67 times greater KSI risk than car occupants. The speed estimates are likely too high for cyclists and close to spot on for car, so these are likely worst case, by a good amount. However, I can’t find good data on population wide average speed.
That sounds bad, however remember these are tiny risks multiplied by a low number, so the resulting risk is still *tiny*! E.g. in order to suffer a KSI, even using the worst 16 KSI/Mhour figure, you would have to cycle 30 thousand hours to have a 50% chance of KSI, which is about 90 years of cycling for a high-mileage cyclist (6000 miles per year, every year for 90 years). This high-mileage, fast cyclist would have a 10% chance of KSI after about 18 years of cycling (6000 miles every year). Similarly, the fatality risk is 2314 years (6000 miles per year) to have a 50% chance of death, 462 years to get to a 10% chance, 46 years for a 1% chance.
So, cycling is 4 to 7 times more dangerous than being a pedestrian or a car driver – and I’m trying to be deliberately pessimistic in my assumptions. However, 4 to 7 times a *tiny* risk is *still* a **tiny** risk. You’d have to consistently put in a lot of miles, over a long period of time, before these risks would become uncomfortable in terms of KSI. And even then, I suspect the adverse consequences of trauma wouldn’t affect your life for long, while the health benefits of a life full of cycling would add more than enough extra years to compensate!
For fatalities, the risks are incredibly low – even if you spent an entire life on the saddle on the road, it’s still highly improbable that you would end up dead!
And of course, this is for the UK (2010), which – though fairly safe – is not the safest for the cycling. Subjectively, the experience from the Netherlands is in order to improve safety you have to make the *environment* safe (segregation) and encourage participation (which has political benefits). Helmets do not help with the latter.
Data source: http://www.dft.gov.uk/statistics/releases/road-accidents-and-safety-annual-report-2010/%5B/quote%5D
I like how you work the stats.. you’ve presented it in a elegant way… (which might have fooled some haha 😉 )
But here we are talking about death or serious injury, what about less serious injury… and how do we classify serious and less serious injuries? (and no I’m not going to read that report to find out!)
What you’ve show here is that you can use some stats to tell us we probably won’t die, and probably won’t get an injury above a certain level which you haven’t disclosed (and probably don’t know?)
I think including minor injury frequency is much more useful as in a number of those situations, the helmet may be the dividing line between a less serious injury, and a serious injury as classified by the above report.
One would assume that minor injuries happen more frequently, therefore by not wearing your helmet you are exposing yourself to the serious injuries as you outlined above, but also a number of the more frequent ‘less serious’ injuries that would be transformed into more serious injuries without wearing a helmet? (assuming that a majority wear helmets in the reported cases of minor injuries)
OldRidgeback
As someone who works in the
As someone who works in the road sector and who sees a lot of data on crash statistics on a daily basis I’m convinced the pro-cycle helmet safety data is wafer thin. As a motorcyclist I’m glad to wear a helmet when riding my motorbike. But as a motorcyclist and qualified engineer, I also know the lightweigh plastic construction used in most shell-type bicycle helmets offers at best, minimal protection. I wear a road legal motorcycle MX lid when I’m racing my BMX and I know this does actually offer protection – got one for my son too. I ride on the road a lot and have locked a lot of road mile in 30+ years of serous cycling and for most of the cycle accidents I’ve seen (or close calls that I’ve had) a cycle helmet would offer little to no protection anyway. Crush injuries are the major cause of fatalities for cyclists and by a very, very long way – the DfT data is available.
Stumps
As a Police officer i see
As a Police officer i see quite a few nasty accidents involving cyclists, some with and some without helmets.Speaking from a purely personal perspective i have never seen someone with a helmet suffer a bad head injury whereas those without have had some horrendous injuries.
Hear Hear.
Just make your own
Hear Hear.Just make your own minds up.
But be sure to take all the evidence into account, for and against.
And do the right thing, whether it means your brains will be lying across the road or not, as long as it goes a little way in ‘proving your point’.
paulfg42
Doctors told me that, given
Doctors told me that, given the speed of the impact, my other injuries and the damage to the helmet that I was lucky not to have suffered a very serious if not fatal head injury. I’m happy to trust their judgement.All adults at the school bike club have to wear helmets too. You can argue all you like but there is an element of danger in cycling and schools would be crazy to permit children on trips out to cycle without a helmet. We also have to insist on seat belts on every bus trip on a commercial coach.
It seems some people who are anti-helmet would wish that no one wore a helmet, which is as daft a proposition as making helmets compulsory.
There are some obvious
There are some obvious differences between pro and ordinary cycling, as I detailed.Anyway, we have aggregate data over a large data set, from which to judge somewhat the risks in cycling on the roads (which covers a gamut of cyclist types, from those in ordinary clothes about town to those in lycra charging down A-roads as fast possible – potentially in competition on open public roads). From this we know:
Normalised to distance travelled, the risks of death or serious injury (KSI) are:
Pedestrian:
37 fatalities per billion miles
518 KSI per billion milesCyclist:
36 fatalities per billion miles
889 KSI per billion milesCar occupants:
3 fatalities per billion miles
40 ksi per billion miles.Motorcycle:
138 fatalities per billion miles
1775 KSI per billion milesBased on distance travelled. Cycling doesn’t significantly more dangerous than being a pedestrian. However, distance can be misleading. Different modes of transport have different speeds, can take place on different kinds of roads, and many journeys are not inter-changable with another mode of transport. A lot of road safety people seem to like to normalise to equivalent journeys, but I don’t like this – it requires arbitrary guesses at what can and can not be considered comparable, and allows a great deal of selection bias to creep in. I prefer normalising to exposure time – it makes more sense to me to think about the risk of 1 hour of walking versus 1 hour of cycling. On that basis:
Pedestrian: assume 2 to 4mph average:
0.074 to 0.148 killed / million hours of exposure
1.036 to 2.072 KSI / Mhours of exposureCyclist: assume 9 to 18mph:
0.324 to 0.648 killed / Mhours of exposure
8.001 to 16.002 KSI / Mhours of exposurecar occupants: assume 30 to 60mph (DfT figures suggest average speeds are ~55mph):
0.090 to 0.180 killed / Mhours of exposure
1.200 to 2.400 KSI / Mhours of exposureSo, by this, cyclists are at a 4.37 times greater risk of death and 7.72 times greater risk of KSI than pedestrians, and 3.6 times fatality risk of car occupants, and 6.67 times greater KSI risk than car occupants. The speed estimates are likely too high for cyclists and close to spot on for car, so these are likely worst case, by a good amount. However, I can’t find good data on population wide average speed.
That sounds bad, however remember these are tiny risks multiplied by a low number, so the resulting risk is still *tiny*! E.g. in order to suffer a KSI, even using the worst 16 KSI/Mhour figure, you would have to cycle 30 thousand hours to have a 50% chance of KSI, which is about 90 years of cycling for a high-mileage cyclist (6000 miles per year, every year for 90 years). This high-mileage, fast cyclist would have a 10% chance of KSI after about 18 years of cycling (6000 miles every year). Similarly, the fatality risk is 2314 years (6000 miles per year) to have a 50% chance of death, 462 years to get to a 10% chance, 46 years for a 1% chance.
So, cycling is 4 to 7 times more dangerous than being a pedestrian or a car driver – and I’m trying to be deliberately pessimistic in my assumptions. However, 4 to 7 times a *tiny* risk is *still* a **tiny** risk. You’d have to consistently put in a lot of miles, over a long period of time, before these risks would become uncomfortable in terms of KSI. And even then, I suspect the adverse consequences of trauma wouldn’t affect your life for long, while the health benefits of a life full of cycling would add more than enough extra years to compensate!
For fatalities, the risks are incredibly low – even if you spent an entire life on the saddle on the road, it’s still highly improbable that you would end up dead!
And of course, this is for the UK (2010), which – though fairly safe – is not the safest for the cycling. Subjectively, the experience from the Netherlands is in order to improve safety you have to make the *environment* safe (segregation) and encourage participation (which has political benefits). Helmets do not help with the latter.
Data source: http://www.dft.gov.uk/statistics/releases/road-accidents-and-safety-annual-report-2010/
Why is everyone contradicting
Why is everyone contradicting themselves, just because Pro Cyclists go faster, doesn’t mean they have more accidents.If it’s ok for then to wear helmets, why don’t you.
I think this argument should be postponed.
drheaton
I agree that pro-cyclists are
I agree that pro-cyclists are travelling at higher speeds in an environment that is more dangerous. My point was that the perception of cycling as requiring safety equipment is propagated by the images of Mark Cavendish or Bradley Wiggins wearing a helmet.However, in a more ‘dangerous’ environment where accidents are more likely, and happen at higher speeds, and where accidents can be more serious the fact that helmet use is enforced to protect riders surely has some bearing on normal riders travelling at lower speeds. Surely helmets can only be more effective for everyday cycling?
Racing is different from
Racing is different from ordinary road cycling. A peloton of pro-racers will cruise along at a speed that an average, ordinary cyclist couldn’t even hope to reach if they tried to *sprint*. Next, cycling in a peloton or tight in line and at speed, has extra risks which are not present in ordinary cycling. Finally, when you’re racing, you have a strong motivation to ignore risks and charge on – while in ordinary cycling there’s no reason to take on unnecessary risk.So pro-racing *could* be different from ordinary road-cycling, in terms of risks and benefits of helmets. Indeed, it would be very interesting to do an analysis of accidents in professional bicycle racing on closed-roads to see what effect helmets had – as it’s a far more controlled environment than ordinary road cycling is. E.g. has the rate of serious head injuries and death decreased significantly since the introduction of helmets? Do pro-cyclists suffer much less concussion these days?
Ordinary cycling is very different from pro-cycling though.
Raleigh wrote:Probably the
Raleigh wrote:Probably the only reason the pros have to wear helmets is to satisfy the demands of the manufacturers, and if it brings money in, what do they care?Read this – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Kivilev – and tell me that all teams care about is sponsorship.
Helmet use was introduced as a direct result of an accident that may not have been as serious had a helmet been worn.
My point was solely that helmet use is, and should remain, a personal choice rather something enshrined in law but those who are against helmet wear are fighting a losing battle against public perception which isn’t helped by most news outlets highlighting how dead cyclists weren’t wearing helmets (and making a big story out of their deaths in the first place) and the pro tours enforcing helmet use as a safety measure.
mattsccm
double post.
This website is
double post.
This website is still the slowest about“Helmets are uncool, but so
“Helmets are uncool, but so are things like Bouyancy aids for sailing and watersports, HiViz for horse riding, hard hats for rock climbing, masks for sanding..”
All similar in principle
I don’t wear a helmet climbing unless it’s a mountain crag with lots of ledges and loose rock or somewhere where I feel someone else may lob a rock over. I don’t wear a BA paddling in a canadian but did on white water where rocks are about. I don’t wear high viz except commuting on my m/c in busy traffic. These things are, thank god, not yet compulsory or standard.
The chap who said he had been cyclng for 40 years does have a point. If that lorry wants you he will get you but experience helps you know when to pull over and when to get in the way.
Its up to the individual and to say otherwise in the big deal here..If wearing anything wasn’t
If wearing anything wasn’t dagerous, it wouldn’t be called a Brain Bucket.Probably the only reason the pros have to wear helmets is to satisfy the demands of the manufacturers, and if it brings money in, what do they care?
Helmets are uncool, but so are things like Bouyancy aids for sailing and watersports, HiViz for horse riding, hard hats for rock climbing, masks for sanding…
Loads of things are ‘uncool’ but I reckon it’s way cooler to be Alive and Uncool than Dead and Cool.
Oh, and it’s not like when you wear a helmet you take more risks than when you don’t, that’s just stoopid.
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