[Cycloid]

Once again Chris and the Cycling Establishmnet have come out and rightfully said that Helmets are low on their priority of cycling safety factors. Helmets will never prevent an accident, and they may actually increase the probabilty of one happening. A helmet will not help much in a collision with motor vehicle doing 30+mph.

But every time their argument states that cycling is very safe and that helmets only help in minor falls. This is true, but compared with motorised vehicle travel cycling is relatively very dangerous,

If you do the same journey (say a commute) on a bike and in a car you are about forty times more likely to be killed or seriously injured on the bike than in a car. (This is nothing to do with helmet use, just the risk of cycling) REF Cycling UK  https://www.cyclinguk.org/statistics.

Cycling bodies are doing all they can to address the fundamental problems, but they avoid talking about the magnitude of the problem.

Will you do a charity parachute jump with me? Your parachute is extremely safe, but it is forty time more likely to fail than mine? Lets go for it mate!

It’s time to have the real debate

 

Topic

[Captain Badger]

Interesting point. Also why

Interesting point. Also why are 3rd party deaths not considered? Most of those cyclists KSI are as a result of car drivers. This should not be excluded from vehicle KSI

[Anonymous]

The pro-cycling bodies are

The pro-cycling bodies are not increasing our risk. Every time someone gets on a bike and leaves the car at home the risk to a cyclist is reduced. By far the greatest danger to cyclists is the motor vehicle. Reduce these in great numbers and the risk is diminished. The Dutch recognised this quite some time ago.

[Zigster]

Sorry, I can’t see the link

Sorry, I can’t see the link you mean.  My understanding is that cycling and walking carry similar levels of risk per mile travelled.

Cars initially look much better, but that ignores that a large proportion of car miles are on roads specially designed to filter out more vulnerable road users and be as safe as possible for the drivers (i.e. motorways). (I’ve tried to get to the government data on this but it’s playing up on my iPad https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/road-accidents-and-safety-statistics)

 

 

[ktache]

As I understand it the trains

As I understand it the trains in this country have become incredibly safe, leaving the road model and adopting the aircraft level and need for safety.  Until the unfortunate deaths caused by the landslide in Scotland there hadn’t been any passenger deaths caused by crashes for ages.  Trying to find exact numbers, best I could come up with were 10 years without passenger or stall deaths in accident in 2017.  The search also came up with NO passenger deaths on the massive Indian rail network in 2019, which is very impressive.

But until Boeing’s wonderful new airliners flew themselves into the scenery I don’t believe there had been a jet crash for over a year, Trump claimed the safety thing of course, but the 737 crashes obviously had nothing to do with him. 

[Cycloid]

Forty times a tiny risk is

Forty times a tiny risk is forty times a tiny risk. That is why I put the parachute analogy in my post. I know a shop where you can buy a lottery ticket that has forty times the chance of winning. Are you interested?

Yes we are terrible at assessing risk, but I feel that in this case it is something we must take into account.

New cyclists who are getting out of their cars to commute on bicycles in these troubled times probably feel very scared. Their perception that cycling is dangereous is not unfounded, (it may be out of proportion to the actual risk) and needs to be adressed if cycling is to take off.

[OnYerBike]

My take on it is that when

My take on it is that when people say cycling is safe, they mean it is safe in an objective and absolute sense, and that the risk is so low that it shouldn’t influence your decision. Yes it’s more dangerous than driving, but the risk of driving is so low that people jump in a car without a second thought, so “more dangerous” shouldn’t stop you jumping on a bike.

To put it in perspective, let’s imagine you want to get from London to Edinburgh – how would you go about it? For most people it’s probably a toss up between driving, flying and getting the train. What influences your decision? Cost? Convenience? Journey time? I bet for most people, “safety” doesn’t factor – indeed, I would go one further and say that on a pretty regular basis, people choose to do that journey (or similar ones) by car or train rather than flying because they are scared of flying. This is despite the fact that flying is 104 times safer than driving and six times safer than the train (based on these figures: https://www.cityam.com/one-chart-showing-safest-ways-travel/)*.

What does this tell us? Firstly that people are terrible at objectively assessing risk. Secondly that all sorts of everyday activities have a level of risk, and most of the time that risk doesn’t factor into our decision making. 40 times higher than a tiny risk is still a tiny risk – don’t let it stop you riding a bike!

* Yes the figures are American and out-of-date, but I can’t be arsed with finding anything better. I think the point will stand based on current UK figures if anyone can be bothered to find them.

[Cycloid]

I Agree with your analysis

I Agree with your analysis

I used to follow your philosophy, until a week after I retired when I rode into the village to buy a can of beer, whilst not wearing a helmet. I got cut up on the roundabout and I found myself lying on the road looking at a piece of my own scalp. If I knew when I was going to have an accident I would not go out. I still go for a midweek ride on the Cheshire lanes withiut a helmet if I feel like it.

We are not rational beings.

The Link I included in my post gave pedestrian data

 

[pablo]

So many many moons ago I used
So many many moons ago I used to have minor involvement in setting up car front ends for crash and pedestrian safety and used to talk regularly with the CAE boys and girls about the results from simulation runs and physical testing and I came to the conclusion that if I was unlucky enough to end up going over the bonnet of a car the biggest risk to me was on the bike. The G loading on your brain maybe survivable at the speeds tested but I was never really convinced you wouldn’t end up as a vegetable. The key to survivability was deceleration at a G that was survivable and personally anything other than my skull will always help with that. MIPS and similar systems may or may not help that much but it’s better than nothing.
These Threads are a little bit like flat earthers trying to prove the unprovable I feel that you expect everyone to have a light bulb moment and see your point of view and then throw all our helmets in the bin.
The truth is the evidence is not great either way and that’s purely because the legislature doesn’t care enough about it to spend the money investigating it or forcing others to do it for them. What the bike industry spends on it is chump changes it needs millions every year.

[Zigster]

“We need to make cycling feel

“We need to make cycling feel safe before people will make the move.”

And a problem with helmets is that they say the complete opposite – wearing of helmets (and the insistence of some that you have to wear a helmet) promotes the image that cycling isn’t safe.

I’ll wear a helmet when I’m engaged in cycling as a sporting activity because I think I’m taking greater risks. But if I’m popping to the shops in normal clothing, normal pedals, etc, I’m happy to go lidless because cycling isn’t particularly dangerous and helmets don’t make much of a difference to the risk that does exist.

You’ve compared cycling to driving, but why not to walking?

[Captain Badger]

What you say about the risks

What you say about the risks of riding may well be true. However, lids do not seem to be relevant in this. 

As for relative risk of transport modes….

 

[Sriracha]

Quote:

If you do the same journey (say a commute) on a bike and in a car you are about forty times more likely to be killed or seriously injured on the bike than in a car

The stats don’t support your interpretation, because of course people don’t do the same journeys by bike as by car. To arrive at the ratio you quote you would need to do as you say, compare the [i]same journeys[/i] completed by bike and by car.

That might be difficult to do. A good approximation might be KSIs per hour travelled excluding motorways.

Then of course you need to factor in other risks to life and health per hour sat stressing at the wheel versus actively exercising.

[Luca Patrono]

The argument is usually not
The argument is usually not that cycling is safe but that cycling is _intrinsically_ safe – i.e. it is the presence of motor vehicles, not some risk inherent to riding a bike, which makes cycling on roads dangerous. This is obviously to reframe the discussion away from ineffective PPE (“cycling is dangerous, you must protect yourself”) and towards segregating motor vehicles and punishing the harm they cause (“motor vehicles are dangerous, we must deal with that”).

Unfortunately, it never really works – whenever some public figure attempts such a reframe, at least ten people who have completely missed the point that was being made pop out of the woodwork to bleat about how they fell off once and the helmet saved their ass. Yeah, me too, but it doesn’t change the original point.

Oh, and I absolutely despise Twitter for this. It’s a cancerous platform. Just thought I’d add that.

[Cycloid]

Thanks for your reply, The

Thanks for your reply, The parachute analogy wasn’t meant to be a trap, just a clumsy attempt to bring the risk into perspective. If you were in a plane that was plummeting toowards the ground, the bad parachute would look like a pretty good option.

My point is that government and pro cycling bodies are trying to get us out of cars and onto bikes, but at the same time they are increasing our risk of a KSI accident by a large factor,  (they may also be reducing our chance of cardio disease  and the overall all balance may be positive), but they NEVER tell us all the facts and avoid talking about the negatives.

The standard statement they make is “cycling is very safe, It’s just a perception that it is dangerous”. Well to a new cyclist who is scared to death that perception is very justified.

We need to make cycling feel safe before people will make the move

[TheBillder]

Ok I’ll bite and probably
Ok I’ll bite and probably regret it…

Suppose 1 in 100,000 parachutes fails in some way normally, so the one you’re offering me has 1 in 2,500 risk of ksi.

If I go on your parachute jump and start fat, depressed, worried about climate change doom, and atherosclerotic, but then by the time I land I have a new heart and lungs, a sensible weight, have done something about my carbon footprint, and feel a million dollars, does that change my thinking?

And if I also think that I can probably skew the odds a bit because I know a bit more than some about how to do it safely, willing to invest some time and money in being safer etc?

And if I also think that the danger comes mostly from a specific group of other sky users who have never parachuted and should try it, and I also feel very strongly that I have a right to this jump and hence want to do it despite a bit of extra risk, and if only lots of other people could be shown that this is normal, and people who do it are normal (apart from being on average a bit lovelier than those who don’t), and if more people did it they’d also be happier and doing a little bit about the really big crisis facing everyone.

So yeah. I’ll do it. Helmet for me (usually) but totally get why people don’t and fully support the right to choose.

Flame away, as we used to say on Usenet in the 20th century…

[Author]

Replies