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Because they have very little benefit and massive disbenefits?I don’t think it should be a legal requirement, but I’m baffled by the mindset of those who see it as an impediment.Helmets were sold on the promise of saving thousands of lives, by using the worst of bad science, and yet the death rate of cyclists does not fall as helmet wearing rates increase, rather the opposite, as the article points out; so they don’t do what they are supposed to do.
The disbenefits are, relatively, huge. They deter people from riding, they make cycling look much more dangerous than it is, cyclists who wear them have more collisions, and they are a distraction from what really works. The people who don’t ride lose the overwhelming health benefits, get sicker quicker and cost health services billions. The people who drive a car rather than ride a bike pollute the planet and cause danger to the rest of us. The overall effects of helmet compulsion and propaganda campaigns are massive and negative, and they don’t even do what they are supposed to do.
It is no coincidence that in countries which have actually addressed the safety of cyclists e.g. Holland, no-one wears a helmet but cycling is much safer than in countries where helmets are compulsory.
By any rational measure, helmets are a failed policy, and like you, I’m baffled by the mindset of people who think they work, and even more baffled by people who think that they should be made compulsory.
Very little. Just because someone is educated in one field, it doesn’t mean that they are an expert in everything. Doctors and police are not experts in collision mechanics or the benefits/risks of cycling, and tend to be influenced by the collisions they see, thus hardly objective.“All the preaching is performed by police/medical professionals”Yeah, what would they know about road collisions or head trauma?
Except that Jimmy Ray Will’s assessment is right and yours is wrong. Do you wear a helmet when walking? Because that has the same risk of death per mile as cycling, so if your risk assessment is valid, you should either start wearing a walking helmet or ditch the cycling helmet.However, the reason I generally don’t wear a helmet is down to my assessment of personal risk. Am I going to be doing anything that takes my risk of falling off higher than the base norm? If not, then the statistics strongly suggest that I’m not falling off, or if I do fall, it’ll be due to a freak occurence. Then, should I fall off in that freak occurence, how likely am I to actually hit my head?And that’s fine: it’s your head, and not my place to tell you what to do with it.
My assessment is of risk vs cost of mitigation. It’s very unlikely that I will fall off and hit my head, true. But the consequences of my doing so could be very unpleasant. For me, sticking a helmet on to ameliorate those consequences is worthwhile: any expense or inconvenience is marginal.
I only very rarely step in dogshit or on broken glass in normal daylight conditions. I always wear shoes though.
The other way around surely? I’ve never heard anyone be criticised for wearing a helmet, but the helmet proponents are not shy in expressing their opinion of someone not wearing one, and I’ve been on the receiving end many times of their religious zealotry.It amuses me this eye rolling attitude “cult of bike helmets” jog on FFS. If you don’t want to wear a helmet fine, but Christ on a bike (with a helmet? who cares) people can be way more preachy about not wearing helmets.“Maintenance implies keeping
“Maintenance implies keeping the Status Quo.”
At least Rick Parfitt will be happy.
Last week, I was on my ecargo
Last week, I was on my ecargo bike, heading down to some promising outcrops of elderberries, a fairly steep hill, so even with the regenerative braking I was doing maybe 25mph. I spotted two lady walkers going in the same direction in the road a hundred metres ahead, so slowed slightly and ran the bell when I was about thirty metres away; no response. Twenty metres; ran the bell again, three times, no response. Ten metres; ran the bell continuously until I passed them on the inside, the nearest one jumped. They weren’t deaf as I assumed, as they passed me later picking the berries, and were talking to each other.
What can you do? Airhorn perhaps?
I listened to this, and the
I listened to this, and the podcast, and it is billed as thought provoking, but the only thoughts it roused in me were “Why does the BBC hate cyclists?” and “Who the hell commissioned this crap?” The first answered the second.
I listen quite lot to R4, and for the past thirty years I’ve been asking them to have a prog about cycling, because they seem to have one about other means of transport. We finally get one and it is bizarre rubbish. They could have had one about the incredible benefits of cycling, individual, communal and global, but no, we get the assumptions of a motorcycling journalist.
I did email her and asked what the brief was; no reply.not convinced myself, it sounded to me like the classic journalist picks a reason at random first, forms an argument to prove it and then just doubles down through the whole piece thus proving they were right,which seems to happen alot in cycling related articles.
