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Not my experience even on here. A previous post I commented similar stating my personal experience. The result was a response along similar lines that no one preaches about not using helmets….. and then to berate and preach about why people shouldn’t wear helmets. It was laughably ironic.
Was it berating and preaching or was it presenting the other side of the story Without a specific example, it is difficult to judge one way or another.
Most of the anti-helmet posts that I’ve seen have made no recommendation one way or another, but have sought to clarify and determine the facts of the matter. Usually those kinds of exchanges are brought about in response to some public figure stating that they were serious about road safety, so they were looking at bike helmets. That’s the preaching that bugs me (and I do wear a bike helmet).
JustTryingToGetFromAtoB wrote
A guy on here was snippy with me once because my kids wear helmets when riding a bike… can’t remember who it was. I suspect he would have been less snippy if he’d met my kids… they are muppets. Funny, but still muppets.I remember BehindTheBikeSheds/CyclingInBeastMode (or whatever he called himself) was very much an anti-helmet zealot and often referred to them as “noddy hats”. I bet it was him. (I think he was banned after getting into heated arguments and possibly some racist/conspiracy claptrap that he posted. Shame as he also posted some very insightful comments about bikes and equipment)
Having fallen off a (stationary) lorry and cracked my head resulting in a rather worrying spell of blindness, I would wear head protection if working at height. If I thought a sudden gust or passing car or icy patch was going to take me off an unstable stepladder, I wouldn’t go up it. If I regularly walked at 15mph in the same carriageway as 2-tonne pedestrians passing me at 40mph, I’d wear a helmet. If I thought that my personal risk, as opposed to a population-level statistic, of having a serious head injury in the shower was significant I’d do something to address that too.You might be braver, or a better cyclist, or just plain luckier than me. That’s fine, and you can do what you like. My experience is that hitting your head when falling off a bike a) happens regardless of how careful I am and b) hurts a lot less when wearing a helmet. That’s enough for me.
I’m not trying to pass any judgement on personal decisions about wearing bike helmets, and I nearly always do wear a bike helmet when cycling (I may well be luckier as I’ve only ever hit my head/helmet on low hanging branches). It just bugs me that so many people think that bike helmets are anything to do with road safety when they are so very far down the list of what works.
“All the preaching is performed by police/medical professionals”Yeah, what would they know about road collisions or head trauma? It’s been well established that we’ve had enough of experts.
They may well have a lot of experience in their own domains, but that’s hardly going to be applicable to engineering issues of head protection and dynamics of how cyclists are likely to contact cars/objects etc. It’s like asking a computer engineer to wire your house.
What really bugs me is the police asking nonsense questions about whether cyclists were wearing a helmet when the circumstances of the collision make it utterly meaningless.
Same. Since starting cycling again a few years ago I have had two accidents, both at low speed and not involving a car. One where a bee flew into my face and I fell off, the other on a greasy road where the bikd slipped out on a corner and I hit my head on a kerb. Both instances I was glad I was wearing a helmet.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.
All the preaching is performed by police/medical professionals and general public that consider it to be a sign of mental deficiency to cycle without a helmet despite the evidence of far more dangerous activities that they don’t consider a helmet to be appropriate for. As Saint Boardsman puts it, helmets aren’t even in the top ten of things that would keep cyclists safe.
only very rarely step in dogshit or on broken glass in normal daylight conditions. I always wear shoes though.I always wear shoes when cycling, even though there’s less risk of stepping on glass or in poo.
But do you wear a helmet when walking? If not, then why not? People fall over and hit their heads when walking. Surely it’s no less onerous putting on a helmet for a walk to the shops, than it is for riding there on a bike?
Far more important is the shower helmet, the stairs helmet and the lightbulb changing/ladder helmet
Firstly do squirrels bleat?Some do
Awavey wrote:
They’re leading questions because you cant just change a few words in a question and have it result in a comparable set of answers between question a and b, cigarette fumes are not meaningfully comparable to car fumes, and any answer people give maybe influenced wholly on whether they’re pro or anti smoking, pro or anti car anyway. Properly done surveys go to quite long lengths to land on question wordings so as not to unduly influence the person answering and will often ask you multiple times on the same subject but in a question phrased differently to test the limits of your answers and that its a consistent view you are giving For instance if I posed a question of would you stand on an operational nuclear reactor that’s emitting radiation, or would you stand in field next to a wind turbine. That the majority will answer always in favour of the wind turbine doesnt mean “the public supports wind over nuclear”, it’s simply I’ve phrased a leading question based on the prejudices and assumptions of people against a topic so as to ensure I get the right conclusions. Asking people if they left personal property in the street, is not equivalent to a car being left parked in the street. Why not pick house instead, because we know the house would end up the same proportions of wanting police involvement as the car which then undermines the conclusion of the study as being autocentric.I don’t see how cigarette fumes aren’t comparable to car fumes although cigarette fumes are a lot easier to avoid. I think the questions need to be comparing similar outcomes and apart from the property one, I think they’re similar comparisons.
This isn’t about trying to determine if people are for or against cars, but seeing how biased people are when questions concern motoring vs similar non-motoring questions are posed.
I don’t think it’d be useful to compare house burglary with car theft as cars are left in public areas whereas houses are mostly on private ground, and the very nature of a house puts a “private” boundary around things. I’d agree that that question is a poor choice – maybe he should have gone with a comparison of parked bikes blocking a pavement vs a parked car blocking a pavement.
Awavey wrote:
Well I thought Walkers previous studies were hopelessly flawed, so I’ve no faith this one is any better. For a start I’d argue the questions if they are as the gruaniad have documented, are leading questions, and how a person answers depends wholly on their interpretation not necessarily their view that its safer to breath exhaust fumes than cigarette smoke. I also dont think anyone one interprets belongings left on a street in the same way as a locked car with a burglar alarm left on a street.I don’t understand why you think they are leading questions.
The questions themselves are less important than the very clear distinction between motor-related issues and non-motor-related issues. However, I would agree that the car/property on the street is probably the poorest example as cars are generally worth a lot more than other items of property, although it does raise the question of why it is normalised to leave private cars on public roads.
I’d consider the smoking/pollution question to be directly comparable and clearly shows how thinking about traffic/cars is skewed.
The study is available here:
The study is available here: https://psyarxiv.com/egnmj
I think the PDF can be grabbed from here: https://psyarxiv.com/egnmj/download
It’s worth reading the study (it’s not too long) and I’d say that the conclusion is very important:
Our ability to address the multiple harms arising from over-use of private cars will be determined by our ability to judge these objectively. In this study, a large representative sample of the UK public judged questions entirely differently depending on whether they were framed as driving issues or non-driving issues, even though the underlying principles were identical in both cases. This provides evidence of how driving automatically receives systematically biased treatment across society so as to favour the needs of a majority – an effect we term motonormality. We argue that our results arose because individuals have their views about motoring shaped over their whole lifespan by a multi-level series of external influences ranging from observing their parents’ driving while growing up to mass-media discourses about how it is not only normal but even desirable to drive short distances in antisocial styles. Finally, we suggest that this motonormative thought style is as endemic amongst government and the medical profession as in the general population. This means core public health and sustainability issues are being systematically neglected by policymakers. People within such roles need to recognise their own unconscious biases, to work towards providing objective judgements of the consequences of travel and to build these into their day-to-day work.
That’s a good article –
That’s a good article – highlights what some of us have been bleating about for ages.
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/police-chase-van-no-tyres-8038427
No officer, I’m not tired at all
The driver did not understand why the car was not roadworthy:
That’ll buff right out
Some of the comments“As a pedestrian your not soposed to enter the zebra crosing until both sides have stopped and can see you crossing the lollipop lady is causing criminal damage. The role is obsolete, its the councils job to put a crossing with lights their”
Doesn’t even understand the basic HC.
“you MUST give way when a pedestrian has moved onto a crossing”
So, if you don’t step onto the crossing until both sides are clear and drivers won’t stop unless there’s someone starting to cross, does that mean that pedestrians are just stuck there forever?
It’s about time that lollipop people were made to wear bright colours to avoid this kind of thing