Nationwide, the UK’s biggest building society, have clarified why they are introducing a requirement under the travel insurance provided to FlexPlus current account holders for them to wear a helmet while cycling on holiday.
As we reported yesterday, the change will come into effect on 21 September and was notified to the building society’s members who benefit from the insurance in a booklet outlining various changes to the cover provided.
While there was some widening of coverage for cycling – previously, “off road biking” but cover now includes riding on “bridle ways and forest roads.” However, there is a new stipulation that a helmet must be worn.
Meanwhile, “BMX or [cycling] on downhill or extreme trails” is excluded.
In an email to road.cc today, Nationwide explained why it had decided to impose the requirement to wear a cycle helmet.
It said: “The change made to the policy concerning the wearing of bicycle helmets while cycling is intended to provide greater clarity regarding the ‘reasonable care’ we expect our customers to take while on holiday. This change is intended to help to protect our members’ welfare.
“Whilst we accept an individual’s choice to wear a helmet or not, there is an increased risk of head injury for those people who choose not to wear a helmet,” added Nationwide (although anyone who has followed the helmet debate will know that even academic opinion is split on that issue.
“As an insurer, we feel the requirement to wear a helmet when cycling is a responsible approach to encourage safe cycling for our members,” Nationwide went on.
But it clarified that “the change in wording applies only in cases where an injury resulting from riding a bike would have been avoided or minimised through the wearing of a helmet.”
We also asked Nationwide what the implications of the change to its insurance coverage were for people who use bike-sharing schemes, such as the Vélib’ scheme in Paris.
The building society said: “These bikes are treated no differently to any other cycle used on a trip.
“If a customer chooses not to wear a helmet and suffers a head injury as a result of a cycle accident, this would not be covered by the policy terms and conditions.”
50 thoughts on “Nationwide explains why it made cycle helmets compulsory under its travel insurance”
Poor. Very poor.
Poor. Very poor.
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There has been no response from Nationwide to what information is the source of the decision.
And there has been no reply to how Nationwide would compensate riders wh receive rotational injury’s (sic) caused by the wearing of said helmet.
Their condascending attitude really is piss poor.
Daily Fail site must be down
Daily Fail site must be down
What about if the customer is
What about if the customer is showering, falls and sustains a head-injury which could have been prevented by a helmet? (I’m thinking of DinosaurJR falling over backwards while attempting to fellate himself in this example and then impaling his forehead on the batman toy he usually showers with).
All laughing at DinosaurJR
All laughing at DinosaurJR aside, it’s this sort of slowly creeping normalization of ignorance and irrationality that gives the lie to posters who claim “I’m just saying I ride with a helmet, I’m not forcing you to wear one”. You’re not just saying, you’re emboldening the other dolts who will force us all to wear the Hats-Which-Do-Eff-All.
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Because I imagine that they’ll quite happily pay out for grazed hands (gloves aren’t a legal requirement either) damaged knees, elbows, wrist and shoulders (nor full body armour).
Take care kiddies.
don simon wrote:
Indeed. And if they think cycling is such a dangerous activity why not refuse to insure anyone who rides a bike in any circumstances?
Take care kiddies.
Take care kiddies.
[/quote]
I believe that photo to be faked.
Mungecrundle wrote:
Rumbled.
Have you worked it out yet dinosaurJR?
Keep up with the Audi insults too, it makes you look so cool.
Quote:
With such charm, I’ll let you work it out all for yourself.
I read Nationwide’s response
I read Nationwide’s response and thought ‘fair enough’. I genuinely don’t understand the fuss.
drosco wrote:
On one of their original tweets they said it applied in the Netherlands
“Meanwhile, “BMX or [cycling]
“Meanwhile, “BMX or [cycling] on downhill or extreme trails” is excluded.”
How bizarre, the cycling acitivities where you’re most likely to crash and suffer a head injury do not require a helmet? BC requires BMX racers to wear a full face MX style helmet, not even one of those silly plastic hat things.
OldRidgeback wrote:
I think they are excluding those activities from the insurance as opposed to excluding the necessity for a helmet.
One for the helmet debates, the metal pole I hit on an off on Ventoux has broken my shoulder quite badly and left my helmet a mess. Very glad I was wearing it!,
alansmurphy wrote:
“Meanwhile, “BMX or [cycling] on downhill or extreme trails” is excluded.”
How bizarre, the cycling acitivities where you’re most likely to crash and suffer a head injury do not require a helmet? BC requires BMX racers to wear a full face MX style helmet, not even one of those silly plastic hat things.
— alansmurphy I think they are excluding those activities from the insurance as opposed to excluding the necessity for a helmet. One for the helmet debates, the metal pole I hit on an off on Ventoux has broken my shoulder quite badly and left my helmet a mess. Very glad I was wearing it!,— OldRidgeback
so a non wearer firstly would have ridden more cautiously and probably not hit the pole/had the off, second if the event was unavoidable the liklihood is they would have not hit their head due to not increasing the circumference of their head.
These are precisely the reasons why helmets fail to help and yet people like yourself can only correlate your situation/outcome of a broken helmet as being the function of it helping you when all the evidence says actually from a statistical POV it was detrimental to you.
A few times I was glad I’m not a helmet wearer because i would definitely have being injured/had a head strike, one occasion it definitely saved my life by not wearing one.
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
Surely by your logic, because you believe helmets to be detrimental to your safety, had you been wearing one on these occassions then you would have ridden more carefully and avoided the incident entirely?
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
I didn’t realise you were there, thanks for your assistance on the mountain and calling the ambulance.
As a counter argument, I climbed Ventoux, slowly wearing a helmet. I came down Ventoux evidently a little too quickly wearing a helmet. Given the massive fucking drops off the side, never once did I think ahhh this will be fine, I am wearing a helmet. I went at what I considered to be a controllable speed until something went horribly wrong coming out of a corner and the back wheel got all slippy and then the reverse breaks clocked me up.
As for the increased head circumference, my whole body hit one of those weird big metal poles as a smashed shoulder will testify. The smashed helmet merely suggests that my skull would in all likelihood suffer the same fate had I not been wearing it.
I have said many a time before that those suggesting a helmet will save your body being squished by a 4 tonne truck are fucking idiots. I can only conclude that someone thinking that a piece of protective equipment could never once have been protected by that piece of equipment is heading the same way…
alansmurphy wrote:
I was doored in an accident that was pretty much impossible to avoid even with the benefit of hindsight, yet this guy saw fit to tell me where I’d gone wrong and how wearing a helmet didn’t save me from injury. Not worth arguing with.
alansmurphy wrote:
Would love to see the evidence for this as it does beggar belief that you’d take more risks in traffic or descending a mountain with a tiny bit of foam on your head.
Having said that, I very very occasionally don’t wear a helmet going into London and all I can see in my mind on the ride is the Daily Mail article about the squashed cyclist too stupid to wear a helmet. Makes you paranoid and ride at half the speed so maybe you are safer without one!
londoncommute wrote:
Would love to see the evidence for this as it does beggar belief that you’d take more risks in traffic or descending a mountain with a tiny bit of foam on your head.
Having said that, I very very occasionally don’t wear a helmet going into London and all I can see in my mind on the ride is the Daily Mail article about the squashed cyclist too stupid to wear a helmet. Makes you paranoid and ride at half the speed so maybe you are safer without one!— alansmurphy
http://www.cycle-helmets.com/P885.pdf
ConcordeCX wrote:
I wouldn’t base too much on that study.
It had a tiny number of participants and the selection process was so flawed that its findings are essentially irrelevant.
londoncommute wrote:
Would love to see the evidence for this as it does beggar belief that you’d take more risks in traffic or descending a mountain with a tiny bit of foam on your head. — alansmurphy
It’s anecdotal which doesn’t make it anec-data I know 🙂 but I did have a friend who did MTB and used to chuck himself down mountains,and one day had a massive off, head hit massive rock, helmet split in two, ‘totally saved his life’ etc, but digging into it was a near vertical 10ft cliff type drop off course surrounded by boulders, if he’d made it the bike would likely have broken anyway, why did you think you could make that we asked, well it was alright he said I knew I was wearing a helmet… genuinely some people do take more risks because they believe they are being protected
alansmurphy wrote:
they don’t protect against very much.
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/papers/c2023.pdf
as it says in the article, the subject is too complicated for sweeping statements.
alansmurphy wrote:
I didn’t realise you were so dumb you can’t even understand basic English language never mind so dumb to crash into a pole on a mountain descent.
I don’t need to be there for my statements to be true/accurate, statistics, facts such as risk homeostasis being an actual thing and a helmets being too flimsy to be physically capable of reducing a serious injury 75joules being about the max reduction) and the additional fact of an increased circumference when wearing mean that without a helmet you and others like you would be much less likely to have the incident in the first place as I said. This is an undeniable fact otherwise we’d have had pandemic levels of deaths/serious head injuries before helmets became a thing and why helmets have had precisely ZERO impact on cycle safety injury/death reduction.
Stop being an ignoramous of the facts!
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
75 joules is equivalent to a 5kg weight being dropped on to your head from a height of 1.5 metres.
That could easily case a fatal head injury.
There has been a steady and sustained drop in the relative risk of cycling over the last few decades. The risk has actually halved since 1980.
There are obviously multiple factors to consider but the statistics don’t support your argument at all.
Rich_cb wrote:
But surely that argument concludes that helmets don’t really make any difference in making cyclists safer than pedestrians?
davel wrote:
The drop in pedestrian fatalities has been greater and has followed an almost linear pattern since the late 80s.
By contrast, the drop in cycling fatalities was fairly minimal between 1980 and 1995 then accelerated afterwards. Correlation is, of course, not causation but;
Rich_cb wrote:
Got any data post-2008? My understanding is rates have been creeping upwards since then. Also, surely one needs to consider deaths and serious injuries, as the former could be converted into the latter by improving trauma care?
This graph seems to tell a slightly less encouraging story, for example
[img]http://cyclinguphill.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/2013-cycle-casualties-per-bn-km-500×361.png
FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:
KSI data is nowhere near as reliable as fatality data as it relies on accurate recording/reporting of each serious injury. You can be almost certain a fatality will be recorded, less so with a serious injury and with minor injuries the data is of such poor quality as to be almost worthless.
The KSI data FWIW shows a similar pattern to the fatality data. By comparing the cyclist rate to the pedestrian rate you can control for the effect of shared factors like medical care etc.
If the pedestrian data is changing at a different rate to the cyclist data it implies that factors specific to either cyclists or pedestrians are having an effect.
So between 1982 and 1995 there was virtually no change in the cyclist fatality rate whilst the pedestrian fatality rate dropped considerably. This implies that whatever was improving the pedestrian fatality rate was specific to pedestrians eg better road crossings.
Post 1995 the cyclist fatality rate began to drop rapidly whilst the pedestrian rate continued to decline on its previous trajectory, this strongly implies that there was a cyclist specific factor at work.
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
And you actually believe that what you say are undeniable facts?
Wow, are you a flat earthed too?
Is there no part of your greater intelligence that could think that in one single situation a helmet may have done some good?
Go on, think hard about it…
alansmurphy wrote:
I have to say that I do find BehindTheBikesheds is being a bit intransigent here. I would like to add my own anecdote: habitually I bike with about a dozen eggs sellotaped to my head (in a modified carton). One day as I was descending at high speed (the fairing on my electric mountain bike allows me to get up to about 65 Km/h as long as there are no pedestrians to slow me down on this stretch of pavement) I fell and could immediately perceive (from the yolk dripping down my neck) that I had been saved from serious brain damage. Ridiculously, there are people that will claim that under no circumstances at all will a dozen eggs prevent brain damage. I suspect that BehindTheBikesheds may be one of these.
Ush wrote:
I have to say that I do find BehindTheBikesheds is being a bit intransigent here. I would like to add my own anecdote: habitually I bike with about a dozen eggs sellotaped to my head (in a modified carton). One day as I was descending at high speed (the fairing on my electric mountain bike allows me to get up to about 65 Km/h as long as there are no pedestrians to slow me down on this stretch of pavement) I fell and could immediately perceive (from the yolk dripping down my neck) that I had been saved from serious brain damage. Ridiculously, there are people that will claim that under no circumstances at all will a dozen eggs prevent brain damage. I suspect that BehindTheBikesheds may be one of these.— alansmurphy
You make some eggcellent points in this cracking story, hope you didn’t have to shell out too much for a replacement…
The coroner for my girlfriend
The coroner for my girlfriend’s death said a helmet would almost certainly have saved her life. That’s enough for me and he confessed to cycling without one.
Gashead wrote:
You have my sympathies, helmet debates must really seem quite puerile to you.
RIP sister.
Gashead wrote:
My most deepest sympathy for you, her friends & family. I can’t imagine the loss.
However coroners are not infallible. They come out with as much bollocks as the rest of the helmet brigade: http://road.cc/content/news/34847-cyclist-who-died-after-being-hit-three-cars-should-have-worn-helmet-says-coroner
See also A&E staff.
My mate dressed for a ride slipped on his stairs at home & woke up in A&E with a skull fracture. The staff treating him, looked at the cycling kit they’d cut off him & said “Good job you were wearing a helmet, otherwise you would have died” He said he wasn’t wearing a helmet and their respone was “You must always wear a helmet!”
TBH using wooden stairs with cycling shoes, it is hard to argue against but you don’t see safety campaigns highlighting it.
tarquin_foxglove wrote:
My most deepest sympathy for you, her friends & family. I can’t imagine the loss.
However coroners are not infallible. They come out with as much bollocks as the rest of the helmet brigade: http://road.cc/content/news/34847-cyclist-who-died-after-being-hit-three-cars-should-have-worn-helmet-says-coroner
See also A&E staff.
My mate dressed for a ride slipped on his stairs at home & woke up in A&E with a skull fracture. The staff treating him, looked at the cycling kit they’d cut off him & said “Good job you were wearing a helmet, otherwise you would have died” He said he wasn’t wearing a helmet and their respone was “You must always wear a helmet!”
TBH using wooden stairs with cycling shoes, it is hard to argue against but you don’t see safety campaigns highlighting it.
— Gashead
The old ‘Laura Ashley Maneuver’!
Other Insurers are available.
Other Insurers are available…
As the story relates to the Netherlands, fingers crossed that the European Healthcare Insurance Card (newish name for the old E1 11 scheme) does not get thrown out with the Brexit bath water.
These “free” insurance policy
These “free” insurance policy are dreadful and an exercise in not paying claims(even worse than a normal insurance policy). I all likely hooded they have had to deal with 1 bad head injury due to cycling without a helmet and that pushed there poorly underwritten polices into a loss last year and this is there reaction. The fact that they will also be dealing with hundreds of head injuries due to car accidents year but will have underwritten this more accurately.
Wear a helmet, don’t wear a helmet, but don’t go on holiday with just the cover of a policy from your bank account.
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@rich_cb, there’s no way of
@rich_cb, there’s no way of asking this question/making this point without sounding like a twat, so apologies in advance: I mean it with some respect because you’re usually a logical contributor (we disagree on some things but I’m not adamant that I’m right on all of them).
You seem like you might know something about the topic of injuries here – and I know when I don’t know anything about a topic. Do you work for the NHS? I don’t want to kick the other thread off again, but you seem like you haven’t got a clue about financial products and product management – not a dig, and there’ll be no follow-up digs but an NHS career would explain it (at any rate it’s a more worthy way of paying the bills than I chose).
(won’t think anything of it if you don’t deign to reply – just curious)
davel wrote:
I read rich_cb’s post. I think he has a good grasp on how insurance companies handle their risk…. just saying.
davel wrote:
I do work in the NHS, in Anaesthetics, I deal with a lot of head injuries so my opinions are based on a reasonable amount of experience but I certainly wouldn’t claim to be an expert.
This is what they say
This is what they say
“The change in wording applies only in cases where an injury resulting from riding a bike would have been avoided or minimised through the wearing of a helmet.””
But this is how they will apply it
“If a customer chooses not to wear a helmet and suffers a head injury as a result of a cycle accident, this would not be covered by the policy terms and conditions.””
There is really very little relationship between the 2 statements. The first is all but impossible to prove, the second simply gives them an out on the slightest of pretexts.
If I look online I can find
If I look online I can find arguments that smoking is good for you. That’s it makes you thinner, stops dementia. Spouting statistics on helmets to prove an argument is pointless.
Ultimately, if you’re unhappy with Nationwide, bank with someone else.
“Nationwide explains why it
“Nationwide explains why it made cycle helmets compulsory under its travel insurance”
A more accurate headline would have been “Nationwide fails to explain why it mades helmets compulsory and displays its profound ignorance on the subject”
A wise man might consider re-assigning their investments if Nationwide make decisions based on complete ignorance.
Has Dinosaur JR been ban
Has Dinosaur JR been ban-hammered?
All very odd. I would expect
.
Interesting read Concorde.
Interesting read Concorde.
My statement isn’t too sweeping though and I was nearer the middle of the fence press crash. But sitting here with an arm that is hanging limp in agony and without a blemish on the head/face with a totalled helmet, it’s fair to say I’m happy to ha e lost the £70 not to have found out…
‘Weaknesses with a meta
‘Weaknesses with a meta-analysis approach to assessing cycle helmets’.
Feb 2017
refers to;
In New Zealand, from 1989 to 2011, average time spent cycling (on roads and footpaths) fell by 79% for children aged 5-12 (from 28 to 6 minutes per person per week) and 81% for 13-17 year olds (52 to 10 mins/person/week).
Adult cycling declined from 8 to 5 minutes/person/week then trended back up to 8 minutes. Graphs of cycle use over time provide strong evidence that the requirement to wear a helmet discouraged cycling. The reductions in cycling were accompanied by increased injury rates. Between 1989 and 2012, fatal or serious injuries per million hours of cycling increased by 86% for children (from 49 to 91), 181% for teenagers (from 18 to 51) and 64% for adults (from 23 to 38).[i]
and
Robinson 1996 also refers to the incidence of hitting their head/helmet in a cycling accident was “significantly higher for helmet wearers (8/40 vs 13/476, i.e. 20% vs 2.7%, p 0.00001)”. A bare head width of approximately 150mm may avoid contact compared to a helmeted head at approximately 200mm width. Helmet wearers often report hitting their helmets and the 7 fold increase may have long term effects that may not show up in a meta–analysis.
Erke and Elvik 2007[i] examined research from Australia and New Zealand and stated: “There is evidence of increased accident risk per cycling-km for cyclists wearing a helmet. In Australia and New Zealand, the increase is estimated to be around 14 per cent.” The findings were based on six reports, four from when legislation was in place.
and
Ref 104 mentions;
A recent report detailed that cyclists wearing helmets had more than twice the odds of suffering an injury than cyclists not wearing helmets, (104) with an OR value 2.81, 95% CL =1.14, 6.94.
“We also asked Nationwide
“We also asked Nationwide what the implications of the change to its insurance coverage were for people who use bike-sharing schemes, such as the Vélib’ scheme in Paris.
The building society said: “These bikes are treated no differently to any other cycle used on a trip.If a customer chooses not to wear a helmet and suffers a head injury as a result of a cycle accident, this would not be covered by the policy terms and conditions.” “
Which is why I cancelled my Nationwide paid account and took out travel insurance with someone else.If they’e not going to cover me for a perfectly normal activity like riding a hired bike in Amsterdam then the policy is useless. It makes me wonder what other get-out claused they have to avoid paying out because I took part in a very low risk activity.