Chris Boardman's take on helmets

[machew]

Quote

"I have nothing against helmets. If I go on long ride I wear one – sometimes out of habit, often on a mountain bike – but I am under no illusion about the effect on my safety. I manufacture the things. In an incident with a car they will have almost no effect. They are being used to deflect from making real decisions and I won’t waste air time talking about them. The danger for me is being hit by a vehicle doing something it shouldn’t. We should focus on how we stop accidents not what happens to people who have them.”
​

http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk...-reduce-road/story-27569356-detail/story.html

 

[Drago]

He does not manufacture them, if we're being pedantic.

 

[glenn forger]

Did he say something like "My wife's not a cyclist, she's normal"?

 

[ufkacbln]

Meier Hillman many years ago hypothesised that if the effort, publicity and money that went into promoting helmets was used to promote road safety the outcome would save more lives

 

[machew]

He does not manufacture them, if we're being pedantic.

Nope but he makes money from them being sold

 

[Drago]

Nope but he makes money from them being sold

Then, in the interests of accuracy, that is what he should have said.

 

[psmiffy]

Quote

"I have nothing against helmets. If I go on long ride I wear one – sometimes out of habit, often on a mountain bike – but I am under no illusion about the effect on my safety. I manufacture the things. In an incident with a car they will have almost no effect. They are being used to deflect from making real decisions and I won’t waste air time talking about them. The danger for me is being hit by a vehicle doing something it shouldn’t. We should focus on how we stop accidents not what happens to people who have them.”
​

http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk...-reduce-road/story-27569356-detail/story.html

and?

 

[glasgowcyclist]

and?

And I wish politicians would listen to him, he talks a lot of sense.


GC

 

[psmiffy]

ditto

 

[gavroche]

I agree with what he says.

 

[ayceejay]

Like most discussions on helmets this will divide into two camps when the sensible approach would be to have both a focus on how we stop accidents AND what happens to people who have them.

 

[Drago]

Considering his own brand of skid lids being on sale his words have echoes of Gerald Ratner, except these days no one cares.

 

[w00hoo_kent]

Considering his own brand of skid lids being on sale his words have echoes of Gerald Ratner, except these days no one cares.

Not really, he hasn't said 'we make shite because we know there's no point' he's said 'we make them, but they don't really do any good in a life threatening situation'.
Sufficiently different.

 

[Milkfloat]

I don't think that either side of the debate can argue with what he said.

 

[w00hoo_kent]

As ever, he comes across as eminently sensible. I think an awful lot of us can put our hands up and say "I know in my heart of hearts that the helmet is pointless, but I wear it anyway".