Bradley Wiggins calls for safer cycling laws and compulsory helmets

[benb]

A spokesman for the Department of Transport issued this statement:

"We take the issue of cycle safety extremely seriously and are working to reduce the instances of deaths and serious injuries of cyclists on our roads. We encourage cyclists – especially children – to wear helmets to protect them if they have a crash. However, we believe this should remain a matter of individual choice rather than imposing additional rules which would be difficult to enforce. We also want to see more innovative measures being put in place to improve cycle safety. That is why we have made it easier for councils to install Trixi mirrors to make cyclists more visible to drivers as well as announcing an additional £30 million for better cycle routes and facilties. We have also committed £11 million per year for Bikeability training to help a new generation of cyclists gain the skills and knowledge they need to cycle on the roads.”​

​

Comes fro an impeccable Tory source too.

Good job I was sitting down for that - sensible response from government department.

 

[benb]

My wife (who would prefer me to wear a helmet) heard something on R4 about a Cochrane review suggesting helmets did provide a protective effect. I am unaware of such a study, and my google-fu is failing me.

RL, are you aware of the study in question, so I can read it?

 

[Danny]

You think? There is more than a handful on here alone who keep lecturing us about it

Well, there might be two handfuls here that feel really strongly about it. But do you really think that the Government, with all the other problems it faces, is going to expend any political capital on trying to push through compulsory helmet measures.

Apart from anything else, Borris Johnson is a leading helmet safety denier and Cameron knows he would certainly use this as a stick to beat him with as he positions himself for a leadership bid.

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

Wiggo himself has now back-tracked on Twitter, saying he was never calling for compulsion. Maybe he'll go back to doing interviews in French instead, just to avoid any further confusion.

The quote I read said something like ''make helmet wearing law.'' I'd like to see what he remembers saying because the press quote is exactly a call for compulsion.

And in the context, I'd like to see which stats on cycling deaths under the wheels of HGVs and buses support the idea that a helmet will protect them. Of course there may have been some concussion injuries where HGVs have been involved but all I remember is deaths from stories of crushed internal organs, pelvises and abdomen.

 

[dellzeqq]

Bradley calls for laws for safer cycling ...
but his comments on helmets seem a little incoherent as reported in that article.

quite. And, since London is the safest place in the UK to ride a bike..........he's doubly wrong

 

[dellzeqq]

Hmmmm... Do I now beleive Bradley Wiggins or Cunobolin.........

What a dilema.

Not.

you don't have to believe anybody. You just have to accept that some people will wear a helmet and some people won't.

Bradely Wiggins' conception of cycling is warped by isolation from mass cycling. He spends his time in training camps. He's no more across what happens in towns and cities than the average MP from rural Lincolnshire. He's not knowledgeable about cycling injuries and fatalities, and he's not that analytical a character - people do his analysis for him. Doesn't make him any less off a cyclist, but that's all one can say

 

[GrumpyGregry]

My wife (who would prefer me to wear a helmet) heard something on R4 about a Cochrane review suggesting helmets did provide a protective effect. I am unaware of such a study, and my google-fu is failing me.

RL, are you aware of the study in question, so I can read it?

S'funny, after my off in April (you've all seen the pictures) my wife is now convinced that helmets are a waste of time and my head, covered in a decent tweed cap, hard enough to cope unaided.

I will continue to wear one if cycling at speed or any significant distance until the big scar is fully healed just so I don't accidentally split the scar.

 

[dellzeqq]

Phew, thanks!

They gotta be a safer option for minor accidents tho right?

why? And so what?

 

[dellzeqq]

S'funny, after my off in April (you've all seen the pictures) my wife is now convinced that helmets are a waste of time and my head, covered in a decent tweed cap, hard enough to cope unaided.

I will continue to wear one if cycling at speed or any significant distance until the big scar is fully healed just so I don't accidentally split the scar.

quite. I was there. Had Greg been wearing a helmet he might have come away with a broken neck

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Phew, thanks!

They gotta be a safer option for minor accidents tho right?

They may be expected to reduce head injury in the range of circumstances that is compatible with their performance envelope. Basically low and slow on to objects shaped like the anvils they are tested with.

 

[dellzeqq]

I'd rather have a mild headache than full on concussion.

that wasn't the question. Why do you think they do what they say on the packet?

Clue. Enlargement cream..........

 

[GrumpyGregry]

quite. I was there. Had Greg been wearing a helmet he might have come away with a broken neck

I am certain that my injuries would have been more severe with one on.

 

[Boris Bajic]

You think? There is more than a handful on here alone who keep lecturing us about it

Yes. I do. Most people think the pro-compulsion hordes are imagined. Insofar as they are real, they have no power or influence in the UK legislature.

A few slightly mad voices in the prairie howling at the moon about how lovely compulsion would be do not pass bills.

The odd (probably factually so) west country MP in their number does not make them a realistic threat.

Many of us who have been cycling for decades find this whole thing rather fun. Much of the fun derives from the slightly paranoid certainty of some fringe loonies (no-one on these forums of course) that the dark machine is trying to control our lives.

Posts advocating helmet use on an Internet forum do not constitute a threat to our civil liberties. There's no law against feeling affronted and threatened by emotional rants, but it isn't yet a conspiracy.

The helmet-compulsion debate is a diversion to many people, just as there is entertainment value reading the arc-light logic of Christopher Hitchens and then realising that he was as mad as a bag of frogs, but right enough on a few topics to make him entertaining.

 

[Red Light]

My wife (who would prefer me to wear a helmet) heard something on R4 about a Cochrane review suggesting helmets did provide a protective effect. I am unaware of such a study, and my google-fu is failing me.

RL, are you aware of the study in question, so I can read it?

Yes there is a Cochrane Review but one that does Cochrane no credit. The authors are the notorious Thompson, Rivara and Thompson and they reference mainly their own papers and ignore any that don't support their views. Try searching under the title - Helmets for preventing head and facial injuries in bicyclists

 

[GrumpyGregry]

which no doubt means building more off road cycle routes rather than investing measures to make riding on roads safer.

Well you say that. A small piece of government money is coming the 'shams way and some of it is going on improvements to local roads, mainly ASL's, under the influence of our local cycling forum....