The CycleChat Helmet Debate Thread

[mjr]

Has anybody questioned you when you've done this? Yes I know it's public roads and you're not using the facilities and you've every right to be there etc etc but I was wondering if anybody in a tabard had ever approached you?

No-one's questioned me while doing that. The only marshal I remember approaching me is one that I sort-of know anyway. I didn't even get approached/challenged when stopping outside the official feed stops while riding around with friends who had registered.

I've not done it for almost a year and that's largely because of what I feel is increasingly reckless participants and the failure of organisers to take effective safety measures, instead of mainly forcing helmets and banning recumbents. People have died on sportives and I suspect more will have to before this changes.

 

[ufkacbln]

Of course the way to recognize a cyclist from a pro-helmet non-cyclist with an agenda like this First Aider ...


No-one asked how the bike was

Once you have established the person is alive and recover then the question "How is the bike? Should be next

 

[Justinslow]

Fair play @mjray a lone bare head in a sea of helmets, bit conspicuous though

 

[mjr]

I'm far from a lone bare head here, ta. Who needs helmets when we have bowler hats?

(OK, that's slightly unfair, as it was from yesterday's fancy dress ride - sorry if the fb photo doesn't come out - the press were there too but don't seem to have posted news stories yet)

 

[ufkacbln]

I'm far from a lone bare head here, ta. Who needs helmets when we have bowler hats?

(OK, that's slightly unfair, as it was from yesterday's fancy dress ride - sorry if the fb photo doesn't come out - the press were there too but don't seem to have posted news stories yet)

There used to be something called a "Secret"

This was a steel protective layer built into a normal hat

The idea being that when some miscreant struck you across the head for nefarious reasons you were protected ant could then thane reprisals against the curmudgeon

There is a company called Yakkay who follows this tradition ... But not a Bowler (yet...)

 

[ufkacbln]

It's no different to the many many sportives held in this country, it's just a condition of the ride, don't go if you don't like it, I don't have problem with it as I don't mind wearing a helmet.

Actually your wrong, theres probably going to be loads of wannabe speed freaks trying to get all the KOMS round the track giving it the beans weaving round all the kids ask me how I know this......

Seriously though, the above paragraph was in jest, it's for a great cause and it's not something you can do everyday so in my book is (and was last August when I did it before) an enjoyable ride.
It'd be rude to not try and set a fast lap of a racetrack though.

And before you flame the speed freaks, everybody gave everyone loads of room on the track and there were no incidents to my knowledge.

Don't forget that the main organizer of Sportives does not recognize EN 1078 helmets as adequate

 

[ufkacbln]

Let me make myself clear. I am not a fan of helmets and I think each of us have the right to choose to wear one or not.

When I came off I was going fast and went right over the top. The thing I remember the most is sliding face down along the road and hearing the peak and helmet grinding away. I dont think helmets were designed to take anything but the lightest of impacts and I am just lucky that I slid rather than piled in head first. I doubt if one would save you in a heavy heavy impact accident. But on this occasion it saved me from a lot of facial injury. My arms are still scarred from the off.

Headway support Full Face Helmets... Technically

They misquote a series of statistics to bolster their position and when questioned quote a paper published by the British Dental Association

This paper questions the lack of facial protection of the present design and proposes atvDentists should be campaigning for greater facial protection .... Full face helmets


Funnily enough this is one of the times when many evangelists feel that professional medical advice is irrelevant, poor and ridiculous

 

[Justinslow]

I'm far from a lone bare head here, ta. Who needs helmets when we have bowler hats?

(OK, that's slightly unfair, as it was from yesterday's fancy dress ride - sorry if the fb photo doesn't come out - the press were there too but don't seem to have posted news stories yet)

Were they "oddjob" style metal hats/helmets?
Laurel and Hardy lol how apt

 

[mjr]

Were they "oddjob" style metal hats/helmets?
Laurel and Hardy lol how apt

Not as far as I know. The Samaritans fancy dress ride is one of three remaining local charity rides that I can think of which don't require helmets - I guess they're not keen on forcing self-harm

 

[steve50]

Some "facts" from bicycling magazine, what are your feelings / opinions on what they have to say regards helmets.
http://www.bicycling.com/culture/advocacy/should-riding-without-helmet-be-illegal

 

[steve50]

So folks, help me out, what do we think is so different about

• the laws of physics
• rider attitudes e.g. dressing for the destination not the journey
• driver attitudes
• the density of the tarmac
• the density of Danish skulls and the thickness of Danish skin
• et cetera

here in Copenhagen, versus the UK, that the vast majority of cyclists locally don't wear helmets yet ride their bikes, with a frequency/modal share most British towns can only dream of, apparently either ignorant of the risk or entirely happy to bear that risk? Are they stupid? Should I be telling them so? It is bike-to-work month here after all.

Bicycling is super safe in the Netherlands
TreeHugger reader Schrödinger's Cat noted:

You're talking about the Netherlands, where helmet use is almost non-existent, bike use is very high, and yet it has the lowest cycling death and injury rate in the world.
If helmets really were effective, the USA would be the safest place to cycle, right?
the Dutch don't need bike helmets because cycling is not an intrinsically dangerous activity – it's the road environment that is dangerous, and the Dutch have created a safe cycling environment.

The majority of head injuries are sustained by car occupants. Perhaps it is motor vehicle drivers and their passengers who should be wearing helmets?

Similarly, from dr2chase:

Because it doesn't make sense -- cycling there is 5 times safer than cycling here in the US. It would make more sense (that is, the risk is higher) to ask you why you don't wear a helmet when you drive your car. To put it differently – your risk of head injury per trip or per hour is higher if you drive a car in the US, than if you ride a bike in the Netherlands.

It doesn't even make that much sense to focus exclusively on bicycle helmets here in the US; biking is riskier, but not a lot riskier. Clear-weather daylight biking is almost certainly safer than driving in the rain at night – yet we don't worry about helmetless nighttime drivers, and we do worry about helmetless daytime bikers.

Also, on the first Groningen article I wrote, dr2chase commented: "Measuring per-trip or per-hour, cycling in the Netherlands is safer than driving in the US (which is not really all that much safer than cycling in the US)."

The issue of whether or not we should be required to wear helmets in cars came up a few times. However, I think an even more apt analogy would be whether or not to wear helmets when jogging. The Dutch bike at a very slow, leisurely pace. You could likely jog alongside many of them. So, I think that the idea of wearing a helmet while bicycling sounds as absurd to a Dutch person as the idea of wearing a helmet while jogging sounds to an American.

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2...s-compulsory-seattle-amsterdam-cycling-safety

 

[srw]

Some "facts" from bicycling magazine, what sre your feelings / opinions on what they have to say regards helmets.
http://www.bicycling.com/culture/advocacy/should-riding-without-helmet-be-illegal

This from the country which is finally legalising medical marijuana because there's evidence it's safe and works...

 

[steve50]

This from the country which is finally legalising medical marijuana because there's evidence it's safe and works...

i don't think that has anything to do with the helmet debate

 

[Poacher]

Some "facts" from bicycling magazine, what are your feelings / opinions on what they have to say regards helmets.
http://www.bicycling.com/culture/advocacy/should-riding-without-helmet-be-illegal

Second paragraph in the linked article:
"Of cyclists involved in crashes, bicycle helmet use has been estimated to reduce head injury risk by 85 percent. During the summer of 2014, while riding on a road closed to auto traffic, I survived a collision with another cyclist, only because I was wearing a helmet. Without a helmet, the front of my head would have hit the ground at 28mph, unprotected."

Whenever I see that 85% statistic, I know that whoever comes out with it is either ignorant or deliberately propagating an untruth; to put it bluntly, a fecking liar. Thompson, Rivara and Thompson withdrew their claim after it was demonstrated that using the same raw data and the same statistical methods, it could be "proved" that helmets prevent 70% of leg injuries. Surely anyone prepared to go into print arguing for compulsory helmet legislation cannot be unaware of this history?
Greg Kaplan, I'm calling you out!

 

[mjr]

Some "facts" from bicycling magazine, what are your feelings / opinions on what they have to say regards helmets.
http://www.bicycling.com/culture/advocacy/should-riding-without-helmet-be-illegal

@Poacher has already started by highlighting the 88% lie being repeated, which is debunked in many places. I quite like https://voony.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/the-bike-helmet-lobby-and-scientific-integrity/ as a summary. And on top of everything else, that study was in 1989, so was about 1980s hard-shell helmets which are rarely worn now, replaced by micro-shell helmets that are tested less stringently than helmets were 20 years ago!

Looking at the rest of Greg Kaplan's article, let's pick the first flaws I see:

• the two collisions he mentions are both with other road users, which is outside the tested parameters of cycle helmets.
• "Sixty-three percent of bicyclists killed in 2013 reportedly were not wearing helmets" is uninformative unless you have the helmet usage rate for the same population - if 66% of "bicyclists" didn't wear helmets in 2013 (which was the UK stat for 2008), then they're slightly underrepresented in fatalities (which wouldn't actually be that surprising as the riskiest cycling - racing - has helmet use forced by the UCI)... and it's actually fallen to 60% for 2014 - or in other words, helmet-wearers now account for 40% of fatalities, up from 37%.
• "Arguments against mandatory helmet laws that are based on what goes on in other countries, like the Netherlands, are invalid" - so he rejects learning what works from other places because it isn't his preferred conclusion.
• "Claims that wearing a helmet makes cycling appear dangerous, and may discourage cycling, are unproven. In fact in one survey by the NHTSA, 62% of respondents supported mandatory bicycle helmet use for adults." - Is it just me that can see that that survey response has nothing to do with whether helmets discourage cycling? Also, the NHTSA was using the 88% lie until it was forced to stop in 2013 by the Washington Area Bicyclists Association, so the response to its 2008 survey is probably biased.
• "Comparing cycling to other recreational pursuits" seems invalid because cycling is not only a recreational pursuit. It has a utility aspect too. No-one gets the food shopping home by playing American Football, but they do by cycling.

Those are just the first few. I'm sure if anyone looks deeper, they can find more absurdities and logical disconnects in that article. It's one of the worst anti-freedom arguments I've read for ages!

The issue of whether or not we should be required to wear helmets in cars came up a few times. However, I think an even more apt analogy would be whether or not to wear helmets when jogging. The Dutch bike at a very slow, leisurely pace. You could likely jog alongside many of them. So, I think that the idea of wearing a helmet while bicycling sounds as absurd to a Dutch person as the idea of wearing a helmet while jogging sounds to an American.

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2...s-compulsory-seattle-amsterdam-cycling-safety

Do Americans wear helmets for running, then? I don't really see what the speed of cycling has to do with it. If anything, greater speed makes helmets less relevant as it makes one more likely to exceed the tested limit if a vertical surface is hit during a crash.

And the Dutch really don't bike at a leisurely pace. On my recent ride around the Netherlands, I was scalped by more than a few old people on upright bikes because I was riding at a leisurely pace (as that's what it was, leisure, looking at the scenery as I rode along)... it was pretty rare that I overtook anyone. Oh and the roadies fairly blitzed past.

If you want to ponder a style difference, people in the Netherlands ride more sat-up, so are less likely to be head-down and ready to fly over the 'bars... but again, that's not the crash that helmets are tested for. If anything, being sat up means the Dutch have further to fall onto the floor, as does their famous greater average height, so wouldn't you expect more severe head injuries?