The Helmet Debate

[Fish on a bike]

This debate is about helmets in the same way the fox-hunting debate was about foxes. A group of 'right-thinking' people wants to impose their will on another group who have differing views. Using the crutch of 'commonsense' they will harangue the unbelievers until a consensus of 'best practice' is made mainstream. Garnering the new majority, laws will be passed, and control imposed. Thus writ, they will move on, oblivious of the feelings of those they have legislated against. The noose grows ever tighter.

I don't think you can compare it to killing animals for fun! Like most people I think it should be left up the individual whether they wear a helmet or not, we don't need big brother dictating to us, there's enough pressure on us to do this and that. Commuting I wear a helmet, in the countryside on trails I don't. The day I can't exercise my freewill on matters as minor as this is the day I leave the UK.

 

[2wheelsgeth]

Whew. 11 pages of this is enough to make me want to cycle the wrong way down the Euston road at night without lights, helmet or hi-viz. In the outside lane. During a power cut. In heavy rain.

For the record, I wear a helmet and hi-viz, but couldn't really care what anyone else wants to do. It's not like the debate when seatbelts in cars were made compulsory, after all - that really did save a lot of lives.

 

[ComedyPilot]

I think we should ban private cars from being driven in built up areas - imagine how many lives that would save a year?

 

[Nantmor]

It's not like the debate when seatbelts in cars were made compulsory, after all - that really did save a lot of lives.

No it didn't. Have a look at this exchange of emails with the chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Traffic Safety, who, in my opinion fails completely to justify his claims of lives saved.

http://www.john-adams.co.uk/2009/09/23/open-letter-to-executive-director-of-pacts/


The chair, Rob Gifford, has admitted that the seat belt law cost lives of pedestrians and cyclists.

"In your Significance article you are clear that you believe the law has saved the lives of people in cars at the expense of vulnerable road users: “The picture shows a clear reduction in death and injury to car occupants, appreciably offset by extra deaths among pedestrians and cyclists.”".
This is a startling admission from an important figure in the government road safety establishment that seat belts transferred the risk from the relatively invulnerable to the vulnerable. This is unacceptable not just to cyclists and pedestrians, but surely to anyone with a moral sense.

The website linked to above has more material on the subject of seat belts and of cycle helmets.

Talking of the debate when seat belts were made compulsory, enough of a fuss was made by the antis to make the Dept. of Transport commission a report into the results of seat belt laws in other countries. The report was completed in time for the parliamentary debate. It was suppressed and only became known when leaked to the New Scientist some years later. It said there was no detectable improvement in casualty rates in any country which had made belts compulsory. It is on the website linked to.
The helmet debate is very like the seat belt debate, and the claimed success of the seat belt law is often used to justify helmet compulsion. In neither case is there evidence from other countries that their laws decreased casualties.

 

[Dan_h]

Whew. 11 pages of this is enough to make me want to cycle the wrong way down the Euston road at night without lights, helmet or hi-viz. In the outside lane. During a power cut. In heavy rain.

And oddly enough you would probably be fine... at least if all the cyclists I see doing similar things around here are anything to go by!!!

 

[Davidc]

Not relevant to thin polystyrene cycle helmets but was there any evidence of benefits from motorcycle crash helmets being made compulsory?

The sensation of the wind in your hair at 70mph was fabulous. I've often wondered how much benefit a motorbike helmet is in a crash at that (or higher) speed!

 

[tyred]

I have now decided to start wearing a helmet like this:

As can be seen, I have also equipped my bike with a means of dealing with dozy pedestrians and close overtake drivers

 

[2wheelsgeth]

Talking of the debate when seat belts were made compulsory, enough of a fuss was made by the antis to make the Dept. of Transport commission a report into the results of seat belt laws in other countries. The report was completed in time for the parliamentary debate. It was suppressed and only became known when leaked to the New Scientist some years later. It said there was no detectable improvement in casualty rates in any country which had made belts compulsory. It is on the website linked to.
The helmet debate is very like the seat belt debate, and the claimed success of the seat belt law is often used to justify helmet compulsion. In neither case is there evidence from other countries that their laws decreased casualties.

I always struggle with this claim - it seems to me that the evidence can be used to support either case. All I really trust in these cases is experience - 15 years ago I lost two friends in a car accident. Neither of them were wearing seatbelts, and both were thrown from the car. I'm not going to be foolish enough to claim that wearing a seatbelt would definitely have saved their lives, but I've never travelled without one since.

 

[2wheelsgeth]

And oddly enough you would probably be fine... at least if all the cyclists I see doing similar things around here are anything to go by!!!

 

[Nantmor]

I always struggle with this claim - it seems to me that the evidence can be used to support either case. All I really trust in these cases is experience - 15 years ago I lost two friends in a car accident. Neither of them were wearing seatbelts, and both were thrown from the car. I'm not going to be foolish enough to claim that wearing a seatbelt would definitely have saved their lives, but I've never travelled without one since.

Have you had a look at the graphs on http://www.john-adams.co.uk/? Have you read Rob Gifford's futile struggles to make his case, and Adams's demolition of his arguments? You wisely refrain from claiming that belts would have saved your friends' lives. Many people still die on the roads in cars, so it is plain that seat belts won't save everyone who crashes.
Thinking that the evidence can be used to support either side does not free you to use anecdotes to decide. If you want to find out which claims are true you should really look at the evidence.

 

[HonestMan1910]

never felt the need to post on this debate until just after 2015hrs last night, when my helmet saved my life during my incident with a car, without i am 100% sure that the grey matter inside my skull would have been spread all over the road as a result of my head tking the 1st impact from 15mph to 0mph assisted by a car

 

[ComedyPilot]

never felt the need to post on this debate until just after 2015hrs last night, when my helmet saved my life during my incident with a car, without i am 100% sure that the grey matter inside my skull would have been spread all over the road as a result of my head tking the 1st impact from 15mph to 0mph assisted by a car

Glad to hear you are 'ok', however, I would like you to look at the incident and explain how it happened. Then we can see if there was anything that could have been done to avoid the crash.

I fully understand your gratitude that you were wearing a helmet, and it possibly saved you from serious injury, but I am concerned as to how you came to be in collision with the vehicle in the first place?

 

[Red Light]

I have now decided to start wearing a helmet like this:
View attachment 5683


As can be seen, I have also equipped my bike with a means of dealing with dozy pedestrians and close overtake drivers

<Mae West> Is that a gun on your crossbar or are you just pleased to see us? </Mae West>

 

[Red Light]

never felt the need to post on this debate until just after 2015hrs last night, when my helmet saved my life during my incident with a car, without i am 100% sure that the grey matter inside my skull would have been spread all over the road as a result of my head tking the 1st impact from 15mph to 0mph assisted by a car

I doubt very much it saved your life. From the statistics of helmet wearing and fatal accidents in the UK and the fact that very very few people have their "grey matter spread all over the road", even if helmets were 100% effective there is no more than one such case in the UK a year if that out of a billion or more bicycle journeys. And if the accident had been serious enough that you were at risk of a fatal head injury you would almost certainly have suffered several other fatal non-head injuries as well.

 

[HonestMan1910]

Glad to hear you are 'ok', however, I would like you to look at the incident and explain how it happened. Then we can see if there was anything that could have been done to avoid the crash.

I fully understand your gratitude that you were wearing a helmet, and it possibly saved you from serious injury, but I am concerned as to how you came to be in collision with the vehicle in the first place?

My accident was as a result of a driver coming out of a sideroad and attempting a right hand turn onto a main road where i was already going straight on i.e. hitting me on my lefthand side.
The driver admitted resposibility straight away, once i had come round, and said that she never sawa either of my bright white front lights and was only aware of me as i shouted out a warning to her as she continued to emerge onto the road.
Definitely 100% driver error and only way to have avoided the accident would have been for me not to have been there at all.

In my opinion and also that of the paramedics, police and witnesses without a helmet my injuries could have been fatal as my head was the first thing to hit the road.