Compulsory cycle helmets - breakfast news item

[drossall]

Well when they introduced comp. motorbike helmets in the 60s (?) I remember some poor old Sikh refusing to take his turban off and being done for it; nobody would think of not wearing one now though.

But the casualty rate went up after the law was enacted, didn't it?

[drossall]

Are there any actual figures that break down serious injuries to cyclists and show what proportion were actually head injuries ?

Too difficult I would think. You'd need to define "serious" and "head" injuries.

Head injuries are particularly difficult. Often, they mean scalp lacerations. You could reduce those by wearing a tea cosy.

What really matters is actual figures on whether helmets reduce head injuries, not how many head injuries there are without (or with) helmets. As mentioned, see www.cyclehelmets.org on that.

[windrush]

Actually, the more you think about it, the more pointless compulsoryness is, relative to other legislation.

Loads of other illegal things do damage to others.

Even if it were proven that helmets give a massive increase in protection, surely the only person that's going to be affected is the person who decides not to wear one ?

As against the flying rear seat-beltless passenger, the drunk who climbed on my car roof last year, the smokers who used to make my clothes stink for days after visiting the pub and Katy Price.

[Cudzoziemiec]

"Flying rear seat-beltless passenger"
This should mean there's more point in making rear seat belts compulsory than front ones - since the people in the front don't have anyone to fly on to and are only going to hurt themselves by smashing through the windscreen - but of course it doesn't feel that way when you're in a car, and so that's not the way it was. Hell, we had compulsory wearing of front seat belts before most cars on the road even had to have rear seat belts fitted!

[Bledlow]

No health benefit from motorcycling.

Right. Therefore no countervailing argument against the wearing of motorbike helmets, except risk compensation. But note (see below) that this applies both to those wearing the helmets, & those they share the road with.

Results of peer-reviewed studies:

Compulsory helmets = fewer cyclists.
Fewer cyclists = higher accident rates for cyclists.
Fewer cyclists = less exercise, therefore poorer health (note the comments today by Sir Liam Donaldson - BBC News - Call for child fitness tests in schools )
Results of above = compulsory helmets probably reduce life expectancy. May even increase brain injuries, through higher rates of strokes.

Oh yeah - and:
Helmet wearing slightly increases an individuals chance of an accident. Risk compensation, & drivers give helmet-wearers less room, probably because (unconsciously) they're seen as less vulnerable.

Tell that to some people, & you get the ears in fingers "la-la, I can't hear you" treatment.

[Cudzoziemiec]

There might even be a slight health benefit from motorcycling, if it replaces car driving.

[Jaded]

They don't report if a dead car occupant was wearing a seatbelt or not.

Why not?

[Bledlow]

The country that experienced the greatest
decrease in the mid-1970s was Denmark, before its law was passed. As can be
seen in Figure 3, after its law road deaths increased slightly.

Seat belt wearing in Denmark was very high by the time the law was passed, having increased considerably in the previous few years. There'd been a lot of pro-seatbelt propaganda/education (depends on your POV) in that period, & it seems to have been effective. I visited about then, & remember having discussions about it.

[Cudzoziemiec]

To be fair to the news media (or rather to give them the benefit of the doubt) that could be because seat belt wearing is the norm now, so it's only worth reporting if someone definitely wasn't wearing it and their injuries would have been prevented by doing so. Or also due to the large numbers of cars with air bags nowadays, which do pretty much the same job even if you're not wearing a belt.

OTOH these may not be the thought processes in reporters' minds.

Edit: You said dead, so make that if their death would have been prevented.

[MacB]

My youngest sons school is insisting he has to wear a helmet now, as of this term, allegedly it's been the policy all along. My elder two are now at secondary school but both went to this school and cycled without helmets, as has the youngest for over a year. I tried to have the discussion with the school but it was pointless. So instructions now are, he has to take a helmet and must be wearing it when entering/exiting school. Other than that he can please himself.

I've cycled with all of them, to and from school, quite a few times and have gradually been training them to ride on the roads properly. But in reality they make their own way, via road, pavement, cyclepath, cut through, cycling, walking to chat with friends, etc. Pretty much as kids have always made their way to and from school when not ensconced in a car.

I expressly allow them to use the pavements, particularly around the schools, on the understanding that they behave correctly towards other pavement users. This is due to the fact that school policies are closing car parks to discourage car run parents, which just means ridiculous on road/pavement, wherever, parking around the schools. Also the local councils idea that chicanes and speed ramps either side of schools are a good idea. This all adds up to appaling driving and attitudes around the schools at those two special times of the day. The rest of the time these are perfectly safe roads to cycle on and would be with or without the road architecture.

I've held my position and cycled through one of the chicanes on my priority, despite the best efforts of a car coming the other way to stop me. Being driven by a women, with mobile phone glued to ear, various kids she's just collected and then screams out of her window, get off the fucking road, at me.

Wow, mini rant over, I guess I don't care for school run parents then

[CrinklyLion]

Wow, mini rant over, I guess I don't care for school run parents then

I particularly hate the "decided on pavement parking so that I have to walk around the outside of you on the bloody road in order to get past with a pushchair" parents.  Because that's obviously what those yellow zig-zags tell you to do, isn't it...

[simonp]

There's also the UK situation where the introduction of seat belt laws co-incided with a 7-year plateau in total road deaths - and a jump in the number of vulnerable road users killed.

Seat belts: another look at the data | John Adams: Risk in a Hypermobile World

[MacB]

Wow, mini rant over, I guess I don't care for school run parents then

I particularly hate the "decided on pavement parking so that I have to walk around the outside of you on the bloody road in order to get past with a pushchair" parents.  Because that's obviously what those yellow zig-zags tell you to do, isn't it...

  My favourites are the ones I pass en route to the school on my bike, if I pootle the ride takes me a whole 6 minutes, it's 1 mile exactly. When I say pass, I mean I pass them getting into their cars on their drives or outside their houses. Some so close to the school that use of the mile as a measurement is woefully inadequate. You need to resort to millimeters to get a suitably large No to justify a car trip.

[rogerzilla]

They don't report if a dead car occupant was wearing a seatbelt or not.

Why not?

They sometimes do, Princess Diana probably being the most famous.

[Regulator]

There's also the UK situation where the introduction of seat belt laws co-incided with a 7-year plateau in total road deaths - and a jump in the number of vulnerable road users killed.

Seat belts: another look at the data | John Adams: Risk in a Hypermobile World

Quoting one rather dodgy blog isn't evidence Bridget... 

[Wendy]

It's only evidence when it agrees with the reg's view.   

[Regulator]

It's only evidence when it agrees with the reg's view.   

Adams is a well known loon, whose rants have made appearances on this forum before and were totally trashed.

The evidence for the efficacy of seatbelts is significant, substantive and internationally respected.  Adams' 'evidence' isn't...

[mrcharly-YHT]

His blog sounds convincing, I bet the figures he quotes are accurate.

I'm also prepared to bet that they are pointless and meaningless. The efficacy of seatbelts in reducing injury and death could only be concluded by considering similar accidents, with similar vehicles, where some passengers used seatbelts and some didn't.

He has a valid point about risk compensation, tho'. 'Feel' safe and you are more inclined to take risks.

[simonp]

His blog sounds convincing, I bet the figures he quotes are accurate.

I'm also prepared to bet that they are pointless and meaningless. The efficacy of seatbelts in reducing injury and death could only be concluded by considering similar accidents, with similar vehicles, where some passengers used seatbelts and some didn't.

He has a valid point about risk compensation, tho'. 'Feel' safe and you are more inclined to take risks.

No it couldn't. At least, not the point Adams is making. Adams does not dispute that in a crash a seatbelt would protect you. The evidence is strong. However, the evidence for legislation on seatbelts saving lives (just as with cycle helmets) is what is being questioned. The claims made pre legislation have not been backed by results. The claim was that 1,000 lives a year would be saved.

[Martin]

going back to the OP; where are the convincing figures (not from bloody cyclehelmets.org) that total accident rates increased as a result of fewer cyclists in countries that introduced a MHL?

when I'm out on a bike, especially round here, I'm on my own, almost no driver pays me any attention. In a group on the B roads it's generally even more dangerous due to the increased time taken to pass us. Anyone who rides Audax events in Kent will see what I mean.

Such a sad contrast to the Netherlands IMX where even on roads with no segregated cycle facilities the drivers are both more competent and courteous than here. But hard to compare the two countries as over there pretty much everyone is a cyclist even if they drive a car some of the time; and the two parallel forms of transport have evolved together.

[Regulator]

His blog sounds convincing, I bet the figures he quotes are accurate.

I'm also prepared to bet that they are pointless and meaningless. The efficacy of seatbelts in reducing injury and death could only be concluded by considering similar accidents, with similar vehicles, where some passengers used seatbelts and some didn't.

He has a valid point about risk compensation, tho'. 'Feel' safe and you are more inclined to take risks.

His whole set of arguments around seatbelts is based on a fallacious, straw man argument about the basis on which the legislation was introduced.

When the Iles report wasn't made public, it wasn't because it supported Adams - it was because the administration at the time realised that they'd been taken in by a single issue evangelist and a flawed hypothesis.

Adams is about as good for road safety as Paul Smith and the other 'Speek Your Branes' charlatans on SafeSpeed.

[mrcharly-YHT]

They went up in Victoria, Australia.

However, I was out in Vic not long after the law was introduced.  

I saw a lot of people riding with a helmet.













Dangling from their handlebars by the straps. If they saw a copper, they quickly popped helmet on their head.
Chances are (and this is guess not backed by statistics, dodgy or otherwise), the *increase* in accidents owed something to the increase in people cycling with a loose object hanging from some straps on their handlebars.

[clarion]

I see a woman on my commute most days.  She rides reasonably well, except for the fact that she goes straight through red lights   She has long hair, and carries a h*lm*t, which I have never seen her wear, but it is always dangling there...

[Regulator]

You have to be careful about a lot of the data bandied about in the Australian helmet debate.  Much of it, on both sides of the debate, is only partial and often taken completely out of context.  The "30% reduction in cycling" is a classic exmaple of widespread extrapolations being made on partial and insubstantive data.

[Martin]

the lady in the cycle shop in that school video was quite telling; "in countries where a helmet law was introduced cycle sales went down" go figure...