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forum
The cycle helmet debate continues
Well I know where I stand on this. I agree with the surgeon. But I'll just leave this here and see what everyone else says.
Now I've lit the blue touch paper, I'll stand well back!
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/07/15/helmets-do-nothing-says-british-s...
If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.
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42 comments
Why the debate? Make up your own mind, based on personal experience or whatever.
I do object to cyclists who stop and chat - and try to persuade me that my helmet is unnecessary and won't work. My experience is different.
I do object to those who rant on the I must wear a helmet - its my decision.
The "arguments" on both sides are in may cases flimsy, to say the least.
In my view the only time to get het up about this is with those who propose compulsion.
Simple!
Horses for courses.
On my road bike I always wear - I had a big fall a couple of years ago that amongst other things lead to 70 stitches in my face. Needless to say the helmet was toast and I suspect that without it I might have needed more stitches...
But pootling around town on the Brompton, in this heatwave? I chose not to wear.
I wear a helmet and always will. I hit the deck a week last Wednesday over the bars thanks to a car pulling out on me from the left hand side of the road. I landed on the front of my head. Broke my right hand, specs and trashed my helmet. The helmet saved my head from serious injury. I’m buying a new helmet with m.i.p.s technology. Look up mips. Saying that a helmet gives a false sense of security is just a nonsense.
I wear a helmet most of the time - I've had a few offs that had nothing to do with other vehicles and a helmet has definitely saved my head from significant injury, judging from the damage.
The worst was a faulty bike, resulting in me leaving quite a lot of skin from my elbows, knees, shoulder, chin and hands - if not for the helmet, it would have been quite a bit of my forehead, too, considering I landed on my head on tarmac.
On the other hand, I regularly pop out at lunchtime on the hack bike with no helmet, but that's a considered risk on quiet roads.
If you don't want to wear one, that's fine and I'm not going to tell you to, but I'll stick with wearing one when I think it's appropriate.
@Rick_Rude.
Yeah aye..
When in the head and spinal rehab facility there was a bloke.. Friggin hammered man. Story is hearsay yet. ... 4 cyclists.. Rolling down hill on smooth rock path.. Bike path. Keeping their lane, a pissed idiot on a petrol engine bike couldn't hold lane due to speed while climbing and wiped them out on one of the blind corners..
The dude I met was probably alive because he was fit but he was a severely hit mess. Not even sure if he was from a different accident scene.
I remember the staff saying that majority of head cases they have to nurse to better health simply wouldn't be there if the dumb cunts wore a helmet.
Don't know what happened regarding tail of tale.. Drink riding. 100% ban on petrol assistance push bikes. Speeding up hill suggests power output greater than our 300W cap.
Yet I'm with you.. Rack off twat.. Maybe a helmets in the mail, maybe blind corners aren't hindering some paths, maybe gumball season isn't bearing precedence upon our roll.
I wear one or argue with a mother.. I love 'em. But like you wrote.. Slow speeds, nothing to get hit by.. Mothers tend to know way more than us males..
I got pre-empitively victim blamed for not wearing a helmet today by another cyclist.
We (me, wife and child) were out on a popular cycle path probably averaging literally about 8-10 mph as my lad is a small 8 and still only on a MTB with 20" wheels. He had a helmet, me and the wife didn't as I really didn't think doing 10mph on a car free path warranted it as I mostly just arsing about trying to pull wheelies and the like.
Anyway we are going along (slowly) keeping to the left and a pair of walkers are coming the opposite direction walking on their left. Behind them a fast moving older cyclist and his wife are approaching.
We maintained our speed as the approaching cyclists were on the walkers' side and they should have slowed if needed. They didn't and overtook the walkers into our path and we had to stop to avoid his idiot overtake. He then shouts at me that I should be wearing a helmet!! Yeah just in case I hit by cunts like him overtaking when he should have slowed for 2s.
Stupid old cock. If you wouldn't do it in your car don't do it on your bike.
Ironically, probably the circumstances where a helmet is likely to be of most use!
Helmet advocacy by people/organisations with power and influence is essentially mandation by the back door.
Little point repeating what's already been said because it's clear that the pro helmet lot are blind, ignorant and don't have the capacity to grasp what's actually going on nor the outcomes from helmet wearing.
Only one group can't leave things as they were and will continue to badger and exclude constantly.
All those pro racers must have been doing it all wrong for over a century and yet safer than the modern pro wearing helmets, you really couldn't make it up unlike some of the posters here who try to make out stuff as facts. Laughable if it weren't so serious as to the negative effects on society as a whole.
Do you have a link to those helmet wearing stats from 2005-present you constantly refer to?
The problem is is that you constantly repeat the same tired old diatribe whenever the word "helmet" is uttered.
You probably do have some valid points, and they could be delivered in a cohesive & influential manner, but they're just lost in your angry rants where everybody is, apparently, ignorant & wrong except you.
Everybody has their opinion on the matter, and their own personal experiences, and I feel that you'd probably do well to just accept that and move on - coming across like you do is never going to sway somebody to your way of thinking.
Cant see any reason not to wear a helmet, My story is i always told my kids to wear a helmet,they would moan,they would whine. Then one day i have to go into work for a meeting on my day off. I jump on my bike (BMX) and off i cycle,then whoops i've forgotton to put my helmet on. well i think to myself i'll be ok.i ride slower,miss the drains and pot holes,no jumping off the kerbs! So i get to a staggered crossroads and im waiting at the junction. Then bang! a car on the opposite junction hit me because he cut over to my side of the road. i was lucky,the back of my head did not hit the road,Saved by the ruck sack on had on my back. The one time i never wore my helmet!
So, what yor are saying there is that there is no need to wear a helmet, a ruck sack is good enough to save you if you are hit by a car. If I were you I wouldn't use that little story to convince your kids that they should wear a helmet.
I like it. Almost at wear a helmet if your a pedestrian. Nice 1.
My miss take, misread.. Nice 1 though
Makes it tricky to wash your hair, though. Or are you prepared to take the risk of taking it off for that?
Sounds as if in your anecdote the problem was the presence of the car and a crap driver, not the absence of a helmet. Maybe that's the more important issue, as you anecdote demonstrates?
Those shower stalls can be dashed slippery, I hear...
Great anecdote that says more about risk compensation than helmet safety.
When I rode motorbikes I called my leathers my 'suit of invincibility'. I definitely rode differently when I wasn't wearing them!
I take from that - your risk appetite increases with safety equipment, the rucsac made a difference, there are crap drivers about. Did you consider you would have hit your head with a helmet on as your head would have been bigger?
Give it a rest, let those who don't believe in helmets take their chances without them, I'll take mine wearing one. Live and let live, eh?
Lots of cyclists wearing a helmet are only wearing it because they grew sick and tired of being nagged about it by a Significant Other Who Doesn't Ride A Bike.
Allegedly.
The problem is helmet promoters/wearers won't give it a rest, it's every single day that non wearers are been ostracised, refused entry to cycling events, refused to be allowed to ride in a cycling club so no inclusivity, victim blamed, shouted at and abused. it's added up to psuedo mandation in many quarters including increasingly and worryingly compulsion to wear for cycling to school, motions put forward in parliament every now and again and even police action to push helmet wearing.
And what has that done in this country (and every other country and sport)? Since 2005 which is when helmet wearing started to increase significantly in the UK post UCI rules Because BC had to change also), injuries have not improved, deaths are pretty much exactly where they were. Increases in cycling, well no there isn't (just a small incremental mileage increase and the injury rate compared to pedestrians has continued to get wider, child cycling hasn't increased.
All the while more children die solely of head injuries in motorvehicles than total number of children riding a bike, hundreds of thousands more from the general population have hospital stays due to serious head injuries that dwarf the number that are from people on bikes.
If the largest number of serious head injuries occur due to criminal activity (we know this for a fact), then putting the onus to protect - even when we know that that protection is nowhere near enough to prevent the serious injury, is simply heinous and in no other quarter in society do we do this, nor come close to the victim blaming for those not 'armouring' up. Nowhere else does society chide and exclude due to people not wearing a garment that is factually misrepresented and that this causes more harm in the grand scheme of things than it could ever resolve.
I presume you understand the social implications, the human rights breaching implications on top of the bending of the law due to the effects of 'force majeure' with regards to cycle helmets.
The group that needs to give it a rest is the one wearing/promoting helmets, only that group forces others to bend to their will or be attacked in various forms including discriminatory action in law and removing freedoms others experience.
Insidious doesn't even cover it!
This is a lie.
UK Helmet wearing increased rapidly from 1994.
Cyclist KSIs have fallen significantly since 1994.
AFAIK there is no good data for UK helmet wearing rates from 2005-present.
Why do the most vocal anti helmet posters have such difficulty posting the truth?
Seriously??? You are very keen on evidence and stats, so just take a look at the various helmet threads and see who's name crops up most.
He just enjoys screaming into the void and banging that oh so tired drum whenever his carer let's him use the laptop.
It does seem that when ever this debate comes up again, the same few people are shouting down others, comparing helmet advocacy with compulsion, dismissing any personal experience as acecdotal. How many people need to tell you that a helmet saved them from injury or reduced their injury in a situation that was not of their own making to suggest there might be a link? Strange we do not hear from those that went without helmet and hit their heads. The stats quoted always seem to be a bit 'off' and aimed at proving points not related to hitting you head off metal or concrete. To me they sound like conspiracy nuts who think they have cornered to the board. One day reality is going to hit them, or a Ford Fiesta.
What bugs me about helmet advocacy is that it seems to concentrate on cyclists as being the only at risk group for accidental head injury.
Cyclists are already an out-group and demonised by the media and the focus on helmet use just seems an awful lot like victim blaming to me. It seems that rather than focus on what actually would make the roads safer, instead there's far too much blaming 'idiot' cyclists that choose to not wear a helmet.
it's almost as if people were deliberately using a dead cat strategy to distract our attention from something else. But surely nobody could be that cynical...
Whilst I agree with you that the most vocal people on the 'Helmet Debate' (TM) threads are the same small group (on both sides), I'm honestly not sure that a bike helmet will protect you from being hit by a Ford Fiesta. Isn't that sort of the whole point of these debates?
What I was trying to say, is quite often you are not in control of an accident, a car could knock you off no matter your skill level. But if I was Daveyraveygravey I would be taking it a bit easier. I've only hit my head once, scraped the side of my helmet rather, when I slide off on some pigeon shit on a damp underpass on smooth concrete of a National cycle route path, but I was glad it was there. [Have also been left hooked twice and t-boned twice with various consequences, but no head strikes.] I'll keep wearing my helmet because no amount of skill or luck can compensate for the risk. Besides helmets are cool, wasn't Neil Armstrong seen wearing one?
I'll keep wearing my helmet because no amount of skill or luck can compensate for the risk. Besides helmets are cool, wasn't Neil Armstrong seen wearing one?
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Dude.. I love it.. Neil Armstrong would have a huge helmet though; less gravity to compress bodies pressure with.. (Or know gravity, often referred to as no gravity. Little bits of pull from the ship here and there yet none planetary of volume mass).
I like wearing my helmet too.
Because threads on here are the only place in the world that helmets are promoted?
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