Video: Chris Boardman demonstrating safe overtaking of cyclists

Toro Toro wrote:

Paul, I'm afraid you have no idea what you're talking about. This is all gibberish.

You will need more than a skim. You will need to sit down, carefully, and read it until you understand it. I can't do that for you. I could talk you through it, but it would take a significant amount of my time and effort as well as yours, and I don't work for free.

But without you taking the trouble to more than barely acquaint yourself with argument forms, fallacies, and the like, I'm afraid that anything you say about them will continue to be gibberish. So if you're only prepared to skim I'd advise you to let it go. Either tackle the analogy, or accept it. The argument form is not problematic.

I don't work for free either. My time might even be more expensive than yours.

You're basically arguing to accept your authority, even though it should be quite easy to state what you mean by "analogy". And no, I'm not interested in wading through reams of philosophical takes on it - I'll happily take a succinct definition though, preferably erring towards formal. It really shouldn't be difficult.

I'm wondering, do you lecture on the formal, mathematical sciences side or the philosophical side?

Jahmoo wrote:

Anyway......

The video will only make those idiot drivers more stressed, as this is how they live their life. And for cyclists who live by the legality of 2 side by side, well I'm one for moving in when riding down lanes, which I can say most do not.

Education and tip, use common scense and drive carefully, everyone is in such a hurry these days, the roads are too stressful...

Those drivers should buy a bike and go for a ride, should chill them out and give them another perspective on the matter.

I find it a little ironic that one person ( usually) complains about 2, or even 6, people taking up almost as much width as them in their car, especially when they aren't even delayed one second and still complain.

Toro Toro wrote:

Quote:

That's the point though. Helmets don't really make anyone safer.
At best they just (slightly) reduce the consequences of being unsafe.
That's not the same thing.

Sorry, this is utter gibberish. If there are no potential consequences to one's being "unsafe", then one is not unsafe. If the consequences are reduced, then one is safer. The distinction you are making is incoherent.

I don't disagree about helmets being way down the list of priorities, particularly wrt this video. And I agree that it's a shame this discussion has got sidetracked in this way. Still, terrible arguments are terrible arguments in any context; and "Dutch cyclists don't wear helmets and have fewer injuries, so helmets are ineffective" is a terrible, terrible argument.

100%! Suggest you get your flak helmet on though

Toro Toro wrote:

Sorry, this is utter gibberish. If there are no potential consequences to one's being "unsafe", then one is not unsafe. If the consequences are reduced, then one is safer. The distinction you are making is incoherent.

Would you rather be hit by a car but protected from head injury because you wore a helmet; or not hit by a car at all because the road environment is safe?

Helmets don't prevent us from being hit. They don't make us safer.
We should focus on the things that do.

Quote:

I don't disagree about helmets being way down the list of priorities, particularly wrt this video. And I agree that it's a shame this discussion has got sidetracked in this way.

So why do it???

Toro Toro wrote:

"Dutch cyclists don't wear helmets and have fewer injuries, so helmets are ineffective" is a terrible, terrible argument.

You're absolutely right - that is a terrible argument and if anyone makes it I'll pull them up on it. Luckily no one has.

What people have quite correctly said is that other measures such as Dutch infrastructure are magnitudes more effective than helmets at preventing injury.

You more or less said it yourself: not mixing with lions is waaaaay more effective than anti-lion hairspray.

RTB wrote:

Sadly you're wasting your breath (or fingertips) on here 'cos some believe that if you push helmets you somehow discourage people from cycling - yep some really shallow thinkers on some of these pages.

Personally I've thought long and hard about the consequences of a mandatory helmet law such as sam proposes. I've looked at the figures and research from other countries that have tried it and concluded that it does more harm than good.

RTB wrote:

Facts like that fly straight over the flat earth dwellers' heads though 'cos it mucks up their argument.

Doesn't muck up my argument at all because I'm not denying that helmets can help. I usually wear one myself.

But even if they were 100% effective, how many cyclist lives a year would they save if they were made mandatory? I'd guess at a number less than 10.

Meanwhile 1 in 10 deaths in the UK are obesity-related and anything that discourages people from the easy cheap daily exercise that cycling provides will only cause more deaths.

Simply put the evidence is that helmet compulsion would harm more people than it helped. In public health terms that makes it a bad idea.

The British Medical Association (more flat earthers?) used to take the same evidence-led position, until it finally caved to pressure from the "just ignore the evidence, it's common sense" crowd.

GrahamSt wrote:

Toro Toro wrote:

Sorry, this is utter gibberish. If there are no potential consequences to one's being "unsafe", then one is not unsafe. If the consequences are reduced, then one is safer. The distinction you are making is incoherent.

Would you rather be hit by a car but protected from head injury because you wore a helmet; or not hit by a car at all because the road environment is safe?

Helmets don't prevent us from being hit. They don't make us safer.
We should focus on the things that do.

Christ. Clearly, I'd rather not be hit by a car because the road environment is safe. *If hit by a car*, like any sensible person, I'd rather be wearing a helmet than not, because that would be safer than the same contact not wearing a helmet.

Thankfully, "helmets or safe roads" are not exclusive alternatives; we can have both. So the choice you offer is obviously spurious. If we had safe roads, wearing a helmet wouldn't make much of a difference. But we don't, so it does.

Helmets don't prevent us from being hit, no. I haven't ever seen anyone claim otherwise. But it doesn't follow that they don't make us safer; they make us safer in contact if we *are* hit.

What anybody who is not an idiot would do is seek to reduce *both* the incidence of collisions *and* the damage done by collisions when they do occur. It's not either-or, they're independent of each other.

Quote:

Quote:

I don't disagree about helmets being way down the list of priorities, particularly wrt this video. And I agree that it's a shame this discussion has got sidetracked in this way.

So why do it???

First, for the same reason that you are. "Tu quoque", if people are bandying about the names of fallacies.

Second, because *as I actually say*, though you haven't quoted it, because a terrible argument is a terrible argument in any context.

Quote:

Toro Toro wrote:

"Dutch cyclists don't wear helmets and have fewer injuries, so helmets are ineffective" is a terrible, terrible argument.

You're absolutely right - that is a terrible argument and if anyone makes it I'll pull them up on it. Luckily no one has.

PaulJ has. So off you toddle to pick him up on it. Someone did earlier in the week, too. I didn't see you picking them up, so your vigilance may not be all you think.

Quote:

What people have quite correctly said is that other measures such as Dutch infrastructure are magnitudes more effective than helmets at preventing injury.

You more or less said it yourself: not mixing with lions is waaaaay more effective than anti-lion hairspray.

But what kind of moron would think otherwise? I've been quite clear, repeatedly, that we need - like the Dutch have - better driver training and better infrastructure.

But *while we don't yet have those things*, harm reduction - yes - makes us safer. And it doesn't stop us getting them.

There are a remarkable number of people who seem to think helmets are completely powerless to reduce impact forces to the skull, yet devastatingly effective at blocking bike-lanes, impairing driver education, and somehow making cyclists invisible.

GrahamSt wrote:

Would you rather be hit by a car but protected from head injury because you wore a helmet; or not hit by a car at all because the road environment is safe?

Helmets don't prevent us from being hit. They don't make us safer.
We should focus on the things that do.

I really was trying very hard not to bite, but this comment is just insane.

Seatbelts and airbags do not help prevent us from crashing or being crashed into. But they sure as hell help prevent serious life threatening injuries if we do crash or are crashed into.

It seems to me that they therefore make us safer.

If, and I stress, if, helmets reduce the risk of head injury or may reduce the severity of head injuries in the event of a cyclist crashing, falling off, or being hit by a car then surely the helmet has made the cyclist safer?

I remain fairly agnostic as to what difference a helmet actually makes, but a large part of me things that if I had a choice between headbutting the ground helmet off, or helmet on, I'd go for the helmet on option. And I fervently believe that helmets should not be mandatory.

But resorting to idiotic arguments helps no-one.

Toro Toro wrote:

Still, terrible arguments are terrible arguments in any context; and "Dutch cyclists don't wear helmets and have fewer injuries, so helmets are ineffective" is a terrible, terrible argument.

Agreed. I don't think anyone has made that argument here. Certainly, I did not.

Are helmets effective at reducing the incidence of certain kinds of injuries, of themselves?

Yes, they are. Helmets reduce the risk of head injuries by around 25% to 50%, depending on the study (ignoring the oft quoted but discredited US 85% one).

Are the injuries prevented by helmets significant, relative to the overall number of injuries?

For utility and non-competition road cycling the answer seems to be "not at all". I've found it hard to get precise figures on this, but whatever positive effects helmets have in the UK, that effect clearly is utterly overwhelmed by other negative effects, of at least the environment and possibly even of helmet culture (e.g. reduced cycling), by comparison with controls like NL.

Even for competition road cycling, the answer may be "relatively insignificant". E.g. figures I got from a doctor involved in Irish road racing were 2 head injuries over a certain period. So, had the racers not worn helmets, assuming the broader cycling studies roughly hold to road competition, there'd have been 2⅔ to 4 head injuries, given the above ranges. So potentially ⅔ to 2 additional people would have had head injuries. 33% to 200% more.

Does that sound like a lot? Well, there were ~600 recorded injuries over all in that same period. So without helmets the 600 would have been 600⅔ to 602 people. The 33% to 200% benefit of helmets when viewed through the narrow lens of head injuries becomes a meagre 0.11% to 0.33% benefit when you look at the big picture of all injuries.

You could ask if the non-head injuries might have been less serious than the head injuries - unfortunately I don't know, I didn't get a break-down of the injuries by severity; however in the real-world many fatal injuries are not head related, they are crush injuries to the thorax, because heavy vehicles are disproportionately involved in fatal accidents (certainly in London) - a helmet makes 0 difference then.

Basically, what looks like a significant effect of helmets when you focus just on head injuries in cycling could be a trivial effect overall, because head injuries are relatively rare overall.

In software engineering, this would be like focusing heavily on optimising a piece of code that only very rarely gets run, and never shows up in profiling.

Are helmets a useful tool in general cycling safety?

Perhaps in some types of cycling (downhill mountain biking, other kinds of riskier cycling or competition). Perhaps an individual might feel they are useful to them. Though, personally, if I felt something was risky enough to need a helmet I'd prefer to avoid it altogether - got enough broken bones already. This is a subjective, personal decision.

However, at a strategic level, the UK's reliance on helmets for cyclist safety doesn't seem to be delivering results, relative to other neighbouring countries. Indeed, helmets are likely at least a symptom of the real problem: an unsafe environment. Worse, the reliance on helmets may distract from fixing that real problem (as Chris Boardman has said). Even worse, a culture of pushing the notion that cycling requires helmets may deter some from cycling because of the perceived danger helmets signal and/or inconvenience they bring - as compulsion laws definitely do. With fewer cyclists, there then is less political will to fix the true problem: the (perceived) unsafe environment.

So, at a minimum, this helmet debate distracts from the real issues, and at worst it may even be undermining the political base required to fix the real issues. Which, I'd suggest, means helmets are not a useful strategic tool to achieving real cycling safety (as defined by safety achieved by close neighbours).

Paul J wrote:

Toro Toro wrote:

Still, terrible arguments are terrible arguments in any context; and "Dutch cyclists don't wear helmets and have fewer injuries, so helmets are ineffective" is a terrible, terrible argument.

Agreed. I don't think anyone has made that argument here. Certainly, I did not.

Yes, you did. Run back and look, and it's clear as daylight.

Perhaps you meant to say something else. But you didn't.

Quote:

Are helmets effective at reducing the incidence of certain kinds of injuries, of themselves?

Yes, they are. Helmets reduce the risk of head injuries by around 25% to 50%, depending on the study (ignoring the oft quoted but discredited US 85% one).

Are the injuries prevented by helmets significant, relative to the overall number of injuries?

For utility and non-competition road cycling the answer seems to be "not at all". I've found it hard to get precise figures on this, but whatever positive effects helmets have in the UK, that effect clearly is utterly overwhelmed by other negative effects, of at least the environment and possibly even of helmet culture (e.g. reduced cycling), by comparison with controls like NL.

Figures are easy enough to come by. Convenient figures may not be. Here are just a few apposite studies I quoted on another thread:

Toro Toro wrote:

Regression analysis shows that head injury is significantly reduced in age groups with increasing helmet use: http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/3/191.full

Systematic review of 22 different peer-reviewed studies indicates between 63 and 88% reduction of head-injury risk among helmet users: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2598379/

Statistical analysis of coroners' data shows that not using a helmet results in significantly elevated risk of fatal injury:
http://www.cmaj.ca/content/early/2012/10/15/cmaj.120988.full.pdf

Epidemiology indicates helmets are highly effecive at reducing crash impact and preventing injury: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000145751400061X

Aside from statistical and epidemiological studies, dynamic modelling simulation of cranial impacts under a range of accident scenarios shows protective effect of helmet use: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24005027

The fourth and fifth specifically concern *all* fatalities and *all* injuries, respectively.

These virtually all involve control groups of one sort or another, and/or regression analysis. That's pretty much sine qua non for scientific studies.

"The Netherlands" could not serve as a control for any such study, in any scientifically respectable sense, since there *any number* of confounding variables, on several of whose overwhelming influence we're in total agreement.

But while negative effects (principally, a few studies indicate that motorists will treat helmeted riders as less vulnerable) do exist, there is no indication at all that they "utterly overwhelm" the protective effect of helmets. Any epidemiological study at all will make that clear.

I'm leaving out the "in competition" stuff; what a doctor told you is not scientific. I'm not sure what it adds to the main point in any case, though; I'd expect a *much lower* percentage of racing injuries than of cycling injuries generally to result from driver collisions. And you're ignoring the false negative rate; whatever proportion of racing cyclists who will present to a doctor after a crash with abrasions, broken wrists, collarbones, etc., and no mention or indication of head injury since the mandatory use of a helmet in racing prevented any contact to the head from being injurious, or even noticeable.

Quote:

You could ask if the non-head injuries might have been less serious than the head injuries - unfortunately I don't know, I didn't get a break-down of the injuries by severity; however in the real-world many fatal injuries are not head related, they are crush injuries to the thorax, because heavy vehicles are disproportionately involved in fatal accidents (certainly in London) - a helmet makes 0 difference then.

Basically, what looks like a significant effect of helmets when you focus just on head injuries in cycling could be a trivial effect overall, because head injuries are relatively rare overall.

Sure. Nobody will claim otherwise. But then, heavy vehicle collisions are very rarely of the sort - principally the dangerously close pass at speed - which there is evidence that helmets may even slightly exacerbate. Typically they result from poor visibility and/or insufficient looking by the driver. So there's no reason to think that they counteract (let alone, again, "utterly overwhelm") the protective effect of helmets. Indeed, the efficacy of helmets may be one reason why the great proportion of motor vehicles which are not heavy cause such a comparatively small proportion of the fatalities; where helmet use can mitigate injury, helmet use mitigates injury.

Quote:

However, at a strategic level, the UK's reliance on helmets for cyclist safety doesn't seem to be delivering results, relative to other neighbouring countries. Indeed, helmets are likely at least a symptom of the real problem: an unsafe environment. Worse, the reliance on helmets may distract from fixing that real problem (as Chris Boardman has said). Even worse, a culture of pushing the notion that cycling requires helmets may deter some from cycling because of the perceived danger helmets signal and/or inconvenience they bring - as compulsion laws definitely do. With fewer cyclists, there then is less political will to fix the true problem: the (perceived) unsafe environment.

So, at a minimum, this helmet debate distracts from the real issues, and at worst it may even be undermining the political base required to fix the real issues. Which, I'd suggest, means helmets are not a useful strategic tool to achieving real cycling safety (as defined by safety achieved by close neighbours).

Well, look. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. As I said above, it's not as though wearing helmets means we *can't have* better bike routes or driver education. While we don't have them, there's no question that we're better off in helmets.

And the distraction point cuts both ways. Diverting the discussion away from the necessary improvements, to the question of whether or not we should all be wearing helmets, is much easier if we are not doing so, and if half of us are willing to divert most of our education-and-infrastructure energy towards vehemently arguing - in the face of virtually all research - that there is no reason to wear them. Again; tu quoque.

Toro Toro wrote:

Yes, you did. Run back and look, and it's clear as daylight.

Perhaps you meant to say something else. But you didn't.

I've re-read my comments, nowhere do I claim helmets are ineffective. I think you're referring to my first comment, where I left an inference to be drawn by the reader. You've chosen to drawn incorrect inference, and one I didn't intend - I'm not sure you get to attribute it to me though.

Helmets do have positive effects on head injuries. Indeed, if you restrict your view to just serious head injuries and death that effect can look very impressive. In the very comment of mine you've quoted I said "Helmets reduce the risk of head injuries by around 25% to 50%" which is inline with some of the studies you quoted, so I don't know what you're complaining about!

However, in a wider view, the positive effect appears to be swamped into insignificance by other effects. Helmets are not ineffective, but their effect on cycling safety appears to be, at best, insignificant at broad population levels.

Further, there may be higher-order social consequences from high rates of helmet use that negatively affect cycling safety. From the more measurable effects on participation, to further order, fuzzier effects of political will. At least, it is quite plausible if you consider the UK v NL - and you don't blithely try hand-wave away that reality by saying the narrow helmet efficacy studies are rigorous and that the wider, population-level, country comparisons are not.

Toro Toro wrote:

Figures are easy enough to come by. Convenient figures may not be. Here are just a few apposite studies I quoted on another thread:

(snip...)

Well, the epidemiological ones are exactly what I was thinking of when I stated the 25% to 50% risk reduction figure. So, we're actually roughly in agreement on the science behind the effectiveness of helmets. Though, the 66% to 83% reduction meta-study you cite is at the very high-end. A more recent meta-study detected and corrected for some biases in previous well-known and widely-cited meta-study, see:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457512004253

Note the CMAJ study: 1. is not a meta-study, but a primary study (and pretty simplistic in terms of analysis), 2. has been discussed on road.cc before:

http://road.cc/content/news/69107-canadian-research-claims-cyclists-helm...

And see my comment on it:

http://road.cc/content/news/69107-canadian-research-claims-cyclists-helm...

Note that in that study both helmeted and unhelmeted riders were killed by motor vehicles 77% of the time in both cases!

Toro Toro wrote:

The fourth and fifth specifically concern *all* fatalities and *all* injuries, respectively.

Those seem to be (computational) modelling studies, including the fourth even though you've labelled it as an epidemiological one. Not sure they're relevant - we know styrofoam can absorb energy and prevent some of it getting through to headforms. That isn't really in dispute.

With all due respect, this is just distraction. You're arguing that helmets are effective and throwing studies out with numbers inline with figures in a previous comment of mine. Those numbers are just not the issue.

Toro Toro wrote:

These virtually all involve control groups of one sort or another, and/or regression analysis. That's pretty much sine qua non for scientific studies.

Well, yes, obviously.

Toro Toro wrote:

"The Netherlands" could not serve as a control for any such study, in any scientifically respectable sense, since there *any number* of confounding variables, on several of whose overwhelming influence we're in total agreement.

But while negative effects (principally, a few studies indicate that motorists will treat helmeted riders as less vulnerable) do exist, there is no indication at all that they "utterly overwhelm" the protective effect of helmets. Any epidemiological study at all will make that clear.

So you're agreed there are variables between UK and NL which overwhelm any positive effect of helmets.

You're not willing to ascribe any of these overwhelming as being due to the negative effects of helmets however. I can fully understand that reluctance, as it is hard to tease out and prove such effects with scientific rigour.

One of the variables almost certainly is cycling participation - many more people cycle in the Netherlands and so there is much more political will to invest in cycling. However we can not exclude that that particular additional variable of cycling participation is controlled to some degree by helmets. Indeed, we *know* that in other regimes that legally compelled helmet use leads to a reduction in cycling participation. It is not unreasonable to hypothesise that such an effect might also be present to a degree in "weaker" compulsion regimes.

E.g. the UK doesn't have a helmet law, however it does have a significant proportion of people who believe that helmets should be worn and who do not hesitate to press this view on others, including through mass media (cycling on TV channels and government media is nearly always depicted as with helmets).

Basically, it is some or all of these other variables that are *precisely the interesting ones* and the issue. And it is the less controlled, country-level comparisons that show why they are interesting, because they are at odds with the narrow helmet efficacy studies. As you say, their influence is "overwhelming"!

The interesting questions are, why is it that:

* The helmet studies all show several fold reductions in risk of serious head injuries and fatalities,
* Yet in the real world none of the Anglo-Saxon countries which have (culturally and/or legally) therefore "invested" heavily in relying on these amazing safety benefits of helmets have actually seen any significant increase in safety?
* Yet another country, socio-politically very similar to at least one of the Anglo-Saxon countries (and geographically very close), has taken a different course and achieves amazing safety despite eschewing the wondrous safety benefits of helmets that studies have proven?

The narrow head-injury studies all say helmets should make things safer, yet the countries that rely on them the most have the worst safety (at least, in the developed world).

It's a paradox! The helmet paradox.

Rather than ignore this paradox, rather than try dismiss it with "Well, the controlled studies say helmets are safer, and so I will just hand-wave away the Netherlands", someone who was truly interested in cyclist safety (and science) would say "That's strange, why is that?".

Why is it that there are effects in the Netherlands that totally overwhelm the negative effects you presumably would say there should be in dutch riders rarely wearing helmets, and totally overwhelm the large positive effects that the UK rider population should see from wearing helmets.

What could it be?

I don't believe it's all down to confounding factors that are all completely independent of cycling/road-safety and so can be dismissed. I can think of some possibilities (e.g. differences in administration maybe), however I don't believe all the difference can be due to independent effects. To just dismiss the safety the NL achieves that way is not useful. Indeed, it'd be harmful... Nor is that something someone with an open, scientific mind should be doing.

Toro Toro wrote:

I'm leaving out the "in competition" stuff; what a doctor told you is not scientific.

It's not a scientific paper, and the data probably not interesting enough to make a paper from. However, it's the best I could do to get data on the proportion of head injuries to other injuries - the UK DfT doesn't publish that in its annual road stats report, and I don't know how to get such data from, say, the NHS (not my field). However, it wasn't the doctor's /opinion/ but *data* he pulled from the Irish Cycling database.

Not rigorous, however the point was to illustrate the magnitude of the difference between injuries in cycling generally - in a more controlled / all-seeing environment of race incidents than hospital admissions data might see - and head injuries, and try explain (some) of the helmet paradox.

E.g. one explanation, as those figures show, is that head injuries may be rare overall. Even if they are not rare amongst serious injuries, as epidemiological studies suggest - though those are rare overall still.

Basically, a big improvement in a rare injury doesn't do much for safety overall. Indeed, even if the injury is not rare, safety measures that target only that injury may be less effective than other measures that target the cause of all injuries. E.g.:

Say the serious head injury rate is related linearly to the overall, serious non-head injury rate x, in proportion to w for unhelmeted riders, and additionally according to the helmet efficacy z for helmeted riders, with the y the proportion of unhelmeted riders, as:

head injury rate = wyx + w(1-y)(z-1)x = w(2y+z(1-y)-1)/x

Say Country A has 60% helmet use and B 2%, amongst those serious injuries (B might actually have lower per trip helmet use, but helmeted riders in B are over-represented amongst hospital admissions - as is the case in NL - probably because they're indulging in riskier/faster riding). Say head injuries are 2/3 of those unhelmeted (one of the computational studies you linked to claims roughly this this in its background), i.e. w=2/3. Also, say helmets reduce incidence of serious injury by 2/3 - one of the higher figures from the meta studies out there. Ignore participation for now, z=2/3. Say they have equal rates of serious injury where helmets have a positive effect.

So Country A has a serious head injury rate of .31x and B .65x.

Looks like A is doing the smart thing, by relying on the effectiveness of helmets!

Country B could try make more people wear helmets, and decrease that y value. However as y decreases to 0 that expression tends to w(z-1)x. Helmets may reduce the rate at which injuries produce head injuries, however that 'z' variable is fairly constant - we don't know how to make helmets that can stop all head injuries - so you're still getting head injuries. If z is 2/3, then relying on everyone wearing helmets can't get you any better than wx/3 head injuries.

Country A decides that helmets are the be all and end all of bicycle safety. It takes this safety strategy of trying to minimise y - the proportion of unhelmeted riders. Indeed, some people even say you shouldn't cycle *at all* unless wearing a helmet, and some in authority will even try enforce that (e.g. cycling clubs or school headteachers banning people from cycling unless with a helmet).

Country B decides to do something different. It ignores y. Instead it focuses on minimising x. It builds out its road, cycling and pedestrian infrastructure to segregate more vulnerable road users where ever possible. It generally requires lower speed limits in dense urban areas than country A (30 km/h as opposed to 48 km/h), and even lower again in many residential areas (15 km/h or lower). It implements right of way and liability laws that generally put the onus on motor vehicles to avoid more vulnerable road users (A theoretically has this - but its widely ignored and motor vehicles assume priority).

As a result, Country B manages to decrease its x seven fold, to 7/x (and this is about the proportion reduction NL has in its KSI figures compared to UK btw). Based on the above simplified model, the serious head injury rate in in B is now 0.09x - less than a third the rate of country A, despite the far greater use of helmets in A.

Country B by focusing on reducing *all* injuries by making roads generally safer, and particularly so for more vulnerable road users, achieves *seven times fewer* serious injuries (inc. those that'd lead to death) and, despite next to no helmet use a third the head injury rate of country A - , because it has fewer bad accidents that might lead to serious injury (head or otherwise) to begin with, . (Note I'm not sure exactly what the comparative rate is for UK / NL for head injuries, but I'm pretty sure NL is lower).

Further, because its roads are so much safer, country B's population go and cycle in much, much greater rates than those in country A, with further population wide health benefits, as well as helping sustain the political will to invest in safe roads for cyclists.

Country B achieves much better results all round, on every measure, by focusing on preventing accidents and ignoring Country A's beloved helmets.

Toro Tor wrote:

Well, look. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. As I said above, it's not as though wearing helmets means we *can't have* better bike routes or driver education. While we don't have them, there's no question that we're better off in helmets.

And the distraction point cuts both ways. Diverting the discussion away from the necessary improvements, to the question of whether or not we should all be wearing helmets, is much easier if we are not doing so, and if half of us are willing to divert most of our education-and-infrastructure energy towards vehemently arguing - in the face of virtually all research - that there is no reason to wear them.

Equally, there is no reason not to wear helmets when walking along the road, or when going to the pub, or getting in or out of the bath - all sources of head injury in our society (2 of them very significant). But we don't, why?

Further, as the simple model above shows, and as the NL v the UK shows (and you don't get to dismiss reality - if it hasn't been rigorously studied, then it needs studying not dismissing!), you can get better safety by focusing on minimising the *source* of injuries. Making the roads safer, and preventing injuries to begin with, leads to *much better* results - including for head injuries, even when people don't wear helmets.

The focus on helmets in the UK has patently *failed* to deliver results. Those who keep trying to turn the safety towards the wisdom or even necessity of wearing helmets are very much distracting from the real safety issue, by putting so much focus on *one type of injury*.

Look how much energy others have to put in to counter these derailments of cycling safety discussions from the substantive issues onto the helmet debate! How much better it'd be if that energy was spent on the substantive issue: Engineer the road environment to prevent the serious accidents (predominantly caused by motor vehicles) in the first place, and everything gets better!

*Prevent* _any_ possible injury by preventing the accident to begin with and, as simple math and ball-park figures show, you can do *much* better, both for head injuries and all injuries! This more *genuine* type of safety will also do more to *attract* people to cycling!

Toro Toro wrote:

(1) given the conditions we actually do have, helmets do make a demonstrable difference to rider safety, and

(2) the fact that riders are safer with or without helmets under other conditions doesn't alter that, and doesn't render helmets "ineffective".

That's the point though. Helmets don't really make anyone safer.
At best they just (slightly) reduce the consequences of being unsafe.
That's not the same thing.

There are many, many other things we should be focussing our collective energies on if we want to improve things for cyclists in this country, but instead the discussion gets constantly derailed by pointless pontificating about helmets (which is exactly what has happened here).

Toro Toro wrote:

Look, *of course* we should have better infrastructure, and better driver training.

My point is not that these things are set in stone. My point is that:

(1) given the conditions we actually do have, helmets do make a demonstrable difference to rider safety,

and

(2) the fact that riders are safer with or without helmets under other conditions doesn't alter that, and doesn't render helmets "ineffective".

Helmets would also make a demonstrable difference to pedestrians too, yet we do not argue that the best way to deal with pedestrian deaths - predominantly caused by motor vehicles - would be to have pedestrians wear helmets, and do nothing about the behaviour of motorists.

Instead, we'd lower motor vehicle speed limits and install traffic-calming measures (well, if at all - pedestrian deaths are also much higher in the UK than in NL, the UK generally has much higher, and more lethal, speed limits in urban areas).

Yet, when it comes to cycling, for some reason some choose to follow a different logic, as you seem to?

Toro Toro wrote:

It actually isn't a fallacy at all.

The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy is the standard reference work; you'll find the relevant entry here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-analogy/

So yes, perhaps you should tone down the sarcasm, or save it for occasions when you know what you are talking about.

I don't have a background in classical philosophy, but I do have some in logical reasoning (inc. formal).

Analogies do have their place. E.g., what you linked to is about reasoning through analogy, which can be useful to help explain and explore. However, analogies always break down and fall apart somewhere (otherwise it wouldn't be an analogy but an equivalence). So, you can use an analogy to try find new areas to explore and test, however you can not use an analogy to prove something.

E.g., "A and B have similar properties x, y. A has the property z, which could be useful with B". Then "Maybe that could mean B also has z - let's test that" is a valid use of an analogy in reasoning. However, using the analogy to claim "A has z, so B has z" would be a logical fallacy - unless z follows from x and/or y of itself.

From the introduction of the link you posted: “Analogies are widely recognized as playing an important heuristic role, as aids to discovery. … an analogical argument may provide very weak support for its conclusion, establishing no more than minimal plausibility.” (emphasis mine).

So, yes, argument (in the "n therefore m" sense) by analogy is a logical fallacy, given that analogy by many definitions (including classical) implies at least some differences.

Toro Toro wrote:

Edit: to PaulJ

Yes. That is because the Netherlands has Dutch drivers and Dutch road infrastructure. We do not.

So are Dutch drivers a different species to UK ones, or maybe the training and attitude of drivers is different?

So shall we carry on saying must wear helmets and accept that most people won't ride because they are shit scared, or should we deal with the shit driving that is deemed acceptable in the UK.

Toro Toro wrote:

Do we conclude that:

(a) the studies are all wrong and the spray is ineffective?

(b) the Netherlands is a low-risk environment for lion attacks, so the figures there are not applicable to our game park?

(c) providing facilities so that unarmed people don't have to share the same space with man-eating lions on a daily basis is considerably more effective at preventing lion attacks than lion spray is. (Plus it also works on the elephant attacks too).

And then of course there is the slight issue that applying lion spray to your head isn't much use if the lion decides to go for your neck, spine or squishy internal organs.

Toro Toro, how about instead of making all cyclists wear helmets we introduce Dutch style cycle infrastructure and legal approach with presumed responsibility so we too can have such stats like the Dutch do which PaulJ pointed out?

Toro Toro wrote:

Edit: to PaulJ

Yes. That is because the Netherlands has Dutch drivers and Dutch road infrastructure. We do not.

Again; imagine that we are running a game park in Tanzania, and are worried about lions attacking tourists. I suggest equipping the tourists with a lion-repellent spray which numerous studies have shown to work. You point out that nobody in the Netherlands uses the spray, and nobody gets mauled by lions there. Do we conclude that:

(a) the studies are all wrong and the spray is ineffective?

(b) the Netherlands is a low-risk environment for lion attacks, so the figures there are not applicable to our game park?

Bravo Toro,

You deserve a prize along with Sam. I award you the special, gold-plated "ignore the elephant in the room" prize (particularly apt given you went off into an african-animal argument-by-analogy) for not just ultimately ignoring the issue, but managing to do so while even stating the issue in your own argument.

Hint: The conclusion isn't that dutch drivers are different or better (I'm actually half-dutch, I've cycled there - dutch drivers can be as bad as british ones, indeed they're perhaps more aggressive). I've bolded the bit of your comment that contains the answer.

Or, to put it in terms of your analogy, the difference is the lack of lions, so you shoot the lions. Except the lions aren't the drivers, and you shouldn't shoot lions but build... oh bollocks - I'm just demonstrating why "argument by analogy" is a logical fallacy and a bad idea, amn't I?

Very eloquently put.

Deltavelo wrote:

The other point that could have been made in the same piece is that riding two abreast is also allowed in the highway code.

Check the end of the video bud

iUpham, yes, that'll teach me to not stop at the first sign of the credits!

Deltavelo wrote:

Great, except it appears that the safe overtake is made on the brow of a hill, where, at least from the camera angle there was not a clear view ahead. Surely a better place could be found to demonstrate this vital information.

I noticed that too. But in fairness, it was a low camera angle so I'm happy to give them the benefit of the doubt!

Of course, the difficult part is getting through to the intended audience. I posted it on a facebook group earlier and was informed that "I'll start giving cyclists space when they stop jumping red lights..." >sigh<

Gizmo_ wrote:

Deltavelo wrote:

Great, except it appears that the safe overtake is made on the brow of a hill, where, at least from the camera angle there was not a clear view ahead. Surely a better place could be found to demonstrate this vital information.

I noticed that too. But in fairness, it was a low camera angle so I'm happy to give them the benefit of the doubt!

Of course, the difficult part is getting through to the intended audience. I posted it on a facebook group earlier and was informed that "I'll start giving cyclists space when they stop jumping red lights..." >sigh<

That sort of attitude is mind boggingly stupid. I'll start treating muslims with respect when they stop bombing people.