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Drivers in DK are taught to look out for bikes, are accustomed to doing so, and are aware that if they hit a cyclist the law is against them
I think the other important soft factor is that they are much more likely to also ride a bike or at the very least have close friends and family members that do, so empathy is a lot higher.
I wear a helmet, I don't wear a helmet.
On the school run this morning none of us wore helmets and we were cycling on the road and everything.
What was really nice was the two cars that got so far out of our way they drove on to the pavement to get past and nearly took out a buggy.
I think the other important soft factor is that they are much more likely to also ride a bike or at the very least have close friends and family members that do, so empathy is a lot higher.
Yes. Good point.
Looking at all the countries around the world, I can't think of a single one that has significant uptake of helmets but also has a decent amount of normal, everyday cycling.
So we need to decide what we want - a society where cycling is a normal way of getting around, or one where you're part of a tiny minority who have to rely on a polystyrene hat for protection when Shane Warne tries to run you off the road.
the other thing to remember - atleast in holland and esjberg in denmark is .
If there is a cycle path adjacent to the road then you must use it.
So that may piss drivers off there if your not following the law.....how ever they are well designed and have right of way overthe roads so are a pleasure to use.
Outskirts of Copenhagen, Saturday evening, no cycle lane/path. Cars of yobs with packs of beer with all but the driver drinking being driven inconsiderately. I assumed there was nothing else for the youth of Copenhagen to do on a Saturday night. Country roads - not being given space and impatience, it felt more like rural Leicestershire than SW France. London is on another level I admit.
Edit: the other inconsiderate bit was the chucking the empty bottles out on to the cycle path where there was one. To situate it for DrJ we were heading west out of the city.
esjberg and surrounds couldnt be more different to that IME.
As a ball park figure, suppose you do 20,000km/year (12,500miles/year) every year from birth to age 65.
You could use that figure, if you wished to grossly over-estimate how far people travel by car.
Really? What's the right figure? Bear in mind that this is vehicle km, so includes passenger miles, including on a bus. In any event, I think it's in the right ball park. Even if it's half that, that's still a 1 in 16 chance of being KSIed in a lifetime. Or to put it another way, odds on that someone in what I'd consider to be my close family will be.
With the low sun around in the mornings,sunglasses should be your main PPE choice
In general I'd say hi-viz should be your main PPE. It's even a problem in DK where the young and beautiful wear solid black.
I've worn my met helmet twice this year and both of those times were up at aviemore when I hired a Scott Spark ebike and rode out of my normal comfort zone of just bimbling along, I ride everyday to work, for fun, to walk/run the dog, ride off road/on road and I don't feel the need for a helmet on those times.
If I consider the riding I'm doing warrants a helmet then I'll wear it, otherwise I'll make do with my ability to judge potential danger.
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I was quite in my comfort zone when that happened.
it felt more like rural Leicestershire than SW France
Never ridden in Leics (couldn't point to it on a map tbh) but fairly sure it's better than the corner of 64 that I ride in. More malicious drivers than pretty much anywhere I've ridden except maybe Essex.
Why, I don't know. It's night and day compared to the Spain side of the border. The Spanish traffic law was changed in May to allow cars passing cyclists to cross a solid white line. I assume in France this is not the case given how close drivers generally pass. Fewer French roadies tend to wear helmets , and I wonder if this is to identify themselves as French to drivers, ergo if a roadie is wearing a helmet, he/she is probably Spanish so let's pass them as close as possible.
In all seriousness, there's something in the pastis down there.
I am massively in favour of adults making their own choices about appropriate equipment, and likewise making those choices for their kids.
There are lots of activities where injuries and deaths could be prevented by wearing more safety equipment. We all find our own level of comfort. I sometimes see a London commuter in a full face and a Dainese pressure-suit thing. Is that any sillier than putting faith in a hat to protect you in an accident?
Helmets for fast road rides, and mountain biking make sense, because you are far more likely to be injured doing either of those things than just normal leisure/utility/commuting cycling. In Holland, where the only people who wear helmets are roadies out training, or people going mountain biking:
13.3 per cent of the cyclists admitted to hospitals with injuries wore helmets — even though just 0.5 per cent cent of Dutch cyclists wear helmets
It's about the reluctant cyclists. The tubby bloke who really should go for a cycle along the canal instead of sitting in front of the telly. The commuter who thinks she should cycle for the sake of the environment, but the car is easier.
Why would we want to encourage fatties to cycle? The more people who die early from coronary heart disease, the better off the NHS, deficit and planet will be.
Errr.... no.
Obesity related conditions cost the NHS £6 billion a year and rising.
The cost to the country is about £47 billion and rising (about 3% of GDP).
This has nothing to do with the helmet debate - just an amusing anecdote though Madame didn't find it amusing. We were bimbling along through the woods 2/3 through an 80km off-road ride. Both getting tired and losing concentration. I heard some wailing and tuned to see Madame had crashed. I rode back and looked around in complete confusion, "how did you fall off there?". I was then blamed for the crash as she'd hit her head on a low branch which had taken her off the bike(I hadn't seen it and ridden under without even realising it was there).
Her helmet has a dent just like Trail Rat's. Riding under the branch a few times proved that without the extra few cms of the helmet she didn't hit the branch. We also realised that the peaks on the helmets were probably why we hadn't seen the branch.
I haven't read all of this thread so I might be repeating some people but my take on the more/less cyclist and helmet wearing debate is this:
More people would cycle generally if our infrastructure was better and the roads were not full of tossers! People drive, so they see how busy the roads are and how many idiots are on them. They then think "I don't fancy riding a bike on these roads as it's dangerous" Wearing a helmet doesn't make people think cycling is dangerous, shit drivers make people think cycling on roads is dangerous. And to be honest, it is! But it isn't the cycling element that makes it dangerous!!
People need to stop thinking about helmets as a life saving thing, they are not. But they will stop some damage to the head in lots different crashes/collisions. I know this from experience, admittedly mainly MTBing. I haven't had a life threatening crash/collision with a motor vehicle, thankfully, so can't comment on helmet safety in that instance.
trail_rat
I was quite in my comfort zone when that happened.
I was also perfectly within my comfort zone when this happened below, but they way i could ride 8 years ago is vastly different to how i can ride these days so i have no qualms about not wearing a helmet for the way i can ride now.
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However when my new Scott Genius 27.5plus ebike arrives in January then i will in all probability wear a helmet when out on it.
Even if it's half that, that's still a 1 in 16 chance of being KSIed in a lifetime.
Though KSI is a pretty broad category. Goes from life threatening injuries down any fracture, a deep cut, concussion. Or in other words the type of injury you accept a reasonable risk of going for an MTB ride. In fact if you worried about KSI risks. Cars - 286 per billion miles, cycling 6588 per billion miles.
As for the death risk in cars. In 2014 it was 2.0 per billion passenger miles.
At lifetime average of 10k miles per year, (allowing for less miles for kids and OAPs) 1/50'000 chance of a death in a car per year.
1:625 lifetime chance of dying in a car crash. Pretty safe I'd say.
"More people would cycle generally if our infrastructure was better and the roads were not full of tossers! "
NAIL HEAD HIT> THIS is what makes the difference - not a polystyrene potty.
Then the greatest threat to him (after his own health) is still the traffic around him squishing him.And if Mr Sofa doesn't have a canal or cycle lane? What if he has to mix it with city centre traffic?
You may be better arguing that riding in traffic he is more likely to be alarmed by something someone else does and manages to fall off without contacting another vehicle, but that's still the fault of other people being arseholes (altho that cancer doctor lady managed to avoid all blame)
you do know that claims companies get a lot of business from people just walking down the road well inside their comfort zone and manage to fall over and injure themselves, but [i]still[/i] no one suggests wearing a helmet off the bike.I was quite in my comfort zone when that happened.
True but our societies seeming insistence that you need to wear a helmet reinforces this thought.Wearing a helmet doesn't make people think cycling is dangerous, shit drivers make people think cycling on roads is dangerous.
I'll do mine as well then!! 🙂
apologies ninja edited 😉
"True but our societies seeming insistence that you need to wear a helmet reinforces this thought."
Not really .... i fear for my life on occasion i drive my car in the city with some of the ****ers on the road - now as a non cyclist seeing the way the coffins are driven would put me off....
and further to that - many of my colleagues have stated they would cycle in if there was a safe route from Bridge of don or westhill to dyce - that didnt involve going into town first.
No ones mentioned that they would do it if they didnt have to wear a helmet....
I am quite aware that I ride more carefully without a helmet than with one. That is in spite of realising that an accident is probably not going to involve bashing my head, and if it does, the head bashing will quite possibly be of the sort that a bit of polystyrene is not going to help. So I think this question of risk awareness is a very complicated subject, and it's hard to say what the "truth" is.
And if Mr Sofa doesn't have a canal or cycle lane? What if he has to mix it with city centre traffic?
Experience suggest the Boris Bikes used in central London have no higher risk than average.
http://understandinguncertainty.org/fatality-risk-boris-bikes
Edukator: are you basing your Danish opinion on a single ride one Saturday night out of Copenhagen?
By the way, as to what the youth of Copenhagen's outskirts have to do on the weekends...well, there's a rather nice velodrome
I often ride faster without a helmet - that's the fun and the bit that heightens the awareness. lovely feeling....
That's the name explained
A week and a half cycling in Denmark. We then returned to jolly, colourful half-price Germany with bands playing in the town centre, people sitting around drinking beer or coffee, eating nicecakes and being generally enthusiastic about life (rather than moaning about their taxes).
That's the name explained
Indeed 😉
esjberg and surrounds couldnt be more different to that IME.
My experience is more similar to Edukator, cycled a lot in the west part of Jutland and generally if you're on the road Danish drivers give you a lot less space than the average UK driver. In the summer at least, most of the drivers round there are German anyway 🙂 Could pretty much always tell whether it was going to be a car with German plates v. Danish plates passing by how much room they left.
Never mind all the usual arguments for and against helmets that article is wrong headed (pun intended) in so many ways that I don't even know where to start criticizing it.
I'm sure the point's been made above but I can't believe that helmets are a major barrier to participation. It's the lack of infrastructure, the attitude of a minority of drivers, the potholed roads, the British weather (or our perceptions of it), our love of car convenience, long habit and people's worries about their own fitness that keep them off bikes.
The helmet thing is very much a side issue and a matter for personal choice.
A quick poll of the people sat around me at work reveals that the the overwhelming reason for not riding a bike is they "probably should but can't really be arsed". Nobody mentioned helmets.
IMO the significant difference between the Dutch and British is mentality, the Dutch see a bicycle as a viable form of transport for short to medium journeys because that's how they have been brought up, the default mindset is 'I will use my bike for this journey'. Brits see bikes as toys for lycra clad freaks.
Nobody mentioned helmets.
Of course not.
People don't say that they don't cycle [i]because[/i] of helmets - they say they don't cycle because it's not safe (how can it be if everyone insists you need a helmet even for tame traffic-free pootles?), or because they don't want to arrive sweaty and dishevelled at work (with helmet hair), or because they think they need special kit (Lycra and helmets), or because they see bikes as toys for lycra clad (helmeted) freaks.
(how can it be if everyone insists you need a helmet even for tame traffic-free pootles?)
and if you repeat that often enough it might become true.
How exactly do you know that it is the helmet wearing that makes people think cycling is unsafe and not the sense of danger which makes people wear helmets? And while we are at it, if it is just a simple case that helmets puts people off cycling and that by simple reasoning means that the population as a whole is more unhealthy, why does the Netherlands not have a significantly greater life expectancy than the UK?
My experience is more similar to Edukator, cycled a lot in the west part of Jutland and generally if you're on the road Danish drivers give you a lot less space than the average UK driver
I've also cycled in that part of Jutland, and thought the driving was absolutely fine.
People don't say that they don't cycle because of helmets - they say they don't cycle because it's not safe………….
They didn’t though, none of the people said any of those things, they just couldn’t be bothered. No amount of infrastructure is going to change things for the vast majority of people in the UK, they don’t see bikes as a viable form of transport and prefer the apparently simple option of jumping in the car.
An example; my daughters best friend lives about 1 mile away. Whenever I take her over there the mum always asks if we’ve been on a bike ride, we haven’t, we’ve just used bikes to get from A to B because it’s the most convenient mode of transport. Whenever her friend comes over they bring her by car.
why does the Netherlands not have a significantly greater life expectancy than the UK?
Broodje krokets and Olliebollen! The vast majority of people who ride bikes in Holland are not cyclists in the sense that it is used as a form of exercise, they don’t charge around at aerobic threshold, the pootle along at a similar level of excursion as walking.
how ever in doing so - said dutch people exerting them selves as much as walking can get up to a fair clip of speed because they are fit due to their mentality and routine !
Broodje krokets and Olliebollen! The vast majority of people who ride bikes in Holland are not cyclists in the sense that it is used as a form of exercise, they don’t charge around at aerobic threshold, the pootle along at a similar level of excursion as walking.
Yes. Precisely. An awful lot of people on the internet seem to want to claim that if we had Dutch levels of cycling everyone would be massively more healthy, and yet at the same time ignore the fact that most Dutch cyclists aren't doing any significant cardio-vascular exercise. 'Normal' people don't like to over-exert themselves while going from a to b. The Dutch aren't any different in that respect. So the health benefits of 'normal people cycling in their everyday clothes' yadayadda are pretty minimal.
and if you repeat that often enough it might become true.
If you follow any cycling organisations in social media then you'll see that almost any photo of helmetless cycling they use, no matter how gentle a traffic-free leisure pootle it might be, will attract hoardes of comments about how "they should be wearing helmets" and how "irresponsible" the organisation is for daring to use such an image. 🙄
On the flip side the cycling organisations use images like that because they want non-cyclists to relate to the people in the photo and imagine themselves cycling in the same way.
So yeah I do think it is a factor.