There is no finer Petri dish of cognitive biases than people’s opinions about safety measures that should be adopted when, and only when, a bicycle appears between their or someone else’s legs.

Don’t get me wrong. I get why people don’t and am not going to criticise anyone who chooses not to, and of course there’s risk in everything, but it just seems a simple thing to do.

Christ, at my age, packing the dishwasher has become a dangerous task!

safety measures that should be adopted when, and only when, a bicycle or horse, motorbike, skis, skateboard, roller skates etc appears.

Whilst I’m happy people have differing opinions and all, don’t get carried away thinking its a bike thing, it’s not.

WD40 and a rag is a perfectly good way to clean and lube a chain.

Bez is not always right.

who don’t ride up hills (proper ones)

Well, my 6 mile (I’ve got no time, but I need to get out on my bike) route is a smidge under 2000ft in 3 climbs, please do tell me again how my 1x somehow doesn’t allow me access to proper hills

Psst, I know helmet debates are really good fun, but there’s an implicit understanding in this thread that people can vent controversial opinions without repercussions.

It’s not a debate, it’s just a contradiction.

Audaxers are the nicest cycling tribe.

They might well be, but the only person I’ve met who was a big audaxer was a bit of a miserable self centred git. (Could go into why/how but I won’t. He had a “you can tell a happy cyclist by the flies in his teeth” postcard on the fridge. Most ironic fridge adornment I’ve ever seen. And cycling only seemed to make him more miserable.)

I’m pretty sure my opinion of audax is thus unfair – I really fancied doing one until I met him!

Singlespeeders know the world is not flat.

Your “trail dog” isn’t cool, it’s a menace.

29ers are turning trails into flat motorways the dutch would be envious of.

It only took me ~3 years of using Strava to come to the conclusion that showing the world my commutes and popping to the shops rides with no segment pbs is Strava spam others (including any followers) don’t need to see.

“Me only” since start of 2020.

“commute” label is surely for this very reason? Miles are miles.

nickc – you have said it yourself. My local low hills are a bigger climb than that 😉

Where the heck do you and nick live that you’ve 3 (very steep) 200m climbs back to back?

Bealach-na-Ba covers roughly the same ascent and distance as nicks whole loop but it’s just one continuous climb.

2000ft in 6 miles is hardknott pass, top to bottom twice. Its an average gradient of +-12.5%

No one watches your GoPro footage. Not even you.

if i want a first person perspective of a profoundly average mountain biker going quite slowly down a trail, i’ll go out mountain biking.

@keir
Very, very true! Haha.

E bikes f#ck up the trails when its sloppy much more than pedal bikes. Period.

People riding without mudguard ruin trails – cos they ride round puddles and muddy bits turning singletrack into 3m wide mess

@keir no but 19k people will watch a video of 3 different hubs rotating.

People who say this have never popped down to the shops quickly to pick up a loaf of bread by bike.

That makes no sense.

I toppled over while almost stationary by putting my foot down onto a small round rock. Cracked my temple on another rock. Only when I got home did I realise I’d completely split the inside of my helmet from one side to the other. Could have been my skull, at nearly zero mph. Not worth the risk to me. Can’t understand why anyone would chance it.

Your “trail dog” isn’t cool, it’s a menace.

And three are a bloody liability, especially when you don’t bother watching what any of them are doing on a busy trail.

If you don’t use mudguards because of “looks” you are a bit of a pleb. If you think a brown streak up your arse looks better then you are deluded.

The rules are not sacrosanct..

Could have been my skull, at nearly zero mph. Not worth the risk to me. Can’t understand why anyone would chance it.

Closest I’ve come to serious head injury was either falling down a flight of stairs or being in a car crash. But I assume you can understand why anyone would “chance it” in those situations.

Bicycles are magical super-dangerous devices for giving you brain damage: for some reason, a bafflingly non-controversial cycling opinion.

26ers are where it’s at!
And, yes – not wearing a helmet on any ride, however short, is….not very sensible.

Nobeerinthefridge

Member
……..

Lol, trying to take the climbing moral high ground cos you have more gears!

Not really. I ride slx 1×11 on my rigid because:

1x is for fashionistas

Rubber_Buccaneer

Subscriber
93% of 1X deniers still believe the earth is flat

Naw. It’s got hills and that, innit.

Also, this is a thread for opinions. Statistics and opinions are different things until we are talking politics…

Additionally: MBUK officially became not worth reading at the same time as the adverts for “fear of a flat planet” tee shirts disappeared.

“Closest I’ve come to serious head injury was either falling down a flight of stairs or being in a car crash. But I assume you can understand why anyone would “chance it” in those situations.”

No one I know has fallen down any stairs.

Several people I know have been involved in car crashes, however the injuries were not the sort that would have been prevented by a lightweight crash helmet.

All my family ride bikes and over the years both myself, my wife and my two children have fallen off. The only person who was hurt was my wife (a head injury) when a bar bag fell off its fitting and went into her front wheel. She wasn’t wearing a helmet (she’s Dutch…..) and she was very lucky.

My friends ride bikes and most have fallen off at some stage – some mtbiking but some just riding along for various reasons. There have been broken and dented helmets. I’m sure they have had other accidents but no head injuries that I’m aware of.

Its very clear that if you fall off a bike you are quite likely to hit your head.

In my opinion you are reasonably likely to fall off a bike at some stage in your life if you ride them a lot.

My controversial opinion is that it is sensible to mitigate the risk of striking your head whilst riding a bike. However I am not always sensible.

latest Dutch thinking:

Top hat? Bike helmets would save 85 cycling fatalities a year, says report

The mental gymnastics people will go to to try and justify wearing a helmet whilst cycling but not whilst participating in other “normal” activities is stunning.

(note this is an opinion, not a direct response to any particular post. 🙂 )

if i want a first person perspective of a profoundly average mountain biker going quite slowly down a trail, i’ll go out mountain biking

I agree. Wait for me at the bottom.

In my opinion you are reasonably likely to fall off a bike at some stage in your life if you ride them a lot.

It’s an oddity, but now I think of it, in 30-odd years of mountain biking, I’ve only ever trashed one helmet (hit head on a rock), and thinking back, I don’t think I’ve otherwise crashed in such a way that a helmet would have really prevented an injury. I’ve only been road riding for the last 3-4 years and feel way more exposed here. Again, I’m yet to have an off serious enough to trash a helmet, but I feel far more exposed riding at speed in a group than I ever do battering down off-road trails and rock gardens. Certainly the one road ride I did where I forgot to take my helmet felt, at once, very liberating and very scary. I rode home far more carefully than I would normally have!

My kids wear helmets and my son has definitely bounced his helmeted-head off the tarmac more than once (yey for U12 circuit racing!) and even managed to knock himself silly in a CX race (a fair achievement!) They wouldn’t think of putting a leg over a bike without a helmet, and I reckon this is a good thing.

Ebikes are the future.

I was the only non ebiker of 8 last night, despite being the fittest there, I had the least fun.

Fact.