Wiggo on helmets

Moving off in a slightly different tack I wonder what effect Wiggo’s comments may have on any chance of a compulsory helmet law being proposed? The last time it was a private members bill sponsored by some NuLab scrote in the mid 2000s, that ran out of parliamentry time. Now, with a split coalition losing what little support it had, what better way of papering over the cracks and being seen to have ‘caught the public mood’ and having a grip than to introduce an easy-to-pass law? And has been pointed out earlier, another useful source of chance taxation.

i suspect the police will be only to happy to escort rebel bikers to a cashpoint machine for a on the spot £80 fine should a compulsory helmet law come into existance

and what about children?

Well they always have and always will be exempt from any laws. Police would usually only go after the type of normally law abiding person anyway.

If the helmet is made legal, who is going to police the effectiveness of said helmet?
I had an off a couple of weeks ago, landing square on my helmet (certainly was painful matron) that I assume means it’s time to buy a new one. But, I could quite legally ride under the new law as I would be riding with a helmet, albeit a totally ineffective one.
MOTs for helmets?

and what about children?

Providing the baby children are not called Robin, they should be OK.

Car drivers are sitting inside what is effectively a safety helmet.

you do know about momentum don’t you? it’s the reason we have seatbelts, without which you’ll rattle around inside the “helmet” quite alarmingly, also despite seatbelts plenty of people unfortunately still manage to sustain head injuries. Why do motorists need special treatment*

Apologies for the glib comments but just using the same arguments

Don Simon, thats the same with motorbike helmets. You also have the factor that the older they get they lose their effectiveness as the materials start to change. I think the recommendation is renew every 5 years.

Plus some of the ‘lids’ out there this now are ‘well cool’!

Yeah that was what made me wear one for the first time I was IIRC 17 at the time, walking down the main street from college to catch the bus when I saw a bloke commuting down with a cool MTB and a peaked helmet and I though, wow this is so cool.
Why wouldn’t people wear one is just beyond my understanding.

Most people on here can acheive 30mph on a road with a little downhill assistance. A moped is restricted to 30mph. Why do we see cyclists as anything different needing special treatment because they have to propel their transport.

Not asking for special treatment.

All I’m saying is that if you are moving quickly in amongst traffic, then your head should be protected. That could be by means of a big steel rollcage and airbags, or a helmet.

I don’t think that’s unreasonable, is it?

despite seatbelts plenty of people unfortunately still manage to sustain head injuries.

Er, seatbelts and airbags etc do not ELIMINATE injuries but they do REDUCE them a lot.

Are you saying if something’s not 100% effective then it’s worthless?

Given that one of the major arguments against helmets has been it puts people off cycling… How does Brad’s success negate that factor. Looks like you could get more people cycling whilst they are also wearing helmets. EVERYONE WINS!!!

D0NK – Member
Car drivers are sitting inside what is effectively a safety helmet.
you do know about momentum don’t you? it’s the reason we have seatbelts, without which you’ll rattle around inside the “helmet” quite alarmingly, also despite seatbelts plenty of people unfortunately still manage to sustain head injuries. Why do motorists need special treatment*

Apologies for the glib comments but just using the same arguments

I think you have just argued my point for me. The helmet is strapped in place to keep it in a position were it is most useful. A driver is strapped in place to keep them where they are most safe whilst been able to operate the controls.
The energy in momentum is what the helmet will be trying absorb as it slams into an object from what ever speed it was doing before to nil.
Thank you for making that point for me.

simons_nicolai-uk – Member
Cyclist last night was crushed by wheels of left turning bus. Failure of infrastructure as cyclist was where current roads direct a rider.
Helmets and headphones an irrelevant distraction. Very poor response from Brad.

+1

A driver is strapped in place to keep them where they are most safe whilst been able to operate the controls.

and yet hundreds of car occupants die from head injuries every year, why aren’t you arguing for helmet compulsion in car occupants?

I’m pro helmets, I think they are a good idea and would recommend everyone use one but I think the compulsion argument is weak, flawed and comes with several drawbacks. Recommend people use them, advertise them, give them out to kids/adults whatever, just don’t say you MUST wear one at all times please.

Helmets and headphones an irrelevant distraction

He wasn’t commenting on that particular accident though.

He was talking about the responsibilities of cyclists in general, which was a fair point. Comments being taken out of context.

and yet hundreds of car occupants die from head injuries every year, why aren’t you arguing for helmet compulsion in car occupants?

Because the aim is to take some steps to reduce injuries. In cars some reasonable steps have been taken – car safety, NCAP etc. For pedestrians, steps have also been taken – pavements and crossings.

Seems odd not to bother when cycling, doens’t it?

Wiggo competes in a sport that has seen helmet compulsion. Remember when helmets were optional, then could be removed for climbing? Remember Fabio Casertelli? It’s a slightly different culture to shop pootling.

Personally, I’d rather see compulsion as everyone knows where they stand. I speak as an interested party – having a teenager who knows everything and removes his to ride to school.

Why would you want to wear earphones and make one of your senses less effective?
You wouldn’t ride with one eye closed, would you?

and what about children?

Pickle them?

Does that mean we should talk about body armour for ducks

Can we please

double post

one small comment by someone generates all this debate?
are you ALL trolling each other?

Yay! Top thread in BIKE and bloody CHAT forums. The old round and round in ever decreasing circles helmet debate.
FANTASTIC.

God have mercy on my restless soul, I’ve spawned a monster

Why would you want to wear earphones and make one of your senses less effective? You wouldn’t ride with one eye closed, would you?

So we have to do this one again as well….

It really is hard to believe this is a cyclists forum sometimes. It’s like Daily Mail island on here.

1) Would you ban deaf/hearing impaired people from cycling?
2) Cyclists with headphones in can hear more than motorcyclists or drivers (motorcyclists often wear earplugs due to the noise on their bikes) so hearing obviously isn’t a particularly important sense on the road.
3) Electric cars and other cyclists are almost silent – you can’t trust your hearing. You MUST look
4) Even with headphones on I can feel/hear/sense vehicles
5) if it’s an issue of distraction then by rights we should ban all in-car entertainment and ban use of telephones whether hands free or not.

All of this comes back to blaming the victim rather than making the roads safer.

4) Even with headphones on I can feel/hear/sense vehicles

You’ve been bitten by a spider.

You’ve been bitten by a spider.

Definitely have the cycling bug…. (groan). Was speaking to a motorcyclist the other day about the ‘6th sense’ of nervousness you get about some vehicles. You don’t know what is making you nervous (road speed/position in lane/position relative to other vehicles?) but your cycle-senses are tingling.

You’Have you been bitten by a spider?

1) Would you ban deaf/hearing impaired people from cycling? Not their choice
2) Cyclists with headphones in can hear more than motorcyclists or drivers (motorcyclists often wear earplugs due to the noise on their bikes) so hearing obviously isn’t a particularly important sense on the road. I imagine they use their other senses and the rear view mirrors more effectively
3) Electric cars and other cyclists are almost silent – you can’t trust your hearing. You MUST look Which I think is why electric car manufacturers are introducing noises to their silent cars
4) Even with headphones on I can feel/hear/sense vehicles AWESOME
5) if it’s an issue of distraction then by rights we should ban all in-car entertainment and ban use of telephones whether hands free or not. Agreed and clearly you agree with the earphone argument

All of this comes back to blaming the victim rather than making the roads safer.
You haven’t done anything to expalin why dulling one of the senses could be seen as a positive move when you have the option, except to show me that as you do it, and you are clearly AWESOME, that it should be seen as acceptable.
When i ride I listen to the traffic as I find feeling it is a bit difficult and not something I desire.
You keep riding with earphones and carrying your opinion, I’ll keep riding without and mine. OK?
FYI I don’t read the Daily Mail, and in fact quite a bizarre thing to say. 😕

But still inconsistent that cyclist could be considered ‘negligent’ or ‘contributing’ to an accident through use of headphones when a driver could not.

Equal treatment. Not discriminating against victims. Your call obviously but not illegal, my own assessment of risk – in all the times I’ve cycled with headphones on I’ve never had a near miss as a result. I don’t reckon that’s going to be the thing that gets me (hence I consider it an irrelevant distraction)

OK, now that I’ve gone away and had some lunch let me lay out my thinking when I say I want to get the message to drivers that helmets do sweet **** all in an RTC.

Please note I’m only talking about RTCs here. Not slipping on ice, forgetting to unclip or anything like that. I’m also not talking about taking defensive cycling into account. Just the RTCs where we have no control of the outcome.

A helmet is designed to protect the head in falls from a stationary position. That’s the design spec. The effectiveness of helmets drops off dramatically as the force of impact increases. Therefore, in low speed RTCs in a particular set of circumstances a helmet may provide some small level of protection.

Motorcycle helmets have a different design spec and they can protect your head in impacts with a greater force so the range of RTCs where it might protect you is much much greater. It would be great if we could design practical bicycle helmets that provide a similar level of protection but we can’t.

Even though your brain is very important it’s not the only part of you that you need to live. In fact, you need pretty much every one of your internal organs and your spinal cord to survive. You also need a circulatory system that is closed loop and not spurting blood all over the place. There are any number of ways your organs, spine, or circulatory system could be damaged in an RTC and it’s much more likely to be one of these that is damaged in any RTC than your head.

The proportion of RTCs where a helmet would have helped is tiny. 99% of the time wearing a kitten would be just as effective.

This is the message that I think we as a cycling community should be trying our hardest to get across to non-cyclists.

Everytime Nigel Mansell or Bradley Wiggins or you or I say that cyclists should be wearing helmets, in the minds of non-cyclists we’re increasing the proportion of RTCs where a helmet would be useful from 1% to 99%.

It moves the debate in completely the wrong direction.

We should be should be talking about advertising campaigns, cyclist training, driver training, infrastructure, but the debate always comes back to helmets.

Saying that we need to get our own house in order then we can start demanding better standards won’t work because we don’t have a house. We’re not cyclists, we’re a bunch of people who ride bikes some of whom include excellent riders, OK riders, psychopaths, idiots, arseholes, and everything in between. We are not a group and we have no leaders.

Anyway, that’s what I meant when I said that helmets do SFA in an RTC.

Equal treatment. Not discriminating against victims.

Only those victims that choose to make it more dangerous for themselves, no? It’s more a case of taking responsibility for your own actions.
I’ve been caught out by relatively silent cars, you’ve got no chance of hearing them with earphone. If you’ve managed to hone your spidey senses or use mirrors then that’s excellent and I wish you luck.

well said BruceWee

In cars some reasonable steps have been taken – car safety, NCAP etc.

so would you class helemts as unreasonable for cars?

For pedestrians, steps have also been taken – pavements and crossings.

what’s been done for bikes? so far a bit of green paint. I’ve had 2 incidents in recent months one lorry hit me and one car very nearly did, former in a mandatory cycle lane, latter in a bus lane, that paint isn’t helping much, a helmet may* have mitigated some damage but driver education and cracking down on crap driving might be better steps.

I’d rule cyclist accidents on a 3 tier system
1 silly stuff not unclipping at redlights or get a bit of a wobble on and you hit the deck. Inattention, tired, whatever this is the same sort of stuff that you can do while walking around. A little slip/trip/fall could turn into a big problem in certain circumstances, again no one is arguing for helmets for pedestrians

2 Rider going faster than his abilities allow, happens to plenty here offroad so I should imagine it’s reasonably common on road too. Here is where, if you really want, you can say “haha you should have been wearing a helmet you muppet” Riders discretion, you can’t prevent everyone from doing every possible stupid thing, check the darwin awards for stuff you might have to legislate against.

3 this is the biggy, motor vehicles ploughing into a cyclist, in some instances a helmet will help in others there will be so much force or other injuries meaning the helmet is naff all use. Again what would really help here is not having a helmet law it’s protecting vulnerable road users from crap drivers. Be that driver education, proper punishment for careless dangerous driving, segregated facilities or whatever.

*yes I was wearing one

<edit> brucewee said it a lot better than me

captain danger it will only be a true monster if Tandem Jeremy graces us with his presence.

Good display by some big hitters though, congratulations 😉

i personally believe helmets give users a false sense of secuirity and may ride in a manner less likely without one.

The proportion of RTCs where a helmet would have helped is tiny. 99% of the time wearing a kitten would be just as effective.

I’m going to need some evidence for that, I’m afraid.

in others there will be so much force or other injuries meaning the helmet is naff all use

Can’t see how this is anything other than guessing or imagining.

If you get thrown over the bonnet of a car or knocked flying, you’re going to hit the floor. If your arms or legs get broken, then it hurts but you’ll survive. If your head hits the deck (or a wing) then you’re in deep trouble.

I can’t see why you have a problem with this. I’ve seen people being helped off the road after a car has nudged them off at low speed or almost stopped before impact – otherwise unhurt, but with a head injury.

I honestly cannot see how a helmet does not help when your head hits the tarmac. Really.

Doens’t matter how they are designed or how you might be crushed under the wheels. It’s padding for your skull. Padding helps impacts.

a helmet may* have mitigated some damage but driver education and cracking down on crap driving might be better steps

THEY ARE NOT EXCLUSIVE FFS!

brucewee said it a lot better than me

No, he didn’t, there was not much substance in his post!

We should be should be talking about advertising campaigns, cyclist training, driver training, infrastructure, but the debate always comes back to helmets.

No, it doesn’t. There are teams of people (or should be) in councils all over the place looking at cycling facilities. They’re not very effective often, but they don’t just spend all their money on helmet campaigning and nothing else, do they?

ASLs all over the place, signposted cycle routes, cycle crossings, SOME decent cycle paths, all these things have had some money spent on them (not nearly enough of course). I’ve never seen a single ad or billboard telling me to wear a helmet.

You haven’t done anything to expalin why dulling one of the senses could be seen as a positive move when you have the option, except to show me that as you do it, and you are clearly AWESOME, that it should be seen as acceptable.
When i ride I listen to the traffic as I find feeling it is a bit difficult and not something I desire.
You keep riding with earphones and carrying your opinion, I’ll keep riding without and mine. OK?
FYI I don’t read the Daily Mail, and in fact quite a bizarre thing to say.

One thing, if I don’t hear a car its much much much more to do with the sound of wind passing my ears (I think such noise is slightly reduce with headphones tbh), wind and traffic noise (not just engine but tyres on road a pretty load) occupy the same part of the sound spectrum and are both a broad whitish noise. There for they blur into one another. Music tends to be diffinitive sounds and higher in pitch.

Obviously that’s doesn’t change the fact that music must not be load, and when taking in a road section and going faster, I often can’t really here much of my music.

But if you really believe traffic is such a soft delicate noise that it can be lost under tunage. Do this. Go somewhere away from traffic, put your mp3 player on, set it to a comfortable (not loud – just comfortable) volume. Now walk to a busy road…

Headphones or no you should be looking often, and look them in the eye too.

NB – needless to say I don’t use fancy seinheisser earphones that block ambient noise when out riding, I use cheap crappy ones cos sooner or later sweat kills them. Nor am I saying you must wear headphones. Just that it really makes piss all difference.

and yet hundreds of car occupants die from head injuries every year, why aren’t you arguing for helmet compulsion in car occupants?

The last report I saw showed a direct correlation between the two biggest fatal injuries for car occupants – head & chest injuries – and the number of accidents where the occupants were not wearing their seatbelts.

Can’t see how this is anything other than guessing or imagining.

lorry wheel rolling over your head helmet won’t help, crushed chest, perforated lungs, broken neck, lots of life threatening injuries where a helmet won’t help. I only said some I didn’t claim to have the stats.

I know helmet use and promoting better driving aren’t exclusive but there downsides to compulsion hence my stance.

The last report I saw showed a direct correlation between the two biggest fatal injuries for car occupants – head & chest injuries – and the number of accidents where the occupants were not wearing their seatbelts.

so not wearing a seatbelt in a car is dangerous? who knew?
Seriously tho do you have the stats for head injuries KSIs among seatbelt wearers?

I’ve avoided this thread. I struggle with long sentences, but has the whole helmet thing been resolved then? Put to bed once and for all? Everyone in agreement?

Oh good 😀

lorry wheel rolling over your head helmet won’t help,

Obviously, but you don’t know what kind of accident you’re going to have before you set off, do you?!! FFS!

Seriously tho do you have the stats for head injuries KSIs among seatbelt wearers?

Of course not, not relevant either. Drivers have numerous safety features, motorcyclists do too, and yet you’re saying that cyclists don’t need them?

sorry bored myself