Why would anyone cycle to work?
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It's a good point (which wasn't necessary to repeat :-)
The point I was making was about likelihood (which may vary depending on where you cycle).
The other thing one needs to consider is consequences.
So for example if you were a young healthy parent then death might be unlikely in the short term but the financial consequences could be devastating so it would be sensible to have life insurance.
I don't think the risk of a cycling accident and certainly one that would be helped by a polystyrene helmet is very high at all.
Thats fantastic............dont then.
I will. And for some reason my head has started to hurt!! ;-]0 -
The same idiots will talk about why they don't wear helmets and at the same time have no lights, dressed all in black.
It doesn't really matter who posted this, but it's typical of the conflation of bad cyclist with no helmet, and the general contribution to the 'blame the cyclist because they weren't wearing a helmet' zeitgeist.
Where they've actually legislated for bike helmet use they've seen significant falls in bike use and an even more anti-cyclist attitude. The public health and traffic congestion penalties you can imagine for yourself. When you see photos of Amsterdam or Copenhagen etc, etc, you rarely see a helmet and I'm pretty sure their casualty figures have not been negatively impacted.
I sometimes do and sometimes don't. So please, those who always do so, can they do it quietly and not go on about it. I have a ski helmet but have hardly used it, as I don't hit the park and rarely do serious off-piste these days. I'm sure it affects my proprioception too, and I can never understand those who ski with their hoods up as that does also for me.
My attitude to risk has probably changed - I was once on a Contessa 32 that broached off St. Cats and none of us were wearing life jackets or harnesses - and that I wouldn't do again! But cycle helmets for a trip down the shops - meh.0 -
While I have argued for cycle helmets being sensible from a personal point of view, I agree they shouldn't be mandatory. The absolute last thing we need in the UK is cycling to be even less accessible to anyone who chooses to get on a bike.0
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silverwhistle wrote: »It doesn't really matter who posted this, but it's typical of the conflation of bad cyclist with no helmet, and the general contribution to the 'blame the cyclist because they weren't wearing a helmet' zeitgeist.
Where they've actually legislated for bike helmet use they've seen significant falls in bike use and an even more anti-cyclist attitude. The public health and traffic congestion penalties you can imagine for yourself. When you see photos of Amsterdam or Copenhagen etc, etc, you rarely see a helmet and I'm pretty sure their casualty figures have not been negatively impacted.
I sometimes do and sometimes don't. So please, those who always do so, can they do it quietly and not go on about it. I have a ski helmet but have hardly used it, as I don't hit the park and rarely do serious off-piste these days. I'm sure it affects my proprioception too, and I can never understand those who ski with their hoods up as that does also for me.
My attitude to risk has probably changed - I was once on a Contessa 32 that broached off St. Cats and none of us were wearing life jackets or harnesses - and that I wouldn't do again! But cycle helmets for a trip down the shops - meh.
I posted it and it still stands. Based on thousands of miles over many years on my personal experience and observation..
Not really sure what point you think you are making. I wear one but I dont care if others do or don't. Bit silly to say quietly and not go on about it. on a forum debate.
However I care if people have lights because I want to see them and not collide at 15 mph each on a dark footpath at 5 am on a winters morning. If we both did not have lights and I took the same dopey attitude I would be getting hurt regularly.
I never worn one when I skied in the Army but I did when I jumped out of a few planes. Whats that got to do with anything. You are trying to lessen the debate by talking about Amsterdam or Copenhagen and shops. Try again in the West End/City of London to people who are cycling plenty of miles daily.
Let me repeat............I don't care if strangers wear them, skiing, walking, riding or in bed sorting the wife out! :T:rotfl:0 -
What’s misleading is to reject the only study that addresses the issue in point and accept the ones that don’t.misleading to even take seriously a 1970s study on motorbikes in the US and apply it to cycling in the UK and then give it equal weight to common sense! From a quick google it seems that a more recent and more relevant study has disproved it anyway
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3783373/
Yes, it’s a 40 year old study, and to my knowledge the only one of its kind. That in itself begs an obvious question: why? If someone published a study finding that you can turn base metal into gold people would be falling over themselves to repeat it, but when a study tells people what they don’t want to hear it gets ignored. That was the case here, and very obviously so because of the dishonest way in which it was published.
As I said, the group wearing helmets had a higher death rate than the control group without, but in order to disguise that, the control and study groups were aggregated together to make it appear the complete opposite. I don’t have a copy of the original study, but here is the analysis of how the stats were fiddled.
Here is another analysis of some of the most “prestigious” research commonly used to justify helmets, and again it turns out that the stats have been fiddled in order to claim the opposite result to that produced.0 -
What I don't see are road traffic collisions involving the town centre feral cyclists who ride rusty chained, flat tyred, brakeless bikes without helmets, lights etc, on the pavement and through red lights. It's a non-statistic. I think those are the type of cyclists that motorists will give a much wider berth to, primarily because they don't want their car damaged.
Obvious really, isn' it. And so easy to demonstrate: just try wobbling around, and see how much more room you get.0 -
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