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news
Humberside Police logoHumberside Police warn cyclists to wear helmets
-- Update: In response to questions put to the force by road.cc the article wording was changed to say the cyclist believed the helmet saved his life, rather than asserting the helmet did save his life.
Humberside Police are the latest British police force urging cyclists to wear helmets despite their use not being a legal requirement in the UK.
The Christmas cycling warning was issued by the Yorkshire force, along with an anecdote about a cyclist whose life was “saved” by a helmet. This follows earlier tweets by Greater Manchester Police staff, including a Chief Constable, which compared not wearing a helmet, which is legal, with not wearing a seatbelt, or speeding, which are illegal.
Paul Kitson, a personal injury lawyer, who specialises in cycle injuries, with Slater and Gordon, calls it “a widely held misconception” that helmets offer good protection to cyclists.
Manchester police say helmetless cyclists are "asking for trouble"
NEWS: Humberside Police Christmas Cycling Warning https://t.co/RjOzOfJiNg
— YorkshireCoastRadio (@YorksCoastRadio) December 23, 2015
In the Christmas cycling warning Humberside Police issues one paragraph of advice to drivers to give cyclists space when overtaking, before a paragraph on cyclists wearing hi-vis and helmets, using cycle paths and observing the Highway Code. It then gives a five paragraph anecdote about a cyclist, Shaun, who was “involved in a collision” for whom a “cycle helmet saved his life”, with no mention of anyone else involved.
The advice says: “Shaun suffered a broken eye socket, jaw, wrist, facial lacerations and damage to his teeth. He’s had six plates fitted in his face to repair it. He wore a helmet – just think what would have happened if he hadn’t.”
Shaun is quoted as saying: “I can only say that the helmet saved my life and I would just like to ask people to think about making sure they buy a helmet with any new bike, it could save their lives.
The police advice continues: “This picture is horrific but Shaun survived, make sure you wear a helmet and stay safe.”
Paul Kitson told road.cc it is a commonly held misconception that cycle helmets offer significant protection in crashes.
He said: “Firstly the risk of being knocked off your bike is marginally greater than being hit by a car when going for a walk. Secondly cycle helmets offer little or no protection when the impact speed is in excess of 12 mph.
“It is a widely held misconception that cycle helmets provide good protection to cyclists.”
Humberside Police, which posts advice on its Twitter account @humberbeat, also tweeted a graphic image of a man apparently injured in a cycle collision with the words: "On the 10th day of xmas my true love gave to me 10 cycle helmets. He survived-you might not."
On day 11 the account offered advice about keeping your cycle safe from theft. The force is also using Twitter to urge people not to drink and drive over the holiday period.
A Humberside Police spokesperson told road.cc: the article "focuses on the role of the driver of vehicles in being aware of cycles, as well as cyclist riding appropriately."
"Regardless of what speed the cyclist is travelling it can still assist in keeping cyclist safe so it would seem appropriate to encourage people to buy and wear helmets while riding a cycle."
"Would you advise people not to wear a helmet? If this is the case do you think this is potentially putting cyclist at risk?"
Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.
Latest Comments
- check12 2 sec ago
200 people out of a close by population of how many? Just build it and stop being a wuss
- Spangly Shiny 1 hour 32 min ago
To paraphrase Field of Dreams, "Build it right and they will come: and use it!"
- Rendel Harris 3 hours 54 min ago
And a Happy Christmas to you, road.cc staff!
- Rendel Harris 4 hours 41 min ago
The odds of not being able to find a single pedestrian - just one, note, "any pedestrian" - in an area containing more than about ten of them who...
- bikeman01 6 hours 21 min ago
I love how wannabe racer reviewers talk about fork flex under braking like their tyres are made of glue. I find traction gives long before fork flex.
- hawkinspeter 7 hours 28 min ago
They don't make them like they used to
- LongitudeLatitude 8 hours 18 min ago
Thanks for using my picture of chocolate in your opening picture. The original can be found here, chocolate! | LongitudeLatitude | Flickr.
- lesterama 8 hours 45 min ago
Fair comments. I'll put my hands up and say I got the wrong end of the stick with this one. ¡Feliz navidad! Here's a pic for the season of goodwill.
- Mike Holmes 8 hours 50 min ago
A trip down memory lane (or street) for me - Harry Quinn's bike shop was at the top of our Street and I used to spend time staring at the bikes and...
- Bigtwin 9 hours 5 min ago
Because people aren't buying those cars. They are effecively renting them on PCPs or via companies. The bike market doesn't work like that.
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36 comments
Whilst i wear a helmet and personally think people should i would never go down the route of compulsory helmet use and any law would be nigh on impossible to regulate as in all honesty we generally have more important jobs to sort out.
However there has been an awful lot of people saying above 12mph and the helmet is nigh on useless, so i did a bit of digging and if you search for average speeds in the major towns and cities of this country its usually around the 9 - 12 mph average which, if you go by what a lot of people on here say, is within the safe speeds for helmet use.
Whilst i'm not saying these people are correct in their averages it does suggest that wearing a helmet in a built up area / town / city would be beneficial ????????????????????
Maybe, so long as it's just you coming off and not the more common event of someone driving over you. You're right in the first paragraph though - there are many more useful things for the police to do than worry about bike helmets.
Re started my cycling in May this year. Was always a bit cynical about helmets. 20 aug 2015 skided on a cattle grid hit a pole with helmet on.knocked out found by drive,due to heavy loss of blood got airlifted to hospital C/T scan, 5 head stitches under the helmet,cuts bruises & sore ribs.
dischanged 21aug
In pub 22 august thinking what if i hadnt put on the helmet. Lucky me!!.
Sorry to hear of your accident, hopefully it hasn't put you off.
Have to say though, it sounds like your helmet didn't work. They are effective in some accidents or, in the case of yours, not.
hi halfwheeler.
No the hemet worked alright,it was badly compressed at the point of impact and still i got a deep cut to my head.I dont want to imagine the mess i might have been in minus the helmet
Re-the comments about Humberside Poloice being basically hard-working good eggs. Personally I have found this with officers dealing with traffic offences in the Metropolitan Police Service - but that's not the point.
Good intentions are all very well, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The fact is that the Met (and no doubt other police services) reflect the prejudices of society as a whole, and that frequently applies with attitudes to safety on the road. A lot of officers have absorbed traditional "road safety" ideology, replete with accomodating behaviour from drivers which endangers others while victim-blaming cyclists and pedestrians. The interesting thing is that MPS accepts the need to work against ingrained prejudice re-race, disability, gender, sexuality - but not with regard to safety. Such is the power of "road safety" ideology.
Merry Christmas Humberside Police. I hope you always wear thick rubber soled boots when turning on those Christmas lights (or any electrical device) and you never leave them on standby. I hope you always wear good quality sunglasses on those sunny days along with a good high factor sun cream. I hope that you were all able to give up smoking and stopped drinking alcohol. I'm pleased that none of you drive diesel motors and live in zero emission homes and have a nut free Christmas dinner, etc, I'm only saying this for your own safety
You forgot to mention kebabs and doughnuts.
To summarise - we are unable to control the increasing number of feckless idiots hammering about on the roads because government has decreed vulnerable road user deaths as reasonable collateral to keep the motoring industry off their backs so...
suit up and prepare for whatever comes your way, we can only come and clear you off the road when your corpse is inconveniencing traffic flow.
What me, cynical?
That's fine....I urge all car drivers not to run me over !!
So the cyclist quoted believed the helmet had saved his life.
Well, I believe in Father Christmas and little green men.
Some years ago I had the pleasure of working alongside the Humberside Police Traffic Division. Although an outsider, I was invariably treated with respect and kindness and quickly came to the conclusion that they were a hard-working, understaffed group of officers who cheerfully faced huge problems as part of their daily routine.
I am confident the present staff are of the same mould and do a difficult job as well as they can. Of course things could be better, things can always be better, but I wouldn't do their job for double their salaries. Cut them some slack.
Fair enough - they do a tough job and I'm sure they're doing what they think is best. It's just a shame that they put out poorly thought out warnings like this that some cyclists (e.g. me) find somewhat offensive. (Offensive might seem a strong term to use, but it does offend me that with all the dangers posed by motorists, the police instead choose to tell me that what I need is a helmet.)
problem with these messages is that it some clueless pr individual who writes and posts it then other clueless officers throw in their tupence hapenny worth in the ensuing social media battle.
In this case I'm very sure that a traffic officer worth his salt would know that a standard road helmet would not have prevented the face plant injuries that Shaun suffered.
"Regardless of what speed the cyclist is travelling it can still assist in keeping cyclist safe so it would seem appropriate to encourage people to buy and wear helmets while riding a cycle."
"Would you advise people not to wear a helmet? If this is the case do you think this is potentially putting cyclist at risk?"
With that kind of fallacious reasoning and approach to risk it's a wonder Humberside Police is OK with anyone ever leaving their home. Come to think of it the home can a pretty dangerous place to be as well. Probably best for everyone to wear a helmet 24/7
To be honest I live in the Humberside Police area and find most motorists to be pretty respectful of cyclists, however there is an element who think we are a plague sent to deliberately provoke them but Humberside Police don't see this as an issue so quite happily give out victim blaming bad information and advice which re-inforces the bad drivers beliefs. It really annoys me that I have to pay towards this type of inefficient policing.
on the news, car plows into Costa, bus crashes into house, obviously it is possible that they were accidents, that the drivers died at the wheel, or maybe like the Glasgow bin lorry last year they knew they weren't fit to drive.
How many people have been killed by cyclists do stupid things? How many people are killed by drivers each and every year.
So why is it imposible for the Police/CPS/etc to deal with the elephant!
An interesting point, and perhaps some kind soul would be good enough to send them a picture of an elephant so that they'll know what to look for.
FFS, why are the police mucking around with giving out shoddy information and anecdotes (which are most certainly not data) about Shaun's opinions on what saved his life? Maybe they've already caught all the dangerous drivers around Lincolnshire/Humberside area and now have nothing better to do than waste everyone's time with useless warnings.
I personally choose to wear a helmet when cycling, but I'm not convinced that it will do very much during an incident (every time I've come off my bike it was my gloves that were the most useful safety equipment). If the police think that public information is more effective than actual policing (and I hope that decision is data driven) then they could at least inform drivers about safe overtaking techniques around vulnerable road users. Maybe they could even educate drivers about why cyclists choose to take primary road positions or choose to cycle two abreast.
Nope - they just re-iterate stupid, poorly thought out propaganda.
Magical thinking seems to be the norm these days. "I had an accident, with awful head injuries, imagine how bad they would have been if I hadn't had my magic talisman with me!".
Just because a person wore a helmet that suffered obvious damage, does not mean that the helmet sacrificed itself successfully and prevented things being worse. This is a very clear subjective view/confirmation bias kind of thing.
Of course, it is simply impossible to create proper controlled experiments, because you can't have a real crash with AND without a helmet, in identical circumstances, and compare the effects.
I do get tired of people who trot out the "my mate fell off, wore a helmet, is OK, therefore all bike riders must wear helmets" crap. If you extrapolated from incomplete data any further you'd be able to see into the future.
Of course, those who wish to wear them should continue to do exactly that; I wear one when on an upright bike.
Doesn't seem to prevent me getting run over! But as another commenter on here stated, my gloves have always been much more useful, and I never seem to whack my head. It seems to be mainly abdominal injuries. maybe all bike riders should be informed by Humberside Police of the importance of wearing a suit of armour.
And here is Shaun http://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/Cyclist-knocked-bike-Hull-Helmet-saved-li...
This particular helmet did nothing to protect the fella whatsoever. He was wearing the wrong piece of equipment. A full face helmet would have prevented all of these injuries.
Any peelers on this site. Can you personally encourage your colleagues to nail the nuggets who tail gate me and pass me by a whisker of my life while speeding. That will be greatly appreciated
Whilst humberside police do cover parts of Yorkshire, they also cover North lincolnshire as well, Can the artice please reflect that, rather than refering to them as a "Yorkshire Force" and forgetting about a whole other county.
If we could also get Garmin to get rid of N+S Humberside 20 years after they were abolished that would be good as well.
This poor chap could have done with a helmet. http://www.irishnews.com/news/2015/12/24/news/injured-driver-able-to-spend-christmas-with-baby-son-363511/
The helmet thing is old news
I'm more concerned with the folowing instruction "Use cycle paths where available " No matter how inefficient, poorly surfaced, overgrown debris strewn, or inappropriate - use them. So now drivers have it reinforced that we should be using the shared use paths with dogs on trips wires, randomly drifting pedestrians on phones and children, when we are cycling at 20mph.
thanks humberside police, for making us less safe.
drivers seems happy to use the cycle path too - had a very near miss last night coming home to Camden along the new segregated (stepped height design) cycle path on Pancras Road behind Kings Cross
riding along the cycle path at reasonable speed (about 20 km/h) and suddenly an Addison Lee taxi van turned hard left from road, mounted the cycle path and stopped right in front of me at an angle, I braked very hard and stopped a foot from his side window.
The idiot driving the Addison Lee vehicle seemed very confused to find a cyclist next to him, and did not offer any apology, just sat there looking at his sat nav.
Local kids from the Somers Town estate then started throwing stones at the vehicle and shouting obscenties at the driver, as I cycled off!
At the next red light I stopped to see where the driver was, he had now done a u-turn and mounted the other cycle path on the southbound side of the road....
Wow - a plastic hat that can save your face from being smashed in - they should be handed out for free on Hull's streets on Black Friday. Would save the NHS a fortune.
Didn't do a very good job of preventing his face being smashed in ...
“Shaun suffered a broken eye socket, jaw, wrist, facial lacerations and damage to his teeth. He’s had six plates fitted in his face to repair it. He wore a helmet – just think what would have happened if he hadn’t.”
No more information was given on how the incident happened, but from the injuries it sounds like he face-planted. Assuming the helmet wasn't a gravity MTB style with full chinguard, then its possible the front of the helmet acted as fulcrum and actually made his facial injuries worse.
PLEASE NOTE - I said "possible" not "did" - let's not start Xmas with a helmet debate argument, folks.
This already is. I wonder sometimes if Road CC is a trolling site?
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