Cycle campaign group Spokes stops publicising events requiring participants to wear helmets

In response to the "helmet saved my life" brigade: I'm glad it did. A friend of a friend was told that the only reason she didn't die (rather than receive severe injuries) in the car crash that killed her husband who was driving was that she was drunk. So being drunk saved her, so everyone should be drunk when in a car? If the driver is drunk, s/he is more likely to crash, but also more likely to survive the crash.

Some people who wear cycle helmets may risk compensate and therefore be more likely to be involved in an incident and be injured in the helmet vicinity. If they are not wearing the helmet properly, this is even worse.

If everyone wore a helmet and had perfect (not over ambitious) expectations of what benefits it could deliver, perhaps there would be no risk compensation by the helmetee, but there would still be risk compensation by other road users. If we could eliminate that, on paper or in real life, we would be left with the balance between injuries that helmets make worse or more likely, and injuries that they reduce the impact of.

So, whilst experience teaches that helmets have been beneficial in some crashes, it does not follow that helmets are a benefit overall. They may or may not be and we should not pretend otherwise however much we would like it to be true.

I work in A and E.
Cyclists injured are surprisingly rare, and most commonly injuries are of the limbs. 1 or 2 a month
Night time alcohol related head injuries are very common, 4 - 6 a week
Heart attacks are very common, 4 -6 a day, about half are in people who should have a healthy heart due to age.
Sports related injuries including head injuries are pretty common, especially in the football season. 2 -3 a week on average.
Car crash related injuries are also very common, and involve the most serious trauma frequently encountered. Head trauma easily preventable by protective headgear is astonishingly common.
In none of the high risk activities are helmets promoted or required, except motorcycling and building sites. Severe motorcyclist injuries are spinal, the head is usually well protected. Building site head injuries are still the most common cause of injury from that type of work place.
Why the fuss about cyclists and helmets is a mystery to me, it seems like a conspiracy to make cycling seem unattractive.
Good call Spokes

Well done Spokes! About time someone showed a bit of guts and challenged the creeping compulsion.
Nobody has yet proven that helmets make a significant difference ("I fell off and skinned my knees and the helmet saved my life" anecdotes do not count, even if they are true!) Boris bikes have been making thousands of helmetless journeys in some of the most unpleasant traffic in the country and guess what, there have been no queues of head injuries in A&E, not a blip on the statistical radar... but what is easily provable is that selling lumps of polystyrene is a HUGE moneyspinner, no brainer for the big companies to push them hard then, even though teaching proper use of primary would do far more to improve peoples safety...

Now all that probably comes across as rabidly anti-helmet, but surprise, I'm not, I wear one almost always when MTB'ing and often in traffic, but I'm a grown up and get to choose.

Spokes are bang on and have gone up massively in my estimation for making this stand for commonsense.

Anecdote #4,583: 2 and a half years ago I was taken off on Duke St Hill in that London and although my chin was only slightly scuffed the polystyrene of my helmet was visibly squashed flatter where it took the brunt of my fall. That would have been goodnight Vienna without the helmet.

Unfortunately the rest of me wasn't covered in polystyrene so I broke both hands and did so much damage to my knees that I still can't even rearrange the fridge without a cushion.

Choice. Cracknell puts it well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=nu4QzAIayTU

Personally i always wear one. But Choice is important. They should not be made compulsory but can understand why Event Organisers would say this is so, they are trying to cover themselves in every way they can.

Personally I love the 'iron spike argument' (veseuner above). My father in law always said that to reduce accidents drivers should be in a glass bowl in front of the car, difficult to argue with! Not saying it is practical! I think that the safer you feel the more risk you take; simple. That said I have got used to wearing a helmet and always wear one. I just don't think they should be compulsory. It makes no sense to me to have police officers enforcing rules for peoples own safety and this goes for seat belts and motorcycle helmets. I would much rather see them investigating/preventing incidents like the 8yo who died or the stolen bikes (Today's top stories). When this sort of thing never happens then the authorities could consider rules for our own safety. Hot topic this isn't it!

two of my friends have been involved in bad crashes recently, one wearing helmet was in a coma for two days also broke their collarbone the other not wearing helmet broke his shoulder and cracked a vertebrae in his neck. i do not wear a helmet and i am sick of people telling me that i should wear one otherwise i will die or get brain damage. the worst offenders for this are healthcare workers who quite often after telling you that you will surely die go outside for a smoke! i have been riding a bike for over 40 years now and have been knocked off by cars and a hgv and fallen off through stupidity and have never hit my head. the only morons are the people who think they have a right to tell other people what to do.

Having just returned from a short break in a country where cycling participation is much more widespread - and next-to-nobody was wearing a helmet - I'd offer the following observations:

1. The UK has relatively few utility cyclists; here cycling is more of a lifestyle choice, rather than just a way of getting from one place to another cheaply and effectively. In more enlightened areas, most who cycle don't see themselves as 'cyclists' any more than I'm concsiously aware of being a 'pedestrian' when I'm walkking to the shops.
2. The UK's cycling facilities really are laughably awful.
3. The above factors push UK cyclists into becoming 'vehicular', and exposing themselves (or rather, ourselves, for I am one) to much greater risk by sharing roads with dangerous road users and, by necessity, travelling at higher speeds.

So, I always wear a helmet. I've personal experience of the benefits, and I'm yet to be convinced that the evidence against helmet-wearing makes sense. UK roads are dangerous. If I lived in Copenhagen or Amsterdam or Berlin or Barcelona - places that make real steps to integrate cyclists into their trasnport infrastructure - then I'd be happy to pootle along at 8mph in my segregated cycle lane with the wind in my hair. Very happy indeed.

However, I live in Manchester. A wonderful place in many other respects, but not a cyclists' safe-haven. I share the roads with all manner of morons and must constantly be aware of inattentive pedestrians, road-hog bus-drivers, flamboyant u-turn artistes, swinging car-doors, red-light jumpers, pot-holes, broken glass swathes, mobile-phone addicts, indicator-forgetters, cutter-uppers and mindless-abuse-hurlers, among other hazards. For these reasons, I wear a helmet.

But mandatorily? No - we must aspire to the state of affairs which would not require cyclists to feel as I do. To give way to mandatory helmets would be to concede that cycling in the UK will always be far more dangerous than it should be. Therefore, I'm with Spokes on this. We're in danger of a sleepwalking our way towards legislation, and this is an important prod in the chest to cycling activists.

There are risks in everything (even in writing this post...) but my head has the scars to prove that wearing a helmet is worthwhile.

Even if cycling isn't inherently dangerous (compared for example to angling) other road users definitely are. There have even been cases where drivers have deliberately driven into cyclists (at least one in is prison now for murder).

Also, it gives a very bad impression of cycling if they don't wear a helmet. There was never this amount of fuss against motorcycle helmets and they are a lot heavier.

Its all right. If you dont want to wear a helmet on the road - that's up to you. I'm willing to speculate that those that dont wear helmets have not yet had a crash. And when you do (crash)- it will be proof that Darwin was right. Natural selection will reduce the number of MORONS.

I don't think cyclists should be compelled to wear a helmet but simply don't follow the rabid "I'd rather take the car than wear a helmet", "I've had accidents and never landed on my head", or "wearing a helmet could even make injury more likely" arguments. I can't think of a single logical (rather than emotional) reason not to wear my helmet every time I get on my bike. Be it round the lake, off to work or "completing not racing" the Tour of Wessex last weekend. Alone or in a group - I wear my helmet.

If the rules say you have to wear a helmet and you don't want to - don't enter the event. If you want to organise a "non-creeping growth of semi-compulsion" event good for you. Can I come and ride it with my helmet on? My head, my bike, my helmet, my choice. Your head, your choice.

How about the "big metal spike" argument?

If all car airbags were replaced by a big spike that shot out impaling the occupants then people would drive more carefully and casulties would drop.

Cyclist are more careful without helmets?

I have cycled for the last 35 years and can happily report I have never had an accident. I have been an A & E nurse for six years and seen the results of cyclist wearing and not wearing helmets. I have seen helmet wearers walk out with cuts and grazes, and I have seen non-helmet wearers who became kidney donors. I wear a helmet. It's my choice. I do believe it should be personal choice but people should be armed with the right information in order to make an informed choice.
In answer to an earlier thread, I believe it was the death of Andrea Kivilev that brought about the UCI decision to make helmet wearing compulsory in races. Not pressure from helmet manufacturers.

If I can legally ride a motor trike all day at 70MPH and not need a helmet I sure can ride my trike at 20 (well I used to be able to) without one. I've fallen and been knocked off a bike many times, broken several bones but never ever hit my head on anything. (that includes an "Imperial Crowner" off a high bicycle into the stand at Herne Hill. Landed shoulder first, Ouch! I always claim you can't FALL off a trike, you get thrown off, like off a horse.
My son, then 12 and I very publicly via a front page news item in our then local paper, declined to enter a charity ride because we were both required to wear helmets and as 'under 16' he HAD to be accompanied by an adult. "What utter nonsense" I said. "He is (was still then) allowed with my written consent to ride a 25 mile time trial on the main A1 dual carriageway (motorway standard)without a helmet". I now will not officiate in any event where helmets are compulsory, risk assessment is the responsibility of the rider (or parent/guardian.
The objection is compulsion.
More car occupants suffer from head injuries than cyclists and pedestrians in spite of seat belts (that encourage recklessness). Should they be forced to wear safety helmets too?

I would point out that it's often the insurance companies underwriting these events, rather than the event organisers themselves, who are responsible for the requirement to wear a helmet. they see it as mitigating their risk, no doubt, whether it actually is or not.

i would say that if it's so obvious that helmets are the major factor in the incidence of head injuries among cyclists, that you'll obviously be able to see that correlation between helmet wearing and head injuries from all the data around the world. i won't though

I ride with my kids a lot and my youngest, like me, races BMX and goes to the skatepark to get as much air as he can. When we're racing or training or at the skatepark, i ensure he's wearing his helmet, just as I do. But I don't enforce helmet wearing when he's going here and there on his bike because I don't think a head injury is the biggest risk he, or his elder brother, face should they have a cycle accident. Now some people would give me a hard time for not ensuring my sons wear helmets all the time when they're on their bikes, but I think there's too much health and safety crap going on. Too many children are so cocooned that by the time they become young adults and leave home, they'll have little experience of the risks they face out in the big bad world.

I think the issue here is the strange gap that sportives fill. Road racing is dangerous and involves taking risks, hence why we wear helmets. It’s what helmets are designed for. Social rides or riding to the shop doesn't necessarily involve risk taking, we want to encourage cycling participation so compulsory helmet wearing would be a net negative, hence we don’t have a helmet law in this country.

Sportives are in the middle, I've ridden some where the guys at the front are taking it v seriously, whereas the guys at the back are enjoying a social ride. I guess it’s for the organisers to decide if they are promoting more of a social ride or a race.

As for the choice argument I don't really understand, the organisers have a choice whether to make helmets compulsory, and the riders have a choice whether to enter!

Herewith links to:

* CTC policy briefing on helmets

* Helmet evidence overview

* Other helmet links

* Website of the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation (provides wide-ranging links, references and commentaries on helmet research literature)

Roger Geffen
Campaigns & Policy Director, CTC

As for my personal take on helmets, it should be a personal decision. I never wear one when riding to/from work or the pool. I always wear one when heading out for a sportive or a century ride, whether required or not.

Others should be left to make their own choices as well, without prejudice.

There's another way to look at Spokes' stance. They might be saying (not verbally, but hinting at):

Our mandate is to increase overall cycling public. If your event is dangerous enough to require compulsory helmets for all, then it must be for people already into serious cycling (racing / timed sportives), and not new comers. Thus it falls outside the scope of our mandate and we shall not advertise it.

The problem we have here is that some will flatly refuse to wear one cos it doesnt look cool or they cant be arsed to wear one, whether thats through cost or whatever whereas the other side will wear one even if they nip to the local shop.

Spokes has brought it back into discussion by saying they wont advertise a race if the organisers state that you have to wear a lid. To me that reminds me of a saying my mam said of "cutting your nose off to spite your face".

The whole idea is to promote cycling and get it more attention which will ultimately lead to better roads etc etc, whereas their adoption of this policy will have people saying cyclists cant even get their own house in order.

matt637 wrote:

i can't see why taking a couple of seconds to stick a very light, comfortable, smart helmet on your nut is a big problem.

One word: compulsion.

Did you actually read the article?

I always wonder at the intelligence of people who throw insults at those who have the opposing point of view to their own. People are putting the case against being forced to wear a helmet, why is that such a problem for you?

Also, anecdotes do not make good foundation for arguments. I'm not saying wearing a helmet is necessarily a bad idea but, as demonstrated in the main article above, it's not a simple case of adding a helmet is necessarily better than a bare head. This has been discussed on road.cc before, there are lots of constructive comments in these two threads, for example:
http://road.cc/31956
http://road.cc/35876

I also recommend www.cyclehelmets.org to anyone who wants a balanced point of view on the subject. I respect people's choice, whether they wish to wear one or not.

I support Spokes' point of view. I don't want people to feel they should wear one and I don't want them to feel cycling is a dangerous activity that requires safety equipment. The single biggest change to improve cyclists' safety is driver behaviour. If being hit by a car, 4x4 or larger vehicle is the biggest risk we cyclists take then a half-inch thick polystyrene hat full of holes isn't really going to make much difference to the outcome.

And Spokes are absolutely right. Since helmet wearing is not associated, in a scientific sense, with reduced risk, why are some event organisers demanding helmets? Perhaps this explains it:

"It should be noted that in many instances the issue of whether helmets should be compulsory or not for all riders is out of organisers’ hands, with the requirement for participants to wear a helmet imposed by insurers."

Along with the urban myth that helmets are effective, there is the one about "the insurers demanded it." except they didn't. The last time I entered one of these rides, and was firmly told that I'd have to wear a helmet, I asked why, to be told that "the insurers tell us we have to make riders wear helmets." So I asked who their insurers were, and then asked their insurers whether they demanded helmets, and, lo and behold, they didn't. Insurance demands are just BS piled on BS.

The only effects of helmet compulsion is fewer cyclists and obscene profits for the helmet manufacturers, with no reduction in risk to cyclists. Since cycling confers such huge health benefits, regular cyclists live longer, and are fitter and healthier than the general population, it's more dangerous not to ride a bike than to ride one. By deterring some people from cycling helmet promotion denies the health benefit to them and increases ill health and premature death.

Any organisation demanding that helmets have to be worn is lying through their teeth, and you should either not enter, or ride without one. It's time we stopped the H&S zealots ruining our lives with their absurdities.

The ultimate stupidity is the British Heart Foundation demanding that helmets be worn on rides to raise money for them. The best way of reducing your risk of a heart attack is by getting more exercise, so by demanding helmets, the BHF is increasing the risk of heart attacks!

Check out cyclehelmets.org for a few facts rather than organisers' assumptions.

you're wasting your time lolol - no matter how many peolpe we get on here who say they have had serious or semi serious bonce (for you johns) injuries which could have been avoided by wearing a helmet you will still get the selfish muppets who only seem to think that it's their problem and doesn't effect anyone else. I had a mate who hit a pot hole at 40mph downhill, front wheel folded and he was certainly glad he had his helmet on. I got side swiped by a car last year, thrown up and landed on my nut (for you again johns) and was glad to have my lid on (childish word for helmet). I don't know how some people on here ride, or where they ride, but i feel there's a good risk of an accident every time i go out these days with the state of roads / drivers etc.