Police social media team face backlash for "victim blaming" posts reminding cyclists to wear helmets

And not one of us would ever object to your choice or indeed your right to do this.

But you see you are not a social media poster representing one of her majesty's police forces.

It does make somewhat of a difference.

I think the biggest difference is being so reactive about a throwaway safety blurb on a twitter post and reading way too much into it.
It's like reading the health warnings at the front of a product manual and screaming "victim blaming" at the "Do not eat" etc section

In the eye of the beholder.  That safety blurb is for / because lawyers and manufacturers trying to cover their ass.  Any given instance of the helmet advice might be throwaway but this line appears so often.  Depending on who says it and the context I feel it's somewhere between "don't leave your valubles in your car" and some line from the 80s about not "giving others a reason to do it".

Aside - As others have done it feels oddly like I should declare my head-covering preferences.  Is this the new cycling "listing your pronouns"?  (Hair / Cap - but always a helmet when climbing, even trees)

Onomatotato wrote:

I think the biggest difference is being so reactive about a throwaway safety blurb on a twitter post and reading way too much into it. It's like reading the health warnings at the front of a product manual and screaming "victim blaming" at the "Do not eat" etc section

It's really not (and just to declare an interest, I wear a helmet at all times and encourage my friends and family to do the same). The point here is that the police are responsible for maintaining safety on the roads and for investigating incidents and instigating prosecutions against wrongdoers. If their first reaction to an incident involving a cyclist and a car is to tell cyclists to remember to do something which is in no way a legal requirement, rather than telling everybody to be safe or telling drivers to watch out for cyclists, that is justifiably a matter for concern in terms of how it reflects the overall attitude they have towards cyclists and who they believe has the greatest responsibility for protecting their safety. We can argue the toss about helmets until the cows come home, but they could be absolutely everything their most fervent advocates claim in terms of protection and still be a very minor contributor to cyclist safety compared to drivers actually being aware of, and following, road safety regulations. Given that context it is perfectly legitimate to express concern about what the police statement reflects of their attitudes, beliefs and priorities.

If they wanted to pass comment, the minimum would have been to 'change the way people work' part of the control hierarchy. But no, let's go with ppe.

No wonder that woman who cycled off a cliff in Kent went with 'I'll wear a helmet next time' and not 'I will not cycle anywhere near a cliff edge'.

As you, Mungecrundle and Rendel say.  The H&S viewpoint is useful as it takes the "personal" and "drama" out of it - and also shows what a low-level improvement is being suggested.

"Helmets" or other PPE are a popular call because the focus is on the personal.  For cyclists this restores our agency - it's something we can do / control in the present.  For people giving advice to cyclists it fits "rights and responsibilities" e.g. cyclists *choose* to cycle (an unusual activity / "not what roads were made for") so must bear some responsibility for what happens.  If there are crashes we look for individual fault.  If that's on the driver's side?  That's just a particular bad driver.  So we don't need to look at the whole system.

Because it is a pernicious trope that plays to a preconceived notion that cycling is dangerous and that cyclists are risk takers responsible for their own misfortune when in collision with other road users.

Working in a Tradeteam warehouse some years ago, they took the decision to abandon helmets as a barrel or a pallet falling from the top shelf would be totally indifferent to a helmet - you were better off having unimpaired visibility.

Someone must have done a pretty exhaustive Risk Assessment to allow that to happen and with the agreement of Tradeteam's insurers.

If not, I feel really sorry for the Next of Kin and the legal battle they are going to face.

He ain't going nowhere.

They will have to drag him out, deep fingernail gouges on the door frames.

A helmet didn't stop 11 of mine snapping like twigs ... But it did help save my stunning good looks 😊

Drivers, why not make use of these windows to which your vehicles have been provided? If you have chosen to obscure your vision by darkening the side windows, why not open them? Relatively pleasant in this warm weather.

mctrials23 wrote:

I understand the sentiment from cyclists but dear lord do people need to get off their high horses sometimes. You should be wearing a helmet and I assume the person involved wasn't and has probably suffered as a result. 

I should be able to ride without a helmet or lights and only ever be at risk from my own stupidity on the roads but I am not. Therefore I use lights and wear a helmet and assume everyone is trying to kill me in their cars.

The police are trying to remind people that helmets are vital. Please stop trying to making political points against well intentioned comments. 

Helmets may be helpful, but they are not vital and the evidence on how useful they are is mixed, with some reports showing that they provide protection to the entire body (extremely doubtful) and other reports showing that wearing helmets can lead to riskier riding by the wearer and closer passes by motorists.

What the police should have done was to remind drivers to look out for cyclists - that addresses the root cause of the majority of RTCs which is poor attention and observation by motorists.

So you'd say the same if someone was stabbed and they said 'wear a stab vest'?

Focusing on PPE is stupid and irresponsible in a tweet.

Someone in charge a police twiter account should be making relevant, accurate, pertinant comments not well intentioned ones.

Saw this quite a few times in the comments and it makes zero sense. People don't get stabbed regularly without malice. They don't get stabbed from falling over and landing on knives. When you ride a bike on the road you should wear a helmet. I have seen a lot of of people who have come off their bike for whatever reason (not all car related) and credited their helmet for saving their brains. I have come off my bike a few times and without a helmet on one occasion I would have smacked my head very hard. 

If you are doing something dangerous and you can do something simple to mitigate some of the risk then IMO its a no-brainer. 

The language used to talk about when cars hit cyclists needs to be fixed but encoraging people to wear a helmet is never a bad idea. 

If you think cycling is that dangerous, then the remedy is not to cycle.

The tweet was

Cyclist carted off in Air Ambulance

Wear a helmet.

Since the cyclist needed an air ambulance, what exactly would a helmet do ? Was the cyclist wearing a helmet anyway?

Advising in a tweet to use PPE is just stupid. PPE is the last line of resort

"If you are out driving, please remember not to drive into cyclists."

mctrials23 wrote:

Saw this quite a few times in the comments and it makes zero sense. People don't get stabbed regularly without malice. They don't get stabbed from falling over and landing on knives. When you ride a bike on the road you should wear a helmet. I have seen a lot of of people who have come off their bike for whatever reason (not all car related) and credited their helmet for saving their brains. I have come off my bike a few times and without a helmet on one occasion I would have smacked my head very hard. 

If you are doing something dangerous and you can do something simple to mitigate some of the risk then IMO its a no-brainer. 

The language used to talk about when cars hit cyclists needs to be fixed but encoraging people to wear a helmet is never a bad idea. 

Due to all the advertising that bike helmets get, I'm not surprised that people believe that they are incredibly effective, but when you actually try to study the effects of cyclists with and without helmets, the statistics become far less clear. I've read many reports of cyclists claiming that because a helmet split apart, that it saved their life, but that completely ignores how bike helmets are designed to work. A successful bike helmet would show compressed polystyrene where the impact acceleration forces were successfully reduced, but a split apart helmet is a sign that it did not work as designed - it does not take much force to split a bike helmet at all.

There's a couple of fundamental issues with people promoting bike helmets. Firstly, it portrays cycling as a dangerous activity which acts as a major disincentive to get people out cycling. Secondly, it is used (as in this tweet) to blame the victims of poor driving standards which completely distracts from the actual issue - driver inattentiveness.

If you want people to be healthy, then it is always a good idea to persuade them to cycle as much as possible whether with or without a helmet/knee pads/protective glasses/gloves/shin pads/mouth guard etc.

Incidentally, I encourage you to wear a helmet whenever you shower, change a light-bulb or go down stairs - those activities are also associated with head injuries and so encouraging people to protect their head would make a lot of sense. Or is it only cyclists that should wear a helmet?

I don't think people do think they are brilliantly protective. If the standard road helmet was brilliant then downhill MTBers wouldn't have full face and motorcyclists would wear them. Myself (and I assume many others) think that any increase in safety to the most vital part of our anatomy is worth considering. If you have a big off on your bike and your helmet got split in two, what do you think would likely have happened to your head without it?

As to the argument that helmets promote cycling as a dangerous activity, yes they do, because it is. Even ignoring drivers you could hit a patch of ice, an animal runs out in front of you, you hit a patch of dirt and loose debris, your tyre suffers catastrophic failure etc. Unfortunately there are cars and I will continue to wear bright clothing, use lights, a radar and wear a helmet until cars are no longer a massive danger to cyclists. I don't protect myself against the ideal, I protect myself against the reality. 

I wouldn't wear a helmet if I was in Netherlands on one of their purpose built paths going at slow speeds but in the situations I face I will stack as many things in my favour until things change. 

You're last point is just ridiculous and I hope you realise that. I'm 35 and I have never fallen down stairs, slipped in a shower or fallen off a ladder and I do those things far more than I cycle and yet I have come off my bike a few times. 

Its risk management and when I'm on my bike I don't have complete control of things. If you don't want to wear a helmet then go for it but it genuinely boggles my mind.  

mctrials23 wrote:

I don't think people do think they are brilliantly protective. If the standard road helmet was brilliant then downhill MTBers wouldn't have full face and motorcyclists would wear them. Myself (and I assume many others) think that any increase in safety to the most vital part of our anatomy is worth considering. If you have a big off on your bike and your helmet got split in two, what do you think would likely have happened to your head without it?

As to the argument that helmets promote cycling as a dangerous activity, yes they do, because it is. Even ignoring drivers you could hit a patch of ice, an animal runs out in front of you, you hit a patch of dirt and loose debris, your tyre suffers catastrophic failure etc. Unfortunately there are cars and I will continue to wear bright clothing, use lights, a radar and wear a helmet until cars are no longer a massive danger to cyclists. I don't protect myself against the ideal, I protect myself against the reality. 

I wouldn't wear a helmet if I was in Netherlands on one of their purpose built paths going at slow speeds but in the situations I face I will stack as many things in my favour until things change. 

You're last point is just ridiculous and I hope you realise that. I'm 35 and I have never fallen down stairs, slipped in a shower or fallen off a ladder and I do those things far more than I cycle and yet I have come off my bike a few times. 

Its risk management and when I'm on my bike I don't have complete control of things. If you don't want to wear a helmet then go for it but it genuinely boggles my mind.  

I am surprised about your comparison of the safety of showering/changing lights/descending stairs with cycling as most cyclists spend vastly more time cycling than any of those other activities. I would suggest that you are just having an emotional reaction to the "danger" of different activities and not looking at the evidence.

Personally, I don't believe bike helmets are particularly effective and certainly the ones that split apart have completely failed in their design, but nonetheless, I always wear one whilst cycling. I just do not believe that cyclists nor the police should be focussing on helmet wearing when they are not even in the top ten of things that increase cyclists' safety.

I do, however, like to promote glove wearing as every time that I've come off my bike, I've instinctively used my hands to arrest my fall and have never hit my head. Gloves also have the benefit of being cheap and comfortable to wear and they are remarkably good at preventing abrasion.

mctrials23 wrote:

 If the standard road helmet was brilliant then downhill MTBers wouldn't have full face and motorcyclists would wear them.

Well, downhillers wear full face to protect their teeth and jaw when/if they faceplant or hit a tree, AFAIK the bonce-protecting part isn't any more effective than a road helmet; obviously motorcyclists are more likely to come off at far higher speeds than cyclists, cycle helmets are designed for impacts around the 12-15 mph range.

Helmets specifically project against the acceleration from typical head height to the ground, forward speed is irrelevant to the impact against the ground.

A couple of years ago, we were on a steep descent when unexpectedly the road was covered in mud. It was impossible to stop or slow, and we had several serious injuries including someone who was fitting and unconscious from a hard bang through their helmet. Scary to see. I suspect they would have died without a helmet.

With vehicle impacts, all bets are off, if the vehicle is going at typical road speeds, but most likely you would die or be seriously injured from chest impacts or spinal injuries including broken neck rather than skull fracture.

That being said, having come off my bike on ice back in the 80s before helmets were a thing, I'd always wear one because what they do help with is turning a nasty fall into trivial fall if there is tarmac or kerb involved. In group riding, there is always the possibility of brain fade from another rider, and a heap of bikes is a most unpleasant thing to fall into.

Rendel Harris wrote:

mctrials23 wrote:

 If the standard road helmet was brilliant then downhill MTBers wouldn't have full face and motorcyclists would wear them.

Well, downhillers wear full face to protect their teeth and jaw when/if they faceplant or hit a tree, AFAIK the bonce-protecting part isn't any more effective than a road helmet; obviously motorcyclists are more likely to come off at far higher speeds than cyclists, cycle helmets are designed for impacts around the 12-15 mph range.

Motorcycle helmets are rated to provide protection up to 16mph, and evidence of their efficacy is as robust as that for cycle helmets i.e. as robust as blancmange.