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

eburtthebike wrote:

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.

You and I will never agree on helmets Burt, I know...when I crashed my motorcycle at 30mph (entirely my fault) my head slid along the ground for a good 30 metres and my helmet had severe striations all down the side, I'm very glad it wasn't the side of my head and face that was rubbing along the tarmac. It didn't save my life but it certainly saved me serious plastic surgery and probably a lifetime's disfigurement, so I was quite pleased it was there. 

Rendel Harris wrote:

eburtthebike wrote:

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.

You and I will never agree on helmets Burt, I know...when I crashed my motorcycle at 30mph (entirely my fault) my head slid along the ground for a good 30 metres and my helmet had severe striations all down the side, I'm very glad it wasn't the side of my head and face that was rubbing along the tarmac. It didn't save my life but it certainly saved me serious plastic surgery and probably a lifetime's disfigurement, so I was quite pleased it was there. 

I've been admiring your posts here, but I am utterly astonished and aghast that you use a personal example to prove your case, rather than reliable data.  Your single anecdote is utterly irrelevant, just like all the cycle helmet anecdotes, and the reliable data for the efficacy of motorcycle helmets is extremely poor, just like cycle helmets.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

I'm not trying to prove a case Burt, I literally am doing what you say, sharing an anecdote. The data may well show that overall helmets aren't much good, I'm just saying I was very glad I had one on when my noggin went sliding down the road.

No, it's not a dangerous activity. Stats show had injury deaths per km are higher for pedestrians than for cyclists.

If I walk to work my risk is higher, but the pearl clutchers are far less likely to be concerned I am taking my life in my hands.

Can you show me a singe instance of where there was an appeal for pedestrians to wear helmets following an injury?

wycombewheeler wrote:

No, it's not a dangerous activity. Stats show had injury deaths per km are higher for pedestrians than for cyclists. If I walk to work my risk is higher, but the pearl clutchers are far less likely to be concerned I am taking my life in my hands. Can you show me a singe instance of where there was an appeal for pedestrians to wear helmets following an injury?

The Charlie Alliston incident is a good example of where a helmet may well have prevented the death of pedestrian Kim Briggs. but there was little mention of that. Of course, that is also victim blaming to bring that up, but it's notable how there seems remarkably different attitudes to collisions between cyclists and pedestrians and between drivers and cyclists.

mctrials23 wrote:

 

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. 

So there you have it people, the truth to overturn all the statistics, from a sample of one who cycles less than he climbs ladders!

How did anyone ever survive cycling for about 100 years before helmets were invented?

Backladder wrote:

So there you have it people, the truth to overturn all the statistics, from a sample of one who cycles less than he climbs ladders!

How did anyone ever survive cycling for about 100 years before helmets were invented?

Well, to be fair, anyone who was cycling for 100 years before helmets were invented is very likely dead now.

I hadn't thought of that

hawkinspeter wrote:

Well, to be fair, anyone who was cycling for 100 years before helmets were invented is very likely dead now.

Thankfully, correlation != causation...

mctrials23 wrote:

I don't think people do think they are brilliantly protective.

They do.  My MSc dissertation examined how protective people thought cycle helmets were, and the majority thought that they were much more protective than they actually are, almost certainly due to the endless drip drip of "helmet saved my life" stories so beloved of lazy journalists.

If you're suffering insomnia, here it is https://silo.tips/download/do-cyclists-have-an-exaggerated-view-of-the-r...

eburtthebike wrote:

mctrials23 wrote:

I don't think people do think they are brilliantly protective.

They do.  My MSc dissertation examined how protective people thought cycle helmets were, and the majority thought that they were much more protective than they actually are, almost certainly due to the endless drip drip of "helmet saved my life" stories so beloved of lazy journalists.

If you're suffering insomnia, here it is https://silo.tips/download/do-cyclists-have-an-exaggerated-view-of-the-r...

That is the most perfect burn I think I have ever seen. Beautiful!

hawkinspeter wrote:

Due to all the advertising that bike helmets get, I'm not surprised that people believe that they are incredibly effective,......

It isn't the advertising, which almost exclusively concentrates on style, airflow, speed, and rarely mentions safety.  The "advertising" is carried out by the helmet zealots who tell us that helmets have saved thousands of lives and we will die without one.

eburtthebike wrote:

hawkinspeter wrote:

Due to all the advertising that bike helmets get, I'm not surprised that people believe that they are incredibly effective,......

It isn't the advertising, which almost exclusively concentrates on style, airflow, speed, and rarely mentions safety.  The "advertising" is carried out by the helmet zealots who tell us that helmets have saved thousands of lives and we will die without one.

Yeah, I meant the unofficial advertising. It seems that the more car-oriented the society, the stronger the emphasis on cyclists wearing helmets and ridiculing those that don't for being stupid.

mctrials23 wrote:

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 cyclists was not doing anything dangerous.

Helmets don't stand up to much against a car. Lights are a legal requirement at night anyway, other than that, great post.

I'm always intrigued when people say that helmets don't do much vs cars. What do they mean by that? They aren't going to stop a large enough impact or a car running over your head but surely hitting the floor is hitting the floor and the large determining factor in whether a helmet saves you is how hard you hit the deck. 

Brain damage from a crash is one of the things that scares me the most. Most other things heal and even if you are disabled from a crash, the worst outcome IMO is a traumatic brain injury that would stop me from working or functioning. 

mctrials23 wrote:

I'm always intrigued when people say that helmets don't do much vs cars. What do they mean by that? They aren't going to stop a large enough impact or a car running over your head but surely hitting the floor is hitting the floor and the large determining factor in whether a helmet saves you is how hard you hit the deck. 

Brain damage from a crash is one of the things that scares me the most. Most other things heal and even if you are disabled from a crash, the worst outcome IMO is a traumatic brain injury that would stop me from working or functioning. 

Bike helmets are tested to a safety standard that IIRC is a static drop from 1.2m onto a flat surface. The forces involved when colliding with a moving vehicle are drastically greater and completely over the design criteria of bike helmets. This is why it is foolish to expect a bike helmet to provide much protection when involved in a moving vehicle collision.

It is interesting that your main requirement of a bike helmet is to prevent/avoid a brain injury, but bike helmets are not particularly designed to prevent that. Brain injuries are most commonly caused by the brain "sloshing" in the skull and bike helmets do almost nothing to prevent that. What bike helmets are relatively good at is preventing skull fractures.

Of course, the best way of avoiding brain injury and skull fractures is to not be involved in a RTC. Luckily we have teams of dedicated police officers who are tasked with keeping dangerous drivers off the road although it appears that some of them would rather harp on about PPE which, as discussed, is ineffective.

mctrials23 wrote:

dear lord do people need to get off their high horses sometimes. You should be wearing a helmet...

You're riding rather a high horse yourself there. Wearing a helmet is a choice (I always do, incidentally) and the efficacy of helmets is highly disputed. Comparing wearing a helmet to having lights is nonsensical, firstly because lights are a legal requirement and helmets are not and secondly because lights help prevent incidents and helmets do not. The police should be focussing on asking drivers to be careful around cyclists and obey the law, not on telling cyclists that they must wear something that may offer them some protection if they're not.

Lights at night are a requirement. I was more referring to to day running lights. I have certainly noticed that drivers behave differently since putting a front flashing light on my bike so I assume its making me more visible. I agree that they should be focussing on driver competence and safety towards cyclists but that doesn't make the message of "wear a helmet" any less sensible in my view. 

As to the efficacy of helmets I haven't seen any compelling studies for the case against helmets. 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29677686/

mctrials23 wrote:

Lights at night are a requirement. I was more referring to to day running lights. I have certainly noticed that drivers behave differently since putting a front flashing light on my bike so I assume its making me more visible. I agree that they should be focussing on driver competence and safety towards cyclists but that doesn't make the message of "wear a helmet" any less sensible in my view. 

As to the efficacy of helmets I haven't seen any compelling studies for the case against helmets. 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29677686/

As far I am aware, most of the studies throwing doubt on bike helmet effectiveness look at wider issues such as the uptake (or not) of cycling and the secondary effects of risk compensation (e.g. cyclists taking more risks as they feel safer and motorists passing closer as they believe the cyclist is protected). The studies showing a protective effect of bike helmets tend to use hospital admissions which is realtively easy to do, but could be misleading (e.g. are helmet wearers involved in more hospital admissions or conversely are non-helmet wearers not reaching hospital due to death).

I recommend having a read of Cycling UK's page on helmet compulsion. I mainly agree with their views i.e. bike helmets probably do provide a small level of protection but that is massively out-weighed by the benefits of cycling: https://www.cyclinguk.org/campaigning/views-and-briefings/cycle-helmets

mctrials23 wrote:

As to the efficacy of helmets I haven't seen any compelling studies for the case against helmets. 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29677686/

That's a meta-study, so its reliability depends on what criteria were used to select the original studies, and it is therefore subject to bias.  There are many such meta-studies, all liable to the same defects, and putting lots of bad research together doesn't suddenly make them reliable. 

All the long term, large scale, reliable studies show at best, no benefit from mass helmet wearing, and at worst a reduction in the safety of cyclists.  As St Chris of Boardman puts it "Helmets aren't even in the top ten of things that make cycling safer."

From one of your previous posts "If you are doing something dangerous and you can do something simple to mitigate some of the risk then IMO its a no-brainer."  Your assumption that cycling is dangerous is incorrect; it's driving that is dangerous, and the basis of H&S is to reduce the risk at source, and the last resort is PPE.  Cycling has the same death rate for distance travelled as walking, so unless you consider walking to be dangerous, another of your arguments falls.

All your arguments and assumptions have been tested here and in many other places, and have been found wanting, by people much better informed than you.

You might like to check out cyclehelmets.org before posting again.

mctrials23 wrote:

Lights at night are a requirement. I was more referring to to day running lights. I have certainly noticed that drivers behave differently since putting a front flashing light on my bike so I assume its making me more visible. I agree that they should be focussing on driver competence and safety towards cyclists but that doesn't make the message of "wear a helmet" any less sensible in my view. 

As to the efficacy of helmets I haven't seen any compelling studies for the case against helmets. 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29677686/

https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/8/4/317

Benefits (medical cost savings) of helmet compulsion are less than the cost of helmets, even at only $20 per helmets.

All of the costs imposed on the cyclists, for the rather negligible savings to the health system. Considering the costs of brain injury treatment are not cheap, the actual injury reduction must have been tiny.

Why? Because utility cycling is very safe. 11.2 head injury fatalities per billion km travelled.

So we can talk about how much benefit there might be in certain collisions, but that's based on the assumption that the cousin is a certainty, when it is far from.

mctrials23 wrote:

As to the efficacy of helmets I haven't seen any compelling studies for the case against helmets. 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29677686/

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

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. 

Absolutely, everyone knows that strapping a piece of polystyrene foam to you head is the ideal protection against being hit by a car.

A telephone directory works as well,  but you just don't look as cool or make helmet manufacturers obscene amounts of profit for no proved benefit in vehicle collisions.

yupiteru wrote:

A telephone directory works as well,  but you just don't look as cool or make helmet manufacturers obscene amounts of profit for no proved benefit in vehicle collisions.

Exactly!  Helmets are a gigantic scam on the public, a product that doesn't work and can't be taken back when it fails.  The manufacturers not only make no claims for the efficacy of their product, apart from reaching some irrelevant standard, and even include a warning in the box saying that it won't save you; they leave that to the bad scientists and helmet zealots.

Helmets are now a billion dollar industry and is probably more profitable than drugs but without the risks.

mctrials23 wrote:

I understand the sentiment from cyclists but dear lord do people need to get off their high horses sometimes.

I would but I'm worried my riding helmet won't protect me from a broken neck while descending.

mctrials23 wrote:

You should be wearing a helmet and I assume the person involved wasn't and has probably suffered as a result.

Two assumptions.

mctrials23 wrote:

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

Wear a lid should you feel like it.  I sometimes do.  Blows from branches have been softened for me etc. and I've possibly avoided gravel rash.

I think going for the low hanging fruit of "motoring helmets" for car occupants might do more good.  I'm sure much of this is well intentioned.  If people want to make a donation of concern or advice that's their business.  However - can you put any for me towards things which can be shown to make cycling for all easier and safer though?  I appreciate that's a bigger ask than "cyclists!  Wear foam hats!" though.

chrisonatrike wrote:

I think going for the low hanging fruit of "motoring helmets" for car occupants might do more good.

Problem there is going up against Big Auto which is trying so very hard to pretend that motor vehicles are just an extension of their driver's front room...

Yes.   The industry having identified that "want" should ensure take-up of (more or less) autonomous vehicles.  For better or just differently worse.

While I dont agree with the sentiment of the tweet, and agree that it is a misplaced reminder of our *choice* to wear a helmet ...

I can safely say that the helmet I was wearing when I was hit by a poorly driven car stopped my face and head from being lacerated by the car windscreen, and although it did not *stop* the TBI, there is a very likely chance that the TBI would have been far more sever had I have not been wearing it.

And the helmet was left in place during my helicopter evac (and during the several bouts of CPR).

For some on this website, true life situations like mine and others that display even slightest evidence that a helmet does help prevent even more serious injury, do not seem relevant and are dismissed as mere ' anecdotes '.
I would suggest that if their belief that helmets offer little or no protection, that they fully replicate the collision that happened to me - twice.
Once wearing a helmet.
Once not wearing a helmet.
And then they can compare the effectiveness for themselves.

I'd do it helmet first ... Just in case not wearing a helmet turns out to be more terminal or damaging.