“We want to make people who don’t wear helmets look the stupid ones”: Sister of teenage cyclist killed in collision with overtaking driver calls for mandatory cycle helmet law

The sister of a teenage cyclist who was killed after being struck by an overtaking driver, causing him to hit his head on a kerb, has called on the government to make wearing a helmet while cycling a legal requirement, telling her school assembly that “I just wish my big brother had a helmet on” the night he died.

A road safety expert, meanwhile, has responded to the youngster’s campaign by noting that, while cycle helmets can lessen the risk of traumatic brain injury in a collision, they “alone do not prevent crashes from happening” and that safer infrastructure is key to preventing fatal collisions.

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15-year-old Riley Ketley was cycling with friends to the shops in the Yorkshire village of Molescroft, Beverley, on 8 April 2021 when he was struck from behind by a motorist who had allegedly “sped up” to overtake the group. Riley suffered a serious head injury in the crash and died hours later in hospital.

“There was just no saving him. He had a head injury to the front of his head and a head injury to the back. He’d hit the car the front ways and he’d hit the back of it on the kerb,” Riley’s mum VJ told the BBC today.

At the inquest which followed the teenager’s death, a friend who was cycling behind Ketley – who had been told he had been accepted into the Royal Marines earlier that day – told investigators that he had pulled out into the middle of the road, as the driver of a Honda Civic “sped up as if overtaking”, leading to the collision.

The motorist, who said he felt “absolutely terrible” about the incident, claimed that he’d moved to the right to give the youngsters as much room as hospital, the Yorkshire Post reported in 2022. He said the group had seen him and moved over to the adjacent cycle lane, when Riley pulled out.

“There was absolutely no warning at all, and I had no chance to stop and avoid a collision,” the driver told the inquest.

After extensive inquiries, the police concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge the motorist, with a forensic collision investigator determining that there was no evidence of excessive speed and that the crash was “unavoidable”.

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And this week, Riley’s younger sister Amelia, now 12, has urged all cyclists to wear helmets while riding their bikes, in order to help prevent the serious head injuries suffered by her brother.

“I just wish my big brother had a helmet on that night,” Amelia told her school assembly this week, as part of her campaign, which includes handing out helmets to classmates.

The 12-year-old, who said losing her brother at the age of nine was a traumatic experience, told the BBC that wearing a helmet while cycling should be mandatory by law, in a similar manner to using a car seatbelt.

“We want to make the people who don’t wear helmets look the stupid ones,” she said. “But people don’t wear helmets and you want them to just automatically put them on instead of people having to tell them to put them on.”

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In December 2022, the Department for Transport insisted that the government has “no intention” to make wearing a helmet while cycling a legal requirement.

Addressing a written question from a fellow Conservative MP, the then-minister of state for the department, Jesse Norman, said the matter had been considered “at length” during the cycling and walking safety review in 2018.

Norman also added that while the Department for Transport “recommends that cyclists wear helmets”, the “safety benefits of mandating cycle helmets are likely to be outweighed by the fact that this would put some people off cycling”.

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Responding to Amelia’s campaign for a helmet law, Steve Cole, the director of policy, campaigns, and public affairs at The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA), noted that other factors – such as infrastructure – are more critical to ensuring the safety of cyclists on the roads than helmets.

“While everyone has the right to choose whether they wear a helmet, the evidence shows us that they can more than halve the risk of a traumatic brain injury,” Cole said.

“However, it’s important to note that helmets alone do not prevent crashes from happening, and poor infrastructure can often be to blame for collisions.”

Cole also called on the government to “publish its long overdue road safety strategy and to invest in safe infrastructure”.