Aibu to think the school is bang out of order

[Fishwife1949]

Saw a load of school children from our local school doing cycle training whats the issue you

Well there not wearing cycle helmets nor the instructor and this is not the first lot i have seen i am actually very shocked when my son did his 2 years ago they insited that they have helmets and their bike had a 10 point check to make sure it was road worthey

Surly if your teaching children road safty first lesson wear a frigging helmet and i cant belive the school are allowing this

fredfredgeorge
If a helmet cracks on impact, what would you suggest would have happened to the user had they not been wearing a helmet?

gold the same as what did happen...if the helmet cracked it didn't do any job of protection.

If you are trying to imply that your head would crack underthe same conditions as a failed helmet then thats plain crazy.

No I'm not implying that, but an impact hard enough to crack a helmet would certainly give someone a big bump if they weren't wearing it!

Like I said I send lots of to the suppliers for crash replacements. You're not telling me they don't do any good at all.

and if the helmet cracked it didn't do any job of protection

why not?

gold the helmet can do two things.

1:Crumple thus absorbing and spreading the impact and protecting (to a small extent) the head underneath.

2: Crack thus absorbing none of the impact and just transmitting the force to the head possibly in a slightly different place than it would have been.

Thus if, after an accident, your helmet is broken but not crumpled, then you have essentially the same level of head injury you would have had without it.

It is a bit like a bungy cord. If it snaps the moment you apply force to it then it doesn't slow your descent. It only slows you and prevents injury by changing shape.

Goldship The way helmets reduce the force on the head is by the foam (usually styrofoam) compressing down and being squashed - it's why they're single use as the don't rebound fully. The hard outer shell is there to stop abrasions and to keep the foam in shape.

If they don't squash, but instead break - all the same force that hit the outside of the helmet hit the head too, without the compression no force is abated. Now it's possible that some compression happened before the helmet broke, we simply don't know for sure without very careful study of the broken helmet.

Helmets are not designed to break, if they break we don't know what protection they produced, it could have been none.

Hm. I was a commuting cyclist for several years - went over my handlebars and dented a bonnet with my head once. No helmet, no injury either though. I am on the fence about whether or not to bother for myself. BUT when I have my toddlers in bike seats they always have helmets on, but this is because they are far more likely to get injured when the bike topples while getting them in and out (and a helmet would protect against a nasty fall/concussion/skull fracture) than they are to be in a car crash (where IMO a helmet would be sod all use).

I want an invisible helmet. Are they actually available here?

I always, always wore a helmet. Cycle in S London, lots of double-parked streets. Don't look like a commuter/professional cyclist, I wear normal clothes and look mumsy - child seat on bike. I stopped wearing the helmet for what I thought would be a few weeks only, as morning sickness meant the strap made me gag, and I've been astonished at how much more room drivers give me: I went from around one scarily narrow overtaking a week (do about 6x 3 miles a week) to only one in 6 weeks. The nausea's gone but I haven't put the helmet back on. (Child wears one when with me).

When I did the cycling part of a mini-triathlon [stealth boast] the rules stated that if anyone so much as touched their bike without wearing a helmet they would be disqualified.

There's a lot of evidence suggesting that helmets don't help a lot in the majority of bike KSI accidents - which makes sense if you think about it, a helmet isn't going to protect you from a taxi doing a U-turn right in front of you, or a left-turning lorry.

However, helmets do decrease the risk of injuries in accidents involving no third parties i.e. falling off your bike. And these are exactly the kind of accidents that kids learning to ride are likely to have.

Coming off your bike at 10mph may only result in skinned knees and elbows - but if your head hits the kerb at that speed it could be a whole lot worse - why take the risk?

Anecdotal: I have had two nasty (self-inflicted) accidents off-road, both of which ended up with helmets being completely destroyed. I have no doubt that without the helmet I would have suffered from extremely severe head injuries.

TheMightyRubester if the choice was training or no training then yes there's no reason for helmets to be required.

However given that bikeability instructors insurance requires the students have helmets, the fact that helmets are likely to be very beneficial in the type of accidents students in bikeability training would be expected to have. I do not see a reason to run it as such. Helmets should be provided and required alongside bicycles.

That doesn't mean other people or even the same children should be required to wear helmets at other times, but specifically during bikeability training I think it's a reasonable requirement.

TheMightRubester As far as I can see yes - although British Cycling website is not the clearest (on anything!)

Of course it could be being taught under the schools insurance or some other, so it doesn't mean the activity is uninsured, just that bikeability instructors teaching under 18's would normally require a helmet. All BC activities for under 18's require a helmet.