When people don’t wear bike helmets

[Blackbinsack]

I know there un cool not the comfort-ablest thing and pain to have to carry once your bikes locked up. but why don’t more people where them I once fell off my bike and my helmet completely cracked could of
Been my head had I not worn it 26,000 people are treated in hospital for brain and head injuries every year due to not wearing a helmet.

www.cyclinguk.org/article/10-reasons-cycling-good-you

@TheRollingCrone

They don't wear them here either - after four nights of being kept awake, I called non emergency police. Operate said the police can't chase riders if they're not wearing appropriate head gear, so they don't knowing right well the police have their hands tied.

That's right, if you've ever witnessed a police chase you'll notice the rider will throw their helmet off so the police won't knock them off to stop them.

If you're knocked off your bike by a lorry a helmet won't save you.

People in Holland and Denmark don't have as much need to wear cycling helmets because they aren't made to play dodge the lorry

If you get hit by a lorry then a helmet isn't going to do much good.

TBH, if I lived in the UK again I wouldn't be cycling along the roads at all - helmet or no helmet. The roads and driving there terrified me as a cyclist. A helmet would have done very little to protect me.

Oh goody I’m a judgemental ignoramus . Let me explain why I am slightly over-invested about helmets....

I wear mine because despite being an experienced cyclist, I had a car with no right of way pull out of a side road into me, was thrown onto the windscreen and bonnet of the car and once they braked, was thrown from the bonnet into the road head first and I can still hear the sound my helmet made hitting the road. But my helmet got burst, not my head. So I’m never not going wear one after that.

Judgemental? Absolutely. Ignoramus? I choose to think not.

But as someone else said, there are many prominent people in medicine and the bike industry who are vehemently against compulsory helmet laws (Chris Boardman is another who springs to mind) and I agree that it should be a personal choice.

Isn’t it a matter for individual choice? And literally no cyclist that I know has had a “near miss” where a helmet would have made any difference. If cyclists are made to wear helmets, then we should all wear helmets all the time, walking and being in a car are just as “dangerous”

It's not 'could of.', it's 'could of'.

Just googled the full stop before/after quote issue, and apparently it's complex, not only is British English different to American, but style guides of major British publications don't agree. Apparently the Guardian style guide says the stop should be inside if a whole sentence is being quoted, but outside otherwise.

The comparison with Netherlands is a moot point as they have a decent infrastructure of cycle routes which are a) separate from roads and b) aren't full of potholes. British cyclist are generally riding among traffic on shit roads so much more likely to have accidents.

A helmet is not going to injure you and it might prevent serious injury. I don't believe for a moment people ride more dangerously when wearing a helmet.

My children and I will continue to wear helmets when we cycle as I still believe it is safer than not.

People are idiots, as is proven when Summer seems to mean that protective leathers for riding a motorbike are no longer necessary.

I also get very cross whenever people don't wear seatbelts on tv. I'm more irate when I see it on factual programmes, but also get annoying when watching fiction too.

No, I don't know anybody who's had a bear miss where a bike helmet would've made a difference either.

I wonder if people give as much thought to placing their children in a metal box that has the same affect as smoking. Cars pollute inside and it is poisoning children, people are during early due to the pollution of cars
www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/12/children-risk-air-pollution-cars-former-uk-chief-scientist-warns

Yet people worry about other people wearing helmets

Thing is, motorbikes and cars are a lot less safe than cycling. Different kettle of fish!

A helmet is not going to injure you and it might prevent serious injury. try tell that to my old colleague, the helmet broke his neck

Queenofnights
Perhaps learn proper quotation marks. Use your puncuation in pairs for quoting text or speech.
Quotation marks or inverted commas (informally known as quotes and speech marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs to mark a section of text as speech, a quotation, a phrase, or an unusual word. They are used in groups of 2, as a pair of opening and closing marks.
‎

As a primary-aged child I travelled everywhere within a few miles of my house, sometime sharing single-lane roads with large lorries, occasionally dragging my bike through a hole in the fence and across the railroad tracks, when I felt too lazy to take the bridge over the tracks. I didn't wear a helmet because they didn't exist. I was not afraid of traffic.

As an adult living in London, there's no way I'm cycling on the local roads, with or without a helmet, I think people who do have a death wish.

It's the school rule - no bike helmet, no bike. I don't have a problem with it.

Yawn to all the grammar experts.

I don't know what to think re helmets but probably best to wear one just in case although nobody in this house cycles any more.

The amount of people I have seen cycling in T shirts and shorts makes me wince though because DS1 came off his bike a few years ago and filled his arm with gravel which had to be picked/cut out with tweezers and scissors at A&E with a bit of cauterisation for good measure. Then dressing changes for weeks afterwards. Had he been wearing sleeves then it would have been soo much better.

So can all motorcyclist scrap the helmet laws?
Police can't chase them so all bikers/motorcyclists can go helmetless now?
Serious question.

If we're going to quote statistics people can we at least get them accurate?

Road Traffic Accidents account for 50% of all traumatic brain injuries. This includes cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians hit by vehicles.

So no, CARS do not account for 50% of brain injuries FFS.

Do you know how brain injuries occur in most car accidents? It's not necessarily that your head comes into contact with anything, it's the speed at which your brain hits the front of your skull when your seatbelt grabs you, because your head stops moving with your body but your brain doesn't. So wearing a helmet while driving a car will do sweet FA in these circumstances.

Yes the LIKELIHOOD of you being in a bicycle crash is low, but the CONSEQUENCES if it were to happen will be greater than for example walking because you are a) going faster and b) more likely to hit your head on the ground because you won't have time to put your arms out to stop the fall (due to going faster).

But do carry on allowing your children to go out without helmets after all, it'll NEVER happen to them, right?

@Grandmaswagbag roads being flat has nothing to do with it. There are competely off road cycle paths near me which aren't flat. There is absolutely no reason to wear a cycling helmet on them if you are a vaguely competent cyclist and stick to them.

Also in my area there are cyclists over 70, mostly men, and none of them wear cycling helmets. Motorists seem to give them a much wider berth than all other cyclists apart from children under 10.

Motorbikes are different. Not only do they go much faster, but the helmets are a lot more substantial, so offer more protection than a cycle helmet.
If a cycle helmet were to be made like a motorbike helmet, the cyclist would be at risk of dying of heat exhaustion.

Perhaps wearing a helmet should be a personal choice, but treatment on the NHS not be free if one isn't worn and the cyclist has an accident??

My view is that if I can spend £20 or do on a helmet that MIGHT reduce the severity of my head injury IF I fall off then why wouldn't I?

It's hardly a massive inconvenience....