Mandatory Helmet Laws & stuff (MHL discussion)

[fat and old]

Thanks Bob, I'll read them over the break, but it's not looking promising reading the other comments. I might get some bad juju confirmation bias here

Edit: A quick look at this, and yes, I think it's a bit oudated re airbags. They were taken into account however the systems that were prevalent or even proposed were pretty primitive compared to today.

5.2 Causes of Head Injury

The most common sources of head, face and neck injury inside the vehicle were from contacts with the steering assembly, door and instrument panel, the roof and side rails as well as from the side window..........the roof was a surprisingly common source of severe injury to these occupants, even though a small number involved roll over collisions. The roof was the second largest cause of severe brain injury........

A quick google gives this

https://tech.hyundaimotorgroup.com/arti ... g-is-born/

5/8/2020.

Part of the blurb

Q. Where did you first get the idea from?

Usually, automakers develop most of their safety features based on the guidelines of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration(NHTSA), Insurance Institute for Highway Safety(IIHS), or The European New Car Assessment Programme(Euro NCAP). The Roof Airbag, on the other hand, is an evolutionary technology that no one has ever thought of. After conducting a safety assessment on roof airbags, Hyundai Mobis figured out a roof airbag can protect passengers by covering the entire ceiling of a car when a car is overturned.

Somebody oughta tell Monash about that!

[fat and old]

Opinion: My thoughts on the cycling decline and a list of theories to explain it
(April 5, 2023)

https://bikeportland.org/2023/04/05/opi ... -it-372259

That was thought provoking.

The section on the rise of car sharing....uber etc... was something I hadn't considered before. I reckon you could place those short term Go car hires etc in the same basket. Businesses that make it easy to use a motor vehicle without the drama of owning one. Obviously Taxis were already entrenched, but the delivery model has been changed in a big way. It's cool to use an uber. On the car hire companies, it's revealing that while in Melbourne there's been a push to "no vehicle" apartment blocks here and there, they're not only adjacent to an inner city rail station, but the two I know of also have a dedicated car share park in front. I hadn't thought of that angle.

The section on race is interesting too, in that it was race that actually gave Territorians a helmet free life. The rest of the author's assertions don't really apply in Australia I think, although I could easily be wrong.

The link to the issues of homeless peeps living on the bikepath is eye opening

https://bikeportland.org/2019/03/18/con ... ble-297115

[fat and old]

Jumbo Visma to wear a brain design helmet in Paris-Roubaix

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/jumbo- ... awareness/

Good looking graphics.

[baabaa]

That was thought provoking.

https://bikeportland.org/2019/03/18/con ... ble-297115

Did you see the full report?
https://www.portland.gov/transportation ... t/download

And seeing this is about helmets look at the numbers of riders in a non MHL environment - was rather surprised even with the good bike infra how high the usage is - of course some people here wont believe this number due to the way the survey was done or the method of sampling and the endless excuses for this and that ......but yet another log on the fire in the MHL debate ?

Page 7 - Best look for the graphs but the words are...

Helmet use
The use of helmets had been rising from a low of 75% in 2006 to a high of 85% in 2018 and 2019 (Figure 3). That trend stalled as overall helmet use dropped slightly in 2022. As in the past, there are significant differences in helmet use by district (Figure 4). Based on similar count data going back to 2006, helmet use remains highest in Southwest Portland and lowest in East Portland.
Since we began collecting data in Portland, women have consistently worn helmets at higher rates than men. That trend continued in 2022 with 87% of women wearing helmets compared to 78% for men (Figure 4). East Portland had both the lowest overall helmet use (56%) and the greatest difference in helmet use by gender (23 percentage points). Southwest Portland was the opposite with the highest rate of helmet use (90%) and the smallest difference in use by gender at 4 percentage points (Figure 5).

[fat and old]

To be fair non MHL over age 16. Still a large percentage though. All of those people wearing a helmet when they don't have to.

And I know the reply will be "That's what I expected. All I want is the right to be one of the outliers that don't wear a helmet". And fair enough, I agree with them. However, that high helmet use figure, in an area where they DO NOT HAVE TO BE WORN, combined with this

Portland has long been recognized as a leading North American bicycling city. That reputation has been based on investments in both infrastructure and programs and on high ridership levels. Investments in infrastructure and programs have continued without pause since Portland’s 2014 peak in bike commute share (at 7.2% of all commute trips). Since 2014 Portland has built 121 miles of new bikeways, which added 77 miles to the city’s bikeway network. Most of those miles (58%) were either low-traffic streets known as neighborhood greenways, protected bicycle lanes, or off-street pathways. These three facility types are considered the most family-friendly of the city’s infrastructure. Another 30% of new infrastructure consisted of buffered bicycle lanes. It is easy to argue that Portland’s bikeway network is of higher quality and reaches into more parts of the city than in 2014-2015 when bicycle commute mode split and the
number of people biking to work peaked

Tells me that the majority of Portland's cyclists believe that there are serious risks when cycling that need to be mitigated, either through PPE or outright elimination.

[BobtheBuilder]

Another article on the case for car helmets.

Just a heads-up - the case for car helmets is usually a tongue-in-cheek appeal for rationality and consistency ... not an actual appeal for car helmets to be made mandatory. Rather to illustrate how irrational mandatory bike helmet laws are.

https://colvilleandersen.medium.com/the ... d6c4ae3ed2

"Helmets for motorists have been invented — in all seriousness- in order to save lives and reduce serious injury. Almost 50% of all serious head injuries happen in car crashes. Why are motorists not forced to wear them? The science is clear.
Let me be frank. People who naggingly promote bicycle helmets or mandatory helmet laws either privately or publicly — but who DON’T simultaneously support helmets for motorists or even pedestrians — are no friends of urban cycling. They are tiresome pests. Singling out bicycle users with sanctimonious finger-wagging about head gear is destructive to the public health, irrational and unintelligent."

And:

"The health benefits of cycling are twenty times greater than any risk. More people die on stairs in America each year than dying while cycling. Gardening is more dangerous than cycling. A great many things are more dangerous that cycling. Driving is an epidemic, with over 1.2 million people a year killed in or by cars. Obesity and lifestyle illnesses are slaughtering obscene numbers of people around the world and the numbers are rising every year. Let’s be rational and intelligent."

[MichaelB]

Yep, another peer reviewed paper. Not.

Same old same stuff

[DavidS]

Can't see the problem, if you have helmets in cars at least you have somewhere to leave them when you go somewhere.

It will save lives, think of the children.

DS

[fat and old]

"The health benefits of cycling are twenty times greater than any risk. More people die on stairs in America each year than dying while cycling. Gardening is more dangerous than cycling. A great many things are more dangerous that cycling. Driving is an epidemic, with over 1.2 million people a year killed in or by cars. Obesity and lifestyle illnesses are slaughtering obscene numbers of people around the world and the numbers are rising every year. Let’s be rational and intelligent."

Rational and Intelligent

More children die in America from gunshot wounds than anything else. Fix that, campaign against that, and I'll know the author is serious.

[Cyclophiliac]

"The health benefits of cycling are twenty times greater than any risk. More people die on stairs in America each year than dying while cycling. Gardening is more dangerous than cycling. A great many things are more dangerous that cycling. Driving is an epidemic, with over 1.2 million people a year killed in or by cars. Obesity and lifestyle illnesses are slaughtering obscene numbers of people around the world and the numbers are rising every year. Let’s be rational and intelligent."

Rational and Intelligent

More children die in America from gunshot wounds than anything else. Fix that, campaign against that, and I'll know the author is serious.

Do you have a source for that assertion? According to this
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm
deaths by poison are more common, but I couldn't find any data by age group (due to lack of time to spend finding these details).

[warthog1]

"The health benefits of cycling are twenty times greater than any risk. More people die on stairs in America each year than dying while cycling. Gardening is more dangerous than cycling. A great many things are more dangerous that cycling. Driving is an epidemic, with over 1.2 million people a year killed in or by cars. Obesity and lifestyle illnesses are slaughtering obscene numbers of people around the world and the numbers are rising every year. Let’s be rational and intelligent."

Rational and Intelligent

More children die in America from gunshot wounds than anything else. Fix that, campaign against that, and I'll know the author is serious.

Do you have a source for that assertion? According to this
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm
deaths by poison are more common, but I couldn't find any data by age group (due to lack of time to spend finding these details).

What, how many old people fall down stairs and collapse in the garden?
The relative prevalence of those activities compared to cycling?

Old people fall over with monotonous regularity. Sorry, but it is easily the most common job I attend at work.

[baabaa]

Do you have a source for that assertion? According to this
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm
deaths by poison are more common, but I couldn't find any data by age group (due to lack of time to spend finding these details).

This may help
https://www.verifythis.com/

[Cyclophiliac]

@baabaa, can you please fix the quoting in your previous post? It's incorrect, and looks like I posted something I didn't.

[baabaa]

This may help
https://www.verifythis.com/

https://www.verifythis.com/article/news ... e3e47aa639

[MichaelB]

This may help
https://www.verifythis.com/

https://www.verifythis.com/article/news ... e3e47aa639

It’s a crying shame they can’t will not do anything about this …

[Cyclophiliac]

This may help
https://www.verifythis.com/

https://www.verifythis.com/article/news ... e3e47aa639

Yes,that's useful, but I think people are missing the point of my reply to f&o. I was asking *him* to provide a source for *his* assertion.

[BobtheBuilder]

Yep, another peer reviewed paper. Not.

Same old same stuff

Enough peer-reviewed papers been posted over the years here. Someone will always respond with either a minor, usually irrelevant, objection or use anecdotal evidence to "refute" it.

If the emotion about the safety value of bike helmets was consistent, all those so passionate about them would be advocating for pedestrian and car helmets too. Maybe even sleeping helmets. There are deaths from falling out of bed, you know.

[BobtheBuilder]

Rational and Intelligent

More children die in America from gunshot wounds than anything else. Fix that, campaign against that, and I'll know the author is serious.

Do you have a source for that assertion? According to this
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm
deaths by poison are more common, but I couldn't find any data by age group (due to lack of time to spend finding these details).

What, how many old people fall down stairs and collapse in the garden?
The relative prevalence of those activities compared to cycling?

Old people fall over with monotonous regularity. Sorry, but it is easily the most common job I attend at work.

Round and round we go. There have been lots of studies on injury rates during common activities, like walking, gardening, cycling and so on.

Powell, K. E., Heath, G. W., Kresnow, M., Sacks, J. J., & Branche, C. M. (1998). Injury rates from walking, gardening, weightlifting, outdoor bicycling, and aerobics. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005768-199808000-00010

Full article available here: https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Full ... g,.10.aspx

If you think walking gardening, weightlifting, outdoor bicycling and aerobics have radically changed their risk profile in the last 25 years, go and find your own more recent study.

[BobtheBuilder]

I couldn't resist. Here are a few more recent articles highlighting the horribly risky nature of gardening!

Beware your petunias! More PPE needs to be mandated for anyone foolish enough to spend time in the backyard unsupervised and untrained.

Schaudt, J., Ziegenhorn, S., Lienert, J., Exadaktylos, A., & Klukowska-Rötzler, J. (2019). Accidents Caused by Gardening - Trivial or Serious? 5-Year Retrospective Analysis at the University Emergency Department Berne. Praxis, 108(10), 665–672. https://doi.org/10.1024/1661-8157/a003284

Watson, D. S., Shields, B. J., & Smith, G. A. (2012). Trimming- and pruning-related injuries in the United States, 1990 to 2007. The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, 72(1), 257–262. https://doi.org/10.1097/TA.0b013e318239ceed

Harris, C., Madonick, J., & Hartka, T. R. (2018). Lawn mower injuries presenting to the emergency department: 2005 to 2015. The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 36(9), 1565–1569. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajem.2018.01.031

HALL, T. (2018). Gardening injuries. Clinical Medicine, 18(5), 440. https://doi.org/10.7861/clinmedicine.18-5-440a

The last reference sums up the truly horrifying nature of the risk of gardening, something that has too long been put in the 'too hard basket'!


"In 2007, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) reported that, in 2006, 87,000 gardeners required treatment in hospital for injuries caused by:

"lawn mowers (6,500)

flower pots (5,300)

secateurs and pruners (4,400)

spades (3,600)

electric hedge trimmers (3,100)

plant tubs and troughs (2,800)

shears (2,100)

garden forks (2,000)

hoses and sprinklers (1,900)

garden canes and sticks (1,800)

"In 2009, an article was published entitled Gardening? It's just as risky as rugby says doctors. Gardeners attend clinics with ailments such as ‘gardener's back’, ‘weeder's wrist’ and ‘pruner's neck’"

[...]

"In 2010, an article was published entitled Gardening riskier than skiing and stated, ‘One in ten Britons has been injured when gardening, four times as many as those hurt on the ski slopes’."

[MichaelB]

I couldn't resist. Here are a few more recent articles highlighting the horribly risky nature of gardening!

Beware your petunias! More PPE needs to be mandated for anyone foolish enough to spend time in the backyard unsupervised and untrained.

Schaudt, J., Ziegenhorn, S., Lienert, J., Exadaktylos, A., & Klukowska-Rötzler, J. (2019). Accidents Caused by Gardening - Trivial or Serious? 5-Year Retrospective Analysis at the University Emergency Department Berne. Praxis, 108(10), 665–672. https://doi.org/10.1024/1661-8157/a003284

Watson, D. S., Shields, B. J., & Smith, G. A. (2012). Trimming- and pruning-related injuries in the United States, 1990 to 2007. The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, 72(1), 257–262. https://doi.org/10.1097/TA.0b013e318239ceed

Harris, C., Madonick, J., & Hartka, T. R. (2018). Lawn mower injuries presenting to the emergency department: 2005 to 2015. The American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 36(9), 1565–1569. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajem.2018.01.031

HALL, T. (2018). Gardening injuries. Clinical Medicine, 18(5), 440. https://doi.org/10.7861/clinmedicine.18-5-440a

The last reference sums up the truly horrifying nature of the risk of gardening, something that has too long been put in the 'too hard basket'!


"In 2007, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) reported that, in 2006, 87,000 gardeners required treatment in hospital for injuries caused by:

"lawn mowers (6,500)

flower pots (5,300)

secateurs and pruners (4,400)

spades (3,600)

electric hedge trimmers (3,100)

plant tubs and troughs (2,800)

shears (2,100)

garden forks (2,000)

hoses and sprinklers (1,900)

garden canes and sticks (1,800)

"In 2009, an article was published entitled Gardening? It's just as risky as rugby says doctors. Gardeners attend clinics with ailments such as ‘gardener's back’, ‘weeder's wrist’ and ‘pruner's neck’"

[...]

"In 2010, an article was published entitled Gardening riskier than skiing and stated, ‘One in ten Britons has been injured when gardening, four times as many as those hurt on the ski slopes’."

And the point is

What specifically have you done to repeal the laws or support the organisations that want to do it ?

I think/know they make a difference in more situations than they don’t and I (as part of my working roles) properly understand RISK and appropriate mitigations.

[Thoglette]

Do you have a source for that assertion? According to this
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm
deaths by poison are more common, but I couldn't find any data by age group (due to lack of time to spend finding these details).

I spent about 30seconds and found http://childstats.gov/America’s children/mortality.asp which indicated that unintentional injuries account for about 1/5 of child deaths (0-17) in the US. Suicide is #2. Homicide #3. Cancer #4.

No breakdown of mechanism given. But only cancer is firearm-free.

Note that there’s a lot of neonatal deaths, either from underlying conditions or complications.

[BobtheBuilder]

The point is obvious. Many activities have a level of risk attached. There is one activity that has a highly disproportionate sense of risk mitigation associated with it.

You ask for peer-reviewed papers. You get them. You fall back on your personal, anecdotal evidence.

You might "think/know" you know different, but evidence and reasoning suggest otherwise.

As far as "doing anything about it", how is that relevant? Why does this always come up? This is a discussion forum. It's for "discussions". You don't have to be here and if your only reason for being here it to tell people they shouldn't be here, then maybe you shouldn't be here?

It's like a broken record.

* Post reasonable argument against MHLs.

* Get objections asking for evidence.

* Post peer-reviewed evidence.

* Get accused of cherry-picking evidence.

* Address criticisms.

* Get presented with anecdotal evidence as response to peer-reviewed evidence.

* Get told the discussion is pointless because you're not "doing anything about it"

* Rinse and repeat.

[warthog1]

Round and round we go. There have been lots of studies on injury rates during common activities, like walking, gardening, cycling and so on.

Powell, K. E., Heath, G. W., Kresnow, M., Sacks, J. J., & Branche, C. M. (1998). Injury rates from walking, gardening, weightlifting, outdoor bicycling, and aerobics. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005768-199808000-00010

Full article available here: https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Full ... g,.10.aspx

If you think walking gardening, weightlifting, outdoor bicycling and aerobics have radically changed their risk profile in the last 25 years, go and find your own more recent study.

Indeed. you keep bringing up injury rates without including participation rates and age demographics.
Home gardens continue to be a key part of Australian culture, not just in growing plants in soil, but in artistic endeavours and societal ideas, customs and behaviour. Today, nearly 90% of Australians have a private domestic garden, and for many, particularly those over 50 years of age, gardening is their main form of exercise.
https://www.theconnective.co/2021/02/17 ... 20exercise.

In any case here is your response from Nov2 when you last brought it up.

Gardening - maybe not. Australian data - "of 1,337 surveyed, five per cent of gardeners had required medical attention due to injuries sustained, compared to just 3.9 per cent of cyclists."

At the risk of unleashing a torrent of nitpicking, regardless of the ins and outs of each stat, the general point is that, overall, cycling is a safe activity, if we include walking, running, tennis and jogging as safe activities. If we don't, then the only thing that's safe is sitting at home on the couch ... safely getting chronic diseases.

Round and round we go indeed.


Whilst we are rinsing and repeating how is your plan to repeal or change these laws proceeding?
You can even win over a consensus on a vanishingly small forum such as this.
If we put that to one side, what is your plan and progress with having these rules removed?.......

What's that? You don't have one but will proceed to repeat the same tired old sht on here?
Carry on. Good luck with your desire to remove MHLs the absence of any cogent plan or activity to do so.

[warthog1]

The point is obvious. Many activities have a level of risk attached. There is one activity that has a highly disproportionate sense of risk mitigation associated with it.

You ask for peer-reviewed papers. You get them. You fall back on your personal, anecdotal evidence.

You might "think/know" you know different, but evidence and reasoning suggest otherwise.

As far as "doing anything about it", how is that relevant? Why does this always come up? This is a discussion forum. It's for "discussions". You don't have to be here and if your only reason for being here it to tell people they shouldn't be here, then maybe you shouldn't be here?

It's like a broken record.

* Post reasonable argument against MHLs.

* Get objections asking for evidence.

* Post peer-reviewed evidence.

* Get accused of cherry-picking evidence.

* Address criticisms.

* Get presented with anecdotal evidence as response to peer-reviewed evidence.

* Get told the discussion is pointless because you're not "doing anything about it"

* Rinse and repeat.

I cannot be bothered reading the same nonsense again here is a previous response;

You incorrectly assign risk to my behaviour because it would appear you are not a cycling enthusiast and don't indulge in or enjoy sport cycling. You post only in this thread it appears for the most part.

Incorrect on two points.

1) A number of nitpickers here have disputed the notion cycling is safe, then gone on to describe riding at speed in heavy traffic, something that is outside the norm for most cycling in most countries and an environment in which almost any activity is not safe.
Cycling is generally very safe. Undertaking cycling in risky conditions, even if mitigated, is not safe. The conditions you describe, even though sensibly mitigated, involve risk. That is risky behaviour.

As I posted earlier, the stat's would disagree with your assertion;


In 2015–16, about 12,000 Australians were hospitalised for a pedal cycle-related injury representing 1 in 5 injury hospitalisations from land transport crashes. Between 1999–00 and 2015–16, 651 pedal cyclists died as the result of their injuries, an average of 38 deaths per year. The age profile of hospitalised cyclists changed over time. Rates for age groups under 25 fell by 0.6%–4.2% per year, while rates for those 25 and over rose by 5.4%–9.4%.
https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/injury/ ... ns/summary
That is all sorts of cycling.
Cycling can be safe certainly and yes I agree, utility cycling on separated infrastructure away from traffic is safer. I see no reason to mandate helmet usage there. I don't support mandating it at all. The stat's indicate there is risk in many types and it makes sense to address that risk. I do that with route selection, ride time, varia radar/light, visible clothing and yes a helmet.
I certainly don't do it because it is risky, I do it for fitness enjoyment and largely mental health I believe. I've tried meditation/relaxation techniques. Nothing works like a long bike ride. It is my approximation of meditation.

2) I have worked as a bike courier in Sydney, commuted to work in the worst of inner-urban Sydney traffic two decades ago, prior to that rode (mostly on quiet streets, rail service roads and footpaths) to school, since then used a bicycle for most of my sub 5km travel (and other travel). I didn't get a driver's licence until my early 30s (a requirement for the remote NT work I was doing) and relied on bicycle, foot and public transport for my transport needs. I have done close to 10 000km of cycle touring, most recently from the Black Sea to the Atlantic with my partner and our then one year old.

That is certainly more extensive than I expected.

I am a cycling enthusiast, but most of the threads on here cater only to a very narrow band of risky sport cycling that doesn't interest me personally. I have nothing against it, it's just not of interest to me.

I have participated on threads related to repair and resurrection, but as I don't have any expertise to offer, only as someone asking questions (and always getting very helpful, supportive answers). I haven't needed to do any repairs that I didn't know how to do for a good while, so I haven't asked questions on those threads.

No there are multiple topics outside of sport/competition cycling. Many ages and backgrounds, locations of posters. Having spent much time on here I can tell you those sport cyclists take steps to minimise their risk. Nobody wants to get injured or killed and take steps to minimise the chance of that happening whilst enjoying their passion.

I regularly participated in Critical Mass in the late 90s / early 2000s, including getting arrested a number of times, and was active in related environmental movements like Reclaim the Streets, where likewise I got arrested a number of times.
I have also been fined or warned by police for riding on footpaths and riding without a helmet.

I moved to the NT almost two decades ago and have greatly enjoyed riding helmet free since then and seeing the much greater usage of cycling to just 'get around'. I loathe going to south-eastern Australia and having to put on a lid just to trundle down to the shops or visit friends.

I don't do anything active about MHL in the NT, because the status quo is fine and actively campaigning to change the nominal law runs a strong risk of it being enforced.


I hope you are satisfied with my account of myself and that it meets your criteria for participation.


The only thing I ask of you is either to leave, if, as you say, this is a pointless forum, or contribute positively to discussing mandatory helmet laws, rather than continually nit-picking and diverting attention and energy away from discussing the broader issue and how to address it.

If people stop posting unsupported fallacies about universal cycling safety and helmet ineffectiveness I will stop countering them.

With respect about how to address MHLs I am not reading anything of note tbh.
I would be happy if that was the the primary content of the thread.

There is more on pg 448 of this repetitive thread

Remove cycling from the presence of heavy, fast moving motor vehicles and yep it can be relatively safe

[warthog1]

whilst we are repeating, here is another one.

I continually post supporting references for the point I am making that yes, helmets do provide protection in a head strike.

I haven't said they don't provide protection in a head strike. How much is debatable, as is how much helmets contribute to risk compensation (an empirically established phenomenon that isn't usually perceived subjectively).

I generally haven't been replying to you however you have come up with some ridiculous analogies;

I don't garden with a helmet because there's no MHL for gardening.

Sorry to break it to you, but a helmet is very unlikely to help you in these circumstances.

Even the inflated claims of the helmet manufacturers don't claim they're designed for collisions with motor vehicles.

Continuing to expose yourself to high risk environments, because you have faith in a helmet to save you, is a great example of risk compensation. You take more risks because you think (erroneously in this case) that something will make you safer.

You incorrectly assume I wear it to save myself if I am run over. I wear it to mitigate injury in a head strike.
You incorrectly assign risk to my behaviour because it would appear you are not a cycling enthusiast and don't indulge in or enjoy sport cycling. You post only in this thread it appears for the most part.

If you choose to cycle in the most dangerous conditions, it will be less safe (but helmets won't help). The same is true of gardening or chess.

What is designed for those situations is a key across multiple panels or a side view mirror smashed in. That kind of education sticks with motorists long after they've put your life in danger.

A helmet on the other hand is a meaningless talisman.

I saw someone walking once and she tripped forwards straight onto her head. Ouch!

Since then I always wear a helmet when walking.

You wear one every time you walk, job and get in a vehicle and we can go from there ...

People don't not wear them because they're whingers, they don't wear them for the same reasons they don't wear them in bed or walking or jogging. The only rational place to wear them is in motor vehicles, and that's pretty rare, except in ... high-risk, sport driving. Fancy that.

Sure Bob, all "constructive engagement" with supporting references for your opinion.

But the benefit of this protection for safe, sensible, risk-aware riders is tiny. Smaller than travelling by car or bus. And far smaller than the foregone population level benefits of widespread cycling.

I think that the mechanics and effectiveness of helmets is an interesting question, one that has good faith proponents on all sides, but it's not the central question in relation to mandatory helmet laws. MHLs produce small to negligible (depending on how you interpret the patchy data) declines in cycling injuries, far lower than the purported effectiveness of helmets would suggest. Even if the inflated claims for their protective value were accepted (and we ignored the lack of empirical data confirming this), the effect of MHL on cycling rates far outweighs their benefit at a population level.

Worldwide, people largely wear helmets voluntarily for a wide range of risky activities, including for high-risk cycling. MHLs don't make risky cyclists safer, they just discourage low-risk cyclists from cycling.

And you continue on in this post claiming "small to negligible declines in cycling injuries" and "inflated claims for their protective value."


This has been posted multiple times but you continue to ignore it presumably because it doesn't align with your point of view.

A meta-analysis has been conducted of the effects of bicycle helmets on serious head injury and other injuries among crash involved cyclists. 179 effect estimates from 55 studies from 1989-2017 are included in the meta-analysis. The use of bicycle helmets was found to reduce head injury by 48%, serious head injury by 60%, traumatic brain injury by 53%, face injury by 23%, and the total number of killed or seriously injured cyclists by 34%. Bicycle helmets were not found to have any statistically significant effect on cervical spine injury. There is no indication that the results from bicycle helmet studies are affected by a lack of control for confounding variables, time trend bias or publication bias. The results do not indicate that bicycle helmet effects are different between adult cyclists and children. Bicycle helmet effects may be somewhat larger when bicycle helmet wearing is mandatory than otherwise; however, helmet wearing rates were not found to be related to bicycle helmet effectiveness. It is also likely that bicycle helmets have larger effects among drunk cyclists than among sober cyclists, and larger effects in single bicycle crashes than in collisions with motor vehicles. In summary, the results suggest that wearing a helmet while cycling is highly recommendable, especially in situations with an increased risk of single bicycle crashes, such as on slippery or icy roads

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

There have been multiple other references posted indicating helmet brain injury prevention.
I consider that constructive engagement as it is addressing a gap in understanding that appears held by some frequent posters in this thread.