This thread isn't intended to influence whether anyone wears a cycle helmet or doesn't.
That is entirely a matter of personal choice and I fully respect the choice of those who do. The primary intention of the thread is to show that enforcing wearing by legislation is very silly since it results in large falls in the rate of cycling and increases the deaths and serious injury rates of those who still cycle. The secondary intention of the thread is to justify the choice of the many millions who don't wear them, which includes those in the major cycling nations in Europe.
The evidential arguments below have some appended reference numbers as Links. I've used deaths for simplicity but the same is true for KSI (Killed and seriously injured)
Do cycle helmets protect against head injury from impacts? Yes of course they do, it would be irrational to suggest otherwise. Does cycle helmet wearing reduce the number or proportion of cyclists getting killed or seriously injured? No it does not, it can actually increase those in two ways. First is the well proven fact that the fewer cyclists that are on the road, the greater they are at risk due to drivers lessened awareness of bicycles. These rounded annual figures I posted in 2016 illustrate that well:
Australia with only 1% cycling has 1 death per 4600 cyclists. 100% Helmet wearing compulsory.
London with 4.6% cycling has one death per 20,000 cyclists. 27% wearing helmets.
Britain overall with 3% cycling has 1 death per 17,700 cyclists. 18% wearing helmets.
The Netherlands with 70% cycling has 1 death per 59,000 cyclists. 0.5% wearing helmets. (1)
Clearly it is the numbers cycling and not cycle helmets that keeps cyclists safe.
Why does Australia have such a low cycling rate, the lowest in the world? It's because they made helmet wearing compulsory, a major deterrent to cycling. Similar is true for New Zealand, some US and Canadian jurisdictions, and to degrees Finland, Spain, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Iceland where some legislation has been introduced. Compare that with The Netherlands where they ride in normal street clothes without helmets and are the safest cyclists in the world. Before anyone says it, that is not all due to infrastructure, similar is true for Denmark with a fraction of that cycling infrastructure. (2)
The second reason cycle helmet wearing can increase the risk of accidents of all kinds is the contentious one of risk compensation, that those who wear protection can be inclined to take more risks. Of course it is difficult to produce evidence for such a behaviour, but some arguably exists. For example I give the following from 2016 on the latest cyclist death statistics in London published at that time, the year 2014:
In 2014 there were 13 cyclist deaths in London. all 13 wearing a cycle helmet. Almost every one was crushed to death by a vehicle running over them, the most common cause of London cyclist death, none died from a head injury. At that time the surveyed helmet wearing rate in London was 27%. So all London's cycling deaths resulted from the quarter of cyclists wearing helmets. The three quarters of cyclists not wearing helmets resulted in no deaths. Similar can be shown for any of the years of the last few decades and there's data online that you can check. I contend that this is due to risk compensation by helmet wearers feeling safer, and greater care by non-wearers knowing how vulnerable they are.
Of course none of us consciously think "I'm wearing a helmet so I'll take risks", that would be daft. The problem is that the vast majority of all the micro decisions we continuously make in in huge numbers during any activity are by our subconcious minds and we aren't even aware of them. I won't clutter this post with the proofs but if you want to know more, just ask.
There's also the study by Dr Ian Walker, a traffic psychologist from the University of Bath, suggesting wearing a helmet might make a collision more likely in the first place. Drivers pass closer when overtaking cyclists wearing helmets than when overtaking bare-headed cyclists, increasing the risk of a collision, the research has found. (3)
Risk Compensation and Bicycle Helmets published by Phillips, Fyhri and Sagberg in 2011 reported “Our results show increased cycling speed and decreased risk perception in a helmet-on compared to a helmet-off condition among cyclists used to wearing helmets, a finding that is in line with the theory of risk compensation. However, for those cyclists not used to helmets there were no differences in either risk or behaviour between the helmet-off and helmet-on conditions.” These findings support the theory of risk compensation among cyclists in a mandatory helmet environment where they are used to wearing helmets.
I've implied in paragraph 3 above that the more cycling there is on the roads, the less cyclists are at risk due to greater driver awareness of bicycles. Known as "Safety in Numbers", I believe that is accepted in this forum, but for some more evidence consider this. Back in the 1980s London cycling was in the doldrums due mainly to fear, so there was very little cycle commuting or other utility cycling.
But then by positive action of one inspired person, Ken Livingstone, London's cycling began to rapidly increase and over the last three decades has now reached 600,000 daily commutes plus a large degree of other utility cycling, making us by far the cycling capital of Britain. And although there is large year on year variation, annual deaths have been falling from a 1986 peak of 33 deaths in one year. In the post 2000 years with cycling doubled, the average per annum was 18 deaths. In the last five years with cycling at an all time high the average is 8.6 per annum. That's a drop in deaths of 52%. In the last pre-Covid year of 2019 we reached a new low of just 5 deaths. The message is again very clear, the more cyclists there are, the safer they are.
There are of course other reasons than cyclist road safety why we should increase utility cycling. Of benefit to all they are chiefly reduction in motor vehicle use and the health benefits of the exercise that cycling provides, itself reducing the death rate. To achieve that cycling increase we need look no further than The Netherlands. Many mistakenly believe the success there is due to an excellent cycling infrastructure, but that is very far from the truth as I'll show.
By 1970 the Dutch with cycling at a low of about 40% were hard on our heels in our UK's even greater loss of cycling and increase in car usage. But then in 1972 the Dutch government acted decisively against car use with ever increasing restrictions, while making life better for cyclists, mainly by more cycling freedom and active promotion. They had no cycling infrastructure at the time and although starting a program to achieve that, it was to take many decades and still has much to be done. The outcome of those 1972 measures was a continuous recovery in the rate of cycling through to 1990, importantly by ordinary ex car drivers still dressed as they always had been without any protective gear and cycling simply for transport without any hint of sporting bias. So it was on sit upright bikes frequently with chaincases and even skirt guards to protect their street clothes, hub gears and low effort speeds typically around 10 mph. And that is how it has continued to this day with 70% of the population cycling virtually every day for all and any purpose without any special preparation.
The majority of their infrastructure, which is still being expanded, followed the cycling increases, it never led them as so many wrongly believe. Another mistaken belief is that the Dutch "Strict Liability" law of the early 1990s, thought to be making drivers wholly responsible in motor vehicle/cycle collisions, encouraged more cycling. But again this isn't true since that law has proportionality and the Dutch have no strict liability term. (4)
So how do we greatly increase cycling volumes and make it safer? I'd suggest we largely follow what the Dutch did from 1972 on, with some extras:
1) Clamp down on the ways motor vehicles are used, for example by giving priority at junctions to cyclists and pedestrians the Dutch way, making them the most important road users at all times with motor vehicles giving way.
2) A complete absence of promotion of safety gear like helmets and hi-viz by officialdom and the likes of ROSPA, because that has been largely responsible for the widespread perception that cycling in Britain is dangerous, deterring it's adoption. That has led to the ridiculous situation that the majority under the age of 45 have never learnt to ride bicycles due to parental fear from the 1980s on. Pedestrians and drivers account for five and four times the number of fatal head injuries as cyclists, but no-one is calling for pedestrians to wear helmets although the fatal head injury rates are similar for cyclists and pedestrians.
3) Active continuous promotion of utility cycling with the emphasis on it being healthy, safe and normal, without any hint or mention of a sporting connection. The media must, if necessary through government pressure, play a large part in this and cycle dealers also have a large part to play by not pushing protective gear for road use.
4) The introduction of a Dutch style limited liability law to protect cyclists and pedestrians, making them feel safer when normally dressed.
5) Reduction of private car use by enforcement. One example of how this has been very successfully done in some countries is by every other day use only, via colour coded number plates making it easy to police. Another way is by taxing according to annual mileage covered, the more one drives, the more expensive it gets per mile.
6) Stay off cyclists backs in the way we do with pedestrians, giving near complete freedom the Dutch way. Please skip the ad and watch the first video on the link 5 at the end of this paragraph right through to fully understand how complete this freedom is, while remembering that despite the scary things you'll see, Dutch cyclists are by far the safest in the world (5)
The few details I've given in this post are proof enough that to make cycling safer and more popular, the worst thing one can do is enforce helmet wearing, reinforcing the false impression that cycling is very dangerous, reducing the incidence of cycling and increasing the accident rate. The best thing one can do is to greatly increase cycling and anything that can reduce it must be very strongly opposed. Fortunately our UK governments know that well and have always killed any attempt to introduce helmet wearing compulsion, knowing what a proven killer that is in both senses.
Some other views on on cycle helmet wearing:
Mayrhoffer 2008: "Despite the lack of helmets, cycling in the Netherlands is safer than in any other country, and the Dutch have one-third the number of cycling fatalities (per 100,000 people) that Australia has."
The UK's CTC say that cycling in the Netherlands and Denmark is perceived as a "normal" activity requiring no special clothing or equipment.
Pucher and Buehler state: "The Dutch cycling experts and planners interviewed for this paper adamantly opposed the use of helmets, claiming that helmets discourage cycling by making it less convenient, less comfortable, and less fashionable. They also mention the possibility that helmets would make cycling more dangerous by giving cyclists a false sense of safety and thus encouraging riskier riding behavior.
-------------------------------------------
As well as the number links 1 to 5 in brackets after the texts above, there follow some links giving additional information on the subjects discussed above, including much supporting data:
www.cyclehelmets.org
en.wikipedia.org
visionzerolondon.wordpress.com
www.researchgate.net
.
That is entirely a matter of personal choice and I fully respect the choice of those who do. The primary intention of the thread is to show that enforcing wearing by legislation is very silly since it results in large falls in the rate of cycling and increases the deaths and serious injury rates of those who still cycle. The secondary intention of the thread is to justify the choice of the many millions who don't wear them, which includes those in the major cycling nations in Europe.
The evidential arguments below have some appended reference numbers as Links. I've used deaths for simplicity but the same is true for KSI (Killed and seriously injured)
Do cycle helmets protect against head injury from impacts? Yes of course they do, it would be irrational to suggest otherwise. Does cycle helmet wearing reduce the number or proportion of cyclists getting killed or seriously injured? No it does not, it can actually increase those in two ways. First is the well proven fact that the fewer cyclists that are on the road, the greater they are at risk due to drivers lessened awareness of bicycles. These rounded annual figures I posted in 2016 illustrate that well:
Australia with only 1% cycling has 1 death per 4600 cyclists. 100% Helmet wearing compulsory.
London with 4.6% cycling has one death per 20,000 cyclists. 27% wearing helmets.
Britain overall with 3% cycling has 1 death per 17,700 cyclists. 18% wearing helmets.
The Netherlands with 70% cycling has 1 death per 59,000 cyclists. 0.5% wearing helmets. (1)
Clearly it is the numbers cycling and not cycle helmets that keeps cyclists safe.
Why does Australia have such a low cycling rate, the lowest in the world? It's because they made helmet wearing compulsory, a major deterrent to cycling. Similar is true for New Zealand, some US and Canadian jurisdictions, and to degrees Finland, Spain, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Iceland where some legislation has been introduced. Compare that with The Netherlands where they ride in normal street clothes without helmets and are the safest cyclists in the world. Before anyone says it, that is not all due to infrastructure, similar is true for Denmark with a fraction of that cycling infrastructure. (2)
The second reason cycle helmet wearing can increase the risk of accidents of all kinds is the contentious one of risk compensation, that those who wear protection can be inclined to take more risks. Of course it is difficult to produce evidence for such a behaviour, but some arguably exists. For example I give the following from 2016 on the latest cyclist death statistics in London published at that time, the year 2014:
In 2014 there were 13 cyclist deaths in London. all 13 wearing a cycle helmet. Almost every one was crushed to death by a vehicle running over them, the most common cause of London cyclist death, none died from a head injury. At that time the surveyed helmet wearing rate in London was 27%. So all London's cycling deaths resulted from the quarter of cyclists wearing helmets. The three quarters of cyclists not wearing helmets resulted in no deaths. Similar can be shown for any of the years of the last few decades and there's data online that you can check. I contend that this is due to risk compensation by helmet wearers feeling safer, and greater care by non-wearers knowing how vulnerable they are.
Of course none of us consciously think "I'm wearing a helmet so I'll take risks", that would be daft. The problem is that the vast majority of all the micro decisions we continuously make in in huge numbers during any activity are by our subconcious minds and we aren't even aware of them. I won't clutter this post with the proofs but if you want to know more, just ask.
There's also the study by Dr Ian Walker, a traffic psychologist from the University of Bath, suggesting wearing a helmet might make a collision more likely in the first place. Drivers pass closer when overtaking cyclists wearing helmets than when overtaking bare-headed cyclists, increasing the risk of a collision, the research has found. (3)
Risk Compensation and Bicycle Helmets published by Phillips, Fyhri and Sagberg in 2011 reported “Our results show increased cycling speed and decreased risk perception in a helmet-on compared to a helmet-off condition among cyclists used to wearing helmets, a finding that is in line with the theory of risk compensation. However, for those cyclists not used to helmets there were no differences in either risk or behaviour between the helmet-off and helmet-on conditions.” These findings support the theory of risk compensation among cyclists in a mandatory helmet environment where they are used to wearing helmets.
I've implied in paragraph 3 above that the more cycling there is on the roads, the less cyclists are at risk due to greater driver awareness of bicycles. Known as "Safety in Numbers", I believe that is accepted in this forum, but for some more evidence consider this. Back in the 1980s London cycling was in the doldrums due mainly to fear, so there was very little cycle commuting or other utility cycling.
But then by positive action of one inspired person, Ken Livingstone, London's cycling began to rapidly increase and over the last three decades has now reached 600,000 daily commutes plus a large degree of other utility cycling, making us by far the cycling capital of Britain. And although there is large year on year variation, annual deaths have been falling from a 1986 peak of 33 deaths in one year. In the post 2000 years with cycling doubled, the average per annum was 18 deaths. In the last five years with cycling at an all time high the average is 8.6 per annum. That's a drop in deaths of 52%. In the last pre-Covid year of 2019 we reached a new low of just 5 deaths. The message is again very clear, the more cyclists there are, the safer they are.
There are of course other reasons than cyclist road safety why we should increase utility cycling. Of benefit to all they are chiefly reduction in motor vehicle use and the health benefits of the exercise that cycling provides, itself reducing the death rate. To achieve that cycling increase we need look no further than The Netherlands. Many mistakenly believe the success there is due to an excellent cycling infrastructure, but that is very far from the truth as I'll show.
By 1970 the Dutch with cycling at a low of about 40% were hard on our heels in our UK's even greater loss of cycling and increase in car usage. But then in 1972 the Dutch government acted decisively against car use with ever increasing restrictions, while making life better for cyclists, mainly by more cycling freedom and active promotion. They had no cycling infrastructure at the time and although starting a program to achieve that, it was to take many decades and still has much to be done. The outcome of those 1972 measures was a continuous recovery in the rate of cycling through to 1990, importantly by ordinary ex car drivers still dressed as they always had been without any protective gear and cycling simply for transport without any hint of sporting bias. So it was on sit upright bikes frequently with chaincases and even skirt guards to protect their street clothes, hub gears and low effort speeds typically around 10 mph. And that is how it has continued to this day with 70% of the population cycling virtually every day for all and any purpose without any special preparation.
The majority of their infrastructure, which is still being expanded, followed the cycling increases, it never led them as so many wrongly believe. Another mistaken belief is that the Dutch "Strict Liability" law of the early 1990s, thought to be making drivers wholly responsible in motor vehicle/cycle collisions, encouraged more cycling. But again this isn't true since that law has proportionality and the Dutch have no strict liability term. (4)
So how do we greatly increase cycling volumes and make it safer? I'd suggest we largely follow what the Dutch did from 1972 on, with some extras:
1) Clamp down on the ways motor vehicles are used, for example by giving priority at junctions to cyclists and pedestrians the Dutch way, making them the most important road users at all times with motor vehicles giving way.
2) A complete absence of promotion of safety gear like helmets and hi-viz by officialdom and the likes of ROSPA, because that has been largely responsible for the widespread perception that cycling in Britain is dangerous, deterring it's adoption. That has led to the ridiculous situation that the majority under the age of 45 have never learnt to ride bicycles due to parental fear from the 1980s on. Pedestrians and drivers account for five and four times the number of fatal head injuries as cyclists, but no-one is calling for pedestrians to wear helmets although the fatal head injury rates are similar for cyclists and pedestrians.
3) Active continuous promotion of utility cycling with the emphasis on it being healthy, safe and normal, without any hint or mention of a sporting connection. The media must, if necessary through government pressure, play a large part in this and cycle dealers also have a large part to play by not pushing protective gear for road use.
4) The introduction of a Dutch style limited liability law to protect cyclists and pedestrians, making them feel safer when normally dressed.
5) Reduction of private car use by enforcement. One example of how this has been very successfully done in some countries is by every other day use only, via colour coded number plates making it easy to police. Another way is by taxing according to annual mileage covered, the more one drives, the more expensive it gets per mile.
6) Stay off cyclists backs in the way we do with pedestrians, giving near complete freedom the Dutch way. Please skip the ad and watch the first video on the link 5 at the end of this paragraph right through to fully understand how complete this freedom is, while remembering that despite the scary things you'll see, Dutch cyclists are by far the safest in the world (5)
The few details I've given in this post are proof enough that to make cycling safer and more popular, the worst thing one can do is enforce helmet wearing, reinforcing the false impression that cycling is very dangerous, reducing the incidence of cycling and increasing the accident rate. The best thing one can do is to greatly increase cycling and anything that can reduce it must be very strongly opposed. Fortunately our UK governments know that well and have always killed any attempt to introduce helmet wearing compulsion, knowing what a proven killer that is in both senses.
Some other views on on cycle helmet wearing:
Mayrhoffer 2008: "Despite the lack of helmets, cycling in the Netherlands is safer than in any other country, and the Dutch have one-third the number of cycling fatalities (per 100,000 people) that Australia has."
The UK's CTC say that cycling in the Netherlands and Denmark is perceived as a "normal" activity requiring no special clothing or equipment.
Pucher and Buehler state: "The Dutch cycling experts and planners interviewed for this paper adamantly opposed the use of helmets, claiming that helmets discourage cycling by making it less convenient, less comfortable, and less fashionable. They also mention the possibility that helmets would make cycling more dangerous by giving cyclists a false sense of safety and thus encouraging riskier riding behavior.
-------------------------------------------
As well as the number links 1 to 5 in brackets after the texts above, there follow some links giving additional information on the subjects discussed above, including much supporting data:
Trends in cyclist casualties in Britain with increasing cycle helmet use (to 2000)
Trends in cyclist casualties in Britain with increasing cycle helmet use (to 2000)
Cycling in London - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Latest Pedestrians and Cyclists Deaths in London
Click on map to see pedestrian fatalities since 2017 2014 : 64 pedestrians and 13 cyclists killed, = 77 citizens; 61% of all road deaths (56% of all KSIs) 2015 – 66 pedestrians an…
visionzerolondon.wordpress.com
(PDF) Effects of bicycle helmet wearing on accident and injury rates
PDF | Bicycle helmet wearing globally has increased over the past 30 years via promotion and in some cases legislation. Various reports have assessed... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate
www.researchgate.net
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