h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Cyclists: be safe—be seen as a bad target - A1009144
Author: ~Recumbentman (keeper of solmization syllables) - U208656

At last, the answer.

OK, Recumbentman, I declare my colours here and now.

I'm a road safety officer and I promote the use of cycle helmets.

Ask any physician (particularly one specialising in head injuries) whether cycle helmets are a good thing or not and you will get a resounding 'yes'.

I think two things can be said. Cycle helmets are good at preventing serious injuries and deaths. There may be an argument that they are not as good at preventing more minor injuries, particularly if helmets are poorly fitted.

It would be good to have links to your sources. I have links to lots if need be, which I can get for you in a couple of days (I won't be in the office for a couple of days).

I completely agree with you about motorists' perception of cyclists. I'm told that women are safer in skirts than in lycra. Again a perception of vulnerability.

Great idea to have helmets shaped like barristers' wigs!

I know of people whose lives have been saved by the wearing of a helmet. I've also known someone who was killed riding his bicycle - one of our cycle instructors who had strong ideas against wearing them (but who while in our employ wore one whilst carrying out training).

Did you know that there is a theory that says that drivers would drive most safely if they all had a sword coming out of the steering wheel pointed at their heart?

Here's a link:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30E14F638590C7A8EDDAE0894D9404482

It only gives an abstract, you have to pay for the complete article.

I kept it simple by using only one article, as it says what they say unequivocally.

I agree that helmets save heads from cracking on falling from a bike. I think the question is a wider one: why do helmetted riders have more and worse injuries?

My entry is a sincere attempt to answer that.

Seems to be part of that link missing. After /gst/ it should go
abstract.html?res=F30E14F638590C7A8EDDAE0894D9404482.

That may not be missing at all, it just didn't all appear on my screen. It's all there now as I look at the entry I'm replying to.

ZFS,

That bit about the sword is cute. We probably all know a few people who could do with a car like that.

It also sounds like fodder for a Tom Lehrer song.


It's great, number of researchers that can sign their names with a smiley!

I'm not convinced that this is the case, Recumbentman. There is evidence that helmets save lives. I'll happily look out sources for you.

However, there is something called risk compensation, which means that people have a tendency to take more risks when they perceive themselves as being safer. This could mean that someone whose car has ABS brakes may leave braking until later, secure in the knowledge that his/her brakes are superior. People using seatbelts may drive more aggressivly, for instance. I would never drive without wearing one and I have to say wearing mine gives me a sense of being safer.

OK, what do the police cyclist's accident figures look like (probably none done), and would you be sentenced for impersonating an officer if you took their resemblence on the old push bike? They wear helmets (proper cycling ones, not the navy blue t*t).


HB

ZSF - "There is evidence that helmets save lives."

I agree they can, but the New York Times source, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, can hardly be discounted. To repeat myself boringly, they found that "the rate of head injuries per active cyclist has increased 51 percent just as bicycle helmets have become widespread".

Saying "helmets save lives" does not reverse this finding.

". . . would you be sentenced for impersonating an officer if you took their resemblence on the old push bike?"

At a guess, I'd say . . . yes!

Recumbentman,

I would agree that helmets reduce head injuries and deaths from head trauma. But, I'm sure that you would agree that saying anything increased in number by 51% is meaningless without context.

I would hope that they included an equalizing factor like 'per miles ridden', 'per hour on the road', or 'per trip'.

If the numbers of incidents increases 50%, but the usage increased 200%, it is going to be quite different than if the usage decreased by 30%.

Recumbentman,

I believe the evidence in the UK is that cycling is increasing. I can get access to UK stats for casualty collisions involving cyclists. I'm not sure how accurate the figures are for cyclist numbers. I can't really comment about America.

I am somewhat forcefully reminded of what happened following the introduction of seatbelts in the UK. Injuries to car occupants went up. This was very alarming, until it was realised that fatalities had decreased and that therefore more people were not being killed!

Ah ZSF,
Those statistics mirror those to which I had been about to refer. It also happened with helmets in wartime.

As soldiers started using steel helmets, injuries seemed to shoot up. It was only after the numbers were examined that it became obvious that injuries were up because fatalities were down.

Omigosh - I could have been thinking about that! Certainly the overall severity of injuries went down.

I think (no stats - just gut feel) that the reason injuries have risen is mostly to do with risk compensation.

I personally tend not to wear a helmet - but I have seen how much more agressive and risky colleagues are when they first start to wear helmets.

Jason McCroy (RIP) Britain's most charismatic downhill mountainbiker was quoted by the press (paraphrases) that he didn't like to wear body armour as it was mentally saying to himself he was likely to crash. I believe body armour is a pre-requisit in world cup downhill racing. I'm fairly certain that most downhill riders recognise the fact that to push the envelope of speed, they are likely to crash.

So what am I saying...

Risk taking is a personal thing, each individual is prepared to accept an amount of risk for a certain aim. There are laws at present that control certain aspects of our lives, in this case wearing helmets. Each individual will choose how to behave in regards to the law and their risk taking... what they need is informed choice. If, like yourselves, the individual is aware of the full consequences, what more can we do?

HB

(more and safer cycleways would be a start I suppose)

more prosecutions of car drivers with more severe penalties wouldn't hurt either.

most of the cyclists I know who have been injured have been injured by car drivers, usually with the comment "I didn't see them" involved in their statement somewhere.

there is a name for this, it is "driving without due care and attention", and is a criminal offence which isn't prosecuted enough.

It's a bit more than that xyroth.

Research has shown that car drivers (actually drivers of all motorised vehicles except powered two wheelers and the like) are programmed to look for oblong shapes, as these form the majority of traffic - cars, buses, lorries and the like. They're not programmed to look out for the narrow shapes presented by cyclists and powered two wheeler (motorcyclists, scooter riders, etc).

Yes, they should look out for cyclists and we should be doing more to encourage them. And yes, I would agree you could argue without due care and attention. The phrase used is 'looked, but failed to see'. It applies to pedestrians, too.

There's your answer then, not judge's wigs, or look alike policemen, but large oblong box helmets!!!

On a more serious note though, I've heard nothing but disrespect for the "new" theory aspect of the driving test. Now I'm not certain on this, but isn't part of the test is meant to show the participent's predictive / awareness powers? They get given a multi-choice set of questions, one example I heard was something to the effect of "How much longer will it take a car travelling at XXmph to stop in icy conditions?" A) 30', B) 40', C) 70', D) 90'.

Doesn't that depend on a lot of differing variables that is individual to the situation?

Don't vague and wooly questions like this detract from hard facts like, there are multiple road users, not all of them are oblong boxes!!

Maybe it's the old guard who have been driving for several years whose habits are poor c/o a relaxed attitude to driving, confident in their own abilities and experience levels who get caught out by the unpredictable happening.

HB

This is probably of interest http://www.lesberries.co.uk/cycling/helmets/effectiveness.pdf

FordsTowel says rightly that stats out of context are not enlightening. We have to strike a mean between too much statistics and too little, and in this case I went for the minimum in order to keep the entry short and sharp.

To quote my entry boringly once again:

"The number of head injuries has increased 10 percent since 1991, even as bicycle helmet use has risen sharply, according to figures compiled by the [United States] Consumer Product Safety Commission. But given that ridership has declined over the same period, the rate of head injuries per active cyclist has increased 51 percent just as bicycle helmets have become widespread."

This is a choice of figures of a kind that I would defend as most basic and incontrovertible. We should not seek to wriggle out of the findings, just because they are shocking.

It can hardly be a mistake, a selective reading, or a slanted view. Why else would Ronald L. Medford, the assistant executive director of the safety commission's hazard identification office, say “It's puzzling to me that we can’t find the benefit of bike helmets here”?

It's a well-researched statistic, published without contradiction in one of the world's major newspapers. We just have to face it. Quibbling about it is burying our heads.