https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...ing%20head%20injury.

" This review included five well conducted case‐control studies and found that helmets provide a 63–88% reduction in the risk of head, brain and severe brain injury for all ages of bicyclists. Helmets were found to provide equal levels of protection for crashes involving motor vehicles (69%) and crashes from all other causes (68%). Furthermore, injuries to the upper and mid facial areas were found to be reduced by 65%, although helmets did not prevent lower facial injuries. The review authors concluded that bicycle helmets are an effective means of preventing head injury"

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

But he is trying to convince people not to wear helmets. One of their goals is to promote "helmet-free role models" and they disseminate poorly interpreted data to argue that helmets are at best useless and maybe worse than no helmet at all.

I think advocating for bike lanes and more cycling is great.

I have no idea what you are talking about regarding blaming a cyclist being hit by a car. Nothing I have said could be construed to supporting that statement.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

Even if the result is they don't then ride a bike, get fat, get obese, get diabetes and have life long health problems that could have been averted by being more active in childhood via biking and then continuing that into adulthood?

That is part of the bigger picture in balancing the risks thst CB points to.
Because riding bikes IS suppressed by being forced to wear a helmet.
Plenty of evidence of that in Aus after helmet laws got passed.

(Said by someone who always does wear a helmet and so does my daughter... but I don't give a fheck about my hair or getting a sweaty head, unlike many normal people).

I read the detailed data position paper. Those links are tenuous. There are a lot of "dots" to connect between the various studies spread around the globe between differing cultures and timeframes, to be able to definitively make that case. Several logical leaps appeared to being made.

Presuming that's true, its another leap to say that there is some causal link between reduced cycling, and increased health issues. "If only we hadn't passed helmet laws...everyone would still be healthy." Seems VERY thin. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say THAT problem is WAY more complex than "helmet laws".

what he's promoting is to not increase the barriers to using a bike as a means of transport by making helmets compulsory.

we should be doing everything possible to get people out of their cars and using bikes for short journeys, for both environmental and health reasons.

we shouldn't be telling people that if they want to use a bike for a 5 minute journey down the street to the bakery to pick up their bread that they must wear a helmet to do so!

we should be encouraging it and making it as easy as possible to do it, along with providing the infrastructure to make it safe to do so.

boardman's mum was killed while cycling after being hit by a car driver, and guess what, she was wearing both a helmet and high visibility clothing.

make it safe for people to cycle, not force them to wear a helmet which may or may not help them if they're hit by negligent drivers.

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Feel the Speed

I wear a helmet 100% of the time. I also believe that a helmet can prevent serious injury. That said, I am emphatically okay with not wearing one if it gets more people out on bikes.

.

These are pros, just 2 days ago. I wonder how likely this is to happen in group rides or grand fondos... or IM 70.3 draftfests. I've lost 2 friends to bike crashes. I've seen many go down. I had a female rider go down on loose gravel, in front of me, a few years ago, and her helmet slit in half, and she got up dazed, but alive and ok. I wouldn't be here, or maybe would be, but impaired, if I didn't wear a helmet. I don't need science anything, and don't care about statistics. I've been riding over 50 years, and if you keep riding, your number could come up at any time. All I need is my memories and experience, to wear my helmet, and I still have those, because I wore my helmet. I don't care what anyone else does, but I do get uncomfortable riding close to someone without a helmet. I would hate to be the guy to cause a crash, that kills or maims someone .

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Athlinks / Strava

I think it's great he wants to get people out of cars and on bikes.

I think it's fine to be against helmet laws (though I really think it should be required for children).

It's not fine to make up fake science to try to convince people that they are safer without a helmet on.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

You are making the leap from using people without helmets in promotions to convincing people not to wear helmets. They are not the same thing.

I agree. If you are riding anywhere close to the level you show here a helmet should be mandatory. However most people are riding on vacation, with friends, or around the neighborhood at very slow speeds. Regardless of if they have a helmet or choose to wear one or not, let’s get them out riding first. I bet once they get into the sport and ride regularly they’ll choose wear a helmet. But even if they don’t it’s my opinion the health benefits outweigh the risks.

No, they are not limiting their actions to just publishing photos of helmetless people. Tom Hampton posted this earlier where they try to make psuedo-scientific arguments against the use of helmets for health and safety:

https://www.cyclinguk.org/...idence_cuk_brf_0.pdf

Even their very first argument is absurdly misleadingly worded:

" You are in fact as unlikely to be killed in a mile of cycling as in a mile of walking."

Except in cycling you are travelling 7 to 15 times faster than when walking. So if we take on faith that their statement is accurate, it means in an hour of cycling, you are 7 to 15 times more likely to be killed than in an hour of walking.

And even then, they did not say anything about whether that stat is controlled for helmet use or not.

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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com
Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
Instagram • Facebook

While I'm a moderate on the helmet debate and willing to accept some of the arguments, I disagree that everything on that link is spot on.

Some of it is purely speculative. And some of it is downright misleading.

I'll just pick one example: the risk compensation argument. This is the argument that wearing helmets promotes greater risk-taking behavior and reduces overall safety.

The link says, "Some evidence suggests they may in fact increase the risk of cyclists having falls or collisions in the first place, or suffering neck injuries."

It's not a lie. The first part - "more falls" - probably banks on the 2016 study, "Wearing a Bicycle Helmet Can Increase Risk Taking and Sensation Seeking in Adults." But that article was a bit suspect. As a metric it used scores from an eye tracking device mounted to either a helmet or baseball cap. It wasn't a direct measure of either risk nor risk-taking behavior from actual collisions. But a more recent literature survey of this topic from 2019, "Bicycle helmets and risky behaviour: A systematic review", studied 23 papers on the topic. Of those 23 studies, 18 found no increased risk, 3 were mixed, 2 supported the notion of increased risk. And 10 suggested that cycling behavior actually *improved* with helmet use.

So the link picked one (or 2) of those 23 studies and doesn't even bother mentioning that the preponderance of evidence goes in the other direction.

But it's not a lie. Some evidence *does* suggest. Right?

That site is pretty dogmatic, as almost all helmet debates, unfortunately, are.

A good friend was very active in Transportation Alternatives in NYC. If it were up to him, cars would be illegal. He was against helmet mandates because it meant less people would ride bikes.

I used to live 1.6 miles from work, with a bike share station one block away. I never used it once, because I didn't want to wear a helmet, and I would never ride without a helmet.

I was also walking on a sidewalk once, when a person was riding his bike towards me, despite the presence of a nice bike lane - a real pet peeve of mine. I said "bike lane" as he passed, and he responded "I'm not wearing a helmet, asshole!".

There are costs and benefits to either approach. A lot depends on the specific area, but I do feel that motorists (with insurance implications), pedestrians, and cyclists must all be considered. It's probably the case that lots of urban/commuter cyclists with no helmets are safer than a few with helmets, which I think is what the county-based differences show.

I do feel strongly that everyone SHOULD wear a helmet, but I don't know what that means for a mandate, especially since enforcement is sure to be lacking. I certainly wouldn't support a smear campaign on helmets.

I can support this argument. With that being said, I'm not sure who Chris Boardman is going to be a role model to these days. Anyone that follows Chris Boardman has to be old enough to make a logical conclusion for themselves. I do think it is probably a good idea to encourage helmets where possible. However, we also have to be careful that we don't get to a point where that stance becomes social and brand suicide and we lose sight of greater good goal... Get more people healthy, get more people outside, get them on bikes, less cars, less pollution, less obesity, more happiness.

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I don't know what the stats are regarding bike head injuries relating to speed. Obviously the faster you are going the bigger the injury, potentially. But I do have a couple of mates and mates kids that have had bad injuries when moving at a slow speed. My schoolmate died popping a wheelie,. flipped back and cracked his head, a guy I used to train with, rode his TT bike to the shops, came off as he clipped a kerb at 10km/hr and fractured his skull etc it's not a huge PITA to put a helmet on.

haha... can you provide me with a piece of data showing that the sky is blue? This is called data run amok

The way I see it, we know that excessive sun exposure causes skin cancer. But we don't have the police going down to the beach and arresting people for not wearing sunscreen. And it should be the same for cycling helmets.

I choose to wear a helmet while road riding, because I am aware of the risks if I do crash. But I object to it being mandatory.

Sorry I was busy earlier so it took me a while to see this.
(1) The paper you cite is not the original study. The original study is from 1999: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...articles/PMC7025438/
(2) The 1999 study is essentially the only study out there that has this finding, and IDK if you are a scientist or not but I am and I can tell you this study is garbage. It is akin to the "red meat takes years off your life" studies you read in the papers all the time. It's an observational study. They compare 145 children from Seattle hospitals who were treated for head injuries, to a different sample of 450 children who simply fell off their bikes. Then they try to "control" for observed differences between the two groups. The helmet wearers were very different from the non-helmet wearers: predominantly white, middle class, etc, whereas the non-wearers were more often black or other races riding alone on busy city streets. Here's the real proof the study is wrong: if the study's assumptions are true you can use their data to estimate the effect of wearing a helmet on crashing. The answer you get is that (again if the study were correct but it very clearly is not) the mere fact of putting on a helmet CAUSES a 700% increase in crashes. Now I don't believe that for a second, but if you want to hang your hat on the 63-88% number then you have to eat that one too. I.e. helmets are very very dangerous and you are WAY better off not wearing one. The problem, of course, is that the helmet wearers are different from the non-helmet wearers and they have different crashes, and you can't easily control for that especially in their sample, which is wildly biased. You really don't learn anything from this study.

Let me also address the bigger issue: no one is saying that helmets do absolutely nothing. They help a bit in some circumstances. It turns out that those circumstances are so rare that you can't find anything if you do a high quality study. The signal is lost in the noise. The question is: is the benefit worth the cost? Well it probably is if you are riding crits, and probably is not if you are toodling around town.

Here's a related question: should people wear helmets in cars? It's clear that helmets would help protect their heads, right? Motor vehicle accidents are a far far larger source of head injuries than bike accidents. If your answer to that question is "no", then why not? Is it because you think the cost is too high relative to the benefit? Well then, I guess maybe you can see Chris Boardman's point, no? Furthermore, in the case of bike helmets, the biggest risk is cars. No foam hat is going to help you if you get run over by a car. Focusing on helmet use is missing the point. It really doesn't help much. We need to make our streets safer and hold drivers accountable.

Does anyone remember what was said of Gerry Ford (the President)

It applies.

Good post and includes a lot of what I was going to write, so no need now!

Sadly that argument doesn't hold up over here in the UK, where the community funds the care that this person will need to receive if they smash their noggin.

Cheers, Rich.

I don't think you understand his stance. He is trying to get people on bikes and and make bike riding safer. He is not trying to convince people not to wear helmets, he's trying to eliminate helmets as an obstacle to mass use of bikes, and to eliminate the red herring that a cyclist who's not wearing a helmet deserves whatever they get.
Look at ANY open public discussion about facilitating cyclists and keeping them safe and there's a pattern where every non-cyclist, and angry motorists in particular, fixate on the perception that cyclists are reckless, self important rule breakers who have no respect for the rules of the road and have only themselves to blame for the rate of accidents. The 4 arguments that always seem to crop up first are:

1. Lots of cyclists don't wear helmets, so it's their own fault if they get hurt.
2. Cyclists don't pay road tax so they shouldn't be on the roads.
3. All cyclists ride through red lights and break a multitude of other rules of the road.
4. Cyclists are inconsiderate to motorists which is patently obvious by their riding two abreast or trying to stay in the middle of the road instead of getting out of the way.

This is all garbage, and almost any cyclist can explain why, but huge numbers of people don't realise that. Far more lives will be saved or improved by changing these perceptions of cycling and cyclists and increasing bike use, than by forcing those who do cycle to wear helmets. It's not even close.

It's pretty certain that helmets increase the likelihood of an accident. It's less clear whether they offer sufficient protection when a crash does occur to make them a net benefit. I always wear one, but I'm aware things are not as clear cut as most would suggest.

Obesity, sedentary living, and pollution have a massive impact on health in society. The mental health aspect is significant too. Even if reduced helmet use does result in worse outcomes from accidents, the proliferation of cycling will have benefits that massively overshadow this. Also, the proliferation of cycling can be expected to reduce the rate and severity of cycling accidents due to better infrastructure and more aware and more tolerant motorists.

If this is his stance, and you consider it irresponsible, can you explain your definition of irresponsible?

Absolutely spot on

The research shows that less than 5% of people in Germany, Netherlands and Denmark ride with a helmet....OK, so this may be true, however, on fast group rides, everyone I know from Netherlands, Germany and Denmark ride with a helmet. There is a difference between a trip to the local shop on a bike path and a group ride on the road

I am a committee member of a bike club with more than 170 riders, we have probably 10-15 accidents per year. I recall one accident that involved a car, and another with a motorbike, all the others have been hitting the curb, hitting other riders, taking corners too fast or losing control at speed. We have had a number of broken collar bones, ribs and concussion injuries, air ambulance called out once. No one has had any serious injury. A number of riders have destroyed their helmets (including me, twice in past 5 years.

I challenge anyone to argue that a fall, serious enought to crack a helmet did not prevent a significant head injury

It is utter bullshit to say that cars take more care passing riders without helmets. Likewise cyclists wearing helmets do not take more risks

What is it with people dismissing "science" and "statistics" because they don't understand them, while at the same time trying to make arguments based on nothing more than anecdotes. The irony!


What do you think science is?
You deride science, but then say you'll put your faith in conclusions you've gleaned from your own observations.
Do you understand that science is all about making observations and drawing conclusions? The difference between what you're suggesting and good science, is that good science tries to eliminate assumptions or bias, and realise what it knows and what it doesn't.

Anecdotes are worthless in isolation. They are where science begins but you think they are the conclusion.
I was going to write more, but honestly what's the point.....

Wut?

It's probably quite safe to assume that a normal walking pace is something like 10 minutes for a km, so that's 6 km/h. Are you actually suggesting that people using bikes as a means of transportation regularly ride at 42-90 km/h?

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Greetings from the German Wine Route,
Roland