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Put A Lid On ItCrowdfunding campaign wants all London cyclists to wear a helmet
The people behind a forthcoming crowdfunding campaign believe that everyone who rides a bicycle in London should wear a cycle helmet – and they want to raise money to produce a product “so cheap and so available that everyone chooses to wear them.”
Put a Lid on It, which launched on social media and put its website live last week, claim that 92 per cent of people who use the capital’s cycle hire scheme bikes don’t wear a helmet, and have made them the first target of their campaign.
While some people have tweeted messages of support to the campaign’s Twitter account, others have accused it of victim-blaming and ignoring issues that would improve conditions for cyclists such as safer lorries and separated infrastructure.
Launched last week, the putalidonit.co.uk website says: “We want to make helmets, so portable, so cheap and so available that everyone chooses to wear them,” which some might see as missing the point that there are other reasons people don’t cycle with one."
It adds: "Our primary goal is to make the helmets available through convenience stores by bike stands and bike shops. But there will be a limited edition version available to crowdfunding backers along with a range of other goodies."
The website outlines how Put a Lid on It came into being:
Sam Terry, a keen cyclist and Londoner, realised that the key is convenience. Cyclists need to be able to go to the corner shop next to the bike stand and buy a helmet. The helmet needs to be cheap enough to buy on an impulse and lose without irritation – a bit like a cheap umbrella!
The helmet also needs to be portable. Sam considered all the helmets currently available. Cheap helmets were bulky, collapsible helmets were pricey (and most just don’t collapse enough). The only option was design a new solution – LID was born!
LID is the only collapsible helmet that reduces to the size of a couple of books so it WILL fit in your bag. If we achieve our funding targets, we will sell it for the price of a budget umbrella. Most importantly it will protect the wearer. It will be thoroughly tested and certified to European safety standards. Let’s stop head injuries ruining everyone’s day!
While some tweets to the @putalidon account on Twitter back the initiative, others said they were distracting from other measures that would improve the safety of cyclists.
Clive Andrews wrote: “I know you mean well, but is your campaign based on any evidence? Helmet-fixation is demonstrably not helpful.
“If it's ‘about choice’, why does your campaign imagery clearly say there's ‘something wrong’ with a photo of a lidless rider?
Please don't be disingenuous enough to pretend posters like this are anything about promoting ‘choice’.”
Hackneycyclist asked: “Will you be asking pedestrians & drivers to #putalidonit as well? Many die from head injuries in collisions.”
Other messages were more supportive. Julian Swann wrote: “Hired my first boris bike today. So easy to do but no mention of helmets in the safety guidelines. #putalidonit”
Ken Livingstone, who as Mayor of London gave the go-ahead to the capital’s cycle hire scheme which would be launched under Boris Johnson, said in 2011 that he had planned to provide helmets for people hiring bikes.
He said: “It was always the plan that you should make certain that people who are cycling have got a helmet. You almost want to have a way where the helmet is actually chained to the bike, so people who don’t bring one can have one.”
In the Australia, where cycle helmets are compulsory, people hiring bikes from Melbourne’s cycle hire scheme can buy a helmet for A$5 from vending machines, as Terminator star and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had to do last week when he was stopped by a police officer while riding a bike without one.
Critics of Australia’s compulsory helmet laws however have said that they have led to a lower uptake of cycle hire schemes there than have been seen elsewhere.
Of course, if you do choose to wear a helmet when hiring a bike in London, you could take your own helmet with you – as this pair of riders we spotted recently did.
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Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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95 comments
I'm slightly intrigued by this - personal choice is one part of this clearly, but you seem to have reasons to actively encourage not to wear one (apart from the previous point mentioned). Could you expand on those reasons please ?
Love it.
You realise that's just as ridiculous a position to take as the pro compulsion brigade..?
No, in your world, people would not be able to make a choice about wearing protective gear, it'd all be banned!
Yes, it would! As well as not wanting to be forced to wear a limited-life relatively-heavy hat, if you want to ride deliberately in such a reckless manner that you need body armour, then you are a danger to yourself and others that should be removed from the cycleways and public roads and limited to controlled events! Why is it ridiculous that I don't want foolishly reckless riders around me?
So ban shoes and padded shorts too. If you can't handle bare feet and a hard saddle don't ride. In fact, ban saddles too; if people can't stand on the pedals all the way they shouldn't cycle either.
That's silly -- you wouldn't need to ban those things, once bikes are banned. And running needs banning too. If you can't simply walk somewhere, then you don't deserve the gift of mobility.
I suspect you're being silly. Is there any evidence that shoes or padded shorts (and I usually ride without padded shorts, including 50+ mile rides - easy on a sensible bike) or saddles lead to greater risk-taking?
It's pretty obvious that people who dress as road warriors behave more like them, plus motorists take more risks with them too, according to that overtaking distance study reported on road.cc a few years back.
Well spotted. As is your assertion that my helmet wearing 'harms everybody'.
I am not sure what harm I am doing to you by wearing a helmet beyond of course the aesthetic issue. What struck me about my crash was that it occurred during a normal commute and a combination of road bump and street furniture made a simple tumble (something I have avoided for many years as I don't bounce), into a potentially life changing injury.
As I said I am certainly not keen on compulsion but at the same time I have made the decision to wear a helmet at all times. By so doing I am having no adverse impact on your desire not to do so.
The road warrior ideal of positively not wearing helmet is beyond me, I didn't wear one previously through lack of organisation or forgetfulness. I am predominantly a non lycra cyclist (unless very warm in the summer or doing the sunday run) and simply look to get from A to B safely on my bike.
No misattribution by me, you started talking about compulsion with 'your choice harms everyone' etc, as part of your anti helmet argument, which I still believe is scaremongering. You went on to state quite reasonably and coherently why you oppose wearing a helmet, and that's fine I respect your choice, if you could respect mine and we can agree to disagree, then great.
I think we are both against compulsion, just that only one of us is pro choice
Other governments have made the stupid decision to mandate helmets and you must know there is a vocal lobby for such a law. The motives of a part of the lobby are at least well meant. I referrered above to the civil servant who explicitly said that wearing rates becoming high would facilitate a compulsion law. It is fairly obvious that it would make it easier. I do not know that it is policy, and did not claim so, but I assure you that it was said. I will try to find a reference
I was careful to use the word "inadvertently" in order to clear you wearers of any responsibilty. So there is no need to call me bonkers.
I am unsure of the relevance of your presumed liabilty fantasy.
I think that they should be able to achieve their goal without designing anything. The cheapest one at Halfords is £15UKP -bit small for me - but there are helmets for £10 including shipping from China retail (aliexpress) and from less than £1 (they claim) @2000 pieces, wholesale (alibaba). I used one from DX for £16 for a couple of years. My review. No affiliation.
http://club.dx.com/reviews/134225/324786
The most likely place to die from a head injury is the hospital (from a head injury sustained IN the hospital); the second is the home. Perhaps they should have these helmets at hospital reception or at the corner store so people can use them in the most hazardous places...
Nothing new here. Plenty of folding helmets have been marketed. Don't think any have been successful..
Just sent them this
""We are a multidisciplinary team who have been working together in the design & delivery of products for the last 15 years"
The above quote is from your website and may be true. Unfortunately it is also true that you are completely ignorant of the facts about cycle helmets, which is a bit of an error if you are seeking to promote them.
May I suggest that you might like to remedy that ignorance at cyclehelmets.org
Then putasockinit."
Who exactly are 'The Team' behind this and what are their motivations?
Is public safety the main motivation or is it to get into the bicycle helmet business?
If it is the former then perhaps they should be campaigning for better infrastructure. If its the latter are they cynically creating a climate of fear to increase sales of a product they are trying to promote?
Bunch of dicks whatever
That's the bsais of all helmet campaigns. Always has been; always will be. Nothing new there.
Better of changing road behavior, lorry and bus safety and road layout than a cheap pointless helmet. if anything its saying don't ride without a lid, you will die, what a way to encourage riding!
DON'T put a lid on it - DO keep a clear head and enjoy the wind in your hair!
Moving on from the helmet debate, let's have a look at the business/investment angle.
Reproduced from the "Our Plan" frame of the website for purposes of comment. Right now, the majority of the work that's been done is marketing and social media awareness. There is a bit on "Manufacture Costing" (based on, er, what exactly?), and the plan going forward is to get Retail and Individual Backers, THEN do Production Engineering, Prototype and Standards Testing. No details as to the timeline on the important stuff as well.
Okay. So Putalidonit haven't got a working prototype, let alone one that comes in on budget and meets standards testing. Nor any evidence of a track record in actually making bike helmets. All the "friends who have helped us get started" are marketing, social media, and design people.
From what I can tell, no evidence so far of any manufacturing or product design/testing input. And the crowdfunded investment is nonrefundable, and if it doesn't get off the ground, does all the money goes to the marketing, social media, and design costs?
Purely from an investment standpoint, this is a big plate of NoNopeNoway for me, with a bowl of RunTheHellAway for dessert. With a working, tested prototype with some idea of the profitability, then I'd look at the equity and safety efficacy angle.
Well said hampstead ... exactly my thoughts.
somebody who has been in as many crashes as the individual behind this project is the last person to be lecturing others on road safety - does it ever occur to these 'helmet saved my life' people that some of us don't share their own difficulty in staying upright on two wheels and wish that folks who seem to struggle with something most people mastered as a small child would stop telling us we're doing it wrong because we don't feel the need to dress up like an American football player just to go for a bike ride?
Some do.
http://s256.photobucket.com/user/edscoble/media/IMAG0332.jpg.html?t=1312...
Not sure he's still around, but used to be a regular sight on my commute from S London to the City back in the day.
Well it might not be your own mistake, but that of somebody else, which causes you to decide to wear a helmet, in the belief it might offer some protection. (and I'm not getting into the efficacy debate, it's personal choice). Glad to hear you have never, and will never come off your bike, though!
However it's a terrible idea and campaign, for most of the reasons already stated.
If you want new rules so all London cyclists must wear helmets, that fine.
If you want to develop and sell a new helmet, that's fine too.
But it does seem rather disingenuous to combine the two into a single ad campaign.
I've written to Putalidonit, politely expressing my concern. If anyone feels like doing likewise they're on: hello [at] putalidonit.co.uk
Videos of people falling off and failing to even hit their heads:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH-tg8esBQM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFBK_wsXkCA
LOL the people in the cars at 1:28 might have benefitted from helmets!
Nothing wrong with wearing a helmet when you make a mistake after a few beers on a night out, and ride into the edge of the kerb, go over the bars, and smack your head on the sharp concrete kerb edge.
But its not going to make any real difference when a motor vehicle weighing 1930kg moving at 48 km/h runs into you whilst you wait at a traffic light (i.e. impact force of 51,453 N), because the driver is more interested in their facebook status on their smart phone, than what is going on in front of them on the road, is it?
Cycle helmets are not designed to withstand hitting a sharp edge like a kerb, only blunt objects like hitting the road with the top of your head (a nice trick if you can manage it -- don't suppose it happens in accidents very much). The helmet will just split and offer no protection.
US standard CPSC test includes: The hazard or curbstone anvil is rounded like the edge of a curb. It is a severe test, and the drop is 1.2 meters (11 mph). Although it is the top of your head again.
Mine has a CPSC sticker in it.
I'm taller than 1.2m. How about you?
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