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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
It's the 11mph that's the important bit.
Even with my mammoth frame and appalling fitness level I average 16mph - I can't see me decelerating 5mph as I fall (more than 1.2m) from the bike to land on the crown of my head...
If I could do that I'd be a circus act.
Don't wear one if you don't want to. I don't always, it's a case of risk management.
From another website:
Bicycle helmets are designed as a compromise among impact management, cooling, weight, cost and many other factors....no helmet can protect you against all impacts....
Why so low, when bicyclists frequently exceed 14 mph in forward speed?
The typical road or trail bike crash involves a drop to pavement. The important energy in that crash is supplied by gravity, not by forward speed. Although forward speed can contribute some additional energy, the main force is the attraction of gravity, and the impact severity is determined by the height of your head above the pavement when the fall begins. It is gravity that determines how fast your helmet closes with the pavement. Some of the crash energy is often "scrubbed off" by hitting first with other body parts. The typical bicycle crash impact occurs at a force level equating to about 1 meter (3 feet) of drop, or a falling speed of 10 MPH. The rider's forward speed before the crash may be considerably higher than that, but the speed of the head closing with the ground, plus a component of the forward speed, less any energy "scrubbed off" in other ways, normally average out at about 10 MPH.
Prove it. What norm says that, except the cycle helmet ones? Adults fall off a saddle that puts their head at nearly 2m.
Not that it matters because if you hit a large pebble/small rock or impact anything other than squarely vertical, you're entering untested territory. It's amazing that they're still allowed to sell these as protective for real world use.
Prove it - no.
They are a risk management thing, don't wear one if you don't want to. My point is that they are not meant to prevent all injury and a campaign to remove choice simply to sell a product that doesn't even exist is best avoided.
I find this really a bit silly, if you don't want to wear a helmet, fine but don't spout rubish I came off on a club run at 23 mph head hit road HARD helmet knackered head intact. How anyone can argue helmet don't work in some situations is absolutely daft
Yeah but when I'm pootling to work on a boris bike I'm doing about 8 mph, and I'm not going to fall off.
There's a bit of a difference in being out for a training run (or even competing) and riding to and from work.
I wear a lid for training and competition because it's required and because it also makes sense. I don't when I'm commuting because there's no real need.
When training or racing you're pushing the envelope and people do crash. If you don't crash once in a while when you're racing, you're not trying hard enough to compete. But if you ride that way when you're commuting, you're doing it wrong. Riding on busy urban roads is about getting where you want to go safely and that involves riding defensively. Turning the commute into a race is foolish. If that's the way you ride, you might as well buy a BMW and start cutting everyone up.
The top of your head?
They test an impact on the crown of the helmet. No tests on sides, front or back.
Amsterdam too...
That's one of the best bikes I've ever seen!
Copenhagen is lovely at this time of year.
Ad campaign presented as a safety awareness one, low blow.
"what's wrong with this picture"? Vulnerable road user forced to share road space with 18 tonne steel boxes
The man's a f**king idiot. I have plenty of money and and if I wanted to wear a helmet because I thought it would aid my personal safety I'd buy one and the best one I could afford and I'd happily afford the best. But since they don't work I am not going to waste even a little bit of my money on a really cheap and crap one.
If you had have dropped the 1st and 3rd sentences your point might have come across as more reasoned than raving.
Thanks.
How to transfer blame to the victim and not the offenders.
Cycling is as risky as being a pedestrian - we should all "put a lid on when walking down the street" - let's see how far they get with THAT campaign . . .
"What's wrong with this picture?"
I think you'll find that the lady needs to adjust the seat hight. Can't see anything else wrong, can you?
"these hard lessons have served to make me hyper-vigilant and aware when riding to prevent accidents"
no, no they haven't, that's why you rode into a fluro orange bollard!
What is this obsession with helmets?
We have had all the arguments again and again but the only obsession should be with road safety for everyone
- rules don't make things safe - people do
Looks like a moneymaking scam to me, reminds me of PPI sales cold calling tactics.
I wonder if they will try to get Chris "cycling is safer than gardening" Boardman to support their campaign.
http://road.cc/content/news/111258-chris-boardman-helmets-not-even-top-1...
very unhelpful campaign that deserves to be ignored, unless they actually build a helmet to the specifications they have stated and get it safety-approved, in which case it should be treated as a badly marketed but potentially useful product.
"IT" put a lid on "IT"?
ffs feeling dehumanised much?
"IT rubs the lotion on IT's skin"
"Did you smash IT?"
London is welcome to this "initiative" and welcome to keep it all for itself.
Helmets for all London car users, why do they think only cyclists need helmets. It seems the cyclists who can't stay upright back this idea, jeeze, here we go again.
Put a lid on it indeed... the campaign, that is. Or why not start off by getting pedestrians to wear plastic hats first (fluorescent ones, naturally), I dread to think of all those hidden hazards awaiting the unwary and unprotected pedestrian, especially in London. And what about pigeon poo, no-one ever thinks of that ever present danger that can fall from the sky at any second. We're all doomed
Hmm, so if a helmet can be made collapsible to that size and pass standards testing... wouldn't it already have been done?
I mean, a huge range of industrial designers should be able to solve this already. There are a few folding helmets on the market, but I suppose there's a reason they don't fold very small.
I.e. the chances of this passing testing as designed now... minimal.
Oh, and the entire campaign is just to sell helmets... in other news: Turkeys campaign against Christmas.
What's the accident rate among Boris Bikers? What's the accident rate where the accident occurred due to the actions of the cyclist? Conversely, how many were caused by the motorists? How many accidents are of the kind where a helmet might have helped? Without this sort of information, the whole thing is pointless, as you're really just appealing to "common sense, innit".
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