Aussie cyclists protest mandatory helmet laws with helmet-optional rides

BehindTheBikesheds wrote:

And more, the EU is absolutely wanting help countries to promote helmet wearing and have done so for years and despite the increases in wearing there have been no positive results over and above pedestrians or other modes. The whole thing is a fucking sham/victim blaming risk zero load of bullshit.

True, those are a few snippests of circumstancial evidence that the EU is insitutionally pro-helmet (though I'm not sure where the first 'cutting' is actually from), but I was hoping more for a link to a credible site with some convincing analysis and research on the topic demonstrating that the Commission is taking real action to push a determined agenda of pushing for places like the NL in particular to introduce compulsory laws.

I'm not being dismissive about it, because I am genuinely suspicious of what the EU gets up to without getting much media attention (and because it did publish that ridiculous report).  But for the time being I'd have to put this one down as 'unproven'.

Tommytrucker wrote:

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A little known tip for you Tommy. Don't click on any thread with helmet in the title and then you won't have to read them.

CygnusX1 wrote:

What I want to know is how effective the Empire's helmet is compared to the Rebel Alliance's speeder helmets...

 

Are we talking about a standard Stormtrooper helmet or a Scout Trooper helmet (the ones speeder bike Stormtroopers wear)? 

(Yes, this is all getting a bit "which sub-species of swallow..." isn't it?)

don simon wrote:

So, do have any sort of conclusions yet?

I would like to say that I've found the debate extremely interesting, no, I really would, I'm struggling, but I would...

Yes! The empire has to mandate the wearing of helmets, not because they improve their safety, but because otherwise, they just don't fit in with the uniform look.

andyp wrote:

The only thing my neurosurgeon said to me about cycling was that I shouldn't do it in the six months in which I had a large area of brain with no skull to protect it.  If we're after anecdotes from neurosurgeons that's my offering.

 

 

And this is it all in a nutshell -  chapeau (cotton, not polystyrene)  pjclinch. 'The context of a cycle helmet is getting back on your bike and finishing your race rather than sitting down holding your head going "ow" and abandoning.  The design spec is not that high: they should mitigate minor injuries, they will very probably not save you from serious or fatal ones.'

And yet I bet the surgeon wouldn't dream of saying don't be driven home or walk home?

As for pro/competitive cycling, this is another bit of wrong thinking. if the helmet acts to increase incidents/crashes and given the data on deaths and casual observance of racing and weekend warriors they tend to crash a hell of a lot more than they did before helmets became a thing.

Thus the overall effect just like it is everywhere else and for all age groups and sexes is that the helmets have put more people out of races than they've allowed to carry on because the chances of crashing sans helmet is less than with.

the effects of helmet wearing/safety aids particularly effect negatively the competitive and the risk takers, this applies to all sports and and indeed in the work place AND a seen in multiple studies children. The protection offered is simply not enough to offset the additional risk kids take, even so fewer children die in the UK of ANY injury type in the whole of the UK than do children dying solely of head injuries in motorvehicle incidents in just England and Wales.

Helmets in gridiron whilst they protect in the moment most of the time, they encourage overt agressive behaviour and recklessness which results in severe injuries in play despite the helmets and to other body parts not just the head (same as cycling) but has massive mid to long term effects that have being proven to be catastrophic. Meanwhile rugby of either code adjusted the way one plays the sport, they attempt to modify behaviour of the participants and whilst you cannot eliminate risk unhelmetted/virtually unprotected it is a massively safer sport than gridiron, particularly re head injuries. The scale is off the charts as to how bad helmets have being for participants because all those years back some people just like in Australia, NZ, the UCI etc thought simply putting protection on was the solution to the problem.

The comparisons in safety between two very physical sports and the wearing/non wearing imitate and highlight beautifully the problem with helmets in sport/activities ... and still we have people like rich CB banging on deluded as ever with no proof and still maintains that the facts and evidence is wrong and that denounced and state sponsored lackeys like Jake olivier are correct. Despite the fact he and others have been outed, have used not just flawed methodology going against his own advice re meta-analysis but dishonest use of  certain injuries to add extras to the head injury total when in fact they are not head injuries at all and certainly not remotely preventable by wearing a helmet.

the sickening thing is that even the EU road safety commission uses flawed study data, they are very keen to push helmet wearing particularly in NL and DK where they see that as a problem for their road safety solution and point the finger at these two low helmet wearing nations as being more dangerous than the UK all the whilst ignoring the modal share and distance travelled, they use the Australia data to prove that helmet wearing states have fewer head injuries but ignore the fact that using absolute numbers is BS when you have a huge drop in actual people cycling.

I've written to the ECF to warn them of this prevalence to promote helmet wearing by the EU commission but it seems the ECF aren't interested in this stealth attack on freedoms and utterly failing to understand safety.

BehindTheBikesheds wrote:

 

the sickening thing is that even the EU road safety commission uses flawed study data, they are very keen to push helmet wearing particularly in NL and DK where they see that as a problem for their road safety solution and point the finger at these two low helmet wearing nations as being more dangerous than the UK all the whilst ignoring the modal share and distance travelled, they use the Australia data to prove that helmet wearing states have fewer head injuries but ignore the fact that using absolute numbers is BS when you have a huge drop in actual people cycling.

I've written to the ECF to warn them of this prevalence to promote helmet wearing by the EU commission but it seems the ECF aren't interested in this stealth attack on freedoms and utterly failing to understand safety.

 

Any links to real evidence for this claim?

I have seen the laughably innumerate EU report on road safety, that did indeed just look at absolute (or per capita) figures while ignoring milage and modal share, and then conclude that NL has a bad record for cyclist accidents.  That did indeed make me think the EU is run by morons.

But is there real evidence that there is a serious behind-the-scenes agenda involved, rather than just the stupidity of a handful of report-writing, pen-pushing Eurocrats?

I haven't seen any such evidence myself, but then, one of the things that makes me a very lukewarm remainer is how little we are told about what the EU actually gets up to. 

E.g. we hear the occasional never-expanded-upon references to the Commission pushing France to 'liberalise it's labour market' (e.g. cut pensions and reduce job security) or allusions to Merkal, influenced by the German car industry, having some role in the uselessness of the EU emissions tests, but never anything in any detail.

So I find it impossible to judge whether there's any truth in what you say or not.

  It's all very well pro-EUniks laughing at tabloid stories about 'straight bananas', but the media rarely seem to do any proper investigative reporting on what the EU commission and civil service actually does all day.  How can there be accountability or real democracy when there's so little transparency?

FluffyKittenofTindalos wrote:

BehindTheBikesheds wrote:

 

the sickening thing is that even the EU road safety commission uses flawed study data, they are very keen to push helmet wearing particularly in NL and DK where they see that as a problem for their road safety solution and point the finger at these two low helmet wearing nations as being more dangerous than the UK all the whilst ignoring the modal share and distance travelled, they use the Australia data to prove that helmet wearing states have fewer head injuries but ignore the fact that using absolute numbers is BS when you have a huge drop in actual people cycling.

 

I've written to the ECF to warn them of this prevalence to promote helmet wearing by the EU commission but it seems the ECF aren't interested in this stealth attack on freedoms and utterly failing to understand safety.

 

 

Any links to real evidence for this claim?

 

I have seen the laughably innumerate EU report on road safety, that did indeed just look at absolute (or per capita) figures while ignoring milage and modal share, and then conclude that NL has a bad record for cyclist accidents.  That did indeed make me think the EU is run by morons.

 

But is there real evidence that there is a serious behind-the-scenes agenda involved, rather than just the stupidity of a handful of report-writing, pen-pushing Eurocrats?

 

I haven't seen any such evidence myself, but then, one of the things that makes me a very lukewarm remainer is how little we are told about what the EU actually gets up to. 

 

E.g. we hear the occasional never-expanded-upon references to the Commission pushing France to 'liberalise it's labour market' (e.g. cut pensions and reduce job security) or allusions to Merkal, influenced by the German car industry, having some role in the uselessness of the EU emissions tests, but never anything in any detail.

So I find it impossible to judge whether there's any truth in what you say or not.

 

  It's all very well pro-EUniks laughing at tabloid stories about 'straight bananas', but the media rarely seem to do any proper investigative reporting on what the EU commission and civil service actually does all day.  How can there be accountability or real democracy when there's so little transparency?

here's an extract that despite the author admitting that helmets are flawed, admited that they reduce cycling numbers, ignored that the protection level of helmets is not that great in motorvehicle/cyclist incidents goes on to say that helmets should be brought in as a general society for riders of bikes.

There are more of these dotted all over the place. It's clear that the EU commission see wearing cycle helmets as a solution and have a blind spot for looking at data particualrly when jumping from one absolute numbers stat to another. So absolute drops in numbers of injuries is pushed as a good thing but is ignoring a bigger drop in cycling so the rate of injury has actually gone up, and again the author uses absolute numbers of deaths (doesn't mention head injuries as such) despite the fact that the % of total deaths is less for cyclists than the modal share but again she uses an absolute % of road deaths being from people on bikes without mentioning the fact that that modal share is a bigger number. No mention of the fact that most of the deaths are people on bikes in their 70s and 80s who are also not wearing helmets and would otherwise be in a care home or dead if they had being forced to wear helmets as per other states or made cycling unattractive by pushing for helmet wearing!

She uses this slanted and blind ignorance to catagorically state that NL and DK are less safe than the UK for cycling due to low helmet wearing rates and from that that helmets must be pushed for for general use across the EU. It truly beggars belief! 

CygnusX1 wrote:

I saw this thread kick off and avoided reading the comments below it for my health, but I am curious... were there any graphs?

Only a couple, I'm quite disappointed (especially after being called "flippant").

I had a look on Amazon for that "Risk" book by John Adams and the Kindle edition is £30! However, I've found an earlier book of his on EBay for a couple of quid, so maybe I'll have a read of that one instead (Risk and Freedom: Record of Road Safety Regulations).

CygnusX1 wrote:

I saw this thread kick off and avoided reading the comments below it for my health, but I am curious... were there any graphs?

This thread doesn't need graphs - it has empirical stormtroopers. 

Nobody wants to ban helmets, Smartstu. All the anti-choice people are those who want to force others to wear a polystyrene hat.

Smartstu wrote:

Quite interesting - in that you guys actually agree on the pro-choice position!? I was initially interested by the debate but ultimately turned off by the intellectual posturing... Let's fight for choice, let's campaign for safer roads and let's get more people cycling. BTW Stormtrooper's helmets were scientifically proven to be ineffective in battle - let alone on a bicycle (see evidence in ROTJ and the defeat by Ewoks).

I have never heard or read somebody who doubts that helmets work, and advocates not wearing, propose that they be legally forbidden.

It is only a proportion of the helmeteers who want to remove choice.

RTB wrote:

Helmet saved my life last year after being smashed off my bike by a car from behind.  I suffered a broken (& disclocated) back along with many other fractures but as the sugeons told me it is only because of a helmet that I lived to be able to wake up in ICU.  The helmet (Kask) is smashed up a goodun but my goodness it saved my head from suffering that trauma directly which would have been game over.  Even with it I still suffered bleeding on the brain so heavy was the impact.

Astonishing some of the flippant, anti-helmet comments written on this thread.  Sorry but this is ignorant and naive in the extreme.  Unless you have been through what I have been through you ain't really qualified frankly to cast such negative aspersions on them.

 

Helmets save lives people!

There are some flippant comments on Star Wars, but the comments questioning the evidence for helmet efficacy are serious and considered. I suggest you read them and think about them. You might then retract your "ignorant" aspersion.

The idea that only those who have hit their head are qualified to comment is silly. One example proves nothing. Science proceeds by the accumulation of data. In none of the countries where helmets have been mandated has there been a reduction in cyclist head injury rate.

It has been pointed out that if all the "helmet saved my life" anecdotes were added together the total would far exceed the number of head injuries suffered by cyclists before helmets and by unhelmeted cyclists.

I once hit my head in a fall. Luckily I was wearing a cotton Festina cap, I was uninjured and recommend cotton Festina caps.

felixcat wrote:

RTB wrote:

Helmet saved my life last year after being smashed off my bike by a car from behind.  I suffered a broken (& disclocated) back along with many other fractures but as the sugeons told me it is only because of a helmet that I lived to be able to wake up in ICU.  The helmet (Kask) is smashed up a goodun but my goodness it saved my head from suffering that trauma directly which would have been game over.  Even with it I still suffered bleeding on the brain so heavy was the impact.

Astonishing some of the flippant, anti-helmet comments written on this thread.  Sorry but this is ignorant and naive in the extreme.  Unless you have been through what I have been through you ain't really qualified frankly to cast such negative aspersions on them.

 

Helmets save lives people!

 

There are some flippant comments on Star Wars, but the comments questioning the evidence for helmet efficacy are serious and considered. I suggest you read them and think about them. You might then retract your "ignorant" aspersion.

The idea that only those who have hit their head are qualified to comment is silly. One example proves nothing. Science proceeds by the accumulation of data. In none of the countries where helmets have been mandated has there been a reduction in cyclist head injury rate.

It has been pointed out that if all the "helmet saved my life" anecdotes were added together the total would far exceed the number of head injuries suffered by cyclists before helmets and by unhelmeted cyclists.

I once hit my head in a fall. Luckily I was wearing a cotton Festina cap, I was uninjured and recommend cotton Festina caps.

Equally, the surgeons treating the 'helmet saved my life' patients aren't exactly qualified to comment on the effectiveness of cycling helmets either. They will likely have an understanding of the injury to the skull and/or brain, but not whether or not a helmet would have made any difference to said injury.

RTB wrote:

Helmet saved my life last year after being smashed off my bike by a car from behind.  I suffered a broken (& disclocated) back along with many other fractures but as the sugeons told me it is only because of a helmet that I lived to be able to wake up in ICU.  The helmet (Kask) is smashed up a goodun but my goodness it saved my head from suffering that trauma directly which would have been game over.  Even with it I still suffered bleeding on the brain so heavy was the impact.

Astonishing some of the flippant, anti-helmet comments written on this thread.  Sorry but this is ignorant and naive in the extreme.  Unless you have been through what I have been through you ain't really qualified frankly to cast such negative aspersions on them.

Helmets save lives people!

Anecdotes are not data, and your anecdote joins all the other thousands of "helmet saved my life" stories so popular in the media.  The only problem being that the death rate of cyclists doesn't fall as helmet wearing rates increase, so either the stories aren't true, or wearing a helmet increases the likelihood of being in a fatal crash a million times.

Your surgeon may be of the opinion that the helmet saved your life, but most of the "helmet saved my life" stories are based on the same opinions of people not qualified to comment.  They aren't experts in collision mechanics or the protective effects of helmets, they are qualified in surgery.  If opinions were facts, the death rate of cyclists would fall dramatically when helmet wearing rates rise, but if anything, it increases.  The opinion of a surgeon in the case of cycle helmets is just about as useful as that of a plumber or a computer engineer or a weather forecaster.

RTB wrote:

Helmet saved my life last year after being smashed off my bike by a car from behind.  I suffered a broken (& disclocated) back along with many other fractures but as the sugeons told me it is only because of a helmet that I lived to be able to wake up in ICU.  The helmet (Kask) is smashed up a goodun but my goodness it saved my head from suffering that trauma directly which would have been game over.  Even with it I still suffered bleeding on the brain so heavy was the impact.

Astonishing some of the flippant, anti-helmet comments written on this thread.  Sorry but this is ignorant and naive in the extreme.  Unless you have been through what I have been through you ain't really qualified frankly to cast such negative aspersions on them.

 

Helmets save lives people!

You appear to be suggesting that unless you have experienced something directly, you are not qualified to criticise it.

Just think that through for a minute. 

RTB wrote:

Astonishing some of the flippant, anti-helmet comments written on this thread.  Sorry but this is ignorant and naive in the extreme.  Unless you have been through what I have been through you ain't really qualified frankly to cast such negative aspersions on them.

Helmets save lives people!

But isn't the argument in this thread not whether or not helmets save lives (and that argument will run and run), but whether people should be legally obliged to wear one or not.  We're all grown-ups (well, most of us on here), so shouldn't we be trusted to make our own decisions...?