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news
Highway Code cycle clothing adviceHighway Code cycle helmet tweet branded ‘victim blaming’ by Cycling UK
A tweet from the official Highway Code Twitter account stating that cyclists should wear a helmet has drawn a strong response online and been branded ‘victim blaming’ by Cycling UK.
The tweet, posted on Thursday night, quoted rule 59 of the Highway Code which relates to clothing when cycling.
You should wear
- a cycle helmet which conforms to current regulations, is the correct size and securely fastened
- appropriate clothes for cycling. Avoid clothes which may get tangled in the chain, or in a wheel or may obscure your lights
- light-coloured or fluorescent clothing which helps other road users to see you in daylight and poor light
- reflective clothing and/or accessories (belt, arm or ankle bands) in the dark.
These guidelines are not legal requirements. Points supported by the law use the word ‘must’ in place of ‘should’.
The Highway Code wording explained. pic.twitter.com/OesvoBDgK6
— The Highway Code (@HighwayCodeGB) February 1, 2015
A spokesperson for Cycling UK told the Guardian that the recommendation led to a culture of “victim blaming” of cyclists and allowed careless drivers to evade responsibility.
“Helmets are only really effective in low-impact collisions, we need better infrastructure for cyclists and education for drivers,” they said.
“If you look at places like the Netherlands and Denmark, where there are more cyclists, it’s not helmets that contribute to low death rates for cyclists but roadscapes and townscapes that are designed to keep people safe.”
The tweet attracted several hundred replies, most of which made similar points (occasionally employing rather more robust language).
British Cycling policy advisor and cycling commissioner of Greater Manchester, Chris Boardman, said the message was, “like the 1950s healthy people smoke Marlborough messages – we will look back on in years to come and ask what were we thinking.”
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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49 comments
Or more training for the judiciary
https://road.cc/content/news/240901-tractor-driver-who-killed-cyclist-du...
Time and time again we see similar victim blaming messages issued by the authority which is dissapointing.
I think the issue stems from the risk perception principles and the lack of knowledge regarding the risk control hierarchy:
risk perception principles e.g. the deadly risk caused by car drivers percieved acceptable because:
- it is familiar: road injury is the 8th most common cause of death in the world and all the other causes are diseases (source: WHO).
- it is voluntary: you are on the road in a car/on a pushbike by choice
- in control: you are in full control of your choice of transportation unlike when sitting on a bus/plane as a passenger
- have clear benefits: you get from A to B way quicker than by walking
- distributed evenly: there are no preselected specific groups who were meant to be killed on the road; could be me, you, young or elderly, male of female etc.
- mainly affects adults: 21% of the deceased are children however 93% of these casulities were produced by low or medium income countries and more importantly very few sane parent would let their children to cycle on UK roads at the moment.
the risk control hierarchy for this particular case could be:
- avoid/eliminate/design out risk: completely segregated cycle lanes which take you from A to B the shortest/quickest way possible; you are at no point exposed to traffic so the chances of being killed by drivers are practically 0.
- substitute with less harmful/reduce risk: autonomous cars and reducing the available space for cars --> less cars on the road meaning reduced risk
- engineering controls: speed limiter on cars, sensors on cars which sense the vulnerable and control systems which does minimise the harm caused by car drivers if an accident is likely; Seat has such a system on their cars
safe road layout design prioritising vulnerable road users in areas where cars and pushbike are on the same piece of road: junctions, crossings etc.
- administrative controls: legislation (in favour of vulnerable road users, proper sentencing including lifetime driving bans), training (licence process includes riding in traffic on a pushbike), supervision (sufficient police presence on the roads to address antisocial/dangerous behaviour), information (media is not biased towards drivers but provides a balanced view considering the above points) and signage(blue strip on the side of the road named as 'cycle super highway', 'cyclists stay back')
- personal protective equipment: helmet, hi-viz, white shoes!
Unfortunately the best control measures are the most expensive which means that the decision makers will be more instrested in you wearing helmet rather than redesigning everything.
I assume the people who are so vocal on wearing helmets also follow the following should rules:
Plan their route and allowed sufficient time.
Have sufficient fuel before commencing the journey.
Switch off thier mobile phone (note, not use hands free, or not answer, switch off).
Keep well to the left on right-hand bends.
Drive with both hands on the wheel.
Select a lower gear before reaching a long downhill slope.
And the many other “should” rules in the Highway Code.
While I agree that helmets are "optional" they are also "strongly advised".
While most cyclist fatalities involve motor vehicles, and a heavy impact, the most commor reason for minor injuries is simply falling off or "minor bumps" with other road users of any type. In these lower speed collisions a helmet can go a long way in preventing a "cuts and bruises" incident to being "unconsious after a head injury"
But all the helmet propaganda tells you that a helmet will save your life, not that it will save you a few scratches or bumps. As far as I know, there is no evidence that a helmet will convert a serious injury into a minor one, but it may be possible. But helmets do increase the risk of the most dangerous injury, rotational (Diffuse Axonal Injury) and all the reliable evidence shows that helmets don't reduce risk of death, so if they prevent some deaths, they must cause others. Is it worth wearing something which might save your life or kill you in equal measure?
cyclehelmets.org
a boxer could very easily knock you out whilst you are wearing a cycle helmet, just by punching your jaw in the right place, because its the resulting sudden movement of your head and your brain impacting the inside of your skull that ultimately is what leads to unconciousness after a head injury, not the externalised head injury itself. and cycling helmets can do very little to prevent that brain trauma from happening
If that were true we would see a reduction of recorded head injuries when helmets are made mandatory as recorded “unconcious after a head injury” accidents became unrecorded “cuts and bruises” accidents. That we don’t anywhere that has made helmets mandatory indicates that the effect you are suggesting does not happen in practice.
If it were true you might expect to see a small decrease in those countries where helmet use is not mandated but has increased, such as the UK previously. That we don't see any clear signal could be due to a number of reasons, it's not a simple thing to evaluate as Goldacre clearly found, but it would probably be safe to say it's not made a massive difference. In those places where helmet use has become mandatory the change in cycling demographic would almost certainly make any robust conclusion about that case (and many others) impossible.
Particularly liked the tweet about Sustainable Healthy Active Green travel.
I've had conversations with work colleugues who think wearing a helmet should be mandatory becasue it will save your life. I try pointing out that a lump of polystyrene won't help when you get smashed into at 60mph by a driving looking on their phone...
I didn't get far with this viewpoint, obviously they are so hard headed they don't need helmets!
Helmets should be optional, it is my choice to wear one, but should I feel like popping to the shop without it then that should still be legal and not a reason to let an innatentive driver off.
The problem that a lot of helmet promoters have is that they don't apply the same arguments to walkers and drivers. They judge cycling to be an extremely dangerous activity which it isn't.
Because there has been a thirty year campaign to sell helmets by deliberately exaggerating the risks of cycling, ably fronted by that bastion of impartiality, the BBC. Then there's the DfT, lots of do-gooders like BHIT, and safety obsessed individuals and organisations like the BMA, all of whom prefer anecdote, myth and rumour to fact.
Cycling has the same risk per mile travelled as walking, so why aren't they demanding that pedestrians wear helmets?
Wrong, sorry you're just flat wrong on your view on the effectiveness of helmets.
I've said it before and I'll say it again (and again and again...) helmets can and do save lives. Saved my life, no question. I was smashed into by a car doing around 50mph from behind, catapaulted onto a telegraph pole, suffered catastrophic spinal, pelvic and leg injuries which came within an inch of killing me.
My helmet (Kask Infinity) was dreadfully smashed up and even with it I still suffered a severe frontal lobe brain haemorrhage. I have no idea how my head suffered its trauma as I have complete amnesia from the incident but one thing that is crystal clear is that this 'lump of polystyrene' saved my head from taking that impact directly and almost certain death. The surgeons told me as much, that had I not have been wearing that helmet the air ambulance that mercifully took me to them would not have been needed.
What would've happened if the driver had decided to treat you with more respect and not run into you?
What would've happened if the driver had decided to treat you with more respect and not run into you?
[/quote]
Yeah. Promise you there is not a day that goes by when I don't think about that and lament it.
While it may be true that you believe that the helmet saved your life, that is a belief, not an objective fact. Likewise, the surgeons may also believe the same thing, but they are not materials specialists or impact analysis specialists and are ignorant about the epidemiological data about helmets, so are not qualified to comment.
Cycle helmets are designed to work up to about 10mph, and since the energy of a collision increases with the square of the speed, at 50mph it has very little protective effect.
https://www.cyclehelmets.org/1209.html
The fact that you believe something doesn't make it true, especially when all the reliable data shows it not to be.
You're listening but not hearing... burt... Looking but not seeing either. To be fair difficult when your head is buried in sand.
Had I not been wearing that helmet, my head would have taken whatever impact came my way directly, isn't that obvious? Ergo it saved me, beyond dispute.
Nothing to do with 'objective facts' versus 'beliefs'. That's just foo-foo speak. It has everything to do with what happened out there in the real world. I am firmly in the James Cracknell camp from bitter, bitter experience but then I guess his helmet didn't save him either in your parallel world did it because the theory says otherwise?
The car was doing ~50mph (that's what was admitted in court), Garmin said I was doing 24mph at impact before being accelerated into the pole. Again this is not some theory about what is or is not protected and at what speed, this is about that place and that time, what happened and the aftermath.
I find your last sentence ignorant and dismissive at best, offensive at worst, especially as more than a year down the track I am struggling to live with upshot of this disaster that befell me.
I appreciate that you believe that the helmet saved your life, but all the real world data shows it to be vanishingly unlikely. You accuse me of burying my head in the sand, and not listening or seeing, but I've spent a lot of time and effort looking at all the available evidence, while you base your position on supposition and belief.
As I've already said, and you apparently didn't understand, cycle helmets are rated to work at about 10mph, and the energy of the impact increases with the square of the speed, so at 50mph, the energy of the impact was many times the ability of the helmet to provide protection.
You dismiss facts as "foo-foo speak" whatever that is, and prefer your anecdote to them, but I'm the one with their head in the sand?
I'm sorry you find my last sentence ignorant, dismissive and offensive, but since it is entirely factual, I'm not sure why. I sympathise with you and hope you recover fully and quickly, but that doesn't change facts.
Did you look at the link I provided?
Same goes for you. Except the facts are on burt's side.
Your posts on the matter seem to have everything to do with belief and very little to do with facts relating to the effectiveness of a cycle helmet. It may be that your holey polystyrene hat helped reduce the force of the impact and therefore the severity of the injury but you can't prove it.
I know it isn't easy but if you try being less offended by someone else's way of expressing their opinion, which is often it's due to frustration, then you might benefit from it. Sometimes people appear rude but that doesn't invalidate what they are trying to communicate.
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