Remember kids... always wear a helmet. (The almighty bikeradar helmet thread)

@eyebrows comments on http://www.cyclehelmets.org deserve comment:

Outdated (last update was 2012) and substantially biased.

as a self funded project it was very difficult to sustain. It's purpose is to examine the validity of research whose authors or promoters claimed a proof of the need for helmet legislation. That limited scope could be described as bias but it never claimed to have the resources to provide the definitive answers.

I think one of the greatest success of http://www.cyclehelmets.org was helping have the first version (2000) of the Cochrane helmet review removed. The revised version no longer had the false reprensentation of opposing academic views. They also cut the introduction, leaving out the bit that explained that none of the studies included met the basic requirements for a Cochrane study at that time because none of them were based on blind or double blind research.

I've fallen off my bike hundreds of times, hit my head maybe 5 times, wearing a helmet for 1, although probably wouldn't have hit if I wasn't wearing it, wouldn't have hurt either way but there would've been a lot of mud in my hair Of the other 4 I hit just my face twice, so the full face I wearing for the other would've been helpful, other 2 didn't hurt. Pretty sure if I'd worn a helmet for more of my falls I'd have hit it a fair few times, no idea if it would've damaged it, maybe, it's all conjecture whatever. Kneepads have been much more useful for me, because I fall on my knees if I'm wearing pads or not.

This:

I will concede that the study of this(for no apparent or logical reason) very emotionally charged debate, is epidemiologically challenged.

and this:

All I intended was to post the most recent reviews, all of which- bar the one from Taiwan- show fairly consistently that helmet wearers have better outcomes in head, neck, facial injuries, hospital stay, and long term outcome.

Part of the answer to the failure of epidemiological studies to support promoting or mandating helmets is in the size of the effects being studied. In the real world (non racing) serious head injuries are quite rare events. What looks like a large change in the likelihood of those injuries is actually a very small change compared to the millions of injury free cycling trips made each day. The scare effect of people saying everyone should always wear a helmet can be large, as evidenced by the large decline in cycling in Australia when helmets became compulsory.

A large decrease in physical activity, active travel, has significant health impacts at population level. The relevant balance of these effects is the basis of the Piet de Jong paper referenced by Goldacre and Spiegelhalter. https://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2012_de-Jong_Health-Impacts-of-Mandatory-Bicycle-Helmet-Laws.pdf

Doctors would tell you both of these if you just @ them @WillMelling

Head injuries are not the rare event you want to think they are as % of cyclists who are hospitalised.d
Source 1:
https://www.aans.org/en/Patients/Neurosurgical-Conditions-and-Treatments/Sports-related-Head-Injury

Source 2:
https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2674
(amongst others)

You continue to fail to respond to the points I've made, continuing to satisfy yourself with this endless cry of helmets put people off cycling.
So I'll argue against that- just this once- as evidenced by the follow-on resurgence of cycling in Australia, Canada and other places with compulsory helmet laws.
http://www.publish.csiro.au/he/HE11178
(amongst others).

The data supports helmets reduce head injuries. Again- I'm not arguing that long term inactivity is not more of a problem, just that helmets work. I have literally never suggested (and I cannot beleive I'm saying this again ) that helmets should be mandatory.

And if we're all honest- Helmet or no is not going to change inactivity levels in a wider spectrum of the population.

I anticipate waking up to you arguing a completely different point, yet again. Enjoy. xxx

Your first link:

It is estimated that up to 85 percent of head injuries can be
prevented through proper usage of helmets

http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1131.html

In June 2013, US federal agencies The National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration (NHTSA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
decided that they could no longer justify citing the claim that
bicycle helmets reduce the risk of head injury by 85%. The agencies
had been challenged under the Data Quality Act to show why they
ignored later research, none of which had produced such convincing
results. Other US Government agencies are expected to follow suit.
(GGW, 2013)

You do seem to insist on your argument being taken out of the wider context of cycling though. Head injuries are likely much more rare as a percentage of cyclists who are not hospitalised.

Head injuries are not the rare event you want to think they are

Fermi estimate time. Let's say for the sake of argument that your aans.org link is a proxy for UK stats, and the hospital admissions is a proxy for KSI. About 1 in 6 hospital admissions among cyclists in your study is for a head injury. UK cycling KSI rate is about 1 per 500,000 journeys. That makes head injuries worthy of hospital treatment about 1 per 3M journeys, or 3×10^-7 per journey.

I leave it to the reader to decide whether that makes cycling related head injuries rare or commonplace. If you bought two tickets for the National Lottery, your probability of winning either the jackpot or the second prize is also about 3×10^-7

That makes head injuries worthy of hospital treatment about 1 per 3M journeys, or 3×10-7 per journey... I leave it to the reader to decide whether that makes cycling related head injuries rare or commonplace. If you bought two tickets for the National Lottery, your probability of winning either the jackpot or the second prize is also about 3×10-7

This is going on my fridge.

That's what I said, kinda, I think.

What I particularly like about Tester's analogy is that when you're trying to get across a message to people with a poor grasp of risk statistics*, the old "you've got more chance of winning the lottery" argument at least gets them thinking along familiar lines. ;-)

*Not aimed at anyone here; I'm looking forward to wheeling this out the next time anyone I know sees me riding a bike without a helmet, thinking I might as well be playing Russian roulette. (I usually do wear one but sometimes CNBA depending on journey circumstances.)

Imagine the size of that revolver.

<insert maths showing size of cylinder to be as big as mars here>

A timely reminder of what we are talking about. Logic, statistcs and risk.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2018/10/21/i-do-not-wear-a-bicycle-helmet/amp/

"you've got more chance of winning the lottery"

You do have to include the "or win the second prize" to be reasonably accurate, and typically people will think you're talking about one ticket per draw, two draws per week. A commuter makes 10 journeys per week. Over a 40 year career, that's 20,000 journeys.
(1-(3×10^-7))²⁰⁰⁰⁰=0.994
From an office of 1000 workers, all commuting by bike every day for 40 years, 6 will receive hospital treatment for a cycling related head injury. Even if none of them is using a helmet at the moment, and helmets actually prevent 85% of head injuries, and you could get every single one of them to start using a helmet, you could only save 5 hospital visits from those 10 million working days.

All these stats/maths is doing my head in.

What I particularly like about Tester's analogy is that when you're trying to get across a message to people with a poor grasp of risk statistics*, the old "you've got more chance of winning the lottery" argument at least gets them thinking along familiar lines. ;-)

Yeah, but they still try to win the lottery every time. The danger with this line of argument is that they'll then try their damnedest to get a head injury, too.

#sorryifIhavemissedsomething

That's what I said, kinda, I think.

You didn't have little raised numbers in it, though. Makes all the difference.

stats/maths is doing my head in

That's why people like simple stories. The one which gets traction is "a helmet saved my life". While unlikely to be true every time it is claimed, it is also unlikely that it is never true. The real story is complicated, full of caveats, bound up with statistics and probability which are the two kinds of maths most people are really bad at; "If making helmets compulsory invoked full compliance among the subset of cyclists not already voluntarily using helmets, and if they made no other changes to their behaviour which confounded this intervention, and if cycle helmets were actually highly effective at reducing the severity of head injuries experienced in real world bicycle crashes, then we would still have to study a large population for a long time to be able to measure with confidence whether our intervention had made any difference" is a bit long and complicated for somebody who has just smacked their head on the tarmac to tweet.

Without choosing sides here, this is a classic case of acceptable risk.

One side is focusing on the whether or not something might happen, and the other is focusing on how to survive if it does happen.

You continue to fail to respond to the points I've made, continuing to satisfy yourself with this endless cry of helmets put people off cycling.

So I'll argue against that- just this once- as evidenced by the follow-on resurgence of cycling in Australia, Canada and other places with compulsory helmet laws.
http://www.publish.csiro.au/he/HE11178
(amongst others).

Hey, that is a bit unfair. You have put out a dozen or so links to academic articles most of which are only available to read by paying a significant fee. To make sense of these articles we need to read them and read follow up commentaries published in the journals and elsewhere. That takes time and I will do what I can with each of them in time.
The CSIRO study linked to above supports the case that helmet laws restrict levels of cycling and growth in cycling.

You may not be aware of the level of academic political warfare being waged on this issue, indicated in some of the links you have posted. Not least over the editorship of Injury Prevention journal or between UNSW and University of Sydney. People who have experienced such academic politics say it is more like that of Saudi Arabia than the mild goings on in Brexit Mania or Trumpism.

And if we're all honest- Helmet or no is not going to change inactivity levels in a wider spectrum of the population.

But that is precisely what happened in Australia when helmet laws came into force 25+ years ago. Child cycling participation dropped by about 40% or more in a couple of years. Most of the "resurgence" since then has been in adult sport cycling not children and everyday cycling except where there has been high levels of government intervention and promotion.

Here we go again

Remember kids... always wear an airbag.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-46790235/crash-testing-the-air-bag-for-cyclists

FFS

Not sure if this is the best place to put it, but has anyone seen this pro-mandatory-helmet campaign?

This is Gareth's story.
Gareth was cycling home on January 16th 2017 at 8am.
He was wearing a helmet, had bright lights on the front and rear of his bicycle and on the back of his rucksack, he also was wearing clothes with reflective strips on. He was doing everything right as a cyclist to stay safe.
A tractor driver failed to see Gareth before it was too late. He hit Gareth from behind, killing him instantly.
Gareth's helmet was destroyed on impact, resulting in a fatal head injury.
If Gareth stood no chance with a helmet on, what chance do others stand when not wearing a helmet?
Our aim with this petition, is to bring in GARETH'S LAW to make it a legality to wear a helmet whilst cycling anywhere on any surface and to have working lights on the front and back of a bicycle, which must be on from dusk til dawn and in poor weather conditions and less than good visibility.
Seat belts must be worn, to save lives, as the law states.
It needs to be the same for cyclists wearing a helmet and appropriate lighting.
If we can prevent just one family going through the trauma that we have, this will be 100% worth while.
We see too many cyclist on the path and road not wearing a helmet and not having working lights on their bicycle.

It strikes me as a very absurd allocation of energy, considering that the unfortunate victim was using everything the campaign seeks to enforce, but still died. Isn't it obvious that the real issue was the tractor driver not looking?

Saw that last week and it made me quite fucking angry. Almost worth signing just to be able to comment on how utterly demented it is.

This hasn't just affected myself and my family, it has also affected the people at the scene and the driver and his family.

The tractor driver was banned from driving for two years, given 200 hours of unpaid work and a 12 month suspended sentence.

Actually reads like sympathy for the driver.