Compulsory lid legislation?

[Dave Davenport]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-eng.../girl-says-cycle-helmets-should-be-compulsory

 

[Siclo]

Hants road police are pushing it. As usual Mr Boardman speaks sense


View: https://twitter.com/Chris_Boardman/status/941594306477002752

 

[SteveF]

Perhaps have a look when you get time. Reason I dropped it here was it's about compulsion (which I'm against) and it was very prominent on the BBC news landing page.

 

[MiK1138]

Wish I'd worn my helmet on my elbow when I came down on black ice this morning OWEEEE

 

[FishFright]

Emotive rubbish? Not from the point of a young girls who's life was saved by wearing one.

Are you going to write to her to let her know how she was spouting rubbish ?

 

[snorri]

Just yesterday I heard a BBC presenter being unwilling to accept a controversial point made by a speaker in the studio, his reason being there was no one present to put an opposing view.
It's a pity the BBC do not have a similar policy in regard to controversial articles on their website.

 

[MichaelW2]

Better quality cycle training would probably have prevented this cyclist from having a self inflicted crash that put her under the car. She was riding downhill on the pavement, braked hard, was unable to maintain control and came off hard, into the road,under a car, at which point the helmet may or may not have been helpful in reducing injuries.

 

[mjr]

Wish I'd worn my helmet on my elbow when I came down on black ice this morning OWEEEE

And that, folks, is why the helmet zealots should be spending some tiny fraction of their money on promoting better de-icing or studded tyres or some other actual crash prevention measures instead of head-only mitigation devices.

 

[DaveReading]

So what's the relevance of a helmet? Did the car trap her head? And does no-one mention that helmet manufacturers warn they don't protect against cars?

She had already suffered major facial injuries, lost a bunch of teeth and been rendered unconscious when her head hit the road, so you could argue that a helmet might have lessened the effect of those injuries, given that that's what helmets are supposed to do.

Obviously once she had been subsequently hit by the car, the helmet became irrelevant. Although you could argue, had she not been unconscious, she might have been able to scramble out of the way.

None of it provable, of course.

 

[mjr]

She had already suffered major facial injuries, lost a bunch of teeth and been rendered unconscious when her head hit the road, so you could argue that a helmet might have lessened the effect of those injuries, given that that's what helmets are supposed to do.

Helmets are supposed to prevent unconsciousness now, are they? I thought some manufacturers explicitly warned they aren't sufficient to prevent that or concussion.

Only full-face MTB helmets would protect face and teeth significantly and I doubt that's what she's calling for.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Had the school not had a helmet policy she would have not been late (not being able to find her helmet) most likely not rushed to school, avoided the accident altogether, and been much better off.

 

[NickNick]

Had the school not had a helmet policy she would have not been late (not being able to find her helmet) most likely not rushed to school, avoided the accident altogether, and been much better off.

The irony of that was particularly striking when I read the road.cc article on. It seems to have more detail than the BBC and from the description of the accident & injuries I really doesn't look to me like the helmet would have made any difference. It seems like one of those "common sense" statements that her doctors made but I'm not convinced.

“As I braked, my bike stopped, but I didn’t. I flew over the handlebars of my bike and landed in front of the car. The driver didn’t see me and, spotting a gap in the traffic, moved forward over me. Her son was sitting in the passenger seat and saw me fall so it didn’t take long for her to realise that something had happened.”

Maisie sustained three breaks in her pelvis, a broken collarbone, major facial injuries and the loss of seven teeth.

 

[DaveReading]

Helmets are supposed to prevent unconsciousness now, are they?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but helmets are intended to lessen the impact forces sustained in a low-energy contact between the head and a solid object, such as might occur when falling off a bike.

So it's perfectly possible that that could make the difference, under certain circumstances, between a force that's sufficient to cause loss of consciousness and one that isn't.

The fact that a helmet may mitigate the effect of certain types of impact doesn't equate to a guarantee that it will, so the answer to your question is No.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

Presumably the steady decline in deaths from 1950 is simply due to cars themselves being better built, with the steady increase in crumple zones and other features? As it can't be that the standard of driving has got better!

Changes to car design in the 1950's wouldn't account for much difference. No such thing as crumple zones back then.
The things you can probably attribute most to safety improvements are the ones that don't get mentioned. For a start, more and more drivers would have had to actually pass a driving test to obtain a licence, rather than just pay their few shillings fee with no test.
Then you've got improvements to road surfaces, barriers to stop vehicles crashing down hillsides, better street lighting etc. Statistically minor rural roads are the most dangerous, so it makes perfect sense that as more higher quality roads, dual carriageways, then motorways were built, the accident rate per mile travelled would start to decline.
We have now pretty much got down to the level at which safety and accident rates are not going to get any better. From now on, expect the figures to more or less just bump along from year to year at a fairly constant level with a bit of apparently random variation.

 

[TheDoctor]

Emotive rubbish? Not from the point of a young girls who's life was saved by wearing one.

Are you going to write to her to let her know how she was spouting rubbish ?

There's no reason to be nasty to children.
Equally, there's no reason to accept thier opinion as authoritative fact.