Yes but it takes you four times as long to walk somewhere as to cycle so you are exposed for four times as long walking making it 30% more dangerous to do the journey by foot rather than by cycle. You seem intent on doing a comparison of two completely different journeys in order to salvage your belief that cycling must be more dangerous. If you want to go somewhere you are safer cycling there than walking there. Period.
I have my mind changed about helmets!
- Thread starter XmisterIS
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Yes but it takes you four times as long to walk somewhere as to cycle so you are exposed for four times as long walking making it 30% more dangerous to do the journey by foot rather than by cycle. You seem intent on doing a comparison of two completely different journeys in order to salvage your belief that cycling must be more dangerous. If you want to go somewhere you are safer cycling there than walking there. Period.
Interestingly if you take the Boris Bike figures for generally inexperienced cyclists cycling with traffic in one of our busiest cities and with over 95% of them not wearing a helmet, the figure so far is about a million hours of cycling without even a serious injury let alone a death.
david k
Hi
- Location
- North West
so your initial stats were wrong?
.... or simply a different source?
david k
Hi
- Location
- North West
possibly, but doesnt that prove theres something wrong with them? we cannot accept stats if they are being contradicted from another source. We need them to be reliable or they become meaningless
Mark_Robson
Senior Member
- Location
- West Boldon Tyne & Wear
There's nothing like stats to confuse an argument. 
There's nothing like stats to confuse an argument.
Statistically?
Not the case.
It is possible to have statistical evidence that both proves and disproves, and both ebe valid.
It simply depends on the question asked......
Simba
Specialized Allez 24 Rider
- Location
- Tottington - Lancashire
It is all down to personal choice, why do non helmet wears get so defensive when the word helmet is mentioned. It's childish.
No, my initial stats were the national figures, not the Boris Bike figures. Both are correct for their respective populations. There are many reasons Boris Bikers might be safer than other bikers including the bikes don't go as fast, drivers assume they will be inexperienced and give them more space and leeway and maybe even not wearing a helmet is safer.
Smokin Joe
Squire
- Location
- Bare headed cyclist, Smoker
They don't.
It's just that we know that any helmet thread will soon descend into you must be mad/irresponsible/going to cost the health service millions/setting a bad example to the children etc if we don't argue our corner.
It is the uninformed garbage trotted out, often by people who have only been cycling for five minutes that will bring about compulsion laws if they are not rigorously challenged. Wear what you want on your head, I doubt if there is a single person here who has been asked, "Why have you got that on, it won't do any good", yet those of us who go without have to put up with comments from every other helmet wearer we meet.
Helmet threads would not run to twenty pages if a certain minority recognised that whether anyone wore a helmet or not is their business and no-one elses.
Because there is a large lobby out there who want to deny the personal choice of non-helmet wearers. There are many cycling events now that I cannot take part in without wearing a helmet. I know of none that ban you for wearing a helmet. A mandatory helmet law has succeeded in Jersey, it nearly succeeded in Northern Ireland and its not for lack of trying that it hasn't succeeded in the UK. I know of nobody campaigning to make helmets illegal. When David Cameron, Boris Johnson or Norman Baker cycle without a helmet the press and the lobby groups pillory them mercilessly for exercising their personal choice to not wear a helmet.
Most of the case being made for compulsory helmets is based on misinformation much of which is reiterated here. Its not defensiveness, its seeking to correct misinformation which is being used to take away our personal choice.
So tell me why do so many people want to take away my personal choice - its patronising.
Simba
Specialized Allez 24 Rider
- Location
- Tottington - Lancashire
I wear one through choice and have nothing against those that don't. The chances of me actually needing it a very slim but, its for MY piece of mind and nobody else's.
Really? You just called those that want to maintain their right to not wear one childish.
Mark_Robson
Senior Member
- Location
- West Boldon Tyne & Wear
Maybe if you just said, "look I couldn't give a flying fook what the evidence says" I'm not going to wear one cos I have the statistics to prove me right, then that would be ok, but instead you try and preach that wearing one makes the rest of us blind naive fools,
Now that's childish!
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