Daily Mail - Boris Bike scaremongering re helmets

thelawnet

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... lised.html

Safety campaigners have demanded helmets for 6000 bikes belonging to Boris Johnson's cycle hire project in central London after two cyclists were taken to hospital with serious head injuries.

In two separate incidents, the cyclists, who were not wearing protective hear gear, were rushed to hospital where they received emergency brain scans after after crashing in a refuse truck and falling off the hire bikes.

And figures released under the Freedom of Information Act, show that there have now been a total of five people who have injured themselves after hiring the bikes since the scheme's inception on July 30.

It's not quite clear how two separate cyclists crashed into dump trucks....

spen666

5 injuries in 50+ days?

Think that is a very low figure

tailwindhome

Seriously.

Stop reading the Daily Mail, you're only upsetting yourselves.

flateric

right, so its the bikes schemes fault for not providing helmets is it? i mean what a load of crap, its surely the individuals fault for not bothering to wear one, but no it must be the bike schemes fault for not buying hundreds of helmets in multiple sizes, replacing them frequently as they get stolen and lost!!

lastant

It's absolutely true because I read it in the Daily Mail...

prj45

Safety campaigners have demanded helmets for 6000 bikes belonging to Boris Johnson's cycle hire project in central London

c***ts.

d.n.f

with the number of trips and miles covered, doesn't this just prove how safe city cycling is?

CyclingBantam

d.n.f wrote:

with the number of trips and miles covered, doesn't this just prove how safe city cycling is?

Yes it does but always remember, you are one of the lucky ones who has a brain...

prj45

To brake@brake.org.uk:

Seriously brake, I'm a great supporter of your cause but please lay off saying that all users of the London cycle hire scheme should be wearing cycle helmets.

Forcing people to wear helmets will reduce the take up of cycling, and increasing cycling in London is the best way to calm the traffic in my opinion; the more cyclists on the road the better, enforced helmet wearing will reduce the level of takeup and that can only be a bad thing.

Please make a very sudden and public u-turn on this policy!

I think you're seriously jepordising your cause with this one!!

deptfordmarmoset

While waiting in a queue today I noticed the Daily Mail headline, which read pretty much like this: ''How Immigrants Stole Our Homes'' - apparently if you nip off to the shops, Lithuanians will seize control of your houses.

So, we already know that the DM is all ink, no think. What is more concerning is what Brake (the ''safety campaigners'' mentioned in the article) say about helmets, using out-of-date statistics, broken links that you might be mistaken for taking as references, spurious arguments such as this one (complete with broken link on the website)...

Tour de France Tour de France leader Chris Boardman crashed during Stage 3 when he touched the wheel of another rider. He injured his wrist, had severe facial lacerations, and evidence of a concussion. He was released from the hospital the following day but could not continue the Tour. He was wearing a cycle helmet. Italian Fabio Casarteli crashed on a quick descent in the Pyrenees Mountains during the 1996 Tour de France. He went into a coma and died in the hospital. He was the reigning Olympic road race champion. He was not wearing a helmet. (www.sph.emory.edu/Helmets/boardman.html)

( http://www.brake.org.uk/why-cycle-helmets-save-lives )

Deary, deary me! They want us all helmeted AND off road. I think the DM is beneath contempt, whereas perhaps the greater danger is Brake, who are feeding the DM with this kind of nonsense.

jds_1981

My god, that brake page is awful.

Aidy

jds_1981 wrote:

My god, that brake page is awful.

I quite like the way they've worded this:

Dr Tim Coats is a Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Leicester and sees first-hand the horrific injuries suffered by cyclists in road crashes. He divides fatal injuries into three categories: - Later deaths, which might have been prevented with better (neuro) intensive care; - Early deaths, due to bleeding, which might have been prevented by better immediate care; - Immediate deaths, in the first few minutes, where the surgeons can do nothing to help. These deaths could only be prevented by prevention. Wearing a cycle helmet is a preventative measure.

Many head injuries belong to the last category, says Professor Coats. In these cases, prevention is the only solution.

Reading it, at no stage has their expert actually said that helmets provide any form of useful protection - but they've tried to phrase it in a way to imply that he has.

Classy.

notsoblue

It was only a matter of time. Boris Bikes are progress, and change is dangerous!

CiB

What is it with these people, demanding that their world view is the only view and they must be right? What right does some organisation have to announce that we don't enough laws in this country and that they've decided we need another one - one that's been shown to have something other than the desired effect in countries where it's been tried.

What a bunch of parasites. Brake - why not just crawl back into the undergrowth and leave the real world alone. Or better still, wind your ridiculous self-serving organisation up and go and get jobs in the real world, and see how long you last there wandering around telling everybody that they have to fit in with your narrow-minded and petulant outlook on life and its inherent risks.

Pffft. Gaah, as someone once said.

SimonAH

I'm surprised the nambys didn't push this through earlier.

Stop for a second and work this out. You can't rent helmets that are 'one size fits all' ergo all renters will have to bring their own helmet. Therefore there will be no unplanned journeys. Therefore scheme dies.

Arses.

I'm waiting for the directive that we must all wear chainmail gloves when peeling spuds or opening corned beef tins.

tailwindhome

Brake wrote:

These deaths could only be prevented by prevention.

Can't really argue with that.

I'm waiting for the directive that we must all wear chainmail gloves when peeling spuds or opening corned beef tins.

Thats not the worst idea I've heard today

SimonAH

Won't somebody think of the children?

bails87

And if they actually bought helmets, who would be first to report "Boris buys 12,000 helmets for cyclists, and GUESS WHO'S PAYING?"

bails87

thelawnet wrote:

In two separate incidents, the cyclists, who were not wearing protective hear gear, were rushed to hospital where they received emergency brain scans after after crashing in a refuse truck and falling off the hire bikes.

It's not quite clear how two separate cyclists crashed into dump trucks....

It sounds like they were in the truck when they crashed. To be fair, if you're going to try to ride a bike in the cab of a truck, you're probably going to get hurt one way or another.

And going from this, in the time the scheme has been running, around 4500 people will have been killed, seriously injured or slightly injured on London's roads, so that 5 represents only just over a tenth of one percent of all the casualties on London roads, and we can assume that the injuries weren't too serious or the DM would have made a fuss about it. At the very least, none of them were deaths.

So 0.11% of road casualties (none of whom were killed) are attributable to one source. Well, we'd better crack down on it! :roll:

richk

I wonder how many people have injured themselves whilst driving a hired car?

bails87

RichK wrote:

I wonder how many people have injured themselves or other people whilst driving a hired car?

FTFY

don_don

I've just sent this e-mail to Mikael Colville-Anderson, of http://www.copenhagenize.com, which I urge anyone to have a browse of if you are not familiar with him:

Hello Mikael,

As an avid fan of your site, I thought you might be interested to hear of this classic bit of 'ignoring the bull' here in the UK. I came across this initially in a forum thread on Bikeradar.com, here:

http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12731619&start=0

Unfortunately, this also highlights the usual anti-cycling messages we see in the press, in this case the Daily Mail, who are reporting on a tiny number of cycling incidents since the introduction of the London bike-hire scheme.

However, there is also a link to the website of 'Brake', a fairly well known 'road-safety' charity in the UK. The page relates to helmet wearing by cyclists:

http://www.brake.org.uk/why-cycle-helmets-save-lives

Sadly, there is some blatant mis-representation of the effectiveness of cycling helmets. Even worse, the authors cite New Zealand and other countries as having successful mandatory cycle helmet laws. No mention is made of the reduction in cycle use after the introduction of these laws, which in my opinion is disgraceful. Nor do they mention the drive to repeal such laws in countries like Australia.

To be fair to Brake, they do also appear to advocate 20mph (30kph) speed limits in urban areas, but this appears to be conditional on not being able to remove cyclists from the road in those areas. The whole article smacks of an anti-cycling / pro-driving attitude.

Perhaps, if you have time, there might be an opportunity to expose this mis-information on your website, which I know is well-read in the UK as well as the rest of Europe.


It'll be interesting to see if he mentions it on the site.

tailwindhome

^^^^^


Not 100% sure but I think I posts on here as NDRU

(or something like that)