Should cyclists legally wear a helmet ?

slowsider

slowmart

weadmire wrote:

Slowmart,

“And you still haven't answered my point on reduced damages where a cyclist has not wore a helmet and suffered head injuries.”

What is your point? You seem to be saying you want to wear a helmet because it will enable you to make the obvious reply to a solicitor's witless question. If that is your main concern, ie you are more concerned about being asked about your helmet than you are about the dubious benefits of wearing one, you are accepting my arguments about their value.

To anyone concerned about being asked stupid questions by solicitors I suggest challenging said solicitors about their ignorance. There is no conclusive evidence helmets work, a lack of such conclusive evidence is of course evidence they don't work. If they worked in the way it is reasonable to expect, their efficacy would be obvious and people like me would have long since lost the argument. Patiently explain this to the solicitor instead of reinforcing the nonsense of helmets by encouraging them in thinking helmet wearing is relevant. Answer their question with a question. If they are too stupid to get the point look up Dr Tom Crisp and see if he will help you.




My point is Smith V Finch which you have neglected to acknowledge or answer? The High Court reduced the damages awarded by 15% BECAUSE the rider was not wearing a helmet when he sustained head injuries.

So my point is based on case law.

Perhaps you or Dr Crisp can explain this? Perhaps this instinct for protecting ones head ( which I accept) was outweighed for the potential of likely injuries that would be sustained in a accident......


Now lets examine this quote

There is no conclusive evidence helmets work, a lack of such conclusive evidence is of course evidence they don't work. If they worked in the way it is reasonable to expect, their efficacy would be obvious and people like me would have long since lost the argument

What are you saying here? We have reached the pinnacle of knowledge and learning because at this point in time we can't properly evidence this beyond reason for a few evangelists?

Sir, your argument backs the view that the world is flat and cigarettes don't cause lung cancer. No doubt we all know someone who has smoked 40 a day , eighty years old and is as fit as a butchers dog. Sounds similar to your argument?

weadmire

Slowmart,

"My point is Smith V Finch which you have neglected to acknowledge or answer? The High Court reduced the damages awarded by 15% BECAUSE the rider was not wearing a helmet when he sustained head injuries.

So my point is based on case law."

We agree - as I said you want to wear a helmet based on the idea your damages will be reduced if you are not wearing one.

But just about any person seriously damaged in a PI case will tell you if it was possible to reverse the process - give back the money and have the damage restored, they would take the reverse swap. This oft expressed sentiment by clients is considered cliche by lawyers. Best therefore to put avoiding the damage first - helmets do not help you to avoid damage despite what you want to have us believe.

I have not read the case you quote and I am not about to but generally if you have an ignorant lazy solicitor, and the world is full of them - notably in my experience one of the firms who work with the CTC - put them straight or fire them. The case as it was pleaded in the case you quote was almost certainly badly pleaded if the claim was reduced in the way you report. You already accept what Dr Crisp has to say about about the effects of adding the mass of a helmet to the top of your head. You accept it makes it more difficult for the muscles of your neck to control your head in the way evolution has intended. The consequences of that are pretty random. It would be almost impossible to quantify the effects with any certainty. If a prosecuting solicitor can't handle that argument they do not amount to much.

The rest of your last post to this thread is arrant cobblers, among other things apparently seeking gravitas and authority with the use the word "Sir " what's that about otherwise? I can't recall whether it was you or someone else who brought up seat belts, that's been dealt with, but now we have smoking and the flat earth society with an accusation of evangelism thrown in. People who are not inclined to helmets are rarely the protagonists in these threads, they are nearly always started by proselytizers with more anxiety than experience. How much experience do you have for example? No need to answer the implied question about anxiety we can work that one out. The question is why are you persisting to the point of making a public fool of yourself - more polite in this regard than the other "slow" who made physical threats, but a fool none the less. Of course if you are an evangelist looking foolish is in the contract and you will not much care. That might be it, in talking evangelism you came over confused and like Bompington commenting on "mince" found yourself talking about and to yourself.

The cycle helmet industry claims it spends a fortune on research and development - it certainly does not spend a fortune on making the things, they cost pennies to manufacture - and yet there is no conclusive evidence they work. The causes of the gap between perception and reality have been pretty carefully examined though I think there is still some way to go. Why is it that something that should be so clearly beneficial doesn't deliver? It is my point that in best of circumstances helmets do not deliver very much and from that minor plus there are a number of things to subtract. Some of the evidence for their lack of efficacy is in the banal controversy of helmet threads. If helmets worked that would not be the case. You cannot say otherwise. Slowmart, Spare us the speechyfying as George W had it. Sir.

NapoleonD, 19,000 odd posts but no reply to my question, why did you contribute? Did you think Slow and his chums needed some help? If you start you must know you should see it through. Let's have the details of your whack. This is not a rhetorical request, I am genuinely interested. In a key way it is the opposite of my experience.

slowmart

Weadmire, stop the rhetoric and try an economic amount of words rather than waffle on without making a point.

You written five paragraphs of personal opinion which doesn't address the points I have made.

Why is that?

You can do better than that or is your pyscho analysis you provide of me and others a sideline from printing your t shirts? And are your t shirts of better quality?

weadmire

Slowmart,

Thank you for asking about my t shirt business. Regarding quality and customer satisfaction I would say the proof is in the numbers: Our sales are growing at about 40% pa. We refund in just 0.4% of of the sales we make, that's about 100 times better than industry averages for mail order apparel, people who receive our shirts want to keep them. We became the dominant t shirt designer and supplier to a leading weekly cycling journal within a few months of said publication listing the availability of our shirts. Our t shirts outsell all others through the Saatchi Gallery shop. If you want to please someone you know give them one our shirts as a Christmas present – they will love you for it.

weadmire

Slowmart,

And all fellow helmeteers someone, who has just bought one of our Campagnolo Delta t shirts by Yukio Miyamoto after reading this thread - a very classy t shirt and one of my favourites - has just sent this link to our customer services email: http://www.cycle-helmets.com/zealand_helmets.html. The report is pleasantly unequivocal in its conclusions and I hope the last word, at least on bikeradar forums, concerning the compulsory use of cycling helmets.

Discard your anxiety and get the wind in your hair, cycling helmets are useless.

junglist_matty

I just wasted the last 5 minutes of my life reading two pages of complete and utter rubbish!

Weadmire, from what I gather, your sole argument is that by wearing a helmet you bang your head and that by not wearing a helmet you wouldn't have banged your head; am I correct? If so, why is it I sometimes accidentally bang my head on the corner of the cooker hood (dam that's painful), the bathroom doorframe (because it's a bit low), the beams in my the garage (because they are also low), and various other things people generally accidentally bang their heads on (in a non-cycling context)?

weadmire

Junglist Matty,

It could be you have been banging your head a few times too often or it could be you're confused about that part of your life you have been wasting, ("the last 5 minutes" or what came before the last five minutes) but whatever the answer you aren't quite understanding the argument and only you, and perhaps your mother, would think you have summed it up in your last post, as in the rhetorical "...am I correct".

To help you, and I think only you, in the context of development of this thread: If you treat the head and the helmet as one and the same, as the pro helmet camp clearly do. As in: "if that had not been my helmet it would have been my head and I would not be...." I'm sure you know the sort of quote I am referring to - in fact i'd be prepared to bet you have said/posted that sort of thing - it must be the case that wearing a helmet makes it more likely you will hit your head. Your head with a helmet clearly being 6-10% or so more massive and significantly larger.

And not only but also, according to the consultant orthopaedic surgeon Mr Tom Crisp, the extra mass of a helmet makes the muscles of your neck less able to control your head in the sort of sharp deceleration/acceleration required to get your head out of the way, of what ever it is it might be about to hit, in the way human evolution intended. I have not seen the calculations but I have been told by an academic involved in crash test dummy analysis that in this sort of collision the momentary deceleration/acceleration of your head is more than 30G. 30G makes the effect of an extra 6-10 % to the mass of your head quite significant for the muscles of your neck.

As you apparently struggle to understand this it will be helpful to follow this link http://www.cycle-helmets.com/zealand_helmets.html it's about the disaster that befell the population of New Zealand in the aftermath of compulsory bicycle helmet legislation enacted by their parliament in 1994. It runs something like a catastrophic decline in cycling to the point of a 10% increase in the BMI of their children, and crucially no net gain in the ratio of cyclist's head injuries in cycling accidents, in fact it almost doubled. News for you - cycling helmets are a wast of time and money, THEY DO NOT WORK.

After you have studied the content of the analysis in the link above you can come on and apologise for wasting everyone's life with a half baked "rubbish" post.

pdstsp

Do you do a classy t shirt with "I'm one patronising b@stard" on it?

weadmire

pdstsp wrote:

Do you do a classy t shirt with "I'm one patronising b@stard" on it?

pdstsp,

We can put anything you like on a shirt in full CMYK colour at up to 1440 dpi to a maximum size of 62cm by 90cm, to all intents the whole of the front of any shirt you are likely to come across. The process dyes the fabric rather than printing it - in it, not on it, you might say. If you google Rihanna Hackney Weekend you will see her wearing a shirt we produced, it is not a design of ours. The reason why it might be particularly interesting here is that she wore the shirt while dancing on stage under hot lights in the middle of summer 2012. The shirts breath so she did not feel as if she was being boiled in the bag. This is important if you are a cyclist. As well as being full colour the process is fully colour fast. We charge £25 for custom orders. p&p to Liverpool is £2.

pdstsp

Yes I see. Well I'll happily spend the £25 but what's the p&p to Shoreditch?

weadmire

p&p to Shoreditch is free if you are sending me money...

arthur_scrimshaw

weadmire wrote:

pdstsp wrote:

Do you do a classy t shirt with "I'm one patronising b@stard" on it?

pdstsp,

We can put anything you like on a shirt in full CMYK colour at up to 1440 dpi to a maximum size of 62cm by 90cm, to all intents the whole of the front of any shirt you are likely to come across. The process dyes the fabric rather than printing it - in it, not on it, you might say. If you google Rihanna Hackney Weekend you will see her wearing a shirt we produced, it is not a design of ours. The reason why it might be particularly interesting here is that she wore the shirt while dancing on stage under hot lights in the middle of summer 2012. The shirts breath so she did not feel as if she was being boiled in the bag. This is important if you are a cyclist. As well as being full colour the process is fully colour fast. We charge £25 for custom orders. p&p to Liverpool is £2.

Is the process you use sublimation printing? My interest stems from a small social enterprise I'm involved with which is run by people with learning disabilities, they use this for low batch runs (normally single figures) and also printed mugs. They're currently looking to expand and looking at larger printing areas (current Max size is A4) I wondered if this is the way to go or if there's a better process?
TIA

weadmire

pdstsp,

The penny has dropped, someone just emailed me, they think I missed your point. They said they thought you were not interested in having a shirt with "I'm one patronising b@stard" on it rather that you were suggesting I am a patronising b@stard, and you might want to send me one.

You will understand why I made the mistake: the attempts at patronage and condescension were all started by the helmeteers - kajjal foolishly suggesting I should grow up for example, Bompington mincing to himself, junglist matty suggesting my arguments are "rubbish" while apparently being confused about what rubbish is, slowmart overconfidently talking about legal cases and insurance while not having a clue about some basic characteristics of the PI legal business, accusing me of "waffle" and not answering the points he made while not making any points, quite a number deliberately misconstruing my argument the better to ridicule it, none of them having much by way of experience that they were prepared to be questioned about. And now you perhaps suggesting I am patronising. I'm shocked.

But if that is your suggestion, I suppose I should be pleased, if you want to criticise me not my argument it suggests you are conceding the loss of the argument. Is that so? Can we lay the dreary subject of helmets to rest now and acknowledge they are useless as protection serving only to mitigate the anxiety of the anxious?