Cycle helmets.

Nathan, I pushed the "like" button, but that was in sympathy.

 

Did I hear right, its already compulsory in Canada and Australia?

 

Should cycle helmets be mandatory? No, I don't think so. I think the gov should be doing everything possible to make it more appealing to get the bike out, not adding reasons to leave it at home.

As for cyclists riding on the pavement, I don't agree with that (except when part of the pavement is designated as a bike path). The right thing to do is to make it safe for everyone. Pedestrians shouldn't have to worry about being run over by cyclists (and I've had one or two confrontations over that, in one case I lost my rag at some youths who nearly knocked my son over). Cyclists shouldn't have to worry about being run over by cars, and car drivers shouldn't have to worry about trying to calculate if there's room to get past the cyclist on the left without having a head on with the traffic to the right.

The solution to that is massive investment in good cycleways like they have in the likes of Holland. Not the really stupid, pointless, dangerous waste of money that the gov and sustrans currently does where they paint a white line on the side of a busy road, effectively narrowing the road, and telling the cyclists to ride in that. When the roads were originally built, someone worked out how wide they need to be in order to be safe to carry the volume of traffic at the time. Since then we've got more traffic and bigger vehicles, and someone says, 'I know, lets paint a line on it forcing the fast moving vehicles closer to together in the middle, and expect the cyclists to stay on the left side of the white line and expect the motorists to never ever drift over the white line even when faced with an oncoming articulated lorry'.

 

Clueless, you read my mind

 

You were thinking all that?

 

He runs this site does he not :-)

Jack McH

 

I prefer the do what you want way
I do not wear a helmet, though I am a careful cyclist, I am aware of my suroundings

Riding on a pavement is fine, so long as the pedestrian has right of way and you cylce accordingly

I have cycled down the A92 within the one metre wide strip for cyclists, it is scarey when an arctic doing 60mph passes you with eight inches to spare

I have also witnessed a serious head injury, with a cyclist, basically it was his own fault with the conditions at the time I would not be cyling downhill full speed to a round about in snow and ice. he did and the only stop was the kerb, he took off with no helmet and landed on his head
I called an ambulance, but he got up and argued that he had to be at work for 06:30 and became argumentive, and eventually took off, the ambulance found him concused about 200 yds on ( I never found out the outcome)

I appreciate there is a difference cylcing in a busy town/city and quiet Scotish towns
or cycling on a mountain bike down cross country hills, but for ordinary quiet cylcing in villages a helmet is of choice IMHO

Jack McH

 

Totally agree. But, in my yoof, other than the tour de France, I don't think cycle helmets were worn by many, in fact, I can't remember anyone I knew wearing them. Helf an safety gone mad as a box of frogs these days, but, the traffic compared to 25 year ago is as mad as a box of frogs!

 

I've actually heard it said that when a motorist sees a cyclist wearing a helmet, they CAN think that they don't need to take as much care because they THINK they're protected...

 

In my opinion yes they should. I used to go off roading on my bike, not done in recent times due to other commitments. The lads I go with still do and earlier this year one of them flipped over the handle bars and landed directly on a tree root. Luckily he had a helmet on, but when the other lads got too him he was flat out and the helmet had split down the middle as he had hit the root with so much force. There was an ambulance called and he was taken to hospital where he spent a few days with concussion. According to the doctors if it wasn't for the helmet at best he would have been a severely handicapped and dependant on others if not dead due to the damage it would have caused to his brain. All of the lads now where helmets.

Rusty

 

I have 3 bikes, a 'traditional' tourer (that I built myself), a Dahon 26" wheel folder, a Claud Butler 'town/street bike' (don't do off roading) and I have a helmet which I use selectively, like on main/busy roads, in town, after dark, etc., but wouldn't want to be told I'd got to wear it on a hot summers day on some a deserted country road.

Children should be made to wear them + adults out riding with their kids should also set an example.

 

This is a good case for wearing a helmet. I don't think its a good reason to make helmets compulsory though.

A bit of common sense and judgement has to prevail. I haven't had my bike out for ages now but when I used to, I used to ride off road too. I always wore my helmet if I was going to be hurtling down some off road track. But what if the plan is to cycle at a leisurely pace along dedicated surfaced cycle paths for the 2 miles into town?

When you go off road mountain biking, you see people at all levels. At the junctions been 'green' route and 'black' route, you often see the hardcore mentalists that literally defy death for fun. They often wear full body armour and really tough helmets with full face guards etc. They look like darth vader. Given the stunts they do, they'd be crazy not to wear such safety gear, yet despite all that gear, they still some times get hurt. They would be hurt a lot worse without the full body armour, but that doesn't mean all cyclists should be made to wear full body armour. Its all about how and where you ride I think.

 

I don't cycle a lot but even on my fairly staid journeys I feel a bit vulnerable - bikes are not very stable, after all, and although I've never fallen off I can see it would do a bit of damage. It would be quite easy to tip the bike over by an incautious turn on a stepped surface or bit of gravel and I try to be careful about that. After all, my head would be descending, at speed, from several metres up and hitting any bit of solid rock that may be about.

My casualty-nurse friend ticks me off summat rotten for not wearing a helmet and she's probably seen a thing or two. If helmets were compulsory it would still put me off using it for that quick 5 minute nip to the shops, though.

I ride on the pavement a lot, especially after dark, but avoid terrorising pedestrians on crowded pavements. At night many of my regular runs are deserted, anyway. No doubt you'll be shocked but if I am going to a pub I often take the bike because I would not drive the car if I'd had a drink, but would cycle as I'm far more likely to damage myself than anyone else and if I think I'm not safe I can choose to push! I should point out that I rarely drink more than a few halves anyway.

 

When I was only about 6 I skidded out of control on some gravel, fell off, slid on my face through the gravel, only stopping because my head hit a brick wall and knocked me out cold. I remember my mam being annoyed because I didn't answer her when she shouted me to see where I'd gone (I regained consciousness as just before she found me), and then as soon as she realised I was hurt badly she obviously freaked, and got me to the local minor casualty hospital (just a few hundred yards away as it happened). They cleaned up my face while waiting for the ambulance to come to take me to the proper hospital where I had to get my head x-ray'ed and then people poked about at me and shone bright lights in my eyes and asked me silly questions (silly to me at the time, too young to understand what was going on). One doctor asked me how many of him there was.

Anyway, everything was still present and correct, apart from some skin that had vacated my face, and I got some time off school because although they decided I was probably ok, my parents were told to keep me under constant observation at home for a couple of weeks, and a nurse called round every few days to see how I was. The last sign of my accident to fade was, embarrassingly, the small but thick scab between the bottom of my nose and my top lip. I was too young to understand at the time, but older visitors to our house occasionally referred to me as hitler until the scab finally fell off.

Wait til you push the bike such that you end up leaning over it, trip over your own bike, then land in a heap somehow, against all conventional laws of physics, simultaneously on top of and underneath the bike.