Three lessons for a better cycling future
BMJ 2000; 321 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.321.7276.1582 (Published 23 December 2000) Cite this as: BMJ 2000;321:1582
All rapid responses
I enjoyed the article and it raises some interesting points, as do
the comments raised.
The only ommission appears to be the impact that training can have on
cycling safety. Just as drivers take a driving, so now can cyclists
progress through a formal, outcome-based, program that provides them with
the skills to deal with the kinds of situations described in the article.
We should not seek to gloss over the road conditions or wish they were
different; rather we should train cyclists to deal with things as they
are.
As pointed out more cyclists = safer conditions for cyclists. We
should not try to train all people at once, rather the more experienced
are trained and in due course by riding create the safer conditions that
go some way to encouraging less experienced rides to get back on their
bikes.
With roughly one bike for every two people in the UK we know that the
capacity exists, we now just need to provide the infrastructure of which
training is a key part.
Paul Rode
Fully accredited National Standards cycle instructor
http://www.rodesafety.com/
Competing interests:
http://www.rodesafety.com/
Competing interests: No competing interests
I am Sports Medicine Physician, professor and co-ordinator of Pedala
Floripa project in the State University of Santa Catarina (UDESC), in
Florianópolis, South Region of Brazil.
I would like to focus my comments to this part of Mr. Wardlaw’s article:
“The health benefits of cycling are so great and the health injuries from
driving so great that not cycling is really dangerous. By telling people
that they need helmets for an activity that for a century has been
regarded as "safe" and in fact has a fine safety record you inevitably
engender the impression that cycling must have become more dangerous than
driving and walking. That deters cycling. That reduces cyclists' presence
on the roads. That increases the risk of death”.
I think the author makes a point with these remarks.
When I first read this article,months ago, it made me think a lot
about my wearing a helmet. I do it, and never had much doubts of doing so,
mostly because I am the project co-ordinator and I think it is my
“obligation” to give the example. But when I see my attitude might not be
helping the cause, although it is protecting my skull, I guess I have to
think it over. At least to give myself a chance of, if not doing so, not
feeling guilty.
I was in Amsterdã, for Velo Mondial, in June 2000. Very few people
wear helmets! Also, people do not wear any special clothes (sportiv) for
cycling!
And while there, one gets the feeling that it should be that way. When
bicycling to work or shopping, one should be wearing the same as when
taking public transport or driving. They show Cycling has to be as simple
as it really is!
Profª Ms. Giselle Noceti Ammon Xavier
State University of Santa Catarina - UDESC
Pedala Floripa project pedalafloripa@hotmail.com
Florianópolis - SC - BRASIL
Hosting the 1rst Latin America Bicycle Conference in 2002 - VELO
TROPICALIS
Competing interests: No competing interests
This is directed at M. Wardlaw who says: don't worry about a
hard shell, the soft foam does all the shock absorbtion. In
fact most of the evidence points to the exact opposite.
Most severe brain injury is caused by either penetration of
the skull or the rotational forces on the brain inside the
skull. The hard shell prevents the former, but a bulky soft
layer makes your head bigger and makes the latter worse. Also
the hard shell makes the head slide on rough surfaces rather
than "grab" the surface and causing those high rotational
forces. Thus the ideal helmet would abandon the bulky
soft padding and just have the hard shell.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Shane Foran (Letters, above) mentions the lurking possibility of evidence suppression and bad science in the statistics which government safety agencies use to
justify various public policies and legislation. When I first read his letter I was skeptical, feeling that this sounded a bit like "conspiracy theory" rhetoric. However, to my chagrin I ran across a blatant instance of just this kind of bad science locally just last week.
One objective out
of 19 listed in a half-million-dollar grant proposal for
"bicycle and pedestrian safety enforcement" from our local
police dept reads:
16) To notify OTS of all "saved by" events involving the use of bicycle
helmets.
OTS is the Statewide Office of Traffic Safety.
Notice the highly filtered collection of statistics here.
The police are to report any incident in which the officer's
subjective judgment during response is that the cyclist's life might have been lost if it were not for a helmet.
The police are not to report any incident in which a cyclist
receives severe head injury or dies despite wearing a helmet, or in which a cyclist not wearing a helmet receives minor or no head injury in a crash. They are only to report "saved by" anecdotes. No medical authority is to be consulted to assess actual injury severity, etc.
These selective reports will then be tallied, county by county, and presented at State governmental levels as proof positive that bike helmets are very, very effective in saving lives. Foran's assertion that real-world data are suppressed and/or highly filtered in official studies now seems quite credible to me.
More info about this peculiar "safety" grant is publicly available. If you doubted Wardlaw's assertion that in the US it is an offence to get in the way of a car, this official document may put your doubts to rest :-)
Competing interests: No competing interests
I am not sure if non-physicians are permitted to respond
in these pages. I am not a physician, and therefore my
response should be discarded if this is a limited professional forum. However, I am that rara avis, a
quotidian cyclist living in the USA, and can comment on
the situation on this side of the pond.
The 'helmet hysteria' which MJW's paper describes is very
much alive in the USA, as is a permanent undercurrent of
anti-bicycle feeling and even anti-bicycle legislation
(such as recent legislation proposed in Montana which
would force cyclists to ride on the wrong side of the
roads, but only when outside city limits; and legislation
proposed in Texas to prohibit cyclists from riding in
groups of three or more on country roads). I know people
here in the US who have trained their children to point
(from the car window, of course) at unhelmeted cyclists
and shout, "There goes a Stupid Person!" Many helmeted, Lycra-clad cyclists in the US will not even acknowledge another cyclist on the road with a wave or a nod, if the other cyclist is not helmeted; apparently they feel that this "irresponsible" behaviour must be punished by social
ostracism.
Assertions that the USA is so car-centric that victims of
motor accidents are blamed, are no exaggeration. Motorists
are very rarely penalized for killing pedestrians or cyclists; only accidents involving other motor vehicles
seem to be taken seriously. As far as I know there is no
project under way to document this glaring inequity in our
legal procedures, but there should be. I heard recently from a fellow member of the Car Free mailing list that a motorist was exonerated after running over and killing a pedestrian in the early hours, because the pedestrian was
not wearing a reflective vest. Even though there was reason to believe that the motorist was speeding at the time, the
victim was blamed for not wearing special technical clothing.
Most Americans I know believe firmly that cycling is
very dangerous and that only wearing a helmet can possibly
ameliorate the danger. Almost no American believes that
riding in a car is dangerous. Parents drive their children (sometimes less than half a mile) to school, rather than let the kids ride bikes. (Recently in my town a child was struck and injured in the parking lot of his own school, in the milling daily "rodeo" of suvs and minivans.)
Cycling clubs and cycling tour
agencies in the US cannot get insurance unless they require
their members/customers to wear helmets. Therefore you cannot tour with any organized group of cyclists in the US unless you accept the helmet requirement. Bike shops will
not let you test ride a bike without wearing a helmet; many shops keep a set of old helmets around for this purpose.
Of course, most safety experts will tell you that old helmets are worthless and should not be used :-) so one
has to wonder.
The hegemony is nowhere more evident than in published images of cycling. There is a tacit but vigorous censorship of any image of an unhelmeted cyclist. You will not find any bike company catalogue, bike poster, bike book,
bike magazine in the US which contains any picture of a cyclist without a helmet on. On the streets you will see
plenty of unhelmed riders, about 50 pct of the total ridership. But you will never see an image of one in print.
I asked a fellow who works for a major bike magazine what
the story is with this very selective publication of images,
and he responded that he had tried to include some pictures
of "ordinary going-to-the-beach" cyclists in a layout, with
picnic basket and no helmets; his boss insisted they
be removed as they "set a bad example, and it was irresponsible to publish them."
All these indicators point to a belief system of extraordinary consistency and force. There is probably stronger consensus among Americans that cycling is dangerous and that helmets are the only remedy, than there is about the existence of God (no matter what the official Pledge of
Allegiance may say).
It is remarkable that a collective conviction of such power and ubiquity has been constructed on what, to me, looks like rather dubious evidence. It also seems to me, after 35 years of cycling in the USA, that cycling skills are indeed in decline. Every day I see cyclists riding the wrong way
in and out of bike lanes; I see cyclists running stop signs
and red lights; sidewalk riding, curb jumping, cutting across four-lane roads without any signal; riding without
lights or reflectors at night; and so on. I do believe that we have created this situation by teaching an entire
generation of riders that the only safety responsibility of a cyclist is to wear a flimsy plastic hat.
This creation of a generation of scofflaw, incompetent riders in turn fulfills the doomsayers' prophecy.
These riders get into trouble by riding stupidly. They
fall off. They crash into light posts and curbs. They
leap out in front of cars. I am not saying that all
cycle/car encounters in the US are the cyclist's fault --
by no means. Bad driving accounts for most of our deaths.
But we do have a very unsafe, untrained, irresponsible generation out there on two wheels getting into more minor
incidents/injuries than I ever remember from my own youth. Each accident confirms the fear-mongering of
the helmeteers, and brings us that much closer to compulsory
legislation.
I write these pessimistic notes partly to confirm some of the predictions, assumptions, and observations aired in
MJW's paper. I would also like to submit a final note of my own, which is that we see here is not an isolated social phenomenon. It is part of a trend dating back several decades, which exalts commerce and consumption over skill or learning. Rather than make a driver's licence a privilege, hard to win and easily lost by bad driving, we have made it a universal
right and then focussed all our technology on making it "safe" for incompetent, irresponsible people to drive cars.
This has inevitably made it very unsafe for everyone outside cars.
We are now applying the same model to bikes. Rather than emphasizing riding skills, obedience to traffic law, and
the other components of good vehicular cycling, we are focussing on a purchasable (and disposable) "quick-fix"
item which any fool can buy and then fondly imagine
him/herself to be "safe". This is very good for the plastics industry and for the helmet manufacturers, and it
serves (if we want to be paranoid) the agenda of the automobile lobby -- by driving cyclists off the roads and making more people rely on cars. But it is not good for
cyclists or for society.
When governments get in on this act and enforce these
foolish quick-fix methods on entire populations it is beyond
inappropriate. It is folly of Swiftian proportion. We have no living social satirists capable of excoriating it with
sufficient verve and venom. I should think that physicians,
of all people, would be exquisitely sensitive to the damage being done to human health and to our long term changes of
survival as a species, by the immoderate expansion of automobile use and dependency. Physicians should also be
more aware than most of the health benefits of cycling for
the individual cyclist, as well as the implicit benefits
reaped by the larger society from "one less car."
I believe it is up to physicians, who stitch back together the human wreckage of car accidents, to speak up about the
relative risks of car travel and bike travel. I hope that you doctors will lead a campaign for real public health measures; not measures designed to pacify auto interests, but measures based on an
accurate assessment of the relative social costs and benefits of cars and bikes.
It is with the greatest interest that I follow this discussion, which I assure you would not be taking place in any reputable forum in the US :-)
I should perhaps note that I have ridden in the US for three decades, unhelmeted, and have never had a serious accident. My total bike-related
injury tally, over 30 years, adds up to a couple of skinned
knees and a bruise or two. But if you listen to most cyclists
(and non-cyclists) in the US, I should be a dribbling vegetable in an intensive care ward by now (I don't exaggerate, this is the kind of rhetoric routinely fielded by the helmeteers). Personal experience tells me that
alertness and riding skill, as well as obedience to the
vehicle code, constitute 90 pct of safety. Personal experience and research tell me that the threat to cyclists comes from an excess of cars, and cars driven too fast and badly. Only by solving this root problem will we make it safe for people to be on our streets outside cars.
I wish you all many miles of healthy, efficient, and above all enjoyable cycling. And I apologize for going on so long.
Competing interests: No competing interests
To add to the author's background on helmet history, there was
another force at play in North America in the 1980's.
Cycling here was traditionally a recreational activity, not a method
of transport. Bicycles were rare on main roads. As cycling advocates
sought to increase the use of bicycles for transportation, it was
necessary to shed the "toy" mentality attached to cycling. The use of
helmets was encouraged by cycling advocacy groups to demonstrate that
cycling was a "serious" activity. Helmet-wearing cyclists could be seen to
be taking measures to enhance their "safety", just like motorists (seat
belts) and motorcyclists (helmets). Unfortunately, this only served to
convince planners, politicians and the general public that cycling was a
dangerous activity, because the serious (knowledgeable) cyclists needed to
wear a helmet every time they ventured onto the road.
With hindsight, it is now obvious that this was a classic case of
shooting oneself in the foot.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Dear Sir - Whilst applauding Malcolm Wardlaw's call for the promotion
of cycling I must take issue with his suggestion that helmets are
dangerous. His analysis of various statistics only emphasises the many
confounding issues in road accident epidemiology.
I myself, as a keen cyclist and as a motorist, have experienced behaviour
in both groups that is likely to lead to accidents and potential serious
injury to (most likely) the cyclist. Yes we need education of both parties
to make cycling safer.
Helmets cannot protect a cyclist from the effects of collision with a
motor vehicle.
I have also had two significant falls from my bicycle during training
runs, unrelated to motor vehicles. Each time I struck my head on the
tarmac sufficiently hard to break the shell of good quality cycling
helmets. I believe that on each occassion the helmet saved me from
potentially serious injury.
Helmets are often uncomfortable especially in warm weather. At least now
they are not unfashionable. I will continue to wear mine and encourage
others to do the same.
Michael Laverick FRCS(Orth)
Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon
Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children
Competing interests: No competing interests
Dear Editor - I read with interest the paper titled (Three lessons
for a better cycling future) by Wardlow A 1. In an attempt to reduce the
fatality of cycling, the author suggests increasing the number of
cyclists in Britain with the hope that this will reduce the traffic speeds
and thus risks to all. The author brings as an example the experience of
the Netherlands and Denmark 2. It concerns me that with an increased
number of cyclists, segregation is almost inevitable. I am aware that the
author also warns about avoiding the segregation as this is associated
with more accidents 2. Besides it is unrealistic comparing the Netherlands
and Denmark experience with Britain, the latter is more populated with
narrower roads and perhaps with an overall more vehicles. Repeated hard
braking and accelerating of drivers trying to reach their home and work on
time, perhaps will increase vehicular accidents. I am sure the author does
agree that the majority of the British drivers do drive within the legal
speed limits for the road. I wonder what was the incidence of vehicular
accidents in the Netherlands or Denmark before and after the increase in
the number of cyclists.
I feel that the cycling routes should be different from driving routes in
order to reduce the number of cycle and vehicular accidents.
References:
1. Wardlow A, Three lessons for a better cycling future. BMJ 2000,
321: 1582. )
2. Franklin J. Cycling skill and its relation to infrastructure and
safety. VeloCity Conference paper, Graz, April 1999.
Ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ quinze/di/VC99.htm.
AA Faraj FRCS(Orth &Tr)
Consultant Orthopedic Surgeon
Airedale District Hospital
Skipton Rd Steeton
Keighley
West Yorkshire BD20 6TD
Competing interests: No competing interests
Reply by the author
Contents
Introduction.
Hard shell helmets.
Are car users vulnerable?
Where did helmets come from?
More cycling must mean safer cycling.
A plea for legislation from Timson, Rivers and Timson.
The barest minimum that the BMA should do.
Introduction
The response to “Three lessons for a better cycling future” was poor.
Just two of the responses contained points worth mentioning. Dr Robert
Arthurson suggests that hard shell helmets would be more effective than
current designs. This is not, in fact, the case, as I shall explain in the
next section. Shane Foran provided a comprehensive review of the
international evidence that seatbelt laws may well kill more people
outside cars than they save inside them, at any rate in the long run.
What I find most disappointing is the failure to grasp the central
message of the paper; that brand image is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If
cyclists and doctors tell people that cycling is dangerous, then cycling
will get more dangerous. Why? Because the danger image deters all but
diehards, the adventurous and the casual. Less cycling means more danger.
Cautious, gentle, risk-averse people will stop cycling (if they have not
already). The faith that cyclecraft is a skill worth acquiring will
disappear and thus ability will decline. This is already happening. I was
shocked on visiting Cambridge last summer to observe the dismally low
standard of cyclecraft. When I last rode there in the early eighties, the
tradition of common sense still prevailed and standards were reasonably
good. At the risk of appearing arrogant, I am rarely impressed by the
standard of cycling I observe anywhere in this country nowadays. But much
of that is the natural outcome of tipping buckets of negative propaganda
over cycling year in and year out.
Brand image is a self-fulfilling prophecy: tell people that cycling
is safe and it will get safer, as more are encouraged to give it a try and
it becomes more widely appreciated and respected.
Hard shell helmets
My own interest in helmets was kindled when I began consumer research
after having decided to buy a helmet. Like Dr Arthurson, I assumed that
the old style hard-shell helmets were more effective than the fashionable
contemporary unshelled helmets. On finding hard shells were unavailable, I
wondered if standards had slipped in order that helmets would have mass
appeal. I suspected that this might explain some of the enormous
difference between case-control trials and real-world experience, which by
this time I was uncovering in my researches.
I received advice from a highly knowledgeable cyclist, who had worn a
helmet since the late eighties and had been following the issue for even
longer. I felt his advice would be trustworthy. He assured me that the
robustness of hard shell helmets was largely an illusion. Experience had
shown that the expanded foam liner did all the work of shock absorption,
not the outer shell. With better moulding techniques, the inner foam could
be made thicker and more ventilated and the outer shell dispensed with,
barring a thin shield to prevent scuffing. Because of pressure from
various authorities, later helmets are designed to meet more stringent
criteria. Whereas the hard-shell helmets were certified for a 10 mph
impact, modern helmets must meet the European CE standard (12 mph) or the
Snell B90/B95 standard (14 mph).
It is important not to get distracted by the traditional purpose of a
helmet - to deflect small projectiles, such as bullets, shrapnel, hockey
pucks or tools dropped from a great height. In a road accident, the
cyclist’s head is itself the projectile. Experience reveals that the head
nearly always hits a blunt surface, in which circumstance any benefit will
only accrue from impact absorption, not from deflection.
I would add one caveat not mentioned by my helmet-wearing adviser.
There is evidence that a helmet may sometimes worsen brain injuries by
increasing the risk of sharp rotation on impact. Current helmet designs
are larger than hard shell helmets and more prone to catch the surface
during a glancing impact - one suspects that the newer helmets are more
likely to impart rotational brain injuries, but I have no solid data.
In summary, it is doubtful that hard shell helmets would, overall,
perform better than current designs, which must meet more stringent test
criteria.
Are car users vulnerable?
If a collision occurs between an bicycle and a car, the cyclist will
come off worse. This is the basis of the common assertion that cyclists
are vulnerable road users.
But how much consolation is that to a driver, who, like a cyclist, is
very unlikely to collide with a bicycle? 75% of serious car user
casualties are due to collisions with a motor vehicle. Although the
equivalent figure for cyclists is supposedly about 90%, in fact many
serious rider-only crashes are not reported to the police, so the actual
figure is probably not that much different from that for car users.
What is vulnerability, objectively speaking? If cyclists really were
vulnerable, I would expect to make two observations: 1. that the risk of
death in a cycling accident (ie: fatalities ÷ all casualties, the accident
lethality) is markedly higher than in a car accident, and 2. that car
users have gained a safety advantage over cyclists as more protective
features have been built into vehicles. So let us now check to see if all
this is so.
Taking 1998 figures, the lethality of all car accidents was 0.8% and
the lethality of cycling accidents was 0.7%. Yes, you did read that
correctly, you are less likely to be killed in a cycling accident than in
a car accident. What does this really mean? If you are cycling and there’s
a collision with a car, you will come off worse, but, if you’re going to
be in a traffic accident, you’re better off being on a bicycle than in a
car, because you are less likely to be killed. I assume the reason for
this is that cycling accidents typically involve much lower speeds than
driving accidents.
The lethality of accidents has fallen since the peak year of 1970.
Taking the three years 1970-72, the lethality of car accidents was 1.8%,
so in the last three decades car safety has improved by 56%. The lethality
of cycling accidents was 1.6% then, so bicycle safety has improved by 57%.
Yes, you did read that correctly, the bicycle has got safer faster than
the car has in the last thirty years. Despite all the billions spent on
crumple zones, air bags, side impact protection, all the effort to cajole
and compel use of seatbelts, time has proved the thin air around a bicycle
to be a more effective safety feature.
So much for cyclists being vulnerable.
Where did helmets come from?
Given the foregoing analysis, it is puzzling that the cycle helmet
issue has got so far. I believe the answer lies within the world of
cycling, primarily. I would cite “Richard’s Bicycle Book” as a prime root
cause of the enormous misperception of the risks of cycling. Most who have
more than a casual interest in cycling will have a copy, I should think.
Here is the archetypal car-hating activist, so scathing of the carcentric
society, yet so peculiarly appeasing towards the threat he perceived from
it: always wear a helmet, he piously advises (this was in 1975). The hated
demon of the motor traffic looms vast and malevolent over the life of
Richard Ballantine. Pages and pages are devoted to convincing you that
utility cycling is about as safe as taking a B17 to Regensburg. I daresay
there were other authors whose feelings of persecution led them to
hysterify the risks of cycling, and to wear a helmet, but Ballantine’s
work is probably the most widely read. In my opinion, he probably did more
than anyone else to make it fashionable to bay and howl about the
“dangers” from motor traffic. It is hardly surprising that the road safety
establishment was soon onto the job - you lot need helmets. Years of this
process has resulted in the public - both cycling and non-cycling - having
developed a greatly exaggerated estimate of the risks when cycling.
Irrational fears can be very deep-seated and difficult to remidy. Consider
the public attitude to radiation……
There were cultural factors too. Helmets first appeared in the USA,
where there is more of a tradition of helmets in sport, and where the
society is so carcentric it is practically a criminal offense to be
injured by a car. Australia was foremost in promoting helmets, pursuing a
self-styled tradition of being first in the world to compel use of safety
equipment. After leading to mandate motorcycle helmets in 1960, and
seatbelts in 1973, vanity just had to be gratified over cycle helmets, as
it was with the state laws of 1989-92.
More cycling must mean safer cycling
It is impossible that cycling would not get safer if it became more
popular. How can I be so sure? Simple arithmetic. At present about 1% of
personal mileage in the UK is by bicycle, while 4% of road deaths are
cyclists. If 25% of mileage were by bike, would 100% of fatalities be
cyclists? As cycle use rises, the risk per cyclist must fall - and that
will happen without any need for vast changes in street architecture. As I
showed in my paper, the safest place for cyclists is on the road in the
traffic. Segregation has not made walking safe - arguably it has made it
more dangerous, by allowing high urban traffic speeds to remain acceptable
- so why should segregation make cycling safer?
I foresee three problems arising, which must be dealt with
effectively to support any serious revival of cycling.
1. Bad cycling. The public view of cycling is understandably negative
because of the irritating antics of the average cyclist: ignoring red
lights, even at Pelican Crossings, riding unlit at night, general lack of
skill. There has to be Police sanction to control such behaviour, but
there must also be promotion of cyclecraft as a personal skill worth
mastering.
2. Bad driving. Bad driving by private motorists is not a significant
problem for the competent cyclist, except at peak times, when there can be
detrioration of behaviour. It’s not that they’re all perfect, but the
mistakes tend to be predictable. Commercial traffic is another matter,
coaches, skip lorries, white vans and dump trucks come to mind as being
vehicles the cyclist does not like to hear rumbling up behind. These
vehicles are likely to be driven in a more cavalier manner. On the
occasions when criminal negligence leads to death, the driver receives a
token punishment suitable for a trivial misdemeanour, hardly befitting the
taking of human life. The death of Bruce Bursford last year highlighted
the problem. Although it is certainly not cyclists alone who are
suffering, this failure of the justice system is a deterrent to cycling.
Who wants to take the risk, knowing their grievance will be dismissed as a
triviality if they are maimed by a commercial driver who didn’t care?
3. Bad psychology. It is widely observed that helmet promotion deters
cycling, but I don’t think the real reason is widely appreciated. Although
helmets do lead to hysterification of the risks, a more potent deterrent
may be that helmets are (accurately) perceived as being deferent, even
submissive, objectifying a hierarchy that puts the motor vehicle at the
top and the bicycle at the bottom. How many drivers will be willing to
demote themselves in this way? Cyclists who wear a helmet and lighthouse
jacket may be applauded by safety campaigners, but they are merely styling
themselves as roadgame. Little wonder one helmeted commuter excited the
wolf-pack instincts of some nasty little Glaswegian ruffians….. what do
you expect? We are a competitive, predatory society. Either you fight your
corner or you go under. Meekness, appeasement, deference are all attitudes
associated with losers. If the cycling community had a battery of
rapacious lawyers just pining for someone to whack a cyclist, I think you
can take it the esteem in which the public regard the bicycle would rise.
As it is, cyclists are seen as the rabbits of society. Burrows never made
a rabbit’s life safe and helmets will not make cycling safer, let alone
more appealing.
A plea for legislation by Timson, Rivers and Timson
The following plea for legislation was received by the author from
safety campaigners Timson, Rivers and Timson.
“As a society we are tired of the waste of lives through risk
compensation by helmeted cyclists. In a widely ignored paper published in
the British Medical Journal, M. Wardlaw showed that cyclist fatalities
increased by 25% as helmets became popular in the UK, against the trends
of improving safety for other classes of road user. Given that helmets
have still not been taken up by the majority of cyclists, it is clear that
the increased risk of death due to helmet use is substantial for the
individual.
“It is futher well established that the health benefits of regular
cycling are significant - similar to giving up smoking - yet these
benefits cannot be realised due to the fear of motor traffic engendered in
the non-cycling population by the sight of helmeted cyclists.
“We recognise that those who now wear a helmet object to being
compelled to ride bareheaded, because this appears to pass the blame for
injury from the victim to the perpetrator, but all road users have
responsibilities as well as rights.
“Legislation to ban the use of helmets for road riding would thus be
justified by the saving of life and the immense benefit to public health
that would result. We, the undersigned, submit our plea.”
Timson, Rivers and Timson.
The barest minimum that the BMA should do.
If the BMA is serious about realising the significant benefits of
more cycling, there are several measures that have to be taken. There are
no ifs or buts about what follows; this is the barest minimum you can get
away with, if you are serious.
1. Stop promoting helmets. It was always a dubious practice to
promote helmets for road riding when they are not intended to provide
protection in a collision with a car. To continue to promote them now that
their negligible effectiveness is known, and after strong circumstantial
evidence has appeared that risk compensation is increasing deaths, would
be professional negligence.
2. Set the risks of road cycling honestly in the context of the risks
when walking and driving. Using suggestion to exaggerate the risks in
order to cajole cyclists to wear helmets hardly counts as candid health
promotion.
3. Promote the positive aspects of cycling, in particular the health
benefits. If Joe/Joelle Public knew that regular cycling would improve
their health by as much as giving up smoking, that might persuade them to
give it a go - and to give up the dratted weed too.
There was a time when teenagers could pedal around the neighbourhood
as readily as adults now drive around the neighbourhood. No one thought
there was any need to restrict the freedom of teenagers. I know this for
certain, because I was lucky enough to grow up when it was still the case.
As a 16 year old with a nice ten speed tourer, I was entirely free to
pedal off for miles and miles into the hills around Glasgow. These
expeditions are some of my happiest memories of youth. If you ask anyone
over the age of 35 about their childhood, a substantial number will recall
explorations with friends on their bikes as amongst their most enjoyable
recollections. Modern teenagers cannot explore on their bikes. Modern
childhood is 17 years of confinement ended by a licence and a keyring.
Modern youth do not have the slightest conception of what it is to roam
off for miles into the countryside, entirely self-contained under their
own power. I would not be too hasty to dismiss this kind of thing as
“touchy-feely”. I wonder how many of the various new psychological
conditions of children are due to simply to frustration, thwarted
Wanderlust, lack of stimulus, lack of adventure. Modern teenagers do not
even know what an effective bicycle is, since the craze for MTBs has swept
away the old tradition of the utility bicycle. Do you not think it is a
responsibility of adult society to preserve joy and freedom for future
generations of children? Is this an adult society?
Mass media coverage of the annual BMA bike ride setting off without a
helmet or lighthouse jacket in sight would probably do more for public
health than the last ten years of anti-smoking campaigns. Do you want it
to happen, or don’t you?
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re: Three lessons for a better cycling future
Cycling is elemental, the levers and linearity of the human body connected to a machine that is skeletal. On the openness of the road, cycling at speed becomes a fusion of the elements. Spinning in its vortex are the obliquities of the wind, the variation of the road, a movement that fastens plunging limbs to the clean, rotary completeness of wheels. Legs piston up a steep hill, the calves like animations of steel, a Swiss watch with the casing removed.
Great Britain at the Olympics over these few years has experienced an ascension to the very zenith of cycling success. It seems from the sacks of medals that have been collected that this cycling supremacy has materialised overnight. Mainstream media has little explained the twenty-year crusade undertaken by “British Cycling” to levitate the bike from a minor aside to the glimmering centrepiece of a sporting nation.
Progress in cycling over these twenty years begins with the gold by Boardman at the 1992 Olympics in Spain. Before that win, there had been the seventy-year hiatus since 1920, the last time when Britain had gained a cycling victory within the maelstrom of the Olympiad. And before 1920, there had been the twelve years since 1908, the occasion when British cycling golds were doughtily won when the Olympics first came to the United Kingdom.
If the forty years from 1950 to 1990 were a test-bed for running, 1990 to 2010 has been the era in which Britain has applied the same native ingenuity to the challenge of high-calibre cycling. The national fascination with athleticism slanted away from distance running towards the potential of the bike. Alpine routes in France have recently been climbed by Britain in the victor’s yellow jersey and two summers ago the Olympic velodrome thrummed with the exultant wheels of Laura Trott and Victoria Pendleton of Team GB. And there is he who ripples like quicksilver. Few empower a bike with quite the same panache. Mark Cavendish of Great Britain, the fastest road cyclist in the world, has the ability, after hours of cycling, to wind up spectacularly to 1600 watts, with a further inflection to a scorching 2000 watts for the finishing yards. The Manx Missile, after pedalling for a hundred miles, generates twice as much power output as a club cyclist might on a pair of fresh, acid-free legs.
Balancing out the 2012 Tour de France win on the open road was the flair expressed in the cage of the Olympic velodrome. Two years ago at London 2012, the line of medals was punctuated with two-wheeled golds, eclipsing the cycling triumphs of four years earlier at the 2008 Olympics in China. Such results can only reflect the continuing vitality of the country. Behind the emotive glories on the podium has been that twenty-year story within the interiors of British Cycling which is reducible to its component parts : an inspired management which used lottery-based funding to judiciously optimise a crop of athletic vigour. From the sonic boom of the mighty, tongue-testing letter that is “D,” it has been a twenty-year continuum of Dedication.
The most valuable consequence of the success of Britain’s elite cyclists has been a revival of the culture of the bike in everyday life. Aerodynamically entubed in lycra, a cyclist earnestly pedalling up a slope is a conspicuous sight on British roads and particularly so in rural areas. With an obesity epidemic in process, a renaissance of the bicycle in the first movements of the twenty-first century is precisely the type of antidote that is needed. There remains, however, the spoilsport of traffic. British roads have become shoals of cars, as the volume of drivers and car ownership has increased over the same twenty years in which cycling has progressed to Olympic consummation. This is an island nation with high density living. The melee of traffic in England is such that the cyclist is vulnerable on country lanes along which, not so long ago, a car would have swished by once every hour.
The provision of almost a hundred million pounds by the government last year for cycling thoroughfares should encourage the use of the bicycle especially for short-distance commuting in the city. Although London has by needs adopted the bicycle with a pace-setting fervour – there are now cycle highways – the remaining nodal cities of the country linger far behind. Town-planners as well as employers still have much to do for a nation that is keen to cycle. Another appealing premise is the creation of well-lit circuits in towns and cities which can be used all year round for the purposes of social as well as solitary cycling, the equivalent of floodlit grounds for football in the colder months. These accommodations for the cyclist will assuage the worry of road accidents, often the main factor that prevents large numbers of people from taking up the bike.
With these trends of the last decade there has also been a renewed interest in the effect of cycling on human physiology. Cycling, for instance, usually means a lower expenditure of calories than running because the bike carries the athlete. On studying the vectors of body weight across a bike, seventy percent of the mass is found transmitted through the saddle and handlebars, with the rest impinging on the pedals. Compared to running, the glaring advantage of floating cloud-like on the engineering marvel that is the bicycle wheel is that the joints are spared from striking the ground, a factor relevant for exercising persons who are significantly overweight.
Past the advantage of joint protection, cycling simply offers the sublimity of the wheel. Hence for many there is the allure of flying quickly on a finely wrought racing machine that has a gazelle-like slenderness in its construction. It reminds one of the Royal Air Force pilots from the Second World War who would glance at their machines and quip, “You don’t get into a Spitfire – you put it on.”
Competing interests: No competing interests