Should I wear a helmet?

LCC believes cyclists should be able to choose whether to wear a helmet or not. This is because the evidence that helmets increase safety is inconclusive (visit www.cyclehelmets.org for more information), whereas they have been shown to reduce the number of people who cycle, which sadly increases danger to cyclists.

Helmets do not prevent cyclists from being involved in a crash, and making cycle helmet wearing compulsory is often seen as a substitute for taking concrete measures to reduce road danger - for example by improving street design and improving driver behaviour. In Holland, where they have the safest streets in the world, cycle helmets are not compulsory.

The LCC believes that promoting compulsory wearing of cycle helmets is a distraction from the real issues of road safety and responsible cycling – which LCC are actively campaigning on.


Replies

The LCC attitude about cycling helmets is rather a childish one and is reminiscent of the attitude towards car safety belts in the 60's & 70's, when it was erroneously & foolishly thought that wearing a safety belt would lull the driver &/or occupants into a false sense of security and thereby, somehow, causing accidents. I'm horrified whenever I see a cyclist without a helmet on their head.

Indeed, wearing a cycle safety helmet will not prevent an accident, just like wearing a car safety belt will not prevent an accident, nor will it lull cyclists into false sense of security and somehow cause an accident. However, like car safety belts, in the unfortunate event of an accident, wearing a cycle safety helmet WILL help reduce the severity of accident injury. (A friend of mine who had just started out on a bicycle ride had a serious accident. Had she not been wearing a helmet at the time, she would have been killed.)

I see lots of cyclists, with and without helmets. Having spoken to non-helmet wearing cyclists about the dangers to which they are exposing themselves, they have then stated that they would immediately purchase a helmet. To suggest that making wearing a helmet mandatory would put people off from buying a bicycle is utter nonsense!

Please, please, bring your thinking in line with most other civilised countries round the world and encourage cyclists to wear helmets. Then go one step further and start a campaign to make wearing a cycle helmet a legal and mandatory requirement whilst cycling.

Yours sincerely,

TheCyclist

This post was edited by TheCyclist at 06:34pm 04 Jul 2012.

Dear TheCyclist, I concur with just about every word you have written.

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