I didn't mean to turn this into a short thread, but once I started ranting ...
So here it is, on one page: skywriter.blue/@georgemonbi...

I'll be getting my bus pass this year, so I'm old enough to remember when Labour (Scottish and down in Englandshire where I come from) were actually worth voting for other than tactically to keep the Scum out, if you can imagine such a thing!

... who can miss the point and reframe it as "I don't need to ride perfectly when biking to school so my councillor doesn't need political courage to build in systems where I can make mistakes *because I wear a Magic Plastic Hat and a special Loud Coat!*"

Though there's also the folk on $500 bikes taking 10 minutes longer to get in and not having to spend 10 minutes showering and changing... 😉

Blimey.

I think the pink door should be congratulated for holding the contents at bay. It's probably actually a white door that looks pink because of seepage from the inside.

Cyclist moving through mountainous scenery in Scotland with no obvious shelter in sight

"According to the App we can stop and get wet here or keep going and get wet a bit further along instead...." 🤔😉

If they made a serious difference to serious head injury then serious injury rates would go down as helmet use goes up.

It's failed to do that anywhere we've looked.

I'd love to be significantly safer with a light, cheap hat but the reality is they don't do much 🤷‍♂️

The most common cause of TBI is trips and falls. Look it up! For under 65s it's car crashes., so if TBI must be avoided at all costs why not wear a helmet in a car?

The reasons we come up with are rationalisations, not logical reasoning.

The fear of TBI on bikes is culture, not the actual risk.

Not as different as most folk think. It's not how fast you're going, it's how fast you stop, typically the vertical component which is from gravity. Horizontal speed loses you skin but doesn't break bones because you tend to slide.

That's not a rational response to risk of TBI, it's a cultural response to a perception that cycling is particularly productive of very serious TBI.

In actuality your chances of TBI are in the same ballpark on foot or in a car, but culture says those are fine without a lid.

And TBI, whether minor or totally life changing, is not particularly more prevalent in cyclists than e.g. pedestrians or drivers (look up the figures), so if you're really concerned about it then it doesn't make much sense to only wear a helmet for cycling.
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TBI is a very emotive term. Headway (UK head injury charity) reckon ~95% of it is from things like banging your head on a low door, getting into a car etc. you see stars for a few minutes and sit down, but you're okay. That's still TBI.
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Football players, of course, tend to hit their heads more regularly than everyday cyclists. In an activity where hitting one's head happens every couple of decades or so the desirability of a helmet is very different from if it's quite likely on a weekly basis.

So any activity where you might hit your head (say, walking through low doorways, walking on slippery pavements) should involve a helmet? I note trips and falls cause far more head injury than bike crashes.

If not, why not?

Is it bait? It's meant to show that there's a tendency to indulge in confirmation bias if you hit your head wearing a helmet in a culture that says they're "essential". It's not uncommon in many activities to hit one's head and wish you hadn't, but typically to not take up helmet using afterwards.

Cycle helmets There is no justification for making helmet-wearing compulsory: it could undermine levels of cycle use and, in any case, the effectiveness of helmets is far from clear.

www.cyclinguk.org/briefing/cyc... is an evidence based briefing from the UK's primary cyclist membership group. They've been on top of "the helmet debate" for decades now, it's worth a read.

I don't want to put anyone off using a helmet if they want (again, look at my profile pic) but I do want to persuade people there are far more important things to worry about than lightweight polystyrene hats, and that nobody should get hassle for choosing not to bother with them.

Look at serious head rates for cyclists after wearing rates are pushed up and they don't clearly come down anywhere you look.
The various hospital studies suggesting great effect give highly varying (and hence unreliable) results that have never been borne out in the Real World.

My wife flipped her cargo trike at speed a couple of weeks ago. Hit her head, no helmet. She said "ouch" and got a bump, it was fine after a couple of days. Her knee is still not right and she probably wishes she'd been wearing kneepads. But won't be wearing kneepads next time...

They're designed for, and can be expected to mitigate or prevent, minor injuries
But minor injuries are, well, minor, and don't impact gross road safety. That's not the same as saying they're pointless (look at my profile pic!), but does mean they're not a significant public health intervention.

Most people only go to the doctor or the pharmacy if there's something wrong. It's normal, but it's not everyday normal.

Cycling in NL is everyday normal like driving in the US and UK is. Special safety clothes not used, even though/some/ people die and are maimed every day doing it.

Let people decide for themselves without pressure, and concentrate effort on stuff we know works.
The Netherlands is your living lab of what works. Because they do what works cycling is a normal everyday thing. People tend not to associate "normal everyday thing" with PPE, that's for dangerous shit.

You're making it a stigma to not wear a helmet in that case.

Everyone (more or less) wears where there is a mandate. Ridership drops where there is a mandate, everywhere, be that legal, cultural or both.

But they're apparently irrelevant in the safety big picture, so why is that important? And if it's seen as important then people think that lightweight protection for mitigation of minor injuries to some parts of the head has magically absolved any need to do stuff that really works, but costs money

The other big negative is illustrated in this very thread: people spend so much bandwidth venting about them that attention is drawn from the very things that are proven to work.

Everyone you put off cycling in a motor-centric culture is a public health own goal.
Does that happen? There's not real smoking gun evidence but for example, I just looked at a paper from NZ that found that 20% more school kids would be more likely to ride without their helmet law.

Cycle helmets There is no justification for making helmet-wearing compulsory: it could undermine levels of cycle use and, in any case, the effectiveness of helmets is far from clear.

It's the unintended side effects of putting folk off cycling that's the main reason Active Travel England and Cycling Scotland (government agencies) don't push them, and not does the UK's main membership cycle outfit, Cycling UK. CUK have a good briefing, www.cyclinguk.org/briefing/cyc...

Encouraging them is a public health intervention, and if you're going to do that you need proper evidence it really helps and has no unwanted side effects.
Evidence for this is a lot patchier than most people think (I've been looking at in tedious detail for over 25 years).

Few people are thrown from cars thanks to seatbelts. They tend to hit their heads on things inside the cars or bits of the car coming to meet them.
There would be no downside to wearing them, or (like racing drivers) flameproof suits.
But culture tells you driving is "safe";is why not.