'Cycling body withdraws support for events that encourage the use of helmets'

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'Cycling body withdraws support for events that encourage the use of helmets'

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Started 12 years ago by chdot
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gembo
Member

Maybe putting a helmet on makes you take more risks, maybe it doesn't? But risk taking helmet wearers, non-risk taking helmet wearers and non-risk taking non-helmet wearers are the three other categories that need to be counted in addition to the risk taking non-helmet wearing cyclist that the general public notice (often without lights, wearing flp flops, jumping a red light - in the popular imagination)

Actually, I should keep helmet on all the time, I was in my garden this morning and bent down to get at some weeds and cracked my head off a hoop of wire that someone long ago stuck in the wall, maybe to hold a plant pot?mnow mildly concussed with nice graze on the forehead

Posted 12 years ago #
remberbuck
Member

I don't dislike Ian Walker's work, I think the description of it as "delightful" is very apt. What I do dislike is it being used as an authority that it does not merit, nor probably was not intended.

My general point is that it was wrong for Spokes to slur, or allow themselves to be reported as slurring, part of the cycling world. In this they have been naive, I have used other words, and have done harm. I cannot see how any form of words, regardless of how tortuous the construction, can get them out of this.

Insto, I am happy to accept the correction of "absolutely no evidence" to "absolutely no clear evidence".

On your last paragraph, I don't know if I agree wth your general point. All I do know from 18 years of commuting through Edinburgh is that if I started to rank risk taking by gender, age, helmet wearing or who has a Halfords bike, then I would end up making a mistake.

Posted 12 years ago #
Greenroofer
Member
Walking through Morningside today...
- Number of children seen riding a bicyle or scooter: 7
- Number of above wearing a helment: 7
- Number of above wearing a helmet incorrectly (too small, wrong position, straps too loose etc): 5
Posted 12 years ago #
wee folding bike
Member

Rember,

Ok, let's try again. Why do you think it is lacking in merit?

Posted 12 years ago #
gembo
Member

Apparently in Ian Walker's study black cars were more likely to pass cyclists leaving sufficient space compared with cars of other colours.. The research is fine, generalising from it is more problematic.

Posted 12 years ago #
wee folding bike
Member

Could these black cars have been Skodas?

Posted 12 years ago #
gembo
Member

Don't think make of car was recorded? Shame given our notorious anti BMW bias on this forum.

I often think when someone drives past me in exemplary manner that they are most likely to be a cyclist themselves?

Posted 12 years ago #
stiltskin
Member

Not sure about that. Some of the worst passes I've ever had come from cars with a bike strapped to the roof...

Posted 12 years ago #
gembo
Member

Mountain bikes or road bikes?

Posted 12 years ago #
remberbuck
Member

WFB, Gembo answers the point well.

It's an account of what someone did and that's fine. That's all. It's not evidence and there is a difference. And trying to base policy on such foundations is ... well, weak.

Posted 12 years ago #
wee folding bike
Member

remer,

So is that as sophisticated as your critique gets on this one then?

Posted 12 years ago #
gembo
Member

With walker's case study data it is as valid to conclude that making everyone drive black cars would increase safety as it is to conclude that wearing a helmet increases risk. The study is fine but it is presumably intended to make you think in more detail rather than draw any definitive conclusions about anything.

Posted 12 years ago #
Instography
Member

That's unfair. Research often finds multiple relationships that are statistically significant, some of which are real and some of which are spurious. The analyst's job is not to trawl for significant differences but to build a plausible narrative where significant relationships can be inferred as real and perhaps causal relationships.

Sad as it will sound, for a laugh, I once took 30,000 records from the Scottish Household Survey, assigned the cases to their signs of the zodiac and wrote a report on variations by star sign. All of the differences were statistically significant (p < 0.01) but all of them were spurious. Just because I could find significant relationships that were horse shit, doesn't invalidate the household survey.

I haven't read Walker's research but just because there's a spurious relationship with the colour of the car it doesn't necessarily follow that the other relationships are also invalid. So, Gembo, your statement is incorrect. You could conclude that the car colour is spurious while also concluding that the other relationships are evidence of something.

Posted 12 years ago #
stiltskin
Member

Ian Walker himself says that his research doesn't prove anything. It was one bloke riding a bike on the same bit of road. There are a whole load of experimental errors that could have played a part & even if accurate it still doesn't tell us that wearing a helmet increases the danger becuase of the large number of other factors involved.

I notice that nobody is quite so keen to embrace his finding that riding in primary also results in closer passes....

Posted 12 years ago #
Instography
Member

Sure, that's why I said I hadn't read his research. It was a comment about research in general.

Posted 12 years ago #
Dave
Member

Not at all, I think that chimes perfectly with my experience. Riding further out means there's less space left and on average passes will be much closer.

However, riding further out replaces thoughtless passes with intentional ones, that's the value.

Posted 12 years ago #
gembo
Member

Insto you show what we have to be wary of. In a study with 30,000 sources of data you can have statistical significance almost because of the sheer size of the data, but the findings might be meaningless. On the other hand, with Ian Walker's data which as cited has one person cycling in Bristol and one other location ? You have a finding which some have found very meaningful (risk increase from helmet) but a similar amount of data about black cars.

Posted 12 years ago #
stiltskin
Member

Whaddya mean Dave? It's the thought that counts? :)

I don't regard intentional close passes being any safer than accidental ones. Anger makes people make rash decisions & it still doesn't allow for misjudgement as the red mist descends.

Posted 12 years ago #
RJ
Member

I hadn't picked up on this (from the Evening News piece):

<quote>Spokes says it has spoken out about the issue because new powers devolved to the Scottish Government meant it could pass a law making the wearing of helmets compulsory, and because there had been an increase in events where participants had to wear helmets.</quote>

Which would explain the timing.

Posted 12 years ago #
crowriver
Member

Which would explain the timing.

Precisely. Also it was only last year that a private member's bill was put to the Northern Ireland Assembly making helmets compulsory. Luckily it did not gain the support of the main parties and ran out of time, but it shows the risk is there of Scotland "leading the way" on the issue...

Posted 12 years ago #
Instography
Member

So not quite so naive. More pre-emptive.

Posted 12 years ago #
chdot
Admin

"
Spokes says it has spoken out about the issue because new powers devolved to the Scottish Government meant it could pass a law making the wearing of helmets compulsory
"

There's actually quite a lot of detail in original Bulletin -

http://www.spokes.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/pall.pdf

But I don't think that possibility is mentioned.

Posted 12 years ago #
Instography
Member

Just reading the 2012 Scotland Act (life in the fast lane) and can't see where it gives the Scottish Parliament that kind of authority.

Posted 12 years ago #
chdot
Admin

Can you see anything about drink driving or speed limits?

Posted 12 years ago #
Instography
Member

There are specific powers to prescribe drink driving limits and about speed limits although it's a tough read because most of it seems to be amendments to the wording of UK acts. Searching for things that might lead to a general competence over cycling or road safety produces nothing.

Posted 12 years ago #
Instography
Member

Just been reading Ian Walker's website and looking for signs that he thinks his research is an amusing, tongue-in-cheek bit of quasi-academic fluff unworthy of serious consideration. I'm struggling to find it. Far from seeing it as "an account of something someone did", he seems to take it quite seriously. I can't see where he says it "doesn't prove anything" but then I haven't come across a researcher who said that their research was the last word.

@Remerbuck. You seem to doubt the entire notion of risk compensation. Would that be a correct interpretation?

Posted 12 years ago #
Nelly
Member

As always when these things are mooted, as well as us I hear a collective groan among the police - how exactly could they police this sensibly?

Back on topic(ish) Was out with friends for a run through east lothian today, I am the only one who goes lidless (i still commute with a helmet) sometimes - and as I explained to a mate when passed at 60+mph by a 4x4, a helmet wont really help if that vehicle rear ends you.

However, as chdot said earlier - its all personal choice, and the only reason sportives demand helmets is (I imagine) because their insurers demand it.

Posted 12 years ago #
gembo
Member

We have mooted several times that the insistence on helmets might be linked to insurers but no one has produced such evidence.

is the other issue - Should Spokes have spoken out about this now? Other UK parliaments have looked at compulsion and there is a suggestion that Spokes are being pre- emptive in case we try to lead the way. alternatively, they could have scanned the horizon carefully, kept their powder dry and intervened if such a measure was consulted on. they are going to have to do that anyway, indeed the publicity around it might cause some opportunist politician with a sudden interest in the matter to go for a private members bill or similar.

Posted 12 years ago #
Nelly
Member

Sorry gembo, was late when I posted that, should have caveated that I have no real idea why some sportives make those demands - but insurance might be one reason.

Another possibility is that the organisers "worry" that to not make helmets mandatory comes across as approving of not wearing one, and dont want to be seen in that camp!

Very confusing to new/returning cyclists, thats for sure.

Posted 12 years ago #
wee folding bike
Member

Guy Chapman specifically says the UCI were not pressurised by insurers:

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/wiki/Cycle_helmet#Helmet_regulations_in_cycling_sport

although he doesn't have a reference for that you could probably ask him.

I suspect sponsorship was the main driver here and all the MAMILs who want to look like their heroes will have to buy a hat for the Robocop look or if they want to enter a race at club level. More sales of insulation material.

Chapman also notes that since they were made compulsory things have not got safer but the sample size is quite small.

SPOKES may just have felt it was a good idea to challenge assumptions.

I'm not sure how it benefits a politician to go for this measure. The LibDem lady from the south of England did not reply to my email. The guy from Cumbria a few years ago wanted measures brought in because a tanker hit him on the head when he was a kid.

Posted 12 years ago #

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