Over-egging the helmet argument

Yet more evidence here that the effectiveness of helmets in preventing injury is vastly overstated by the pro-helmet lobby.

This rider suffers serious head injuries during a race despite wearing a helmet.

It is possible, of course, that the helmet was already damaged, but the rider has made the cardinal mistake of not securing it properly - the straps are nowhere to be seen.

Whatever the case, though, the incident - which you can see in gory detail on YouTube - is clear evidence against those seeking to promote mandatory helmet use.

It's Shout Again time on Radio 4

BBC Radio 4's Law in Action ran a piece this week on cyclists and the law.

It had me shouting at Joshua Rozenberg's lazily opinionated anti-cyclist ramble (cyclists all think the law doesn't apply to them, cycling is dangerous etc) and MP Andrea Leadsom's aims to bring in a new offence of causing death by dangerous cycling.

Thanks to the BBC's Shout Again facility, you can hear it for the next few days - the relevant bit starts at 21:00.

Rozenberg referred to the infamous 2007 Rhiannon Bennett case, where the unfortunate teenager was knocked down and killed by a 'speeding' cyclist . Just like the tabloids' frothing reports of the incident, he didn't mention that the young woman had been drinking, or that the collision may have actually taken place on the road, or that 'speeding' meant '17mph'.

(Dangerous on a pavement yes - but hardly on a road. And play this game: switch the circumstances of the Bennett case. Imagine a cyclist who has been drinking with his friends in the park. He then wobbles on, or possibly off, the pavement. A car doing 17mph in a 30mph limit collides with the cyclist, probably on the road, having shouted 'Move over, I'm not stopping'. The cyclist, who was not wearing a helmet, falls off and later dies from a head injury. Put that to most people and they'd say it's clearly the cyclist's fault.)

The reactions of Bennett's parents are understandable. As are those of the relatives of Eilidh Cairns, the experienced and confident London cyclist killed by an HGV driver with defective eyesight. The man responsible, Joao Lopes, was fined £200 and got three points on his licence. He continued driving, and is now being questioned by the police in connection with the death of a pedestrian in Marylebone Road in June.

Compare that to the punishment received by Bennett's killer, who was fined £2,200, and it's hard to see how - as Rozenberg's glib introduction to the radio piece suggests - cyclists are 'getting an easy ride' from the law.

The whole question of pavement cycling is trickier than it looks, as law'n'cycling blogger Joren Knibbe explains. He's the one rolled out in the programme as 'representing the cyclist', but it's all a bit clunky - it seems the programme makers, and Rozenberg, don't really have much idea what point they're making. Neither do I.

Overall, a poor effort from the Law in Action team.

Still, don't take my word for it. Listen and decide for yourself what to yell at your iPlayer.

PS The BBC reports today that a lorry driver doing 55mph in a 40mph limit and using a phone was cleared of causing death by dangerous driving after he mowed down a cyclist on the A40 last year.

PS 2 I've just found Joren's UKCycleRules blog post about how the programme turned out from his point of view. Not overjoyed, I think it's fair to say.

This blog nabs hire bike thief

A hire bike thief has been caught, TfL tell us, thanks to this blog.

Last Saturday we posted a picture of a hire bike we'd spotted suspiciously situated in a canalside garden in north London, with its logo painted out (right).


TfL's sleuths - the TfL-funded, 30-strong MPS Cycle Task Force - saw the blog and moved into action faster than you can say Bicycle Repair Man (right).

Within two hours, TfL's press person Silka tells us, they had swooped and made an arrest. A man has been cautioned on suspicion of theft. (Apparently, it was a display model rather than a street model, but had still been nicked.)

So if you see anything suspicious - such as a man riding a bicycle wearing a cape with his underpants on outside his trousers, or even a hire bike where it shouldn't be - help the fight against evil by reporting it to the hire bike website.

Jersey's helmet law does my brain in

Oh. Helmets have been made compulsory for under-18s in Jersey, that famously progressive island-peculiar. Jersey likes to style itself a cycling island. This will do nothing for that image. Freewheeler watched the predictably uninformed BBC TV news item on the new law yesterday morning.

The bill was brought in by a politician who had the heartbreaking experience of seeing his son suffer brain injury after falling off his bike. Very sad, but that's not a good reason to make laws.

Still, it gives me an idea. We're always hearing from people with an unprovable anecdote about how a helmet saved their life, so therefore they should be able to tell everyone else what to do. (However, they usually didn't escape as unscathed as they think: their ability to type upper-case letters and write coherent sentences often appears to have been compromised by the trauma.)

Well, my granddad was saved in the Great War when a sniper's bullet was deflected by his cigarette case. So I'm going to campaign for smoking to be made compulsory.


Regular readers will know from previous posts (1, 2) where I stand on helmets. Right on the top of them, to tread them as far into the ground as possible. They're of very questionable effectiveness and largely irrelevant to the Safety Debate, merely drawing attention away from the real issues, such as how we persuade the public and politicians to invest money and willpower into better cycling facilities.

Still, I have a tip for those who believe better personal protection is the way forward rather than better bike lanes, and that it's the victim's responsibility for any accident. Nip up to the excellent Wallace Collection, just north of Oxford St. (It's free, and they have good bike parking now.) In their basement, you can try on a suit of armour (picture).

It's great fun, and you can see how much more you'd enjoy riding round London, and how much safer everyone would be, if only they'd make it compulsory for cyclists.

Specialist subject: Spain's daft helmet laws

I finally caught up with last week's Watchdog on BBC's iPlayer last night (still available for viewing today and early tomorrow). One item, fronted by John Humphrys, investigated those self-assembly bicycle-flavour novelties sold by chainstores for under £100.

Dogwatch's unsurprising conclusion was that such cheap 'bikes' are not worth the cardboard boxes they come in. And even more potentially lethal than pop tarts.

I was pleased though to learn that Mr Humphrys, frontman of Mastermind and Radio 4's Today programme, is a Real Cyclist. When interviewed by the irritating Anne Robinson after the item (right), he revealed that uses a woman's pink shopping bike, and doesn't wear a helmet.

He said his own experience backed up recent research that not wearing a helmet was safer, because motorists give you a wider berth.


As you know, I put helmets on a pedestal. It's the best place for them. I certainly would never put one on my head.

Unless of course the law requires it, which it does in some dangerous countries with primitive road conditions: Australia, New Zealand, certain US states... and Spain.

But Spain's helmet laws are bizarre, as we found in our highly enjoyable cycle tour there last month. Lids are compulsory (right).


But not in built-up areas (right) such as nice quiet backstreets like this, or busy city centres, where presumably all that traffic makes you less likely to bang your head.

Or up hills (below right). Or if it's hot. I'm told that all this may be in honour of the similar motorbike helmet laws, whose similarly odd exceptions were put in to appease the bare-headed lobby when that legislation came in years ago.


Well, coming from Yorkshire, I think south London's hot, so imagine how Mallorca felt.

Does that mean I don't have to ever wear a helmet there, or would I get interrogated by the police?

Perhaps John Humphrys should try it out. He'd be better at the interrogation than me. Indeed, I wish in cycle-policy meetings I had his talent for asking fearless, succinct and incisive questions, instead of Evan Davis's.

Bike Monopoly 30: Go to Jail

If you've ever wanted to go to jail – perhaps so you could write a blog that briefly becomes a best-selling book with some risqué play on the word 'soap' in the title - it's no use trying to get there through a motoring offence. Drink-driving, speeding without insurance, even running over and killing one of those dangerous pavement cyclists - none of these are remotely likely to get you a custodial sentence.

No. A much more effective way of seeing the inside of a cell is to do something which genuinely threatens human life, such as taking a photo of cycle path or building site.

Tory MP Andrew Pelling was hauled in by vigilant local police while doing a bit of bike-facility reconnaissance on 30 December last year; at around the same time, but on a different point of the political compass, south London artist Reuben Powell was handcuffed and imprisoned while going about his job which involved photographically recording the changes taking place in the Elephant and Castle. (We chatted to Reuben about it later at one of his exhibitions, and his side of the story is very sobering stuff for those of who grew up with reassuring images of the trusty-local-bobby.)

Or you could try cycling along a deserted Bournemouth seafront - that seems pretty effective for getting free mailbag-sewing lessons too.

I did have a brush with the law while taking snaps of Rotherhithe Tunnel earlier this year. I was clearly planning to hijack it armed with a D-lock and bungees, and fly it into the Houses of Parliament. The process for avoiding going to jail in such circumstances is detailed in my post of 13 May.

I escaped with my DNA untaken. Which in a way was a shame, as it would have been nice to resolve that age-old query about my facial resemblance to mum's old driving instructor.

Obviously I can't publish any of the photos of Rotherhithe Tunnel that I took because they might help all those terrorists that subscribe to this blog. So instead, the picture above right is of a police car going about its duties of blocking a bike path to discourage cycling suicide bombers.

Bike Monopoly 7: Chance 1 of 3

Most Chance cards seem to be there to chivvy you round the board - advancing to Pall Mall, Trafalgar Square, Marylebone Station, Mayfair or Go, or going back three spaces. It's another of those itineraries you can only do conveniently by bike.

For our first of three Chance squares in this trip round the board, though, we've chosen Speeding Fine £15. The point being, of course, that you can't be done for speeding on a bike, any more than you can on a horse or a skateboard. There is no such offence. Not that it stopped police at Weymouth recently trying to book cyclists for 'speeding' on the seafront, or police in Bournemouth setting up traps to catch 'speeding' cyclists.

You could be had under other laws - 'pedalling furiously', for instance. There's a neat roundup of the law as it applies to cyclists at the trusty Carlton Reid's bikeforall.net website.

But if you're not being furious, you can set off as many speed-camera flashes as you can, and they can't touch you. The fastest I've ever been on a bike was a rather scary 48mph on a 30mph (long, straight, downhill, clear) road in the Peak District. The fastest reported speed I've ever heard was a friend-of-a-friend who reckoned he did 71mph as a courier down some underpass in London.

Yeah, yeah. You know those people who immediately top anything you say? You've got a black dog, they've got one blacker. In fact, their dog is so black, no X-rays can escape its surface. Not even Hawking Radiation.

Taking the ow out of Iowa

A so-called 'cyclists' Bill of Rights' has been approved by the senate in Iowa.

The bill would require motorists to maintain a five-foot distance when passing cyclists, and would give right of way to cyclists where a bike path intersects a street, among other things.

It seems unlikely to become law, as it won't be allowed through the House, rather like my bike after a muddy towpath ride. But even if not, hooray for Senator Matt McCoy, the man behind the bill, whoever he is.