The Great Helmet Debate (From Bournemouth Echo)

The Great Helmet Debate

10:51am Monday 15th March 2010 in

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IT HAS been reported in the news today that the Channel Islands have just made it compulsory for children to wear cycle helmets; the question being asked is whether this should apply to the rest of the UK.

This is a topic that gets discussed on a regular basis and, as I have stated in the past, I choose to wear a cycle helmet. However, I also defend the rights of those who choose not to wear one. In the event that you want to come out on a ride with me then I expect that you will wear a helmet but what you do on your own is up to you. There are plenty of studies that will tell you that wearing a helmet is a good thing and also plenty of studies that will tell you that there is no benefit in wearing one, so I'm not going to get into that debate again.

Helmet wearing has been compulsory in New Zealand for some years and one of the effects when it was introduced was to reduce the number of cyclists. This is my biggest concern; we shouldn't introduce a law that discourages people from cycling. My daughter is four years old and she has always worn a helmet when cycling, it's now one of the first things she reaches for when getting ready to go out on her bike. However, at four years old she doesn't care what other people think about how she looks - she's started wearing odd socks in the last week! - but when she reaches an age where it's important to be "cool" then maybe the helmet won't be something she wants to wear.

There was a very interesting letter in Saturday's Echo submitted by Steve Evans - read it here . He makes a good point about how intimidating it can be to cycle on the road surrounded by large vehicles whizzing past only inches away. This is why I choose to avoid busy roads, I don't like the way lots of motorists will deliberately use their vehicle as a weapon and barge their way through without considering the potential consequences just to save themselves a couple of seconds.

Steve's final point about using pavements is a very contentious one and even the national cycling bodies are very against shared use paths and cycleways. Any solution has to be a compromise and until we have more understanding in society and general respect for your fellow man (or woman) then the debates and battles will rage on!

Finally for this week, a response to a question from Mikey2gorgeous - yes I do have some statistics regarding incidents along the seafront.

Without getting too specific, during July and August in 2009 there were 875 recorded incidents in one particular spot along the seafront during the cycling restrictions. Out of these 70% of cyclists stopped when asked and caused no issue. So that's about 15 cyclists per day being stopped, but unfortunately I don't have figures for the total number using the seafront.