Cycle helmets – I defend to the last the right not to wear one | Philip Hoare
I usually do. Wear a helmet, that is. Always in London. But it was a hot summer’s night, and I was cycling in the bucolic outskirts of Bath. I took a shortcut through the university campus. Unfamiliar territory. Failing light. Bad move. Barrelling along a throughway located almost under the buildings themselves, I saw it, but far too late. A narrow road barrier, cunningly unlit and set below waist height, strung out across the road. I’ve still no idea why it was there.
All I do know (or was told, from the security chaps who reviewed the action replay on the camera that was trained on the spot) was that my excellent braking system on my customised, BikeGuy-built, single-speed Kona worked all too well. The bike stopped brilliantly. I didn’t. I flew over the barrier, en route for a head-on collision with tarmac on the other side. It was my equivalent of Chris Froome winning the Tour de France – only I flung myself head-over-heels over the finishing line.
The security guys were great. They had me bandaged and delivered to the Royal United A&E before I knew where I was. Which I didn’t. I couldn’t even remember the name, or even the face, of my best friend in Bath. Evidently concussed, I was of some concern. As were my bones, after three trolley-borne visits to X-ray, where the radiologist, also a cyclist, smiled wryly and admitted he didn’t wear a helmet every day, only when he was cycling in town. We agreed how illogical were our decisions, the chances we took. But knew we’d stick to them all the same.
The next day I was discharged with a fractured wrist, plastered up to the elbow, a stitched face and shaven eyebrows worthy of Frankenstein’s creature; bruised ribs which render laughing a painful experience, and every joint grazed red raw; and elbows, shoulders, knees and ankles all bearing little oceanic atolls, ringed with crusted blood.
And yet, despite all this, I will defend to the last our right not to wear helmets. It is our inalienable privilege to be stupid, should we so wish. The other day I had a stand-up row in the middle of Broad Street, Oxford, with a BBC crew who were filming me on my bike. They insisted it was BBC policy that anyone shown onscreen had to wear a helmet. (Does such correctness apply retrospectively, too, I wonder? I imagine Sebastian Flyte and Father Brown being thus retro-fitted.)
I declined this media demand, loudly, on the very good grounds that the helmet, which I did wear that day, made me look a prat. (I have yet to see any helmet that actually enhances its wearer.) Of course, this was about my personal vanity, and the prospect of appearing onscreen with what looked like a plastic banana on my head. The director proposed a compromise. Could we film the sequence twice? Once with and once without.
I know which one they’ll use. And I know that they’re right. I just hate being told so. The jury is still very much out on the true effectiveness of helmets, and the arguments well-rehearsed. Do they make drivers complacent; riders likewise? Can they cause sliding into the wheels of traffic? What injuries exactly do they prevent? Perhaps the most telling statistic I’ve heard on the subject is that the majority of cyclists in the Netherlands – the single most cycle-aware country in the world – do not wear helmets.
Mandatory helmet laws exist in Germany, Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Sweden and some US states. But the indefatigable Dutch are determined to preserve their freedom. “We are not Germany,” they say. And despite helmet laws elsewhere, it is the Netherlands that has the best record of cycling safety, not only in Europe, but in the world – precisely because cycling is seen as a normal occupation there.
Doubtless I’d have been saved those stitches to my face had I been wearing my helmet. But my left hand would still be in plaster, making the writing of this piece an extraordinarily cumbersome affair for a sinistral type such as myself. And I would still be looking forward to a cancelled, or at least postponed, summer, unable to cycle or swim or lecture at the various festival events I had lined up for the next few weeks. Now I’m reduced to walking the streets with my arm in a sling, soliciting pitying looks from passers-by.
Yes of course you should wear a helmet. But this is a case of civil liberties – if not quite on a par with ID cards or internet freedom. Just imagine such a law. It wouldn’t stop vehicles pulling out of side junctions into our path, or make them indicate when turning left in front of us.
The other day I watched the police car in front of me do exactly that, in broad daylight, cutting clean across me with no acknowledgement of my presence at all. A police car. Compulsory helmets wouldn’t make anyone any more sensible. It’s clear what we do need: cycle lanes, awareness, and less adversarial use of the roads. A sense of a shared space. Not another law.
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