I’m Considering a U-Turn
If you come here often, you’ll probably know that I’m far from pro-helmet, and absolutely 100% anti helmet compulsion. Basically, the protection offered by bicycle helmets is fairly marginal in situations other than static falls (which is how they’re tested), and I’m a firm believer that compulsion does more to paint an image of riding a bike as a Dangerous Thing than anything else. Everywhere that helmets are made mandatory, cycling rates drop.
As a result of this thinking, I generally don’t wear a helmet. The exception is for racing (because the rules say that I must) or out & out training for racing (because we never do anything new on race day).
However, I’m considering changing all this, because it seems that the British legal system, magistrates, and I suppose, defence lawyers representing motorists are using bike helmets as their Get Out Of Jail Card.
A few months ago, there was the case of Smith V Finch, where the judge agreed that although Finch knocked Smith off his bike by overtaking too close, Smith could have been held partially responsible for his injuries, as he wasn’t wearing a helmet.
Then today, we have this in our local paper, the Newcastle Journal:
A MOTORIST who had driven for eight years without ever passing a test escaped jail after killing a cyclist . . .
. . . Moore, who became the first defendant at Durham Crown Court to admit the relatively new charge of causing death by careless driving, was told by Judge Richard Lowden that Mr Jorgensen’s failure to wear a helmet was a “mitigating factor”.
The punishment for the motorist, who didn’t even have a full f*cking driving license, and was driving a vehicle that he was uninsured to drive? A suspended prison sentence of 24 weeks, banned from driving for two years, and put under a night time curfew. The owner of the car who’d let him drive it (even though she knew he wasn’t qualified & was uninsured) didn’t get off Scot-free though.
Nope - she was fined £93, ordered to pay court costs of £43, and ordered to pay a victim surcharge of . . . . .£15.
I try to remain calm and reasonable here, but this is lunacy.
But as a result, I’m thinking about revising my helmet-wearing. Not because I believe that in the event of >1300kg of steel hitting me at anything more than a walking pace, that it would do anything whatsoever to protect me from near certain death.
No, I may start wearing a helmet, because if I am killed while out on my bike, I want to make sure that the bastard driver’s legal team have to work just that little bit harder to wriggle him / her off the hook.
Yeah, that’s basically the reason I wear my helmet when I commute to work… I don’t want the courts preventing my wife from suing the idiot that hits me into oblivion because of some technicality.
I’m not fanatic about helmet wearing either. If I’m just gonna cruise easy on a seculuded bike path (Under 15 mph) I’ll lose the helmet and enjoy the ride. But if I have any intention of taking it up over 20 mph then I definitely put one on. I learned a pretty good lesson back in 1990 when I went out for a ride one afternoon around this lake that I often used as my “easy cruise”. I wasn’t planning on wearing my hard shell helmet that day however I grabbed it and strapped it on. While rounding a sharp left hand turn at about 19 mph my rear wheel skidded out, I instinctively turned my handlebars into the skid but just then my rear wheel grabbed and I found myself crossed up… I got launched over the handlebars and slammed head first into the asphalt. Now, it wasn’t the impact that was nasty… but the slide across the asphalt on the side of my head which was protected by my helmet. The slide across the pavement ground down that hard shell helmet big time.. I’m just glad it wasn’t my head that was ground down… I would have lost some serious flesh from the side of my forehead and possibly my ear had I not been wearing a helmet.
I still go out on rides today without a helmet… But if I’m even thinking about going semi fast, I make sure I strap one on.
The Cyclists’ Defence Fund has some useful information on this.
This is ludicrous, and very worrying.
A ‘mitigating factor’?
If you sustained a head injury in a ‘car vs. car’ crash or were struck over the head in a pub brawl, would you be considered contributarily negligent for not wearing a helmet? Of course not. What’s the difference?
We can debate the technicalities of helmet use all we like (as it happens, I choose to wear one 90% of the time), but this is irrelevant here.
Whatever the effectiveness (or otherwise) of helmets, it defies logic to suggest that the crime of an offender should be judged differently depending on whether their victim was wearing protective equipment in anticipation of the attack.
As a professor of journalism, I’m offended by how professional reporters handle the reporting of cycling accidents in the U.S. It is routine to mention whether or not the bicyclist was wearing a helmet. What is NEVER reported is whether the helmet, or lack of a helmet, played any role at all in injuries or death. It’s merely assumed to play a role. This is bad journalism.
This is so wrong. That judge should be removed from service.
Does this mean I can shoot someone and not be held liable if they die if they were not wearing a bullet proof vest?
This prejudice towards cyclists seems to be an affliction of mostly English speaking nations (I’m in US). Where does this come from? This is exactly the kind of thing attorneys do with rape cases. They try to prove that somehow the woman’s choice of clothing caused them to be raped and therefore the rapist can’t be completely responsible.
I’ve been thinking the same thing - I might buy a helmet purely for my family’s sake, not mine.
It’s wrong-headed, but so is so much of our legal system.