Nuxx:4e269006$0$2483$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!goblin2!goblin.stu.neva.ru!aioe.org!feeder.news-service.com!tudelft.nl!txtfeed1.tudelft.nl!dedekind.zen.co.uk!zen.net.uk!hamilton.zen.co.uk!prichard.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <4e269006$0$2483$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: Should my son wear a cycle helmet? Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:21:26 +0100 References: <4aCdneFpYaC6KbjTnZ2dnUVZ8tGdnZ2d@eclipse.net.uk>	<4e25c831$0$2937$fa0fcedb@news.zen.co.uk>	<7568dda5-774c-458e-acf3-ea8b6c4616dc@ft10g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>	<4e25eb87$0$2534$da0feed9@news.zen.co.uk>  Lines: 33 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; en-US; rv:1.9.2.18) Gecko/20110616 Thunderbird/3.1.11 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To:  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: Zen Internet NNTP-Posting-Host: 8f919306.news.zen.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=A`\PIIck_@^X;`6<91B3PZ0g@SS;SF6nWR9OH0:RnENTaQ\_d:g?bQV`:ITG5aA:cWCY?2dgl@?7X-Complaints-To: abuse@zen.co.uk Bytes: 2608 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.rec.cycling:817784

On 19/07/2011 23:36, Peter Keller wrote: > On Tue, 19 Jul 2011 21:39:30 +0100, Nuxx Bar wrote: > >> On 19/07/2011 19:26, Simon Mason wrote: >>> >>> Our household has never seen a bicycle helmet and that is the 100% >>> truth. >> >> And you're dead proud of that, aren't you? "We'll have no 'instruments >> of cyclist oppression' in this house, no matter how much they might >> improve safety." >> >>> I also see schoolkids riding home on my commute and it is very rare to >>> see any of them in a helmet either >> >> And I bet the vast majority of them also cycle without front lights >> (when it's dark), with dark clothes, on pavements, and they don't signal >> or observe red lights. >> >> Please don't pretend that their behaviour is about safety when you know >> it's really about being "cool"/rebellious/self-serving. > > Bicycling without front lights (when it's dark), with dark clothes, on > pavements, not signalling or not observing red lights all increase the > chances of accidents. > > Bicycling while not wearing a helmet does not increase the chances of > having an accident.

Well that's a matter for debate, but my point is that teenagers refusing to wear helmets is unlikely to be a well thought out safety decision, and is likely to be done for all the wrong reasons (like dark clothes etc), even if it happens that with helmets, what you say is correct.