Cycling without a helmet

Madam, – Cyclist.ie welcomes the Dublinbikes hire scheme and hopes it will be a great success. It will help to produce the critical mass of cyclists required to make the roads safer for vulnerable road users. The launch of the initiative has brought to your pages once again the subject of bicycle helmets.

Readers may at this stage be confused, with claims of negligible effectiveness being countered with claims of extraordinary effectiveness. The truth is there are peer-reviewed research papers that support either contention. In the real world, however, they cannot both be correct.

Early studies based on smaller samples of cyclists predicted that widespread helmet-wearing would prevent an overwhelming majority of head injuries. However, analysis of head-injury rates in countries where helmet wearing has increased after compulsion has shown no decline.

The position adopted by Cyclist.ie is that, since cycling is not unusually productive of head injuries, and since helmet compulsion has led to dramatic declines in cycling where it has been attempted, we would rather scarce resources were concentrated on initiatives that have unambiguous safety benefits for cyclists. – Yours, etc,