Olympic legend Chris Boardman reveals why it is safer NOT to wear a bicycle helmet

It was a harmless promotional video: Olympic cyclist Chris Boardman rode through Manchester, revealing £ 85 million plans for new bike paths. But when the one-minute clip was uploaded to Twitter last month, there was outrage.

The 52-year-old, pointed to angry tweeters, was not wearing a helmet. “He should know better,” one of them declared.

But maybe – just four years ago, his mother Carol was tragically killed in a bicycle accident, aged 75, after falling off her bike on a roundabout.

In January 2019, the driver of the Mitsubishi pickup who hit her and caused fatal injuries was imprisoned for 30 weeks. Liam Rosney, 34, had already taken calls on his cell phone before the crash – which did not have a hands-free mode.

Chris called the event ‘horribly life-changing’ at the time and then said he no longer felt safe cycling on British roads.

His mother, he points out, was wearing a bicycle helmet and high-visibility gear. And yet it didn’t help and couldn’t possibly have helped.

Chris was also hospitalized with a head injury after a dramatic crash in the 1998 Tour de France. He wore a helmet during the race, as is standard.

But the reason he didn’t wear one in the recent Manchester clip is because he doesn’t believe they are necessary for normal cycling.

Chris, who worked part-time in a bicycle repair shop during the pandemic, does not wear one on his commute to work, nor does he think anyone else should feel compelled to do so.

For motorists, new Covid measures to boost cycling – cutting lanes on the busiest arterial roads in many cities – have led to endless misery. But it’s no surprise that avid cyclists like Chris have welcomed them.

It is only one measure, he hopes, that makes helmets irrelevant.

Currently, while the Highway Code advises cyclists to wear head protection, it says it is ‘a personal choice’ and they are not required on UK roads. It’s not a situation Boardman wants to see change – ever. Indeed, he explains that his mother’s untimely death partly inspired his point of view.

“ We see racers wearing helmets and so we think we should all definitely do that, ” he wrote in a blog on the British Cycling website, stating that wearing a helmet in places like New Zealand is “ more lives cost then it saved ‘.

Granted to sound ridiculous, he explains his dislike of what he calls ‘body armor’ for cyclists. “About 110 people are killed each year while cycling on our roads, almost all as a result of a collision with a motor vehicle, where the protection offered by a bicycle helmet is negligible,” he says.

It is an opinion that is not only counterintuitive, but also controversial. But scientific studies suggest that cyclists who wear helmets on the go are more likely to be spanked than cyclists who don’t.

One study was conducted by Dr. Ian Walker, a psychologist from the University of Bath, who rode a bicycle equipped with a computer and sensors that could measure the distance between him and other vehicles on the road.

During normal journeys, he wore a bicycle helmet half the time and bareheaded the other half – and recorded data from more than 2,500 overtaking drivers in Salisbury and Bristol.

Dr. Walker found that drivers were as much as twice as likely to get really close to the bike when wearing the helmet. He was hit by a bus and a truck during the experiment – both times wearing a helmet.

He concluded: “We know helmets are useful in low speed falls… but whether they provide real protection to someone hit by a car is very controversial. Either way, this study suggests that wearing a helmet makes a collision more likely at all. ‘

Not everyone is convinced. Dr. John Black, an emergency medicine expert, said wearing a helmet is “common sense,” pointing to statistics showing that bicycle helmets reduce the risk of brain injury by two-thirds.

So, if a helmet only saves one life, is it wise to make them standard? Chris disagrees.

The UK has some of the highest levels of serious injuries and deaths from cycling in Europe, and Chris says, ‘This should tell us something. All over the world, countries with the highest use of safety equipment are the most dangerous for cyclists.

Wherever wearing a helmet is mandatory, there is no corresponding decrease in the number of injuries, unless there is also a decrease in the number of bicycles that are chosen. Where helmets are mandatory, cycling speeds drop significantly. ‘

This, he explains, can have unintended consequences. A study from the University of Glasgow showed that people who commute by bicycle almost cut their risk of dying from heart disease and cancer in half compared to people who drive. Their chance of dying prematurely from any cause drops by 41 percent.

Chris says, “Let those numbers sink in. In the UK, one in six deaths – almost 90,000 a year – is due to illnesses related to physical inactivity, including diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Any measure that has been conclusively proven to reduce people’s chances of traveling by bicycle will kill more people than it saves. ‘

He argues that the focus on helmets distracts from more important issues, such as the introduction of stricter speed laws in residential areas, making streets more bicycle-friendly and making areas around schools more car-free.

They are suggestions that will annoy motorists. But he says, “This happened in the 1970s in the Netherlands,” a country known for its cycle paths, “and now more than 50 percent of children drive to school safely every day.

‘Imagine the reduction of congestion if 50 percent of the children are not driven to school. Helmets and high-vis clothing are a sign that we are wrong. ‘