July 1, 2008
Column: Put a lid on it, Boris
I am deeply concerned about the health and general well-being of Boris Johnson, the new mayor of London. I wonder if the pressures of the job aren’t getting to him?
Defending his decision to go helmetless on his bicycle the other day, Mr Johnson explained that the allure of the beautiful June sunshine had proved too great. He had felt compelled to let his splendid blond locks fly free.
As Mr Johnson argued in his regular newspaper column – he finds time to write this in between all the mayoraling stuff – people should be allowed to decide for themselves whether to plunge into London’s traffic properly protected or not. “Be it on our own heads – or, in the case of my helmet, sometimes not,” the mayor said.
Oh dear. One of the key but often overlooked principles of health and safety legislation is that employees have a “duty of care” towards themselves, as well as towards colleagues and customers. It is not just the employer’s job to keep people safe.
Continue reading ‘Column: Put a lid on it, Boris’
I can only say loud and clear that Boris Johnson is totally irresponsible in this bike helmet affair.
Posted by: Fred A. Lyons | July 1st, 2008 at 10:07 am | Report this commentNot wearing a helmet, which is a vital preventive measure in case of accident equates to not wearing a seat belt… and should be fined accordingly.
But this attitude to exercise “free will” in matters of safety is a bad example, coming from a public figure. Bearing in mind he has awesome responsibilities as Mayor of London, one hopes such a flawed judgement will not interfere with his mayoral decisions. At least not when safety regulations are reviewed.
Giving such a bad example, and trying to justify it, without measuring the consequence of his act, makes one wonder whether he is fit for the mayoral job, with its many responsibilities (safety among them). Will Boris Johnson display more flawed judgements while wrapping them in a flippant version of individual liberty? And should Londoners tolerate this? Oh dear… I thought he was just a clown. Now he is proving to be a dangerous one.
Meanwhile, please make sure you wear your helmet when cycling. I for one have seen two serious accidents while riding in town. The bikers were hit in each case identically, by a door flung open from a car that had just parked, where the driver had failed to notice a bycicle was coming on his side. The cyclist flew in the air over the door and landed on his head. One had a helmet. The helmet absorbed all the impact, though he had some cervical problems for a while. He is a good friend of mine, and he is now OK. The other had no helmet, cracked his skull, and lost blood and vital brain fluids there enad then on the pavement, while subject to spasms. The ambulancemen who picked him up were extremely concerned about his condition. Well, to paraphrase Mr Johnson and his beautiful June sunshine: no matter how beautiful the sunshine, give yourself a chance to see many sunshines… wear the damn helmet!
Oh what a load of rubbish. One of the refreshing things about Boris and many of his colleagues in the Conservative party is their refusal to bow and scrape to political correctness and the extremes of health & safety fascism. It is his choice - let him excercise it. If he suffers a fatal accident because he was not wearing head protection, then so be it: it would serve as a lesson to those who eschew safety measures. If he survives, maybe it will encourage others to take a balanced view and realise how damaging our modern society’s kow-towing to health & safety has been. Especially for children, employers and schools, whose freedoms to do and promote the things that make us great as human beings are curtailed by the sclerosis of current legislation.
Posted by: Jules | July 1st, 2008 at 10:28 am | Report this commentGiven that the health benefits of cycling are a lot greater then the risk of not wearing a helmet and that wearing a helmet puts a lot of people of cycling, I see no reason why Boris should be expected to where a helmet.
I could go as fare as to say it would be irresponsible for him to were a helmet as doing so may put someone of cycling by subjecting that the risk of cycling is a lot higher then it is.
Anyway cycle helmets do not reduce fatal accident match as they are not strong enough, they do however reduce miner accidents and avoid the need to spend a night in hospital after hitting your head at low speed. Hence I choose to wear a helmet most of the time I cycle (to work every day and all local trips in Cambrige)
PS, if you don’t wish to be hit by drivers opening car door, cycle in a safe place, e.g in the middle of the lane and don’t let car drives force you out of there way.
Posted by: Ian Ringrose | July 1st, 2008 at 11:11 am | Report this commentJules,
If you are a UK tax-payer, you will share the cost of any emergency treatment the mayor requires after any serious traffic accident. No man is a cyclist entire to himself, as John Donne almost said.
I regret your use of the phrase “health and safety fascism”, as I would hope you would too, on reflection.
Posted by: Stefan Stern | July 1st, 2008 at 11:34 am | Report this commentA friend of mine took his ‘duty of care’ very seriously. He took all government advice very seriously - didn’t smoke, drink, low salt intake, no red or processed meat, 20 minutes of exercise 3 times a week. He noticed most people had accidents outside the home, so he never left his house, covered his walls in cotton wool, in fact. He lived to 120 … but wasn’t very happy.
Posted by: Tom | July 1st, 2008 at 3:00 pm | Report this commentTom,
Posted by: Stefan Stern | July 1st, 2008 at 3:08 pm | Report this commentMaybe it just seemed like 120 years…
Health matters. Liberty matters more.
Posted by: Robin Crewe | July 1st, 2008 at 4:37 pm | Report this commentDear Mr Stern,
Are you not, as proponents of more legislation tend to be, in danger of falling into the well known trap of the law of Unintended Consequences?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequence
Forcing cyclists to wear helmets causes “a net loss of health benefits to the nation” according to one study.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8870773?dopt=Abstract
Indeed numbers obtained by Sustrans and quoted here:
http://quickrelease.tv/?p=279
suggest that in the non-helmet wearing but much cycling Netherlands the casualty rate per 110 million kilometres travelled was a fraction of our own.
If we concentrate on the “helmet” issue we lose sight of the real battle which is to make our streets safer for cyclists.
As a simile, would you consider writing an article suggesting that all teenagers should be forced to wear a kevlar vest when leaving the house? This may well lower the number of teenagers killed by knife wounds to the chest but i suspect those who would commit such a deed would, unfortunately, find other means to kill and maim.
The issue, in each case is to deter the perpetrators from doing harm not the victim from going about his reasonable activity in a method of his own choosing.
i of course write this as a London cycling commuter of 20 years who always wears a helmet. I would be grateful if you could publish articles re: road safety which would help me to be safe riding without one in future.
Regards
Chris Wright
Posted by: Chris Wright | July 1st, 2008 at 5:17 pm | Report this commentWell said Chris,
it is particularly irritating to read articles in one of the few remaining sources of genuine news where the reporter has not done the research. There is more than sufficient scientific evidence to demonstrate that compulsion to wear cycle helmets, whether legal or social is detrimental to public health.
At the risk of sounding extreme, the truth having been drowned out by common sense, a similar situation arises with motorcycle helmets, though for different reasons; wearing motorcycle helmets increases accidents, increases the severity of accidents,due to their higher average speed, and in low speed accidents can increase the sevrity of the injuries sustained. Undoubtedly helmets also reduce injuries under some circumstances too. The fundamental misunderstanding here is about the significance of momentum, and our powerlessness to protect ourselves from its consequences. Hit a wall with your hand; now cover your hand with a handkerchief and hit it again. The difference is approximately the same as the difference a motorcycle helmet makes when you have an accident at speeds over 30mph. Unfortunately, wearing a helmet is what makes it comfortable to ride at higher speeds.
In both cases, lawmakers ignore the systems effects of legislation in pandering to “common sense”. Your reporter really should have researched cycle helmets before reinforcing false preconceived ideas.
Posted by: Joss Wood | July 1st, 2008 at 8:46 pm | Report this commentStefan - I regret nothing. I think your comments about tax burden reflect your own (and your newspaper’s) dominant focus on fiscal matters. However, these worries could not be further from my concerns (and probably many of your readers’). We object to interference in peoples’ decisions about how they choose to live their lives, down to even the most personal matters like this. Rather like the Monarchy costing us each 66p (only - a bargain if ever there was one), I think the tax burden is a price worth paying for some liberty in this over-governed society.
Posted by: Jules | July 2nd, 2008 at 8:24 am | Report this comment“Most of the anti-health and safety sneering is done by people who work regular hours in safe, well-lit, air-conditioned offices, in jobs that involve no physical stress or heavy lifting. With any luck, a paper cut is the worst injury that will ever befall them.”
Posted by: John | July 2nd, 2008 at 6:55 pm | Report this commentNo, that’s just most of the people that you know!
“The first thing you do when you get a new machine is to take the guards off and see what it will really do” I have heard this several times in almost identical words from various shop-floor workers, not as a political statement but as an aside explaining how part of a tale developed.
The people who are keen on health and safety usually end up in air-conditioned offices whether they like it or not.
Fred A Lyons is firstly, inaccurate in his description - if his friend flew over the door, presumably he hit the door rather than the door hitting him - and secondly, making an unreasonable extrapolation from one unusual case: the main danger to a cyclist is being hit by a fast-moving car (as once* happened to me before cycling helmets were invented) not falling off a bike ridden at 10-15 mph, a fraction of the car’s velocity. It is, while not unknown, very unusual for a cyclist to be seriously hurt by falling off at his/her own speed, even in the Tour de France.
As to Boris - it is a well-established principle that the Law cannot protect a man from his own folly.
*Excluding the two occasions as a pedestrian - one on a zebra crossing and the other on a road closed to traffic.
Many years ago, a fellow student (on whom I had been rather sweet) was killed when a lorry turned left over her at the lights. A shame she had not been wearing a helmet. Apparently this remains the commonest manner of death of female cyclists in London.
Posted by: Mike B | July 3rd, 2008 at 12:49 pm | Report this commentA helmet is relevant if the cyclist is moving fast enough to do himself significant harm should his head come in contact with the kerb - as was the case in the two accidents FAL described. How fast was Boris cycling?
Certainly, I regard it as a no-brainer that I should wear my helmet when I descend from my home to the station (400′ height difference) in the morning. Returning home in the evening, the helmet would be a sweaty irrelevance.
Whether helmeted or not, however, I would not cycle inside a line of parked cars at 15 mph.