Making cyclists wear helmets won't do the job
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RE: 'USE YOUR head' (CM 20 December 2012), the pro-helmet lobby may be looking down the wrong end of the telescope.
In Australia, making helmets compulsory cut cycling activity by 30% overnight.
Furthermore, only 4% of cycling fatalities are from head injuries — if you're hit by a moving tin box, you're more likely to break your bones first.
We should be looking at how all road users can co-exist better, as badly behaved cyclists and drivers of any vehicle in the same space is bound to end in tears.
Back in the late 50s the Cycling Proficiency Test was your green light to using the road, but there's no such formal training these days.
At least several hundred thousand members of the two main cycling organisations have some form of insurance.
I believe we should also look at the nearly one million foreign drivers who passed their tests abroad and not at those who took the UK test, which is regarded as one of the toughest in the world. And another thing: let's get compulsory periodic eye tests for all road users, and a ban on cycling with headphones.
Apologies for the rant, but you've opened my can of worms!
Terry Hammond Southampton, Hampshire