The following are sentences from recent news stories about bicycle crashes. I gathered them by searching for “bicycle accident” on Google news. I’ve listed every statement mentioning helmet use in each of the first 10 appropriate stories (one mention per story). Two stories did not mention helmet use.
Her bicycle was nearby and she was not wearing a helmet.
If he hadn’t been wearing a helmet, Solomon said the injuries could have been much worse.
Williams wasn’t wearing a helmet when the accident occurred.
She was not wearing a helmet.
Jim says he was wearing a helmet which he believes prevented more serious injury.
Petrimoulx was not wearing a helmet, Huntington Beach police Lt. Russell Reinhart said.
Truett was not wearing a helmet.
He was riding his bicycle alone at the time of the incident and was not wearing a helmet.
As Carbon Trace readers may be aware, I teach journalism at Missouri State University. So the reporting of bicycle accidents by the news media is something that has a double interest for me.
Putting on my journalism hat (while acknowledging that I cannot escape my interest in bicycle advocacy), I have a few problems with the statements above:
1. None of the eight stories from which these eight statements were taken quotes an expert about helmet use. I’m not sure who would qualify as an expert. But perhaps an attending medical professional or law enforcement officer can can give a learned opinion about whether a helmet did, or could have, played a positive role in the crash.
2. Two of the statements are based on the opinions of the riders themselves that the helmet prevented greater injury. How do they know this? Neither of these people is a medical professional or a member of another profession qualified to make such statements. Just because something happens to you doesn’t mean you understand it.
3. The rest of the statements simply record that the rider was, or was not, wearing a helmet with no context offered about why the statement is being made (although one story did mention a head injury). In the cases in which the rider was not wearing a helmet, the implication is that the lack of a helmet contributed to death or injury. Journalism, however, is not supposed to be in the implication business. It’s supposed to be in the fact business. Or, if facts are in short supply, the expert opinion business.
(I did not link the the eight stories because it seemed a bit tedious. But I would encourage CT readers to run that search string on a regular basis just to keep a handle on accidents. You can do this analysis for yourself and report back here if you get different results.)
In case you think I’m picking on this just because I’m also a bicycling advocate, well, yes, that’s true. But this tendency to imply facts and gloss over context is actually a failing that we can see in many areas of news coverage. So I’m also highlighting a much larger issue by examining this specific issue.
(There. Now I feel better.)
How should reporters handle the helmet issue in news articles about bicycle crashes?
1. Don’t assume. Ask a professional. If a person gets crushed by a dump-truck, it’s likely that wearing a helmet would have done nothing at all to prevent injury or death.
2. Look for human error. What happened? Who did (or failed to do) what? Were any rules of the road broken? What human factors may have contributed to the crash?
3. Look for problems in the infrastructure. Was traffic control ambiguous? Did the condition of the road surface play a role?
4. What were the traveling conditions? Light? Dark? Wet? Windy? Did the weather play a role in the accident?
5. What got injured, or what caused death? Did a helmet, or lack thereof, actually come into play in the crash? A helmet does nothing to guard against a broken leg. A bit of foam and plastic won’t prevent a dump-truck from crushing your torso.
Rule of thumb: If a helmet, or lack thereof, cannot be shown by the evidence and expert sources to have come into play in the crash, then it is superfluous information and need not be mentioned. Mentioning helmet use, or lack of use, in the absence of qualifying context distorts the news.
Who gets hurt when helmet distortion occurs? Isn’t it better to keep the helmet issue in the public eye, even when its mention has little or nothing to do with the news, in order to promote the greater good of helmet use?
Is wearing a helmet a good thing?
(Yikes! There I gone and done it!)
My answer: I don’t know. I wear a helmet most of the time. My daughter does not. My wife has been wearing one less lately. Most people I see on the streets do not wear helmets. The vast majority of the people in those European videos don’t wear helmets. But roadies and other sport cyclists wear them with great regularity. That’s a good choice, I think. They often ride very fast in aggressive postures.
I suppose the best answer may be that the trafficular (FYI: we academics are allowed to make up words) and cultural contexts have a lot to say about what the right individual choice is.
And, really, as an advocate, I’m annoyed by the news stories that imply bicycling is dangerous unless you’re wearing a helmet. That doesn’t have the ring of truth to me. It may even be dangerous.
Comments 10
Ahhh, the helmet craze rears its ugly head. I personally wear my helmet. 99% of the time anyway. For me, it give nothing but a warm fuzzy and safe feeling.
A styrofoam cooler only helps keep your cold drinks and pick-a-nik goodies safe, in the first place.
I personally see that motorists give me more slower, and wider safe passes when sans helmet.
Unfortunately, the media has their own way of distorting the truth by asking the seemingly unaware “witnesses”.
Posted 18 Sep 2009 at 4:08 pm ¶I was surprised to see Andy let the “accident” aspect of bicycle crashes pass with so little comment. Few of these things are accurately described as “accidents.” Is it an accident if I stick my finger into a live electrical outlet and get shocked, or if a gun goes off while I’m playing Russian Roulette?
I don’t see motorists acting any differently whether I wear a helmet or not. They DO cut me more slack when it’s raining. Was THAT reported in the articles?
An alternate post (and I’m sure Andy has done the search both ways many times), would be to compare the results if you search for “bicycle crash” or “cyclist killed” as opposed to the more frequent “bicycle accident”
Posted 18 Sep 2009 at 6:13 pm ¶Did you see Yehuda Moon this morning?
http://www.yehudamoon.com/index.php?date=2009-09-18
The mention of a helmet with no context irks me too.
BTW, the primary reason roadies need helmets is they are often riding virtually blind of the road conditions ahead and inches from an unpredictable crash risk — the rider they’re drafting.
Posted 18 Sep 2009 at 8:59 pm ¶PS: being an insider in any activity certainly gives one insight into how blatantly inaccurate and lazy reporters can be. Skydiving and small aircraft crashes are covered with the same misinformation or lack of information that leads readers to incorrect conclusions about what actually happened.
Posted 18 Sep 2009 at 9:04 pm ¶Steve… I avoided the crash v. accident thing on purpose. That would really require another post. So I guess I better get cracking
Posted 19 Sep 2009 at 8:05 am ¶Just wanted to make sure. Now get back to work!
Posted 19 Sep 2009 at 9:02 am ¶I ain’t no doctor or medical expert. However, I have been over the bars. Last time I had looked at my computer, I was doing 26 – 28 m.p.h. It was a group ride which had nothing to do with it.
I had a beautiful, upside down view of the sunset and the rider in front of me. I hit head & (I think) shoulder & right hand first. Helmet cracked in 5 places, but stayed together and stayed on.
Busted collar bone. Torn up hand requiring stitches. No head injuries. Only took me about a year to figure out what caused it … applying huge amounts of front brake when no brakes at all would have served me better!
One night after some kind of advocacy event, four of us adjourned to a quiet night spot to sip a brew and recap the happenings. At some time or another, all four had done the collar bone thing or dislocated shoulder!
Posted 19 Sep 2009 at 4:50 pm ¶Coy… Let me guess: All those stories involved road bikes and speeds upwards of 25+ miles per hour. If you’re going to ride that kind of machine at those speeds, then, yes, you probably better be wearing a helmet.
Let’s call it sport cycling hegemony — the phenomenon in which one particular use of bicycles tends to dictate how all cyclists should act.
Posted 20 Sep 2009 at 9:18 am ¶Ive been in one pace line pile-up where a rider grabbed a handful of brakes. It happens fast.
Andy, it is a kind of hegemony, come to think of it. It’s the sport cyclists who are the most vocal nannies around here — scolding people on comfort bikes for not wearing helmets.
Another local cycling blog (run by the newspaper and written by club cyclists) has several posts per year scolding people about not wearing helmets. To my knowledge, they have not published one single post advising people on ways to avoid crashing.
Posted 20 Sep 2009 at 9:45 am ¶This is one of the very few cycling “hot button” topics for me. To my scientifically critical eye, the evidence on helmet wear preventing injury is mixed. Whether one wears a helmet or not is a personal choice. It is so upsetting to me when a newspaper or blog mentions helmets in the manner you describe – sometimes even suggesting that (a) not wearing a helmet was somehow involved in the cause of the accident, or (b) the cyclist deserved to get in an accident because they were not wearing a helmet. This kind of irresponsible writing undermines the safety of cyclists more than helmets could ever ensure it.
Posted 01 Oct 2009 at 5:38 pm ¶