comercrawley solicitors

17.03.2009

Cyclists outraged at ruling on helmets

There was uproar among Britain's cyclists yesterday at a High Court ruling that they can be blamed for their injuries if they don't wear a helmet – even if the accident itself was caused by someone else.

"There can be no doubt that the failure to wear a helmet may expose the cyclist to the risk of greater injury," Mr Justice Williams said, making the unprecedented ruling on an accident involving a motorbike and a cycle in Brightlingsea, Essex in June 2005.

"A cyclist is free to choose whether or not to wear one," he said in the legal ruling. But not doing so means "any injury sustained may be the cyclist's own fault and 'He has only himself to thank for the consequences'."

The national cyclists' organisation, CTC, said yesterday that it was considering taking legal action to overturn the "wrong and ill-informed" decision; other advocates of cycling described it as "absolute rubbish" and "sad".

The case involved cyclist Robert Smith, then a 51-year-old NHS manager, who was riding without a helmet to an opera group rehearsal when he was hit by Michael Finch's motorbike. He suffered serious brain injuries. The judge decided that the motorcyclist was "entirely" to blame for the crash because he had been going too fast and had ridden too close to Mr Smith's bicycle. He also dismissed Mr Finch's suggestion that Mr Smith's injuries were caused by his failure to wear a helmet. But the judge established the principle of "contributory negligence" for cyclists who ride without a helmet, citing a 1976 court ruling by Lord Denning in relation to seatbelts and advice in the Highway Code.

In an interview on BBC Radio Norfolk, Ian Comer of comercrawley explained that the court was quite entitled to reduce an award of damages if the medical evidence indicated that the injury was caused by or made worse by the failure to wear one.

‘The Highway Code recommends it and it’s rather akin to the position regarding car seat belts, where a failure to wear one would certainly reduce any subsequent award for injury,’ Ian Comer says.

‘I know it sounds like another bureaucratic intrusion into our well-worn way of life, but it’s the court’s job to establish responsibility and reach an equitable outcome. If the evidence is that the injury might have been prevented or at least mitigated by the wearing of a helmet, then it’s the court’s job to apportion part of the responsibility on the cyclist and not have the other party bear it all.

‘We all have a personal choice of course because there is no law which says that cyclists must wear a helmet. I used to cycle around the back roads of Diss and Roydon and I didn’t wear a helmet either. I suppose you could call that a calculated risk.

‘But I might have thought differently if I were cycling in a busy urban area. I also make sure my children wear a helmet, because I’m not prepared to take a gamble on their welfare.’

A spokesman for the Department for Transport said the Government had commissioned research on cycle safety, which would look at the effectiveness of helmets and report back in September 2010.

Dr Ian Walker, a Bath University psychologist, carried out a study which found passing motorists tended to give a cyclist without a helmet a wider berth than one wearing one. He said it was "quite strange" that the judge had set a precedent for a situation which did not apply to the accident he was considering.

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