Helmets and cycling on the Gold Coast

Today I headed down the coast to see Clint and Kylie. They're staying at Burleigh for a few days so I went down with Gabriel to see them. We decided to walk to the takeaway for lunch and it was then that I noticed that the proportion of cyclists wearing helmets was very small indeed. In Brisbane, I would estimate that over 98% of all the cyclists I see wear helmets. It's so common that someone not wearing a helmet really sticks out. The people I saw didn't just seem like random tourists that weren't wearing them; as far as I could tell, these were regular coasties. We would have seen around 40-50 cyclist and I would estimate less than 10 were wearing helmets.

So that was a interesting diversion, but when we got to the shops things got even more interesting. Whilst I was looking after GT on a bench on the street, I heard a loud bang and looked up. A car had just pulled out of a parallel park and smashed into a roadie heading in the same direction, right in front of us. She was moving on the ground, but didn't look in great shape. Straight away a number of people ran over to her and the calls to 000 started. (As much as being a concerned citizen matters, if you are at an accident scene and you see others on their phones, it's a good bet that they're calling 000. Go over and find out. For this accident 3 people called so they had to call back 2 ambulances who may have been better served on other emergencies).

Clint ran over to her to see if she needed help. All she wanted to do was ring her boyfriend to tell him what had happened. Clint oblidged with his phone and then kept talking to the bf to keep him informed about what was happening.

The guy who was driving the car was pretty shaken up and his mother was in the car and she needed to be helped away, as the shock of her son smashing into a cyclist was a bit much for her. To the guy's credit he stuck around (not that he could have gotten far, it was a very busy area and a number of people took his license plate down) especially considering the size of her boyfriend when he turned up.

We stuck around till she got put into the Ambulance and the bf thanked Clint for all his help. From what Clint could ascertain, the car had pulled over and was in the start of a U turn when he smashed into her. She hit the side mirror (not sure about the rest of the car) and came down heavily. A number of fingers were pointing in the wrong direction her elbow was damaged and her leg was broken.

I'm sure the fact she was wearing a helmet helped her avoid any head damage, a point sadly lost to the people at the start of my post.