A cyclist left with life-threatening injuries after a collision with a car has spoken of the importance of motorists being considerate to bikes – and of cyclists wearing a helmet which may ultimately save their life.
Rafal Zuchowski suffered a brain injury and a host of fractures and tissue injuries after his bike ploughed into a car when the driver stopped suddenly and without explanation. The experienced cyclist was left in a coma and endured a lengthy hospital stay as he battled to recover.
The impact of the collision saw him catapulted off his bike and land on his head – and has been told his life was only saved because he was wearing a cycle helmet.
Since the collision, on School Lane near Gloucester, Rafal continues to experience weakness on the right side of his body, and has been diagnosed with PTSD. The impact of his brain injury mean he suffers with symptoms including fatigue, memory loss and anxiety. His struggle to cope with his injuries also led to the breakdown of his relationship.
Rafal, a Polish national who moved to the UK in 2008 and has settled in Gloucester, has said he continues to be haunted by how different events could have been for him after that day in June 2020, and appealed for motorists to consider how vulnerable cyclists are.
“Car drivers need to remember that a cyclist doesn’t have a seatbelt, they don’t have the protection of a metal shell – they are not protected at all. A lot of the time on the roads, they probably feel scared for their life. I was so lucky not to lose mine that day,” says Rafal, who works as a dispatch coordinator at a dairy company.
“They need to understand that while it may be annoying that a bike is going slower than they want, and they may have to wait to get past, being patient might save somebody’s life. Imagine if it was your child on that bike you are driving on the tail of – would you want that for your loved one?
“I was a very capable cyclist, it was something I loved, and I could cycle for five hours at a time, maybe a distance of 100 miles. But while I have bought a new bike, I cannot ride it. I have lost something so important from my life as I loved cycling.”
Rafal is also a passionate advocate of the need to wear a cycle helmet – while his split in two after the impact of the collision, the protection against the initial impact ensured the incident was not fatal.
“You hear people saying they aren’t going to wear a cycle helmet because they don’t look nice or aren’t cool – this thing could save your life, which is so much more important than how your hair might look,” says Rafal.
“Also, people say they don’t need one because they aren’t cycling far. I was less than five minutes from my home when I was involved in this collision which could have killed me. It’s just too important to make excuses about – if you’re on a bike, you need a cycle helmet.”
Rafal is continuing to receive support for the psychological effects of the collision, and stresses the importance of reaching out for help if it is needed.
“I was sceptical about having any kind of medication or therapy for PTSD, and wanted to just get on with my life, but I have learned on this journey that you should never be ashamed to reach out for help,” he says.
“I tried for a long time to keep my mental health struggles in the background, but I have come to realise that I do need help to move on in my life. When you realise how close you came to dying, you do learn to appreciate the little things in life more and that life is very precious.”
Mohammed Ali, from the serious injury team at Slater and Gordon, says he supports Rafal’s safety messages.
He said: “Rafal’s life was turned upside down in an instant in this collision and he now lives with the ongoing impact of brain injury. He has made a very strong recovery, which is testament to his determination to rebuild his life, but the challenges for him continue.
“He makes hugely important points about the need for greater awareness and respect for cyclists, as well as the need to wear a cycle helmet. We wholly support his safety message, and hope that Rafal’s dreadful experience is a reminder of the need for all road users to be mindful of this.”
The myth of cycle helmets saving lives is endlessly repeated, but still isn’t true. The death rate of cyclists does not fall as helmet wearing rates increase, so the thousands of “helmet saved my life” stories cannot be true. In Australia, when the helmet law was introduced, the death rate went up, not down. Mohammed Ali, apparently some kind of legal expert and Mr Zuchowski have been misled by forty years of helmet promotion and lies, supported by the worst of bad science.
The initial study showing that helmets would save 85% of cyclists’ deaths (A case-control study of the effectiveness of bicycle safety helmets, Thompson, Rivara and Thompson, New England Journal of Medicine 1989) has been torn to shreds on peer review, its findings have never been replicated, but it is still the most quoted piece of helmet research. This study led to the helmet laws in Australia and New Zealand, but the predicted saving of lives is entirely absent, and the only detectable effect is to deter people from cycling, who then lose the overwhelming health benefits and become a huge burden on the health service. Cycling is much safer in Holland, no helmets, than it is in Australia, all helmets, so whatever makes cycling safe, it isn’t helmets.
Cycle helmets are supposed to work by deformation, which absorbs energy, but if they split, they absorb much less, and in this case, the helmet split “….his split in two after the impact of the collision….” so it is vanishingly unlikely that it saved his life.
It is a tenet of medicine, and applicable to other fields, that it is better to treat the cause, not the symptoms. If the cause, as in this case, is bad driving, then treat that: don’t armour the victims in flimsy plastic hats that give them a false sense of security and make them take more risks (risk compensation). Helmetted cyclists have more injury incidents that bare-headed riders.
Richard Burton, Lydney
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Has anyone/LA run a successful helmet campaign/activity in their area encouraging helmet use recently? We did one pre-pandemic with the local trauma consultant at A&E to mixed reception – bit of political backlash as seen as discouraging cycling. I’ve also had that with shared use campaign encouraging cyclists to be aware pedestrians may be vulnerable/invisibly disabled.
Keith Baldock, Brighton
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