Your article about cycle helmets (Oxford Mail, On Yer Bike, April 3) treads dangerous ground.

Whereas I quite agree that in collision with a car, a cycle helmet does little to protect the overall injuries that might be sustained, it most certainly does protect against accidents caused by a cyclist's own stupidity.

I am just such a statistic.

While at university in Southampton in the late 1970s, I apparently bought a pair of jeans, and was cycling along with the plastic bag over the drop bars on my racing bike.

I say apparently because, after waking up in hospital two hours later, I had no recollection of most of the day preceding the accident.

A gust of wind had seemingly blown the bag into my front forks, jamming the front wheel, and pitched me over the bars, at more than 10mph.

I struck the side of my head on the edge of the kerb, and passed out, with my eyes open and bleeding from my ear (much to the consternation of the attending police).

I was lucky - a hairline fracture of the skull, and nothing more than severe concussion.

The jeans were shredded, and the bike wrecked.

I came within a knat's whisker of brain damage or death.

Would a helmet have mitigated the injuries and risk?

You bet.

Not that cycle helmets were widely available then.

But every day, I see cyclists in and around Abingdon merrily scooting around with a plastic bag over the bars, without a hat.

Your writer, James Styring, made the point that in Australia, compulsory helmets caused a significant reduction in the number of regular cyclists.

Perhaps that is not surprising - Australia is a tropical climate.

In the middle, it is hot and dry, in the north, it is tropical rainforest, and even in the south, it regularly tops 40C in the summer.

So wearing a hat is a real thermal burden.

We do not have this sort of climate, and so compulsory hat wearing should not have the same effect, or certainly not to such a great extent, as in Australia.

Finally, professional cyclists have for many years been required to wear a hat - watch the Tour de France this year and see.

Be amazed at the huge pileups at 30mph, broken bones and missing skin.

Be amazed that there are no head injuries.

And that is why hats are compulsory.

CRAIG SAWYERS, Haywards Road, Drayton, Abingdon