I RECENTLY got into a facebook debate with a few friends after I posted a comment in response to Olympic gold-medal cyclist Bradley Wiggins, who said riding a bike without a helmet should be illegal.

Wiggins was speaking shortly after the death of a cyclist in a collision involving a bus near the Olympic village.

I said something along the lines of: “Wiggins is entitled to his view but I am old enough to decide whether I should wear a cycle helmet and don’t need the law to tell me to do so.”

What dismayed me about the response from my friends, both online and off, was not the vehemence with which they disagreed with me, but the ease with which they were willing to give up the freedom to choose.

I was asked how my children would feel if I was to die in an accident because I wasn’t wearing a helmet and I was told of friends who would ‘still be with us’ if only they had been wearing a helmet.

Powerful arguments, but still not enough to convince me I should allow another freedom to be taken away from me.

I am a (relatively) intelligent adult who has been riding a bike since Hong Kong Phooey was my preferred Saturday morning viewing and Spangles were the tastiest way to spend nine pence.

I have had my scrapes while riding bikes – I have been hit by a car, aged seven (my fault). I have crashed spectacularly, mid-air and head-on into my friend Paul, on our Rally Grifters when we both tried to get some ‘big air’ on opposing ramps made out of bricks and old tea trays (both our faults).

I was lucky. Both times I emerged unscathed, if a little dazed and embarrassed. I was a kid and maybe compulsory cycle helmets for under-16s is a good idea. However, as I approach 40, I no longer have the compulsion to experience flight on two wheels and I use my mountain bike for riding around on roads or country tracks to keep fit or for nipping to the shops.

I am quite capable of assessing the risks involved in going down to the Co-op for a bottle of milk on my bike and, based on three-and-a-half decade’s cycling experience, I am willing to take the risk and not wear a helmet.

The fact is most cyclists who die do so because they collide with a car or lorry or, in the case of the death near the Olympic stadium, a bus. According to eyewitnesses the cyclist was dragged under the vehicle and tragically died shortly after. It is hard to see how they would be alive today if they had been wearing a helmet – for all I know they may have been.

The answer, as ever, is education and not giving up a right to decide for ourselves.

More emphasis should be made in car theory tests on spotting and avoiding cyclists. Children should be taught in schools about cycle helmets and lessons given on road sense.

Adults should be reminded about cycle helmets and provided with statistics and information on road-deaths when they buy a bike.

All of this enables us to make an informed choice for ourselves regarding our personal safety– one of the fundamental rights of a human being.

Any accidental death is a tragedy and often brings knee-jerk reactions from the well-intentioned but ill-informed. Flicking through the pages of any edition of The Press will reveal tragic tales of people who would be alive today if they hadn’t got on a motorbike, crossed the road, climbed a mountain, smoked for 60 years or jumped in the Ouse. Almost all of these deaths could have been avoided with education.

The other obvious question if cycle helmets are to be made compulsory is ‘what next?’ All it takes is a politician hungry for votes and a lobby group with a vested interested to reel them in and the seeds are sown for a campaign to rob us of another freedom.

Let’s look at Australia, where cycle helmets were made compulsory in the early 1990s. When the law was passed, deaths among cyclists dropped sharply. However, the number of cyclists also fell by 50 per cent.

Now, I know I may sound like a petulant child taking his ball home, but the day I have to wear a cycle helmet under pain of prosecution is the day my bike goes on eBay and I use the money to buy a tank-full of diesel for my 12-year-old, fume-belching Skoda Octavia.

I leave you with these words from the 1789 Declaration of Rights from our neighbours across the channel (and now second-best competitive cycling nation on earth), the French. “Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else.”