… since we had a helmet law post, and today ..
Wow! This arrived in my inbox from the UK CTC – it very nicely sums up the argument and has some very interesting statistics (if you like that sort of thing!)
Cycle-helmets-(the-evidence)_brf
Now, I know lots of people will say ‘but these are uk statistics’ but having lived in the UK for many years I can tell you that there is nothing much different between cycling here and cycling there. In the UK there are more people, more cars and more idiots … and the same crappy cycle infrastructure.
Thanks for the info sheet, Unity. The helmet law IS crap. Might as well make pedestrians (and anyone using stairs!) wear a helmet. I just disagree with some here on the how and when to reform / repeal it.
Also, our Auckland police seems pretty relaxed about non-helmet wearing. Anyone ever seen / heard of somebody stopped? Just curious.
[Unrelated: In Firefox, the spellcheck / window size buttons partly overlap the comments box window. Could that be fixed?]
@Ingolfson
Number of tickets issued for violation of cycle helmet law (for the whole of NZ admittedly) in 2010 was 9618, up from 5550 in 2000 so not insignificant. I cannot find figures for 2011 yet.
Hi Bryce
I have heard however that enforcement levels are quite different depending on where you are in NZ. That is what I meant, and was wondering about.
@Ingolfson – I think it depends a lot on whether the police in that area have proper crimes to deal with. For instance, in Auckland CBD you have to practically run one over (which means they have to be on foot, which in itself is very rare) as they have plenty to keep them busy. However, in places like Waiheke Island they seem to be very keen as a helmet ticket may well be the biggest action all day!
I think it also has a bit to do with demographics as well – I know a couple of young men that have got them but I have cycled past the police station twice a day for three years and have had 2 ‘nice little chats’ but as yet no fine. You will hear about it when I get my first (I’ve probably jinxed it now so it could be next week!). I’m quite happy to pay my $55 – I view it more like a tax on helmet freedom than anything else and the policemen are very polite. My key tip, if you get stopped, is to be very polite, admit that you know it is the law and then shut up. They run out of steam pretty quick and in my experience, they let me cycle away. I imagine if you’re a 20 something bloke with tattoos, it may play out a little differently!
Copy that Ingolfson. I haven’t seen a breakdown of numbers either but this Aucklander only wears a helmet, while cruising around the city, because there is no way I’m giving any more of my hard earned cash to the govt to spend
.
Thanks for posting this, it’s very interesting and probably one of the best summaries of the evidence that I have seen.
It makes it clear that there is very little evidence for either side in this debate — that is, supporters of compulsory helmet wearing don’t have much to support their case but neither do those who say that helmets reduce cycling and so have an overall null or bad impact.
I think this lack of evidence is what makes it hard to change the law here as you basically need to make a strong argument against the status quo where no such evidential argument exists.
The valid argument that I think can be made is more from first principles: that riding without a helmet is a basic freedom and there needs to be a good reason to take away that freedom. Since no good reasons based on evidence currently exist, we should remain in the default position of not imposing helmets on people.
The current situation has the default set in the wrong place — we need to wear helmets unless we can show they do more harm than good.
Hi Unity, don’t think your Facebook feed is working : (
Julian
I read through that paper and then looked up the NZ statistics they cited (I didn’t have the time to do the others).
First, they cited one NZ study as showing that cycle use dropped significantly post helmet law. But actually when I looked up the study what the authors did was to calculate how many people MIGHT have stopped using a helmet, based on their assumption of a certain price sensitivity (basically, how averse people would be to paying for a helmet if they didn’t already use one). This is not the same thing as measuring how many people actually stopped cycling.
The second NZ study they cited is that one that looked at cycling rates in 1989/90 (a year we have data for based on one survey) and then compared cycling rates in 1998/98 (the next year we have data for).
AS I’ve said before, I don’t think it’s unfeasible that mandatory helmet laws stop people cycling (although I suspect the effect is often massively exaggerated). But I think presenting these two studies as “proof” is deceptive because a whole lot of other things happened in those ten years (between those two surveys) which may have influenced cycling rates.
I think presenting this type of statistic to support an argument actually weakens it if the numbers don’t stand up to scrutiny.
Lucy, those NZ papers lend evidence to the argument that helmets reduce cycling. I think the summary is quite good at just presenting the arguments and providing a summary of the evidence that exists. It makes it clear that evidence is quite weak on both sides and proof of the level of any effect is a long way off.
It is a good point in the summary that, due to the benefits of cycling, you would only need a small reduction in cycling from compulsory helmet laws to outweigh the health benefits of fewer head injuries. (they argue that a 5% drop would mean the costs outweigh the benefits).
Personally, I know one person who no longer cycles because of the helmet law. He’s a bit eccentric but often they are the keenest cyclists….
I recently got back from walking the Heaphy track in Kahurangi National Park, Westland Goldenbay. Currently DOC is trailing having the track open to mountain bikers in the off season. We must have seen over 100 cyclist (and 5 mountain unicyclists – but thats another story) over the 5 days we spent doing the track. I say that around half of that 100 where not wearing helmets. Obviously being off road they where not required to wear one. I thought it was an interesting indication of the levels of uptake when presented with the choice. Not to mention the fact that (down hill) mountain biking is probably one of the few scenarios where wearing a helmet might actually be more likely to offer some useful protection against over the handle bars head plant accidents. I wonder if there are any more scientific recent decent indications of the level of support the helmet law has amongst kiwis…..? (I think CAN put it at around half but pretty sure that was a figure reflective of CAN members rather than general public)
I think as well that what the article doesn’t mention is the change in the kinds of cycling we have now compared to before the helmet regulation.
In the 80s and before there was quite a bit of transport cycling and not so much sport/recreation riding. I rode to school and so did everybody else. My parents had bikes for going places and so did our neighbours. Now transport cycling is a very small part of the picture and road riding & mountain biking are the dominant segments.
This makes the law even more of a stuff-up, in my view.