News location:

Canberra Today 25°/28° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Griffiths / Hard arguments around helmets

THERE has been a lot of strange and poorly informed debate about cycling in Canberra lately so I feel that, as a cyclist who also owns a car (as most of us do), it’s worth unpacking some of the issues.

John Griffiths.
John Griffiths.

Some in the community question why cycling is a good thing that we should try and encourage.

For a start, road damage is a square power function of weight. Bicycles weighing around 100kg with rider can trundle along roads for centuries without the need for roadworks.

Also, with fossil fuels a finite resource every kilometre travelled by a cyclist is freeing up those fuels for a driver.

Inner-city parking space is limited, so again cyclists free parking spaces for motorists.

To the intelligent motorist, every cyclist is the best friend they’ve ever had!

As a society that provides health care there is then the issue that cyclists are getting exercise that, in the long run, frees up hospital beds and doctors’ appointments.

For every citizen who can be convinced to ride a bicycle rather than drive there are huge benefits to the government and the community as a whole.

Small tweaks to infrastructure and regulation that encourage cycling are therefore something sane governments view as a good idea.

Having said that, the proposal last week, packaged in a road safety strategy aiming for zero road deaths, to end mandatory bike helmet wearing was strikingly ludicrous.

Mandatory bike helmet laws save lives. Ending those laws will kill someone. We just don’t know who yet.

I will concede there’s little as pleasant as riding along with the wind in your hair.

But roads are hard and heads are fragile and, of the bike crashes I’ve been involved in, at least half have involved my head.

Which makes this a really interesting public policy debate, once we discard the “Vision Zero” part of the road-safety strategy.

Do the lives spared obesity, by encouraging cycling, balance those lost to head injury?

Particularly when the obesity lives are extremely hypothetical whereas the road injury lives are very real and certain?

I grumbled when the helmet laws came in but, like most other cyclists, I learned to leave the helmet hooked over the handlebars when storing the bike, and I can think of only one time the helmet law pushed me to drive a car rather than ride.

Now the issue that one time was I’d done my hair and didn’t want to mess it up with a helmet. Other people care more about that sort of thing than I do.

One hopes that the drive for organ donors has had nothing to do with this policy direction.

Advances in car safety have really cut into donor numbers. Before airbags, crumple zones, seat belts and collapsible steering wheels, the roads provided a steady stream of healthy young organs.

Increasing head-trauma road fatalities through relaxed helmet laws would certainly provide an improved supply of donor organs. Doubly so when those lives are being traded off against the obese.

It’s not a pretty thought.

On a happier note, aside from the above listed benefits to society as a whole of cycling, let me remind the reader of the personal benefits.

Parking costs nothing, there’s no petrol to pay for, you can save on a gym membership and it’s often faster than driving through a traffic jam, finding a park and walking from the car park to work.

Lastly it’s fun. Even with a helmet on.

 

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Share this

5 Responses to Griffiths / Hard arguments around helmets

Daniel says: 23 February 2016 at 8:27 pm

Wait, where are the hard arguments? Personal anecdotes and bizarre references to an ACT Government organ harvesting conspiracy don’t really stack up as hard arguments, when there is so much existing research in this space.

The conversation would be better served by arguments backed up by facts.

Have a look at the rate of head injuries among all WA road users from 1971 to 1997 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410838/figure/fig2/). The head injury reduction that so many people say prove how efficient helmet laws are, is present across all categories of road user and is largely unaffected by the introduction of helmet laws.

Even the report that was commissioned in Victoria in 1995 shows that the rate at which head trauma among cyclists reduced, matched the rate at head traumas fell. Those figures could only be reached after some careful adjustments due to changes in hospital processing and the way the way hospitals at that time categorised head injuries (http://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/216563/muarc076.pdf)

To swap anecdotal evidence, I can tell you that having grown up in Denmark and Germany, that most people seem to be able to make good decisions for themselves. If someone is going out for a more vigorous ride, where speed is the objective, they would wear a helmet. If that same person was going down to the market or to the train station, they would ride at a more leisurely pace and leave the helmet at home.

The sensible answer is to let people over the age of 17 or 18 years old make their own choices.

The actual facts show that this would be beneficial to Canberra as a whole, and the organ harvesting industry would still go wanting.

Reply
Harry Samios says: 1 March 2016 at 4:40 pm

Hi John, you stated all the main points in favour of cycling, well done. About helmets, in Holland, only road racers wear them and everyone from school age to pregnant women and grandmothers ride bikes. Our helmet laws reflect lack of infrastructure for cycling. Same with the dismount at crossings rule, it’s saves a driver having to apply the brakes by making the cyclist stop, dismount, remount and then start building momentum again. Northbourne Ave crossing lights are timed for pedestrians, very slow to change so that drivers don’t have to stop too often, but when stopped they have to wait for walking time rather than cycling time.
It’s a catch 22 – fewer people cycle because of helmets, so less pressure to provide the infrastructure. And that’s even in Australia’s cycling capital. London/Paris/most of Europe have great short term bike hire systems, no helmets. Everyone tries to avoid accidents. Do I really need a helmet for a leisurely ride on quiet streets to the local shops? I’m retired and mostly unhurried. Thanks, Harry

Reply

Leave a Reply

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews