OZschwitz: Call to repeal law on bicycle helmets

ALMOST 20 years after Australia became the first country to make it illegal to ride a bike without a helmet, two Sydney University researchers say the law does not work and we would be better off without it.

Chris Rissel and a colleague, from the university's school of public health, said their research showed that although there had been a drop in the number of head injuries since the laws were introduced in 1991, helmets were not the main reason.

General improvement in road safety from random breath testing and other measures were probably the cause, he said.

''I believe we'd be better off without it,'' he said of the laws. ''I'd recommend a trial repeal in one city for two years to allow researchers to make observations and see if there's an increase in head injuries, and on the basis of that you could come to some informed policy decision.''

Dr Rissel said that although helmets protect heads, they also discourage casual cycling, where people use a bike to get milk or visit a friend.

Scrapping compulsory helmet use, he believes, would reverse that, improve health rates and reduce injury rates because getting more cyclists on the roads would make motorists better at avoiding them.

To reach their conclusions, Dr Rissel analysed the ratio of head injuries to arm injuries among cyclists admitted to hospital between 1988 and 2008. He assumed the ratio would not change unless helmet use reduced head injury rates compared with arm injury rates.

Their findings showed that most of the fall in head injury rates occurred before the laws came into force.

After the new laws, they found ''a continued but declining reduction in the ratio of head injuries to arm injuries [and] … it is likely that factors other than the mandatory helmet legislation reduced head injuries''.

Dr Rissel said for many cyclists, particularly children and those riding longer distances, helmets were a good idea.

Although good ideas usually travelled around the world, only New Zealand had adopted Australia's model.

The state's peak cycling body, Bike NSW, was briefed on Dr Rissel's paper but was not persuaded by it. ''The data in the study is neither complete nor compelling … We don't think it would stand up to scrutiny,'' said the chief executive of Bike NSW, Omar Khalifa.

He believed the study failed to include cyclists who did not go to hospital because helmets saved them from a head injury.

''We believe riders who have ridden and fallen would almost all support the fact the helmet may have saved them from more serious injuries but … the study does not pick up any of that.''

Without any compelling data on the numbers of extra cyclists that would result from scrapping the law there was no reason for the change.

''Some say they'd prefer not to have it, but very few complain about having to wear them because they realise there's a potential benefit.'

ANCAPS: ANARCHO-CAPITALISTS

OZschwitz: Call to repeal law on bicycle helmets

OZschwitz: Call to repeal law on bicycle helmets

Anarcho-Capitalist Categorical Imperatives

Via AnCaps: Law & Enforced Unnatural Order