Australia to examine mandatory cycle helmet law

Hi Toro Toro,

Is there anywhere that those links are freely available? At $42 a pop they get expensive after opening a couple.
I had a look at the bottom two and I am not convinced by the speeds they are using. 6m/s is less than 14 MPH, I am not a fast rider but that is close to my commuting speed, add in an impact and the combined speed will be more than the trial was designed for.

It would also be preferable if the AIS were more specific in their abstract, I accept that it is a cosmetic preference but it should have been clearer if they referred to region and severity.

Ta,

Bill

Emm, access to scientific papers is actually a bit of a political issue at the moment! In future, the pre-publication versions of papers should always be available on the authors' university/institutional websites. But that's not much help for previous research.

You should be able to access them through a University library, if that's any help.

On the speed, remember that in most cases the impact speed will be less than the travelling speed of the bicycle. Unless you go pretty much straight into a fall at full speed, you'll decelerate through the air.

Impact from other vehicles does complicate this, of course.

Sorry Torro Torro, I may be misinterpreting your second comment but assuming that we are both cycling on planet Earth how can impact speed be less than traveling speed?

I left university some decades ago but I don't think that Newton's Laws have been disproved that much.

Because you slow down. Throw a ball through the air; if it maintains the original speed it is travelling at, it will keep going forever or until it hits something. Obviously that's not what happens.

If you're thrown from the bike, you lose your velocity very quickly. That's *why* you hit the ground, because your velocity quickly declines below that of gravity.

In any case, note wycombewheeler's comments about the velocity of impacts with the ground.

If she goes horse riding on ecstasy there will be no need to wear a helmet. Very few incidents of trauma to pilled-up equestrians have been recorded.

Right. I said my major objection to ecstasy was that teenagers taking it were really boring.

What has this to do with helmets, exactly?

What is Felix cooking, a bear?

Joe, what happens to my imaginary daughter? Is she thrown from a horse, or does she go on to harder drugs?

These are important questions, because YOU CAN'T MAKE ME WEAR A HELMET, SCIENCE!

I have worn a helmet when cycling since my bell image of the 90s. I believe they reduce the risk of head injury. That my opinion, it's in part based on evidence both quantitative and antidotal from personal experiance. I don't care if people agree or not. It's my choice.

However last week I rode along the Keswick disused railway line cycle track with no helmets, I was at a slow pace and I have to say felt great with no helmet. Surley this debate is missing the point, If a person has mental capacity surley they should be allowed to make there own choice it's there head.

cheers nb - that's pretty much how I thought things are over in the Sunshine State

for those interested in the debate and with time on their hands....here's a link to the Mandatory Helmet Law thread on the
Aus' Bicycle Network forum 8000+ posts and growing

http://bicycles.net.au/forums/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=31309&sid=6666eb35bda...

This should be fun.

Went horse-riding. Assuming she was wearing a helmet. She might get a better workout dancing, but teenagers on ecstasy are very tedious.

If she were to take ecstasy, I would prefer it to be in a comparatively risk-free environment; pill-testing, medical assistance available, working toilet taps...

Toro ... just out of interest.

Imagine that you had an 18-year old daughter who decided that she wanted a new leisure activity and assuming that her good health was your main concern.

Would you rather that said daughter went horse-riding once per week or took an Ecstasy pill once per week?

Hi Joe. If you're going back that far, you might actually see where I've replied to those questions already.

I said that yes, this didn't apply in Denmark and the Netherlands, since their cycling environment was far safer.

However, I also pointed out that, since we did not share that environment - since we rode with British drivers and British road infrastructure rather than Danish or Dutch drivers and Danish or Dutch road infrastructure - it was the height of stupidity to extrapolate from the low rate of injury in those countries to the safety of helmetless riding in this one.

You can think of it this way; imagine we are running a game reserve in Tanzania, and are worried that lions are attacking the tourists. I recommend giving tourists a lion repellent spray which numerous studies have shown to work. You point out that nobody in Denmark or Holland uses the spray, and that very few of them get mauled by lions. I agree. I say that's because there are far fewer lions in Denmark and Holland than there are in our Tanzanian game reserve; they are low risk-of-mauling environments. You say it's because all the studies are obviously wrong, and the spray is ineffective. Can you see why that would be spurious?

I also said that helmets did in fact make cycling even safer in those countries, but that given the safer cycling environment there the improvements were marginal enough to be disregarded.

If you want to ask me the same questions again in another forty posts' time, the answers will still be the same.

Fucks sake. Toro ... just bring us back to where you stated that "anyone who doesn't wear a helmet is an idiot" ... and therefore why, in your view, pretty much the entire populations of the Netherlands and Denmark are all "idiots".

How is it that all these "idiots", to use your description of them, happen to have the fewest deaths and injuries due to cycling, per Km ridden, in the Western world?

What advice would you offer to the "idiots" of the Netherlands and Denmark, apart from wearing cycling helmets, to make their cycling even safer?

We're all sitting on our hands waiting for the pearls of wisdom that you will undoubtedly provide.

I said at the start; people who are determined not to wear a helmet will go to just about any lengths to cherry-pick, distort, and dismiss evidence to convince themselves in the face of reason that they are correct. And here's a perfect example.

Yes, some peer-reviewed articles later come in for criticism. If it's scientifically sound - even scientifically *literate* - criticism, you would expect it, in turn, to be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. It isn't.

It's criticised in blog-posts on anti-cycling websites. And people who don't want to wear helmets convince themselves on that basis that the studies are "low grade rubbish". Never mind that they have no scientific competence whatsoever to make that judgement; some guy on the internet has told them something they want to hear, and that's what they're damn well going to believe.

And then they get annoyed when someone makes cracks about their cognitive capacity.

Hey, felix, I've cooked two meals for myself in that time. Do you want me to call over and feed you? You can dig out those stats while I'm doing it. I'm sure you weren't just making them up.

The usual argument about helmet laws is in regard to the cost to the State for health services to the injured. But if helmets actually work - have studies shown that the cost from those who don't wear them is actually greater?

I mean, shouldn't non-helmet-wearers just be dead? Or at least dead in greater proportion? That costs the state nothing. It's injured cyclists that cost the state money, and no one claims that helmets *prevent* injury.

And in these days of unemployment, it frees up a position for another person. These are the difficult studies no-one wants to do. (Credit -Jonathan Swift)

(Put another way; I commute about 17 miles, mostly along main roads with no footpath, much of it overhung by trees. Were I walking that every day, it probably would be sensible to wear protective gear, yes. At a minimum, the much-maligned hi-vis vest, which I don't usually wear on the bike.)

Well, I didn't cite the Cochrane study, so it's not clear why that would be relevant.

But again, the gold-standard here is peer-reviewed studies in scientific journals; not opinion pieces on the website of lobby groups.

In any case, AGAIN the CTC report is about compulsory helmet legislation and/or pro-helmet publicity campaigns. It is not about the safety effect of wearing helmets.

It is really bizarre that people keep confusing these things.

Quote:

Per mile travelled as I recollect. I will get the evidence when I have finished my cooking duties.

While we're waiting, it's worth pointing out an obvious problem with the "per mile travelled", which makes it look like a cherry-picked datum. The average bike journey will cover a significantly longer distance than the average pedestrian journey, so it's not clear at all that the comparison is like for like.

The principal reason for the disparity in journey length is the comparative speed; I wouldn't walk the distances I cycle, because it takes much longer. So, suppose for argument's sake that I travel five times faster on my bike than on foot. That means that to cover the same number of miles, I will have to spend five times as long walking.

If the injury rate in two-and-a-half hours of walking turns out to be slightly higher than the injury rate in half an hour of cycling, it's far from obvious that that indicates that walking is more dangerous. The comparison just isn't like for like.

Can someone please call someone else a helmet Nazi so this thread can die?

Felix, nothing on that page indicates either that the rate of head injuries per journey is similar, or that the total number of journeys is similar.

What it does is compare the absolute numbers of pedestrian and cyclist injuries before and after the compulsory helmet law. But firstly, *again*, I'm not advocating compulsory usage. And secondly, the point about the base rate fallacy is that looking at absolute numbers in isolation is misleading. So nothing there shows what you claim.

You want evidence? Okay, here are some of the many studies published in peer-reviewed journals, rather than on the webpage of an anti-helmet lobby group:

Regression analysis shows that head injury is significantly reduced in age groups with increasing helmet use: http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/3/191.full

Systematic review of 22 different peer-reviewed studies indicates between 63 and 88% reduction of head-injury risk among helmet users: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2598379/

Statistical analysis of coroners' data shows that not using a helmet results in significantly elevated risk of fatal injury:
http://www.cmaj.ca/content/early/2012/10/15/cmaj.120988.full.pdf

Epidemiology indicates helmets are highly effecive at reducing crash impact and preventing injury: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000145751400061X

Aside from statistical and epidemiological studies, dynamic modelling simulation of cranial impacts under a range of accident scenarios shows protective effect of helmet use: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24005027

That's a few minutes' googling. All, as I say, peer-reviewed scientific studies. Not some guy with a website and an opinion.

I call Troll.

First, the NYT has had well-documented fact-checking disasters, and its credibility is thoroughly shot on that front. Google "Jayson Blair".

Second, that has nothing to do with any argument I've made.

Third, are you or are you not going to back up the claim that the rates of head injury for pedestrians and motorists are similar to those for cyclists with statistical data?