News Stories
February 2010
Israel Sees the Light
ARUTZ SHEVA Israeli National News Com
Reported: 21:28 PM - Feb/09/10
Law Would Exempt Adults from Wearing Bike Helmets
The Knesset has passed on its first reading a bill that would exempt individuals over 18 years of age from having to wear a helmet while riding a bicycle in urban areas. MK Shelly Yechimovich, one of the sponsors of the bill, said that the current requirement that riders wear a helmet was frightening off many Israelis from commuting to and from work by bicycle, resulting in more people driving – and more traffic, pollution, and accidents.
August 2009
Otago Daily Times (www.odt.co.nz) 27/08/2009
Helmet standards questioned
Whether they cost $219 or $59, cycle helmets in New Zealand are required to meet only a single standard.
Southern Region Coroner David Crerar is questioning the way standards are set for New Zealand cycling helmets.
Mr Crerar told an inquest into the death of cyclist David Edward John Hall (29) that a single standard for all cycling helmets "is possibly inappropriate".
In a police crash investigation report to the hearing, Senior Constable Alastair Crosland noted that cycling helmets were only designed to protect riders from low-speed, minor impacts and were tested in 1.4m drops that achieved about 16.2kmh.
Mr Crerar said cycling helmets provided a minimum of protection and he suggested that while a school child on a quiet street might need a helmet offering less protection, someone travelling at speed might require a helmet of a higher standard. He planned to ask Standards New Zealand to consider having varying standards for cycling helmets.
Mr Crerar found Mr Hall died from severe head injuries received when he fell off his bicycle in Barr St, Mornington, on March 17, 2009.
Karyn Elaine Costello-Hall gave evidence that her husband, an IT professional, had lost 40kg through a weight-loss programme of diet and exercise. To maintain his fitness, he had begun cycling between his home in Green Island and his job in Dunedin. "David was a bit of a speeder, in his car and on his bicycle. "He told me that he really liked speeding down Stuart St and liked passing cars." She believed it was the first time he had cycled down Barr St.
Senior Constable John Patrick Woodhouse told the inquest Barr St was steep, with a curve. "David has drifted left and off the road as he exited the right-hand bend. "He appears to have dropped his bicycle before crashing into the gutter and a lamppost and then into the rear of Andrew Moore's vehicle."
Mr Moore, of Mosgiel, gave evidence that he was sitting in his parked Mitsubishi truck, in Barr St, waiting for his music lesson. In his mirror, he saw a cyclist approaching. "He was about 40m away and he appeared to be completely out of control. "He was travelling very fast for a cyclist. He had his left leg down on the road and was wobbling all over the place." Mr Moore lost sight of the cyclist and then felt "an almighty bang" at the back of his truck. He found the cyclist in the gutter and called an ambulance while others, including a registered nurse, tried to resuscitate Mr Hall. Mr Crerar attributed no blame to Mr Moore.
The crash report considered Mr Hall - who was wearing an approved helmet - was travelling about 50kmh when he fell. He then slid, head first, into the kerb.
Mr Crerar did not consider a "number of defects" with the bicycle would have caused the loss of control. He noted the front wheel was on backwards and he urged cyclists to ensure their bicycles were well adjusted and maintained.
June 2009
Mandatory bicycle helmet laws could do more harm than good, a new study claims.
January 2009
ABC TV's JOHN STOSSEL'S VIDEO ON HELMETS
Investigative journalist, mythbuster and libertarian, John Stossel has weighed in on the bicycle helmet issue. Stossel, a NewYork City cyclist, has made a video about the unintended consequences of safety regulations. Included in the video are discussions with Ian Walker of Bath University (UK) on the unintended effects of bicycle helmet use. More Stossel videos ...
CAN (Cycling Advocates Network) SPEAKS OUT...
PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Minister of Transport Safety, the Hon. Harry Duynhoven, yesterday questioned NZ's compulsory helmet wearing legislation. The Minister was addressing a transport forum and questioned whether the compulsory helmet wearing legislation was working against government's aim of increasing the number of cyclists.
The Cycling Advocates Network (CAN) supports the Minister's stance.
CAN co-chairperson Axel Wilke says, "CAN has been calling for an objective review of the law for a number of years. To date, central government transport authorities have yet to provide research analysing the effect of the law".
"The merits of wearing a cycle helmet have not been conclusively proven either way in research worldwide. While we fully support anyone choosing voluntarily to wear a helmet, we are concerned about the wider effects the mandatory law has had," says Wilke.
"If the Government is keen to promote cycling for its health, safety, economic and environmental benefits, then a law that results in a 20% - 25% reduction in the number of cyclists would not appear to be the right way to go about it. Instead it sends a message that cycling is inherently dangerous, which it isn't."
CAN would prefer that the considerable money spent on helmet enforcement and
promotion was spent on programmes with more tangible cycling safety
benefits, such as driver/cyclist training, better cycle facilities and most importantly, speed reduction in urban areas.
Ministry of Transport accident data has shown that 1 in 1,000 cycles are involved in injury accidents compared to 3 in 1,000 cars.
ENDS
CONTACT:
Axel Wilke
Co-Chairperson
M: 027-292-9810
P: 03 366 9493 (after hours)
24 October 2008:
Hon Harry Duynhoven, Minister for Transport Safety: "Helmets 'may be deterring cyclists"
http://www.stuff.co.nz/thepress/4736920a28824.html
11 October 2008
I couldn't resist posting these pictures from a cyclists paradise - spot the helmets...
23 September 2008
A touch of Japanese reality...
Comment unnecessary!
20 September 2008
Elle Macpherson deserves a medal for defying the health and safety gods
Simon Jenkins, The Guardian, Friday Serptember 19 2008
The press are idiots to condemn the model for cycling without a helmet. The real villains are over-active traffic managers
The model Elle Macpherson was this week pilloried by the tabloids for bicycling in a London street without a helmet and with her (helmeted) son on her handlebars. "Elle on wheels," cried the Mail. "What the Elle are you doing?" screamed the Mirror with an editorial titled "Elle to pay". Even the Times demanded a response to her behaviour from the gods of health and safety. The answer from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents was a predictable howl: "Illegal and dangerous!"
The truth is the opposite. Macpherson was probably the safest cyclist in London that day. Like the mayor, Boris Johnson, she is signed up (I guess by instinct) to the Wilde-Adams theory of compensatory risk assessment. By not wearing a helmet, she lowers her risk threshold and thus rides more carefully. She commendably cycles rather than drives a car and protects her child, who cannot manage his own risk. The society should give her a medal, not insult her. The press were idiots.
By chance, this week sees the publication of another tome in the mountain of evidence that Britain's safety culture is making us increasingly unsafe. Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic collates a mass of evidence about how we drive cars and use roads. It demonstrates the extent of mendacious brain-washing inflicted on the public by health-and-safety lawyers, bureaucrats and sellers of expensive equipment.
Vanderbilt, like Gerald Wilde, Hans Monderman and John Adams before him, rests his case on the thesis that stripping people of responsibility for safety makes them take more risks, not fewer. Traffic safety is concerned not with dehumanised automatons but with people, and is a balance between authority and personal freedom.
Adams's "theory of risk compensation" states that people push their behaviour to a given level of danger. If they are made to feel safer - through driving a big car, wearing a harness or riding a motorbike in a helmet - they shift their risk threshold to a higher level of danger. The old experiment still works: increase your speed to 80mph, undo your seat belt and see what you do next. You brake. Likewise mobile phone users instinctively slow to a crawl, dangerous but less so than driving at 80mph.
The accumulation of statistics is overwhelming. Helmets, like seat belts, somehow do not seem to reduce accidents. Last year Norway's centre for transport research, in rejecting compulsory helmets, noted the "increased risk per cycling kilometre for cyclists wearing helmets, in Australia and New Zealand at around 14%". It also noted a consequent reduction in cycling use of 22%.
A British study showed that motorists instinctively give cyclists without a helmet a wider berth. Drivers are no more stupid than riders. Eye contact makes driving more intelligent, which is why convertibles reportedly have fewer accidents. For every cyclist who claims "my helmet saved my life", there are two for whom wearing a helmet led them to risk it.
The world's most celebrated cycling country, the Netherlands, has just 1% helmet use and has the safest cycling record anywhere. It has one third the cycling death rate of Western Australia, which has the most draconian law. The Dutch Cycling Council declares that helmets "increase cycling speeds and encourage riskier cycling behaviour ...They also reduce the care motorists give to cyclists". The dispatch rider careering through a red light may think his helmet makes him safer than the unguarded old lady on a sit-up-and-beg style bicycle, but he is wrong.
Ever since the government suppressed the 1981 Isles report for suggesting that compulsory seats belts might cost lives by encouraging speeding, the psychology of road use has been treated as anathema. The idea that signs, lights, cameras and "controlled" pedestrian crossings might distract driving vision and decrease safety is intolerable to those who love regimenting others. A mother nosing her way on a bike through the traffic must be more dangerous than if she were careering at twice the speed in an armoured buggy - whatever the facts may say.
Traffic engineers regard cars as crazed robots to be freed from human frailty. Theirs is a Fritz Lang metropolis in which tiny pods move silently through three dimensions and people are ants. They have cocooned us in super-safe cars that we drive too fast. They think they are reducing congestion with parking restrictions, lanes, roundabouts and gyratories, but cancel any such benefit by making journeys twice as long as they need be with one-way streets and traffic lights. The latter waste road space, increase travel time and burn millions of tonnes of unnecessary carbon.
Traffic management must be the most uneconomic, anti-human and carbon-guzzling regulation on earth. Pedestrians are corralled and confined by fences. Streets are polluted by forests of signs, preventing drivers from their prime task of watching and showing consideration to other road users. We put up with this nonsense in the naive belief that it must be doing us good. It is not.
Vanderbilt is a follower of the "shared space movement" pioneered by the Dutch engineer, Monderman, whose work is now near standard across mainland Europe. There are 4,000 "naked street" schemes in Germany alone, where lights and restrictions are minimal and pedestrians, cyclists and cars tolerate each other at all but the most difficult crossings.
Rather than accelerating and braking down a regulated street, cars tend to move at under 20mph, informally policed by pavement design and the uncertainty of sharing space with pedestrians and cyclists. That eyes are the best traffic policemen was a Monderman maxim. In shared space, accidents fall and journey times actually improve, often by extraordinary amounts.
At Monderman's much-publicised Drachten intersection in the Netherlands, where fountains replace posts, fences, lights and kerbstones, the chief menace is said to be visiting traffic engineers repeating the master's trick of walking blindfold and backwards through the streaming traffic, which somehow gives way but never stops. Naked streets have even proved safer for the disabled.
The one English example is the "half-naked" Kensington high street. Cleared of barriers and safety clutter, its accident rate has fallen by 44% in two years. Only in Britain would such a boon be "experimental", fought tooth and nail by safety engineers in league with contractors and, I must assume, undertakers. There is hardly a street in Britain not being upheaved for some pedestrian segregation scheme, each aimed at reducing personal risk and thus increasing the chance of an accident.
All vehicles are people in disguise, negotiating the use of common space with each other. They must never be induced to delegate that obligation to signs and machines. They certainly must not think themselves safer than others, or they will behave with less consideration for others as a result.
Most people with whom I discuss these ideas look at me with blank amazement. It just cannot be true. The control of "the driving experience" must surely make it safer and not more dangerous. If the facts suggest otherwise, they must be wrong. Control always has the best tunes.
Galileo had the same trouble with the Inquisition. I say give Elle Macpherson a Galileo medal.
simon.jenkins@guardian.co.uk
02 June 2008
Scared Stiff: Worry in America
Unintended consequences: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdoE2YCvwdM
See research report below.
Fines wiped if biker buys 'dorky' helmet
Dominion Post 01 December 2007A Napier man with 11 unpaid fines for refusing to wear a bike helmet has been told some will be swapped for community work if he buys a helmet and brings it to court.
The problem is Shane Boyce, 21, has sold his bike - but reckons he will buy a cheap helmet anyway, to save a bit of money.
He has refused to wear one because he says "they look dorky".
Getting fined $185 for not wearing a bike helmet would persuade most people to start wearing one.
But 11 fines later - the first in 2002 and the most recent in July - he still does not have a helmet.
Nor has he paid a cent of the fines.
He was arrested on Thursday for having outstanding fines of $4320 - of which $2035 were for not wearing his helmet.
The others were for various driving offences and disorderly behaviour.
Boyce appeared before a bewildered Judge Bridget Mackintosh in Napier District Court yesterday.
"Mr Boyce, why would you not wear a cycle helmet?
"Do you have a problem with that?" she asked, failing to elicit a response.
"I tell you what, you'd have a big problem if you were involved in an accident without a helmet. You know that?"
"Um, yeah," Boyce responded.
"This is ridiculous," said the judge, ordering him to buy a helmet and bring it back to the court in two weeks.
She said if he showed her the helmet on that day she would remit some of the fines in return for a sentence of community work.
Talking to The Dominion Post later, Boyce said he had sold his bike not long after his last offence and now walked.
He said he was happy to do community work rather than pay the fine money and he planned to buy a cheap helmet before going to court next time.
"I'll never use it, but it'll save me heaps."
Wearing helmets 'more dangerous'
BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/england/somerset/5334208.stm
Published: 11 September 2006
Dr Ian Walker
Cyclists who wear protective helmets are more likely to be knocked down by passing vehicles, new research from Bath University suggests.
The study found drivers tend to pass closer when overtaking cyclists wearing helmets than those who are bare-headed.
Dr Ian Walker was struck by a bus and a lorry during the experiment. He was wearing a helmet both times.
But the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said tests have shown helmets protect against injuries.
To carry out the research, Dr Walker used a bike fitted with a computer and an ultrasonic distance sensor to find drivers were twice as likely to get close to the bicycle, at an average of 8.5cm, when he wore a helmet.
The experiment, which recorded 2,500 overtaking motorists in Salisbury and Bristol, was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
Dr Walker, a traffic psychologist from the University's Department of Psychology, said: "This study shows that when drivers overtake a cyclist, the margin for error they leave is affected by the cyclist's appearance.
This study suggests wearing a helmet might make a collision more likely
Dr Ian Walker
"By leaving the cyclist less room, drivers reduce the safety margin that cyclists need to deal with obstacles in the road, such as drain covers and potholes, as well as the margin for error in their own judgements.
"We know helmets are useful in low-speed falls, and so definitely good for children, but whether they offer any real protection to somebody struck by a car is very controversial.
"Either way, this study suggests wearing a helmet might make a collision more likely in the first place," he added.
Dr Walker thinks the reason drivers give less room to cyclists wearing helmets is because they see them as "Lycra-clad street warriors" and believe they are more predictable than those without.
He suggests different types of road users need to understand each other.
"Most adult cyclists know what it is like to drive a car, but relatively few motorists ride bicycles in traffic, and so don't know the issues cyclists face.
"There should definitely be more information on the needs of other road users when people learn to drive and practical experience would be even better."
Wig wearing
To test another theory, Dr Walker donned a long wig to see whether there was any difference in passing distance when drivers thought they were overtaking what appeared to be a female cyclist.
While wearing the wig, drivers gave him an average of 14cm more space when passing.
In future research, Dr Walker hopes to discover whether this was because female riders are seen as less predictable than male riders or because women are not seen riding bicycles as often as men on the UK's roads.
However, a spokesman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents insisted: "We wouldn't recommend that people stop wearing helmets because of this research. Helmets have been shown to reduce the likelihood of head and brain injuries in a crash.
"[The research] highlights a gain in vulnerability of cyclists on our roads and drivers of all types need to take more care when around them."
The Paris 'Velib' Project
As can be seen on the YouTube feature, in a city notorious for it's traffic, the project is simplified by there being no requirement for users to wear cycle helmets. The schemes in Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Oslo are also helmet free.An explanation of the project on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDBfwU6zni8
'The city's gone cycling mad'
It has been a month since Paris introduced its city-wide bike rental scheme. So how is it going? Local resident Angelique Chrisafis finds out.
No doubt the Tour de France helped, but when my rather substantial friend Jean, who has never knowingly walked more than 100m without the promise of a four-course meal at the end of it, began to trumpet the joys of cycling, I knew something profound was happening to the Parisian psyche. One month after its launch, Paris's Vélib', or "freedom bike" scheme, has turned the city cycling mad. You simply pick up a bike from one of the ubiquitous stands, ride it along for your short trip and drop it back at any random stand at your destination.
The first half-hour's pedal-time is free, with charges rising steeply afterwards. Day and night, tourists, commuters and returning party animals cruise by on the chic new machines. People have joyfully discovered the cheap new way of exercising en route to work or getting home drunk after the metro closes, hence a rush of hires after 1am. There's a glut of bikes deposited at stands at the bottom of hills and none left at the top, as people freewheel down from the heights of Belleville and Montmartre.
So huge is the success of the Vélib' that Paris is proclaiming a veritable "vélorution", reclaiming the streets for two-wheelers. This is not the first scheme to provide bikes for cheap short-hires - Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Oslo got there first, and Lyon was the pioneer in France - but Paris aims to be the biggest. More than 1.6m hires have been registered in the first month from the 800 bike stands around the city. Currently 10,600 bikes are in circulation, but by the end of the year that will double. The unisex bikes are provided by the poster advertising company JCDecaux to Paris city hall in return for ad space in the city, so at no cost to the taxpayer. It's a political triumph for Paris's socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, and his opposite number Ken Livingstone is so impressed that he has ordered a consultation on bringing the scheme to London.
Even in the world capital of fashion, the municipal bikes have quickly become dernier cri. As the French first lady Cécilia Sarkozy attests, a chic French woman should never diverge from the strict colour scheme of black, grey or camel, and the bikes, with their metal casing, fit perfectly. Initially, they were derided by right-wing councillors for blending so well into the landscape that they risked being dangerously invisible. But, in fact, Paris has avoided a plague of garish neon bikes in favour of an understated colour scheme that looks good gliding down the boulevards. More important, the bikes are excellent. Laurent Fignon, twice Tour de France champion, was impressed, though he did warn that they weren't great for racing or riding hands-free. But perhaps that's a good thing.
The Green party has congratulated Parisians for leaping on a scheme that shows that protecting the environment "is not a punishment, but a delight".
But for all the hype, has Vélib' actually stopped people using their cars? Anecdotally, most people using the bikes are coming off public transport, seeking an alternative to bus, metro and expensive Paris taxis at night. At rail stations, so great is the rush for suburban commuters to jump on bikes rather than cram into Metro carriages that some have tried to lock up bikes on stands at night to secure them for the morning. But the increase in people cycling does seem to be boosting bike awareness and challenging the car mentality. Paris, with its wide streets, is already a better city for cyclists than London. And no, you don't wear shorts, helmet or pollution mask; most people prefer a suit or high heels. Blase cyclists can be seen negotiating the high-speed free-for-all that is the Place de la Concorde while puffing a cigarette and calling a friend.
"If a critical mass of people get on these bikes, it will change the way drivers react to cyclists - it will force the city to put in more cycle lanes," says Alexandre, an IT technician who has cycled to the Champs-Elysées for lunch with a colleague who hasn't ridden a bike since he was 12. Wisely, they have taken the pedestrian underpass rather than negotiate the Étoile roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe.
Already taxi and bus drivers are complaining about the mass of inexperienced cyclists hogging bus lanes. Paris city hall has stamped rules of the road on the handlebars such as "Don't cycle along pavements". But everyone knows rules are made to be broken. Of regular Paris cyclists, 71% admit to jumping red lights, over a third regularly go the wrong way up one-way streets, and more than half cycle without lights at night.
There must be something in the air if even I decided to get on a bike for the first time since primary school. I can testify that, like all good things French, simply getting out a one-day Velib' ticket at a roadside machine involves a Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare of special codes, endless button-pressing and loud swearing. I signed off a €150 deposit on my credit card for the €1 ticket that gave me half an hour's cycle time. (The prices for daily and weekly passes are different from yearly subscriptions - I told you it was complicated.) The spin around the Marais was lovely, but when I glided the bike back into a stand, the light, which should have been green, went red. Should I call the hotline? I asked passersby in what has been termed the new "social networking" as strangers in the street discuss bike hire (or panic about glitches). It was Sunday night, the line was closed. I rang the next morning and, yes, the kind lady established that something had gone wrong - my bike had been "blocked". If I hadn't called I would have been billed for the equivalent of a summer biking holiday along the Canal du Midi.
But despite teething problems, the Vélibs have cheered up Parisians in a rainy August. The true test will come in September, when students, commuters and drivers return from their summer break and the roads fill up again and tempers fray.
Crucially, the Velib' is an alternative for those who have fallen prey to Paris's notorious bike thieves. "I've had bikes stolen so many times, I'd rather just use these," says an advertising executive at a bike point at the Hôtel de Ville. In the first month of the scheme, only around 100 of the 10,600 Vélibs have been pinched. In Cambridge, when a similar project was piloted in the 1960s, the fleet gradually vanished. When another attempt was made in 1993, all 300 bikes were stolen on the first day.
Members in Court
NO HELMETS: A defiant Richard Oddy (left) and Graeme Trass ride to court without their cycle helmets.
A Taupo man who has been campaigning against the mandatory wearing of cycle helmets has been asked to consider what would become of society if everyone defied any law to which they took exception.
Graeme Leslie Trass (49) was yesterday found guilty of not wearing a helmet while riding his bicycle on Lake Tce in December last year.
Trass represented himself when he appeared before Justices of the Peace Tony Israel and Gordon Stevenson.
Mr Israel said the court had allowed Trass great leeway in pushing several barrows, including taking issue with police for not giving him an infringement notice every time he had ridden past without a helmet.
"I have said at least three times that the sole purpose of the court today was to establish whether the element of charges laid against you are proved."
Police prosecutor Sergeant Geoff Kaye submitted that if found guilty, the sentence should reflect the need to comply with the law because of the example set by the rest of the community.
While the defendant found wearing a helmet "uncomfortable" it did not preclude him from being able to ride.
"He must bear the consequences if he chooses to ride without one."
Mr Kaye said there are ways and means of changing the law, but it should be done through political avenues, not through the judiciary.
Mr Israel said by his own admission, the defendant had accepted that he was not wearing a helmet at the time he was issued with an infringement notice.
He fined Trass $55 and ordered him to pay court costs of $130.
Reporting: Sue Hawkins
Photographer: Paula Coubrough
Taupo Times 18/09/03
Helmetless cyclist in court
story by Simon Makker, Taupo Times, May 2003
photo by Sam Ryan, Taupo Times
Facing a charge of not wearing an approved cycle helmet while riding a bicycle on a road, Taupo man Graeme Trass rode his bike to the Taupo District Court's preliminary hearing without a helmet yesterday, and in court claimed he had been a victim of "bully boy abuse".
Trass pleaded not guilty to his charge and requested a judge to hear the trial.
"I have some reasons I'd like to state," said Trass at the hearing.
"I'm not particularly interested in hearing them," said Justice of the Peace Tony Israel.
"I have been a victim of abuse. This is a rights issue versus the power of the state," said Trass. "I chose to defend the charge rather than pay the $55 fine, and if I'm found guilty, that fine could be raised to $1000. Now I think that is bully boy abuse by the state -"
"That's enough Mr Trass," interrupted Mr Israel.
The defendant also requested a speedy trial. His case was adjourned until September 17 for a defended hearing.
Late last year Trass told the Taupo Times the law regarding the mandatory wearing of cycle helmets while riding a bike should be a matter of choice.
"It's an intrusion of out rights - people should have the right to choose (whether to wear a helmet or not)," he said. "It's an over-the-top safety control. Do we then stop people eating chicken because some have choked on the bones?"
Royal Support
Cycling is popular with the royal family. Prince William is pictured here in his Team New Zealand jacket cycling near St Andrew's University. (April 2003)
Helmet Law Concerns Are Legitimate, Say Cyclists
Wednesday, 22 January 2003
Press Release: Cycling Advocates Network
The Cycling Advocates Network (CAN) today denounced reported criticism of anti-helmet-law campaigners, urging their opponents to "play the ball and not the person".
It was reported yesterday that safety campaigners and transport officials had described as the "the lunatic fringe" a new group, Cycle HEALTH (Helmet Law Truth and Honesty), campaigning for a repeal of the mandatory bicycle helmet law.
CAN spokeperson Glen Koorey said that they had been calling for an objective review of the law for a number of years. To date, the Land Transport Safety Authority has yet to supply them with any research analysis of the effect of the law.
"The merits of wearing a cycle helmet have not been conclusively proven either way, worldwide. While we fully support anyone choosing voluntarily to wear a helmet, we are concerned about the wider effects that the mandatory law has had," said Mr Koorey.
"If the Government is keen to promote cycling, because of its health, safety, economic and environmental benefits, then a law that results in a 20-25% reduction in the number of cyclists would not appear to be the right way to go about it. Instead it sends a message that cycling is inherently dangerous, which it isn't."
CAN would prefer that the considerable money spent on helmet enforcement and promotion was spent on programmes with more tangible cycling safety benefits, such as driver/cyclist training, better cycle facilities, and speed reduction in urban areas.
'Ridiculous' helmet law under fire
Sunday Star-Times, 19 January 2003
by Matthew Lowe
A cyclist prepared to go to jail rather than pay a $55 police fine for failing to wear a cycle helmet has formed a pressure group to fight the law.
Graeme Trass has put together a group with the help of an emergency ward doctor and they plan to lobby the goverment to scrap the law forcing cyclists to wear helmets.
The move has outraged safety campaigners and transport officials who have described the organisation as "the lunatic fringe".
Trass was stopped by police last month for riding through Taupo without protective headgear.
He has vowed not to pay the fine and as part of the Cycle Helth (Helmet Law Truth and Honesty) campaign, which has been set up with Wellington doctor Dan Keown, plans to write to Transport Minister Paul Swain about the issue.
"There's quite a few disgruntled people out there who are anti the helmet law and our aim is to get the law removed.
"I have been issued with a ticket and will be defending myself in court if necessary. I won't pay a fine and if a court feels I have done something wrong, they will have to look at alternative sentencing.
"If people want to wear them, then fine, but the reality is helmets do not do a lot except stop a few scratches if you fall off at low speed," said Trass.
The group has drafted letters of protest to Swain but a spokesman for the minister said there was unlikely to be a change in legislation.
"There are no plans to repeal the law and Land Transport Safety Authority (LTSA) research has shown a big reduction in head injuries resulting in hospitalisation since the compulsory helmet law in 1994."
LTSA research shows at least 21 of the 79 cyclists killed in the last six years were not wearing helmets.
Rebecca Oaten, from Palmerston North, lobbied the government to introduce the legislation after her 29-year-old son Aaron was permanently brain damaged in a cycle accident 17 years ago.
She said it was appalling a doctor was backing a campaign she believed could lead to serious injury or death.
"I would challenge anyone opposing the law to spend a few days with Aaron and see if they are still happy to ride around without helmets. I imagine they could not put one on quickly enough if they did."
Keown said helmets prevented only scalp lacerations and claimed there was no evidence they could stop accident victims going into a coma or dying.
"If I cycle around without a helmet, it's my choice and I'm not doing anyone any harm. The fact riding a bicycle can be considered a criminal activity is ridiculous."
LTSA spokesman Andy Knackstedt said helmets were considered a "very important tool" for preventing injuries.
"When you come off your bike, the only thing between your head and the road or car windscreen is your helmet."
source: Sunday Star Times (article no longer available)
Government Kills Cyclists
Media Release 14 November 2000
This Wednesday "cyclist and defendant" Gregor Campbell is returning yet again to the Dunedin District Court to defend his talent of failing to wear a cyclists? crash helmet. Mr Campbell is strongly skeptical of the recent television advertisement campaign showing an accident victim dying because he neglected to use his seat-belt.
Mr Campbell today stated "Since the introduction of compulsory seat-belt laws death and injury to all road users due to head injury has been roughly 60%. There is not a single argument in favour of compulsory cycle helmet laws that can not be extended to prevent roughly 300 deaths and 3600 serious injuries a year to motor vehicle drivers.
"In fact it has been estimated that the cost-benefit of compulsory helmet laws in all vehicles would be 17 times that of cyclists alone. Why has this not been seriously proposed?
"Neither has there been a cent spent on educating motor vehicle drivers on cycle safety, as promised by Maurice Williamson [former Minister of Transport] to be complimentary with compulsory helmet laws.
"The "good news" that head injuries have been reduced 20% since the introduction of helmet laws is really an admission of failure. If all injuries to cyclists were head injuries I might be 20% impressed, but there has been no reduction of other injuries to cyclists caused by motor vehicles. I am not 1% impressed.
"Nothing is being done to prevent accidents to cyclists and they are still being killed. Nothing has changed. Those who enforce this dangerous law from the comfort of their patrol cars cannot be part of the solution to cycle safety, merely part of the problem.?
Mr Campbell has recently changed his official occupation to "Subject of Police Harrassment" to reflect his opinion of official response to the wider problem of cycle safety.