To Helmet or not to Helmet?

To Helmet or not to helmet, that is the question. Apologies to Shakespeare and his great work in Hamlet, not Helmet. According to Wikipedia, in his speech a despondent Prince Hamlet contemplates death and suicide. He bemoans the pains and unfairness of life but acknowledges the alternative might be still worse.  Sure enough Hamlet was talking about avenging the death of his father, not about whether it should be compulsory to wear helmets in the face of possibly worse consequences without one. 

Helmet laws - now there's a divisive topic in Australia right now without any middle ground. On one hand, all states and territories have mandated the compulsory wearing of helmets for cyclists. This is regarded by many as an extreme position introduced by 'nanny states' to deny people the personal freedom to choose whether to wear a helmet or not. Similarly civil libertarians are lining up on the right to defend people's rights to choose to helmet or not helmet.  As Liberal Democrat Senator David Leyonhjelm said in an interview with the ABC “I want to change this culture that the government is there to protect us from poor choices." Perhaps senator it’s not always our bad choices but the poor choices of others with disregard for the road laws and respect for other road users.

Earlier this year I got caught up in a Twitter storm on the topic of @helmetfreedom.  It was inspired by an article in The Economist citing the exceptional work being done in Sweden to improve infrastructure for all road users to eliminate all road fatalities without the need for compulsory helmet laws.  Whilst I received a bollocking for being pro-helmet from a few people with different opinions to mine, particularly after my comment that I value my life more than my hairstyle, I gave up in the end as the 140 character limit doesn't leave much room to get a point of view across.

In my own experience I adopted a helmet before it became a mandatory requirement.  I made that decision when I moved from country Victoria down to Melbourne back in the mid-1980s.  It was a choice I made for my own safety after going from quiet country roads to busier urban roads.

Don't get me wrong, riding a bike without a helmet feels great, but as I said in one of my tweets I value my life more than my hairstyle. A frivolous comment and one I hoped would capture the essence of the debate.  It's not just ourselves we have to contend with out on the roads, paths and trails, it's the ever changing conditions, possible mechanical failures and other road users.  Perhaps it's about catering to the lowest common denominator. Perhaps the helmet laws were introduced too hastily and the meta-analysis of the statistical data wasn’t thorough enough.  What was the underlying root cause of why so many cyclists, drivers, passengers and pedestrians were killed and injured?  However in 1989 when the cyclist road roll hit 98, legislators felt compelled to take action and they did. 

In the late 1980s and early 1990s the various road safety agencies (RSAs) around Australia took a multi-pronged approach to reduce the road toll which was getting out of hand.  They introduced radar speed detectors, anti-drink driving campaigns, speed zone reduction, better driver education, stricter controls on younger drivers and helmet laws. My take is that introducing a plethora of strategies to lower the road toll appears to have statistically clouded the effectiveness of the helmet strategy.  An article and following discussion from Crikey.com highlighted that pedestrian and passenger injury statistics also reduced as a result of these road safety initiatives. Changing driver and social behaviours lowered the road toll across the board.  If these initiatives had of been introduced one at time it would have been easier to analyse, but it didn’t happen that way.  What’s also interesting to note is that 70-80% of cycling fatalities also involved another vehicle. The national statistics from the International Transport Forum 2014 (ITF) reported that  in 1 in 3 cycling fatalities, the cyclist was not wearing a helmet.

Absolute number of cycling fatalities on roads, Australia (source data: BITRE Australian Road Deaths Database)

  

So where to now with the Helmet debate?  Do our laws need to be so hard core?  So many travellers return from Europe lauding the initiatives of countries like England, Holland and Sweden to make cycling safer, whilst making helmets optional.  Where Australia differs from much of Europe is that Europe has retained a cycling culture for over 100 years where positive attitudes to cycling have been ingrained in the general population for generations. European cities are designed differently to ours and include integrated and separated cycle ways. They get cyclists. Unfortunately Australia's cycling culture died with the proliferation of the car from the 1960s and there’s still very much an us and them attitude between a small minority of drivers and cyclists.  A recent episode of SBS’s the Samsung Bike Lane made the reasonable suggestion that one state or territory drop the mandatory law for a year to assess the outcomes on rider safety and participation. The earlier mentioned ITF report put forward 11 recommendations for “Cycling, Health and Safety” and most strikingly – policy should focus on improving the inherent safety of the traffic system, not simply securing cyclists in an inherently unsafe system. 

Road trauma costs Australia $27 billion a year or 18% of health expenditure according to a recent article in the Age.  Imagine if 5% of that amount was spent annually on improved cycling infrastructure such as that commonly found in Europe.  But it doesn’t stop there, the Amy Gillett foundation has done a great job spreading the word with it’s a Metre Matters campaign and effecting legislative changes in Queensland.  Meanwhile a Cycling Culture needs to be re-established in Australia, which provides riders with the safest options to cycle, not just a tacked on after thought and also respects the place of cyclists on shared roads.  

To wrap up this post I’d like to reflect on a recent Facebook post which was accompanied by the image of this busted helmet and a head which looked like it had been worked over by a can opener brings home the benefits of wearing a helmet.  The rider survived thanks to his helmet.  Bones and joints will mend, however brain damage can be permanent and life altering.  This is a complex issue, one that I've barely scraped the surface of and for the meantime I’ll continue to helmet rather than not to helmet, valuing my chances of survival more than my hairstyle.  

A happy new year to everyone and make your next ride a safe one.

More holiday reading on the topic

Wendy Harmer's experience of riding Helmet free in England

SBS Backburner's humorous view on NSW's new laws for cyclists

Fairfax columnists Michael O'Reilly's take on NSW's new laws for cyclists.