Martlew Letter Boris Johnson

Email sent to Boris Johnson via the House of Commons "email your MP" service (available from the alphabetical list of members) Mr Johnson, I am a governor of Kidmore End Primary, a school in your constituency, where I am responsible for writing the travel plan. You are also my "office" MP - you can see me any day riding my recumbent bike to and from my office in Henley. As a cyclist and an advocate for individual choice I take it you will be opposing Eric Martlew's private bill compelling children to wear cycle helmets at its second reading on April 23? I wouldn't dispute that it is often a good thing for children to wear helmets, but that is dramatically different from making it a criminal offence not to. The bill also raises worrying freedom issues: since nine tenths of child cycle crashes happen in offroad play, will the bill cover use of cycles on private land? If not it will be fatally weakened, but the idea of regulating children's riding of bikes in their own gardens raises major concerns for me. The bill has been written by the Bicycle Helmet Initiative Trust. Their promotional material augurs badly for any honest appraisal of the risks and benefits of cycling. For example:
 * they use a figure for helmet efficacy which appeared in only one report, and was corrected by its authors in 1996 in the original journal
 * they claim a potential NHS saving of £2bn annually, which is a third more than the NHS spends on all treatments for children in this age group
 * they claim an annual cycling head injury figure for children which is in excess of the total injuries to all cyclists from all causes.

The most compelling argument against compulsion, of course, is the experience of places where it has been tried. Australia, New Zealand and Alberta have all introduced helmet laws, all have seen cycling reduce by between a quarter and a third, all have seen an increase in the injury rate (the change in injury numbers is less than the change in cyclist numbers). A decade post-law the level of cycling in Australia is still below pre-law levels despite population growth. Alberta has seen a substantial and worrying rise in cycling head injuries - experts are baffled and concerned. You and I both know that cycling is fundamentally a safe and healthy activity. It combines two virtues: reducing congestion and increasing fitness. We also know that inactivity is a greater risk to children at present than cycle-related injuries. And we are fully aware that the major cause of risk is not failure to wear a plastic hat, but poor and aggressive driving. OK, enough already. I hope that you will be doing the right thing on the day. If you have any questions regarding this issue I urge you to contact the Cyclists' Touring Club in Godalming (http://www.ctc.org.uk) or John Franklin, author of Cyclecraft (http://www.lesberries.co.uk). I don't know if you are a member of the all-party parliamentary cycling group, but the chair, Jane Griffiths, is also well briefed on this issue. Finally, a summary of the arguments can be found at http://www.cyclehelmets.org

Thank you for your time, Guy Chapman