GMTV

On 7 January, 2003, BHIT got themselves on GMTV as part of their efforts to whip up support for a helmet law being brought as a Private Members' Bill by Eric Martlew MP. GMTVs summary is here: http://gm.tv/index.cfm?articleid=9418 (note that the CTC contacted them and some of the early distortions have now been removed). My response, sent via their website feedback system, is here.

I note that some changes have been made to the cycle helmets page. But you've still left some howlers in! Before I start, may I ask you to see this web page: me-n-u2 - it has a couple of pictures of me with my children on the school run. Looking at it you might see why I am passionate about the idea of reducing danger at source rather than sticking--plaster solutions which don't work. You say: "The group most at risk from accidents, 11-15 year olds, would be forced to wear helmets ... If not, they could be arrested for breaking the law." The problem here is that 90% of child cyclist injuries happen in offroad play. Unless the legislation covers riding on private land - the equivalent of forcing use of hard hats and steel toecap boots while doing DIY - the legislation will not address this, even if compulsory helmet wearing sis make a difference to injury rates. Now here are some really scary stats:
 * Road traffic crashes are the leading cause of death in children aged 4-16 in the UK (only a tiny proportion of these deaths are cycling related).
 * Research has shown that in crashes where drivers hit child pedestrians, the child pedestrian was four times more likely to have taken avoiding action than the driver.
 * Over 3,000 people are killed on the roads every year, 36,000 were seriously injured in 2002, and police estimates put 90% of road traffic crashes down to driver error.

The source of danger to cyclists is not failure to wear helmets, it's careless drivers. Most drivers overestimate their own skill, and most drivers drive according to their perception of risk to themselves. In a modern car you are very well protected and the perceived risk of speeding, for example, is very low. But as a former Transport Minister once put it: crashes are caused not by the taking of large risks, but by the taking of small risks very large numbers of times.

The "scary stats" you quote also suggest logical fallacies. The fact that 25 children died in 2001 (this is under a fifth, not a quarter by the way) is a tragedy for all involved, but largely irrelevant to the issue of cycle helmets. Why? Independent medical investigation recently showed that of 19 cyclists where cause of death was recorded as head injury, 16 had other mortal injuries as well. The cases included helmeted and unhelmeted cyclists. And this is not a surprise: the human skull is incredibly tough, substantially tougher than a 3/4" thick bar of expanded polystyrene. It is also the perfect shape for resisting impact. This goes to the heart of a fundamental flaw in many pro-compulsion arguments: the idea that everybody who died while not wearing a helmet would have lived had they been wearing one, and that everybody who survives while wearing a helmet would have died otherwise.  This is simply unsupportable.  Anecdotal evidence is worthless (and shroud-waving highly distasteful) but consider the following two cases: two experienced cyclists, both in their early seventies, both had crashes where they went over the handlebars having hit a pothole, in neither case was a motor vehicle involved.  One died, the other survived with trivial injuries.  The one who died was wearing a helmet, the one who survived was not.  Is this a reason for not wearing a helmet? And if not, then why should anecdotes the other way round be treated as a reason not just to wear one, but to force people to wear one? There is a second fundamental flaw in pro-compulsion arguments. They are predicated on the idea that the probability of crashing is unaffected by helmet use, which ignores the idea of risk compensation. Indeed, most helmet compulsion campaigners vigorously repudiate the idea of risk compensation despite the substantial body of evidence to support its existence - and small wonder, as it undermines the very bedrock of their case. Risk compensation is the subconscious mechanism whereby someone responds to a perceived improvement in their safety by increasing their propensity to risk-taking. For example, taxi drivers in Germany in a fleet with a mixture of ABS and non-ABS equipped cars were observed to drive faster and follow closer in the ABS equipped cars, with the result that their crash rate was actually slightly higher than in the non-ABS cars. Similarly compulsory seat belt wearing in the UK led to significant increases in pedestrian, cyclist and rear-seat passenger injury rates. There are many other examples. This is one possible reason why, in countries where helmet compulsion has been tried, the rate of cyclist injuries per mile travelled never falls. The numbers cycling, however, always falls sharply. Australia still has not reached its pre-law levels of cycling over a decade later, despite increases in population. In New Zealand, doctors are campaigning for the repeal of the helmet laws because they have had no measurable effect on injury rates but have drastically reduced cycling at a time of sharply rising obesity and inactivity.

Finally, your "scary stats" appear to show the construction of a logical fallacy:
 * Children account for about a third of the thousands injured, but this is meaningless without some measure of exposure to risk or comparison with other risks.
 * Around three quarters of cyclists killed have major head injuries, but this ignores the fact that most also have other mortal injuries, and there is in any case no proof that helmets make the difference between fatal and non-fatal injuries.
 * Cycling accidents increase as children grow older and peak at around 16 years, again, meaningless without a measure of exposure to risk - they could just be cycling more.
 * Most cycling accidents happen in urban areas where most cycling takes place, from the annals of the blindingly obvious, I suspect!
 * For child cyclists, 90% of their accidents occur during the day, ignores the fact that 90% occur off-road, which is a lot more relevant.
 * Dangerous hours for cyclists are 3.00-6pm and 8-9am on weekdays, which is when people are cycling to school or work and commuters and school-runners are trying to shave precious seconds off their congestion-infested journeys - can you imagine why this might have an effect?
 * Head injuries, ranging from fatal skull fractures and brain damage to minor concussion and cuts, are very common injuries to cyclists, is a gross misrepresentation suggesting as it does that brain damage and concussion are the most likely rather than the least likely to occur; most of thee injuries are in fact trivial - and a goodly number of these "head injuries" are to parts of the head which are not covered by helmets, notably the jaw.  Landing chin-first is definitely not unheard-of.  In any case "very common" is a gross exaggeration - the CTC has calculated that their members ride for an average three and a half thousand years between serious crashes.
 * Around 70% of the cyclists killed on the road have major head injuries and over half of cyclists injured have head injuries, but no evidence is either offered or indeed available to prove that helmets affect these proportions in any way.

In other words, this argument is smoke-and-mirrors designed to give two messages: first that cycling is dangerous, and second that helmets make it safe. Neither is true. The BMA says a regular cyclist will live around a decade longer than average, counting mortality from all causes. Put another way, the benefits of cycling outweight the risks by at least 20:1. And plotting the proportion of cyclist injuries which were head injuries in New Zealand, covering the period when their helmet law was passed, it is not possible to see the year in which helmet wearing rose from 43% to over 95%. Helmet laws have only one repeatable effect: they deter cycling. Everywhere helmet laws have been tried the numbers cycling have declined by between a quarter and a third. The major cause of risk to cyclists, and to children in general, is careless driving. Another substantial cause of risk is diseases codnected with inactivity. "Think of the children" means get on your bike, or if you won't do that, drive carefully.