BHIT claims

This is a summary of some of the more blatantly spurious or disingenuous claims made by helmet promotion charity BeHIT. They say:

Here are some choice cuts:

On GMTV:

 * "...they do take an impact at 12 mph but if you reduce that 12 miles from a 30 mph crash, you've got a half reduction and that can make the difference between leading a quality life or somone not survining or leading a very disabled life."
 * Fact: Crash energy is 1/2 mv2 - a helmet which will absorb the energy of a 12mph crash will reduce the energy of a 30mph crash to only 27.5mph. No helmet is specified or designed to withstand impacts with motor traffic.

In a BikeBiz interview with Angela Lee:

 * Q: "Who are you targeting?"
 * A: "Department of Transport. It's a votes thing. They're wimps. Everyone else has brought this law in. Australia, America," said Lee.
 * Fact: helmet laws are still the exception, not the rule. "Everyone" is very clearly false - in fact only one country in the world (New Zealand) at that time had an all-ages mandatory helmet law, and Australia is frequently quoted because it is the most widely studied of the handful countries with helmet laws covering most riders. America does not have a national helmet law, and most individual states do not have a law either.


 * Q: "But what about stats that show cycle usage declines when mandatory helmet use is introduced?"
 * A: "That doesn't happen. It depends how you promote it. Anyway, it's all in here (pointing to her left temple), if it's promoted positively there will be no decrease."
 * Fact: even the body responsible for introducing the law in Australia acknowledges that cycling reduced. The evidence for substantial and sustained reductions in cycling in Australia and New Zealand following compulsion is overwhelming.
 * Lee also claims that the experience of Ontario, where reductions in cycling were not recorded, overrides the experience in Australia and New Zealand. This neatly ignores two facts: first, the cycle count data from Ontario is substantially less detailed and systematic than that from Australia and NZ; and second, the law in Ontario was never enforced. Helmet wearing rates are barely above pre-law levels, numbers of prosecutions are reportedly tiny. But Lee wants a rigidly enforced law like that Down Under. Sorry, you can't have it both ways.

In a BBC TV interview:

 * Against a back ground of helmet clad four year-olds in a playground, on tricycles, Lee said that one child a week died of head injuries when riding bikes in the UK. This was later repeated to MPs.


 * Fact: UK National Statistics Office figures for 2000 record only 3 deaths of children related to cycling (non-vehicle driver impact) out of approximately 5 million child cyclists. BHIT mischievously use road traffic deaths leaving viewers with the notion that simply sitting on a saddle produces one death a week.
 * Oh, and the number is actually half that anyway.
 * UK National Statistics Office figures for 2000 record only 3 deaths of children related to cycling (non-vehicle driver impact) out of approximately 5 million child cyclists.


 * 70% of cyclists who die, die of head injury
 * Is that true? Possibly, since it is probably true for all accidental deaths whatever the mechanism of the accident. People in developed countries seldom die of blood loss or broken bones. According to some data the cyclist is actually somewhat less likely to die of head injury, but more information is needed. An analysis of hospital admissions data for adults over a seven year period showed that adult cyclists are slightly less likely to have suffered head injury than adult pedestrians.


 * 60% of all cycle related head injuries reporting to A&E are under 16.
 * Fact: 60% of all cases coming to A&E, including head injuries, are under 16 according to government HASS & LASS figures. It is the growing up process. Children are accident prone in the home, on the playground and playing about on bikes. This figure simply shows that cycling is no more dangerous for children than any other common activity.

ASA

 * In their defence against an ASA complaint BHIT claimed that their figure of 50 fatalities, double the real number, was "an estimate based on under-reporting".


 * Fact: According to TRL the level of under-reporting of child cycling fatalities is zero percent, not the 80% which BHIT estimate. The TRL figure is rather more plausible since in an advanced democracy non-reporting of child fatalities is vanishingly rare.

Angela Lee's Balanced Stance:

 * "It is nonsensical that anyone can be opposed or critical of helmets." - Lee in a letter to BikeBiz, March 2003

Shroud-waving

 * "Each week at least one child will die from a head injury sustained through cycling, one such boy who would not wear a helmet was 12-year-old Troy Annetts," said a BHIT press statement. "He paid the ultimate price in May last year when he died of head injuries sustained in a cycling accident."


 * His mother, Carlie Annetts, from Andover, has campaigned for compulsory helmet wearing for children as she believes her son would still be alive today if he had been wearing a helmet. Mrs Annetts said: "If helmets were compulsory I would have been able to say to him that he had to wear one, it's the law."


 * Fact: The figure of one per week is an overstatement by a factor of 500% and cycling does not register on the radar as a source of childhood death (the biggest cause of childhood death is is congenital illness, followed by disease, including cancers, then road traffic collisions).


 * Question: Since the child was already breaking the laws on bike construction and use and pavement cycling, why on earth should we believe he would obey a helmet law?


 * Question: If the child's parent can't persuade him to wear a helmet, why should she think anybody else can - or should?


 * Question: Where is the proof that this particular injury would have been prevented by a helmet anyway? The assertion of the coroner is certainly not evidence; no court in the UK is known to have held that a cycle helmet would have made a difference in any case of death or serious injury.

Conclusion
Don't believe a word you hear from the mouths of BeHIT. They are propagandists and active proponents of policy-based evidence making.