Transport Research Laboratory: Mandatory helmet laws “prevent head and brain injuries”

Compulsory helmet law in NZ had many strange effects, none of which increased cyclist safety. Randomly:
Massive reduction in woman cyclists, since many woman will not wear a helmet because it ruins their hair. I was working in a bike shop at the time, and the reduction in sales of child seats was spectacular. A common mode of child transport simply disappeared.
Children started carrying their uncool helmets on handle bars. You can make helmets compulsory, but people who don't already wear them will either stop cycling, carry a helmet but not wear it, or wear it in such a manner (on back of head) to render it completely useless.
The reduction in the number of cyclists left only a hard core of mostly males on the road. These became seen as slightly unhinged, as if they hadn't read the writing on the wall that everyone else had (cycling was at a much higher level in NZ compared to European countries before the legislation). Whenever there is a fatality, the fist questions asked by the media : did they have a helmet? Were they wearing high viz? Because if they weren't clearly they only have themselves to blame.
I think the failure of the bike share scheme in Melbourne (a cycle friendly place by antipodean standards) shows the fundamental truth:
cycling simply cannot exist as a normal and popular activity in places that turn it into an extreme sport requiring protective equipment.

''The respected centre for transport research''

respected by whom?

The Jersey legislation will do little help the overall health and well being of the population.

From a recent BMA report ;

http://bma.org.uk/transport

The BMA basically recommended a massive shift in transport planning and infrastructure from motor vehices to walking and cycling.

They cited the health benefits and reduction in accidents this would bring in.

However this type of report falls on deaf political ears, much easier to legislate against something that will have minimal effect on head injuries.

Most head injuries in Under 16s are caused by accidents in the home, playground accidents, and as passengers in motor vehicle accidents.

So any politician serious about reducing head injuries in the population would tackle these issues first.

Also lots of sports activities are responsible for many concussion injuries, mainly football and rugby. Helmets here? Thought not.

Michael Carter is quoted saying he sees 3 cycling related head injuries per month. So how many head injuries does he see in total in a month? And from what other causes?

As it often mentioned, countries such as the Netherlands do not have a significant issue with head injuries, and no one wears a helmet for day to day cycling.

I've not read the full report but from this article it appears that the authors are referring to single vehicle incidents, "".....especially in the most common collisions that do not involve motor vehicles, often simple falls or tumbles over the handlebars”".

Where a child is involved these would be likely to below 10mph and within the design limits of the helmet so they may well be effective in reducing head and brain injury

The real question is how effective these helmets would be a few years later when a child is riding more widely, with it's parents reassured by the false sense of security the helmet has given them an the child is hit by a driver (almost put cat (edit - that should be car, unless its a big cat) there, but of course a car is incapable of most movement without instruction from a driver) doing 30?

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I've just read the report in full. I'm appalled. This report is a case of "This is the answer we want now provide us with the evidence". It's not good science, in fact it's not science at all.

Science is not about knowing the answer but knowing what the question is. This is why sociology is not a science but a humanity.

This legislative procedure is a disgrace. To railroad this legislation through without proper debate is a scandal. The CTC and Sustrans were given less than a day to read and respond.

As you can probably gather I am at a loss to express my feelings about what has occurred. It is beyond belief!

Anyone who thinks that the effect of reduced cycling is temporary should look at what happened after helmet laws in New Zealand. From 1989 to 2011, average time spent cycling (on roads and footpaths) fell by 79% for children aged 5-12 (from 28 to six minutes per person per week) and 81% for 13-17 year olds (52 to 10 mins/person/week).

The graphs show that the helmet law was almost certainly part of the reason for the decline - http://www.cycle-helmets.com/new-zealand-road-users.html

In 1987/88, before the introduction of helmet laws, 4.4% of New Zealanders cycled to work, 11.6% cycled to primary school and 18.6% to secondary school 16. By 2004/08, only 2.2% cycled to work, 4.3% to primary school and 4.9% to secondary school.

A survey of children in New South Wales also showed that the drop in children's cycling is neither small nor temporary: 51% of schoolchildren owning bikes, who hadn’t cycled in the past week, cited helmet restrictions, far more than other reasons, such as safety (18%) or parents (20%). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410838/

In NZ, pedestrian injuries from motor vehicle crashes fell by 42%, but the decline for cyclists was only 27% (from 8.2 to 6.0 per million hours). At the same time, hospital admissions from crashes not involving motor vehicles increased dramatically, e.g. in 15-19 year olds (from 11.6 to 45.9 injuries per million hours).

Other researchers concluded that helmet laws discourage the safest cyclists, so perhaps the large increase in injury rates is not surprising http://cyclehelmets.org/1207.html?NKey=101 There may have been a move away from relatively safe transport cycling to sports cycling and mountainbiking.

Real-life data (as opposed to the selective reporting by TRL) show that the main effect of helmet laws is to discourage cycling and that, if anything, injuries per cyclist increase.

As ever it's hard to know which statistics to believe. I can understand the wish to protect children, who from memory 'propably' have more collisions when riding bikes than adults, but am against compulsion. There are many activities we do as children where helmet use may prevent some head injuries (skateboarding, climbing trees! running!!), where would we stop. My daughter always wore a helmet when growing up (through our insistence) though now chooses not to as a young adult - fair enough!
Personally after 2 collisions of head with road (poor handling, my own fault) in 12 months I now rarely venture further than local shops without a helmet, but still believe we should choose.

I'll be quite happy to endure helmet compulsion. But in return I want several MUSTS and MUST NOTS implemented in the highwaycode. Such as: Must not pass a cyclist within 1.5 meters. Must not cut up a cyclist within 25 meters of a junction. Must not cut up a cyclist when exiting a roundabout. Must allow a cyclist to execute a right turn safely. All punishable with a £120 fine and three points. I would also like the police to deal with situations reported and not shrug their shoulders and ask what do you want us to do about it. Finally. If we are to take all these steps to protect ourselves then I want to see a statutory lifetime driving ban on any motorist causing death of a vulnerable road user no questions asked.

Somehow though I can't see this happening so I will continue being anti compulsion.
The helmet compulsion is the easy way out for governments to say they have dealt with road safety.

Farrell. I totally agree. There's no way the government will ever implement those few illustrations I made. They're in two much awe of the car and petroleum lobbies. Even the Scottish Executive who like to have firsts won't even pursue strict liability as there is no "credible evidence that it works" in their view. I'm totally against compulsion. I don't want to have to get tooled up to go to the shops/pub/cinema by bike. Look at my ugly bake in my profile pic. I'm San Helmet. If folk wish to wear helmets, by all means. I'm not stopping them. But in 40 odd years cycling I can count on one hand the amount of times I've fallen off. And then at low speed where I sprained my wrist on the worst crash. I've had one high speed crash where I wrote off a pair of tights trying to swerve a iPhone engrossed ped.