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2010/16: Should wearing bike helmets be mandated by law in Australia?
2010/16: Should wearing bike helmets be mandated by law in Australia?
What they said... 'What it does is it puts people off cycling'
Associate Professor Chris Rissel, The University of Sydney's school of public health
'The mandatory helmet wearing legislation has had a significant, positive impact on both the number of head-injured bicyclists and on the severity of injuries'
Monash University Action Research Centre
The issue at a glance
In August, 2010, two Sydney researchers recommended that a trial be conducted to see if, were bicycle helmets made voluntary, there was any difference in the casualty rates among cyclists.
Associate Professor Chris Rissel and Dr Alexander Voukelatos from The University of Sydney's school of public health have challenged the value of wearing bicycle helmets, claiming they may not be responsible for the reduced casualty rates attributed to them. The researchers have also suggested that having to wear a helmet discourages bicycle riding and so has a negative impact on public health.
To this point, no state government has supported the proposal that there be a temporary relaxation of helmet regulations in a designated area.
The question has become a particularly acute one in Melbourne, where the city's Share Bike scheme has been far less used than anticipated. The cause of this has been in part attributed to the requirement that all riders wear helmets. The State government is considering a variety of means to make helmets more accessible to riders who hire bikes.
Background
(The following is an edited version of information available in full from the United States Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute. The full text can be read at http://www.bhsi.org/mandator.htm)
In Australia, bicycle helmets are mandatory in all states and territories. Compliance is high but varies by area - in some cities it is over 90%; however, it is much lower in some rural areas. In Victoria cyclists' head injuries declined 41% after the introduction of compulsory bike helmets. There were 36% fewer child riders on the road, immediately after the legislation passed, but perhaps more adult riders. Injury reduction was below expectations, but significant. Hospital data from Western Australia showed that the number of intracranial injuries was reduced with increased helmet use, while head injuries were less serious, and hospital stays shorter.
New Zealand's national helmet law took effect in January, 1994. Although cyclists' injuries increased in the years thereafter, head injuries declined. Iceland's mandatory helmet law, covering children under 15, came into effect in October of 1998. The Spanish legislature passed a comprehensive bicycle law in mid-1999 that reportedly included a mandatory helmet provision.
The British Medical Association examined the evidence and recommended in 2004 that the United Kingdom adopt a mandatory helmet law for both children and adults. They had previously recognised the benefits of helmet use but had feared that a helmet law might reduce cycling, resulting in negative net health benefits. In 2010 Jersey is moving toward a new law that will require helmets for riders under 18, having rejected a proposal for an all-ages law. The United Kingdom's Transport Research Laboratory has found that in 2008, 34 per cent of riders in the United Kingdom were already wearing helmets on major roads, and 17 per cent on minor roads.
The Copenhagen Post reported in November, 2009 that a failed attempt to pass a Danish law requiring helmets for those under 12 was being revived after evidence that the proportion of Danish cyclists arriving at emergency rooms with head injuries was declining as helmet use there increased.
Canada has some provincial and local helmet laws. Ontario's helmet law for cyclists under 18 took effect in 1995. Other provinces have followed suit.
Finland passed a mandatory helmet law with an effective date of January, 2003. It covers all ages, but there is no fine associated with breaking the law. Spain adopted a mandatory helmet law for cycling outside of cities in 2004. Helmets are not compulsory in towns and may be removed while climbing steep hills. Iceland and the Czech Republic require helmets for those under 16. France is currently considering making helmets compulsory. Japan adopted a national helmet law in 2008 that requires children under 13 to wear helmets.
Internet information
The Wikipedia entry on 'Bicycle helmet' contains a great deal of information about the construction and effectiveness of bicycle helmets. It also gives o=an overview of the extent to which they are mandated around the world.
The full text of this document can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet
On August 16, 2020, the ABC News ran a report suggesting that bicycle helmet legislation should be repealed at least temporarily in some areas to allow a test of its effectiveness. The full text of the report can be found at http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/16/2983587.htm
On August 17, 2010, the ABC News ran a report titled, "Experts butt heads on bike helmet laws'. The report outlines the disagreement between different road safety experts on the value of bike helmets.
The full text of the report can be found at http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/17/2985631.htm
On April 10, 2010, the ABC News ran a report which suggested that mandatory helmet-wearing may have been responsible for the relatively slow uptake of the new Melbourne Share Bike scheme. The full text of the report can be found at http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/13/2871105.htm
Cyclists Rights Action Group (CRAG), a lobby group opposed to helmet wearing has produced a brief history of bicycle helmet legislation in Australia. This document can be found at http://members.tip.net.au/~psvansch/crag/history.htm
Chris Gillham, is a print and radio journalist and web designer based in the West Australian capital of Perth. He has managed a site since 2000 which gives a wide range of data and argument to support his view that compulsory bike helmet legislation should be repealed in West Australia. This site can be accessed at http://www.cycle-helmets.com/#Overview
Arguments against bike helmets remaining mandatory
1. Bike helmets have not achieved the safety benefits attributed to them
It has recent been claimed that the reduction in death injuries among cyclists that Australia has seen is not the result of making bike helmets compulsory.
Associate Professor Chris Rissel and Dr Alexander Voukelatos from The University of Sydney's school of public health have looked at the number of cyclists admitted to hospital in New South Wales with cycling-related head injuries between 1989 (before helmets were mandatory) and 2008.
The researchers claim that the greatest drop in head injuries was in the 1980s, before the bike helmet laws were introduced. They attribute this reduction to road safety campaigns and speed controls. Professor Rissel has claimed that the introduction of compulsory helmets resulted in only a slight additional reduction in casualties among cyclists.
Dr Rissel has stated, 'As the compliance of people wearing helmets increased you would expect a marked drop in the rate of head injuries and that's not what you see in the data.'
It has also been noted that in the United Kingdom, where it is not compulsory to wear bike helmets, cyclist deaths fell from 256 in 1990 to 114 in 2003 - a drop of 56%. It has been claimed that this indicates that in Australia any decline in fatalities is likely to be attributable to factors other than wearing helmets.
2. There are some hazards associated with helmet wearing
It has been claimed that wearing a bicycle helmet can actually increase the likelihood of an accident. Some studies have found an increased death rate was associated with increased helmet use.
Other studies have indicated that helmeted riders are far more likely to have struck their heads in an accident. To say that helmeted riders are at greater risk of injury seems illogical; however, it has been suggested that behavioural changes may have occurred which cause them to take more risks or less precautions, the net effect of this could outweigh the limited protective benefit of their helmets.
What is suggested here is that the sense of being protected which wearing a helmet gives may lead some riders to take more risks than they otherwise would.
3. Mandatory helmets reduce bike riding and so the benefits to be gained
Opponents of compulsory helmets argue they discourage people from cycling and so contribute to Australia's obesity problem.
Chris Gillham, a West Australian journalist who has been campaigning against compulsory bike helmets since 2000, has stated, 'All research papers at least partly blame an increasingly sedentary lifestyle for Australia's obesity levels. Greater public recreational exercise is encouraged to stem a looming public health crisis.'
The Australian Bicycle Council, a subsidiary of the Australian Government's Department of Transport, stated in March 2004, 'Bicycling is part of the solution to many of our cities problems: the obesity epidemic, traffic congestion, air pollution and more. The mainstream health message these days is that people need to do at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity on most days, to maintain health.'
However, there are those who argue that compulsory helmets reduce the rate of bicycle use and so contribute to both Australia's obesity-related health problems and to our road congestion and pollution problems. The ACT Cyclists' Rights Action Group stated in August 1996, 'The government has neglected to consider that many people would give up cycling rather than wear a helmet, and it is only in rare cases that these declines have been accurately recorded. In the ACT the decline was measured at 33% on weekdays and 50% on weekends. The overall decline Australia-wide is estimated at 30% to 50%. Some people just don't want to wear a helmet.'
The most comprehensive data available in terms of the impact on cycling numbers are two studies done in Melbourne and Sydney. Cycling dropped by 40% among children and 30% among adults. For every cyclist persuaded to put on a helmet, three cyclists gave up cycling. About 30% of cyclists ignored the helmet law
Referring to the contemporary situation, Associate Professor Chris Rissel from The University of Sydney's school of public health has stated of compulsory helmet legislation, 'What it does is it puts people off cycling and makes people think that cycling's a dangerous activity, even though it's a really healthy thing to do and it increases people's physical activity.'
Dr Rissel has claimed that although helmets protect heads, they also discourage casual cycling, where people use a bike to get milk or visit a friend. He believes that scrapping compulsory helmet use would encourage bicycle use, improve health rates and reduce injury rates because getting more cyclists on the roads would make motorists better at avoiding them.
4. Mandatory helmets will reduce the use of hire bicycles
Melbourne's $5.5 million bike share scheme is not attracting the users anticipated and it is claimed that the city's compulsory helmet legislation may be a reason for this.
Fewer than 70 trips are being made a day on Melbourne's 600-bike system, a tiny number of journeys compared with the take-up rate in bigger schemes introduced some other cities around the world.
Melbourne is the only city in the world to have introduced a bike-share scheme and retain its compulsory helmet laws.
On August 2, 2010, on the Internet page of the Victorian Premier, John Brumby, the following comment was posted by Jack Zagorski, 'The other day I was in Federation Square enjoying a coffee and idly watching the bicycles queued up at the Melbourne Bike Share station. During the whole time I was there, approximately one hour, despite the fact that the day was clear and sunny, not one bike was rented. It occurs to me that the main blockage to the effective use of these bikes is the need for a rider to have a helmet. Unlike all other such schemes around the world, including the newly opened one in London, Riders in Melbourne are required to wear a helmet when they ride their bike. Perhaps we should reconsider the helmet law in relation to the Melbourne Bike Share.'
5. Helmet use could be mandated only for particular at-risk groups
It has been argued that helmet-wearing should be retained for only a select group of cyclists who are at particular risk. This claim has been made especially in relation to children.
Associate Professor Chris Rissel from The University of Sydney's school of public health has stated, 'The case for continued mandatory helmet wearing for adults is questionable although there is a case for it continuing for children under 15, who suffered about half the head injuries reported in this study. Helmet use is likely to prevent some injury, particularly for less experienced younger age groups. However the mandatory bicycle helmet legislation is appears not the main factor behind reduced head injuries among cyclists.'
Arguments in favour of bike helmets remaining mandatory
1. The wearing of bike helmets reduces fatalities among bike riders
It has been noted that the number of deaths involving cyclists has dropped significantly since laws making it compulsory to wear bike helmets were introduced.
Australian road safety data shows the average annual cyclist road fatality rate from 1980 to 1990 was 88, while from 1992 to 2002 it was 45. This is a reduction of 49%. Supporters of compulsory helmets argue that much of this decline in the number of deaths is attributable to the introduction of laws making it compulsory to wear helmets.
In New South Wales the number of child cyclists killed and seriously injured declined from the two years pre-law of 327 to post- law of 200, a reduction of 39%.
2. The wearing of helmets reduces injuries among bike riders
It has been claimed that helmets dramatically reduce the incidence of head injury among bike wearers.
Professor Frank McDermott, the former chair of the Victorian Road Trauma Committee, RACS, and the man who led the original campaign to make bike helmets compulsory in Australia, says any sort of repeal would be a backwards step.
Referring to the studies that led to the introduction of compulsory bike helmets, Professor McDermott has stated, 'We did a study on 1,710 Melbourne and Geelong bicycle casualties. About a quarter of them were wearing bicycle helmets and the head injury frequency was reduced about 50 per cent in those wearing bicycle helmets.'
Sociologist, Christian King, from the Brain Injury Center, an online service for people who have been affected by traumatic brain injury, has claimed it would be 'an absurdity' if the legislation were overturned.
Mr King explains his position by stating, 'You've got one of the most complex entities of our universe and if you smash it up against the inside of a skull, well, it's going to really affect the cognition. It depends on the angle and velocity of the head hitting an object as to what part of the brain is compounded into the inside of the skull, but it only has to travel less than a quarter of an inch before it impacts on the skull...I say prevention is better than a cure.'
A detailed survey conducted by the Monash University Action Research Centre in 1995 (four years after the introduction of compulsory helmet legislation in Victoria) concluded, 'The detailed analysis of the data relating to bicyclist head injuries presented in this report indicates that the mandatory helmet wearing legislation has had a significant, positive impact on both the number of head-injured bicyclists and on the severity of injuries for bicyclists admitted to hospital. These changes have continued through the first four years post-legislation and are apparent in spite of recent anomalies in the Hospital Admissions data.'
3. If the regulations were relaxed it would be difficult to gain general compliance
It has been argued that if the legislation were altered so that it only applied to particular groups, such as children, it would become harder to ensure that children abided by such laws.
In 1994 Monash University's Accident Research Centre conducted a study of the attitudes of teenagers toward helmet wearing.
A survey of Year 9 and Year 10 school students was conducted in September 1993 to determine teenagers' attitudes towards bicycle helmets. The survey found that bicycles were the preferred form of wheeled recreation/self-transport amongst teenagers. However, less than one-quarter of all teenagers reported that they always wore a helmet when they rode a bicycle. Major factors leading to teenagers not wanting to wear a bicycle helmet were the helmet's appearance and comfort. However, both safety considerations and parental pressures were factors that influence a teenager to wear a helmet.
Given the difficulty in ensuring that young riders wear helmets, it would appear likely that if these young riders did not have the force of adult example to encourage them to wear a helmet, then it is less likely that they will wear a helmet.
4. Helmets can be made more attractive to riders
It has been claimed that most cyclists do not object to having to wear helmets and that they are not a disincentive to riding a bike,
Omar Khalifa, the chief executive of Bike NSW, has stated, 'Some riders say they'd prefer not to have it [a helmet], but very few complain about having to wear them because they realise there's a potential benefit.'
It has further been claimed that rather than allowing cyclists to ride without helmets, efforts should be made to make helmets more attractive. Young cyclists could, for example be encouraged to customise their helmets.
Advice is now being given on how to wear a helmet and still remain stylish. Astrid Meier, writing for Bicycle Network, notes, 'Most women want to be good-looking. At first glance, bicycle helmets are not consistent with this aim. Hairstyles are often ruined after wearing a helmet, but for those in the know, there are a few tricks to avoid helmet hair. First of all, choose a ventilated helmet to minimise your head getting sweaty.'
Russell Moore commenting on the Alternative Technology Association Forum noted, 'I started wearing bicycle helmets in 1976, way before most, and way before compulsory helmet use came into force. I have ridden over 300,000kms. Accidents? I've had a few. After one of which I was very glad to be wearing a helmet.
Considering the type of helmets that were available in the 1970s and 1980s, we are overwhelmed with choice today, and they are much lighter and much more stylish and comfortable.'
5. It is possible to make helmets cheaply and easily available to those using hired bikes
The Victorian state government is considering providing collapsible helmets that could fold up and be carried in a briefcase or handbag.
The bike-share scheme's operator, RACV, will also hand out free conventional bike helmets next month and VicRoads has confirmed it is working with RACV on a range of other helmet options, including the collapsible variety.
VicRoads and RACV have also been toying with the idea of providing hairnets at helmet vending machines. The Melbourne Bike Share survey taken earlier this year showed hygiene was a key issue in hiring helmets. A $25-helmet is given free to people who sign up for an annual subscription. Helmets have also been made available cheaply at some city stores and hotels. If riders do not wear a helmet they risk a $146 fine if caught by police.
Further implications
It seems unlikely that state governments will relax the legislation requiring cyclists to wear helmets. If the legislation was relaxed and increased deaths or injuries resulted this would put governments in a difficult situation both ethically and legally. It is possible that governments might be sued by injured cyclists for the injuries they suffered after the laws were relaxed.
This, however, leaves governments with the problem of how to address a lack of enthusiasm among commuters for cycling. The Victorian government has invested heavily in the Share Bike scheme and its limited uptake by commuters is very disappointing. The immediate solution appears to be making helmets available to commuters as part of the rental scheme. It also appears that advances in technology and helmet design will see the development of collapsible helmets that can be carried in handbags or briefcases. At the moment there have been some doubts expressed about the effectiveness of these collapsible helmets. Further research and development is likely to ensure that these helmets are as effective as their rigid counterparts.
It is also at least possible that helmets as a disincentive to cycling has been exaggerated. There have been many studies done which have demonstrated that there has been a decline in bicycle use since the introduction of compulsory helmets. However, there are many other factors, including increased car use and the recreational use of skateboards and scooters which might help account for a decline in the use of bicycles.
It is probable that state governments will have to continue education programs, advertising campaigns and a variety of economic incentives to increase the use of bicycles.