4 reasons why wearing a helemt should remain a personal choice:

1. Riding a bicycle is a healthy activity and people who do so regularly, live longer, on average, than people who do not ride bicycles. Cycling should be encouraged.
2. Cycling is inherently safe. Laws that make the wearing of helmets compulsory (or any safety equipment, for that matter) present the message that cycling is dangerous and in turn, act as a barrier to people taking up cycling.
3. Wearing a helmet may of course, reduce the risk to an individual of suffering a head injury in a crash. This logic applies to all activities. But for cycling, that risk needs to be weighed up against the potential to discourage people from participating in such a healthy activity and efficient form of transport. The negative impact of mandating for helmet use is that it undermines the benefits of lots of people cycling slowly like #wheeledpedestrians.
4. A compulsory helmet law is a convenient smokescreen for inaction on making our roads safer for all users. Safety will come with more people cycling, slowly. And more people will cycle if the transport environment is safer. A combination of reduced traffic, reduced speeds and an allocation of space to people on bicycles will achieve that goal. Unless you are participating in a high risk, sporty event, the wearing a helmet while cycling needs to be/remain a choice.

Most scientist agree that helmet laws discourages people to cycle. As cycling has proven health benefits it would be great if we could find ways to keep cyclists safe without forcing helmets on them. I think Holland is a perfect example that proves that cyclists can be very safe without a helmet because the infrastructure provides adequate safety to cyclists.

See what I mean?

I wear a helmet, and a high-viz vest and have lights because I’d rather err on side of caution with MY safety. These things help to avoid and mitigate risk and injury. I also cycle in a defensive mode to ensure drivers are aware of my presence and modify their driving to take account of me. I subscribe to the view that there are drivers out there have no regard to my safety.

I’d like to have the police take account of cyclist safety in their interpretation and enforcement of the law. If cyclists are seen to only choose to comply with laws they see fit to, then is it any surprise if other road users do exactly the same also? Cyclists that don’t wear helmets, ride at night without lights, jump junctions, ride the wrong way down streets, etc, etc give all cyclists a bad name and take the public off our side when we want road laws for our protection enforced.

In the bad old days of the Land Transport Safety Authority (LTSA), 100% of their keeping cyclists safe efforts went into increasing the helmet wearing rate. Compare that with Holland, where you will hardly find an adult who wears a helmet, and where authorities focus on those issues that keep cyclists from having crashes in the first place. And what is the result of all of that? In New Zealand, the crash rate for cyclists is six times that of Holland’s cyclists.

What do I conclude from this? If the objective is to keep cyclists safe, then focus on the things that are effective. Helmets are not one of them.