Concur – there’s more safety in numbers than there is alone and wearing a helmet.

If you go and look at the comments of most articles about this one “normal” news sites, people are screaming about how a helmet saved their life. Confirmation bias to be sure, and they are poorly articulated. But it shows that the propaganda absolutely worked.

Interestingly the majority of cyclists (commuters and short unwalkable journeys) will be doing so in upright city bikes. In an upright position the chance of hitting your head on the ground is low, and the chance your head hits the ground with enough forced to be life changing even lower still. Those who need helmets most are largely competitive cyclists on a track, road cyclists going at high speed, and mountain bikers. Nobody would be caught dead anywhere on a mountain bike trail without a helmet. But the risk of that same bike, when ridden at normal commuting speeds on a regular road, is extremely low.

Would I ever give up my helmet knowing the speed I ride, and the roads I ride on? absolutely not. But grandma Jenkins down the road isn’t cycling at all because a helmet messes up her hair. And she is suffering in terms of micro mobility, and health, for not doing so. Would I love to be able to go to the shops 10 minutes away without having to wear a helmet? yes absolutely, and the chance of an accident there is slim to zero.

Whats really shameful here is that the “bureaucrats” at the ministry of regulation have done a seemingly remarkably poor job of understanding the statistics as the rate of cycling injuries per 100,000 cyclists has actually INCREASED since the 90’s largely because helmet use drove people away from cycling. What we need is more cyclists, and anything we can do to get away from driving cars, and getting into riding bikes, is a good thing.

The answer to the question on the “merits”:

• The plastic hat rule is a health, safety, finance, congestion, business, education, human rights, discrimination, et al, disaster.

• It is however a political success, one aided by the lack of effective cycle advocacy.

And yes, there is mountains of papers etc. which underpin the first bullet, as Glen can probably attest. The second bullet is an observation. The first point is of course why the idea, at least 35 years old by now, has NOT spread around the world – indeed when it is brought up by opportunistic politicians in places like the UK the local advocates normally just need to mutter something about AU & NZ and the idea quickly goes away – we are the acknowledged example of what not to do.

Better throw in a quote, one from the UK:

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Does the safety risk of cycling outweigh the health benefits?

The answer is, quite clearly, no: the actual risk of cycling is tiny. There is one cyclist death per 33 million kilometres of cycling, while being sedentary presents a much greater risk. Over 50,000 people die in the UK each year due to coronary heart disease related to insufficient physical activity, compared to around 100 cyclists killed on the road. Research suggests that safety risks are outweighed by the health benefits by a factor of around twenty to one.

from Active Travel Strategy, Department of Health & Department for Transport, UK, 2010
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(This is of course from long after Rob Storey introduced the NZ rule, but he has acknowledged he knew this, he just had what in modern parlance is called “alternative facts”.)

The benefit of cycling is simply taken as read these days and can be summarised as:

“If a person chooses to ride a bicycle in their normal everyday clothes; no special gloves, hats, shoes or lycra required; then on average across a population they are healthier, live longer and save the rest of society money.”

In New Zealand for providing this good they are ridiculed (“bare head, knuckle head”) and fined (as of 2014 about one person every 30 mins according to Police figures, hopefully less now).

Fining people for doing good is plainly stupid (and wrong if you care about such things). It is also damaging to society in so many ways.

In the early 2000’s the NZ Government noted the benefits other countries were receiving from boosting cycling and wanted NZ to receive some of the same. Here in Christchurch they held a meeting for transport designers and cycle advocates at which there was a surprisingly honest opening statement from the Government reps at the front:

“We shot New Zealand in the foot” with the plastic hat legislation.

They went on to explain that they had intentionally, but erroneously, portrayed cycling as dangerous in order to gain acceptance of the hats. Now they wished to get people onto bikes, a challenge when you’ve spent years claiming it was a dangerous activity, but a challenge they had to meet as it was simply politically too soon to tell the public that the plastic hat promotion has been based on misrepresentation.

That was some 20 years ago, back then the cycling advocates and transport planning professionals (who in Christchurch at that time were often the same people) at the meeting did a collective nothing, they let is pass.

Or as Glen puts it, they let the horse bolt again.

Now after over 30 years, of what we will politely refer to as counter-productive stupidity, David Seymour’s inquiry presents another opportunity for NZ cycling advocates to take a stand and fight for the right to get healthy without ridicule or fine, and provide benefits to society through doing so.

Will they take it, or will the horse be left bolt yet again?

Still here? With such stamina you must be a cyclist! 🙂

I can help answer that question for you via this ACC data enquiry, which found that barely 8% of cycling injury claims involved injuries to the head or neck and no more than 2% of cycling claims resulted in concussion or brain injury – https://www.acc.co.nz/assets/oia-responses/claims-data-for-cycling-related-injuries-gov-006790-response.pdf