On 10/25/2012 8:04 PM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:

Pray tell us; where in the world has bicycle usage remained the same or risen AFTER MANDATORY HELMET LAWS were introduced? Not Australia or New Zealand.

Australia and New Zealand.

Studies showed that mandatory helmet laws DO cause cycling rates to DROP. Frank has posted data and links to those studies many times.

Surely you're not gullible enough to believe any of the "studies" to
which Frank posts links.

"The enactment of legislation promoting helmet use is associated with an
increase in helmet use and a decrease in head injuries. For example, in
Victoria, Australia, helmet use increased from 31% to 75%, and cycling
fatalities decreased by 48%, after the introduction of mandatory helmet
laws, despite an increase in cycling among adults."

(Cameron MH, Vulcan AP, Finch CF, et al. Mandatory bicycle helmet use
following a decade of voluntary promotion in Victoria,
Australia — an evaluation. Accid Anal Prev 1994;26:325-37.)

The key thing to remember is that you have to be extremely wary of
statistics specifically selected to try and prove something that is
actually untrue. In the case of the claims of reduced cycling levels,
there were several key flaws. First they searched for a time period
where they could find an atypical decrease. Second they chose sub-groups
of cyclists that fit their goal, and ignored sub-groups that did not fit
their goal. Third, they ignored all other factors that cause an increase
or decrease in cycling rates. All of this was intentional of course.

It is true that immediately following the implementation of a helmet law
there is often a dip in cycling levels, at least for children. After a
year or so, levels will return to the previous level. This is especially
true if helmet usage was not promoted through education for a long
period prior to the law taking effect, for reasons such as the lack of
wide availability of helmets at the retail level, especially outside of
just bicycle shops. For adults, as the Victoria study showed, there was
not even a decrease in the first year, adult bicycle usage went up 44%
in the first year after the helmet law was introduced, though the
increase cannot be attributed to the helmet law since cycling rates
increase and decrease for a variety of reasons (if I employed the same
junk science and statistics as Frank, I would jump up and down and
insist that the 44% increase was solely because of the helmet law!).

If you look at the web sites that promulgate the most misinformation
about helmets, i.e. http://www.cyclehelmets.org and look at the data
for Victoria http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1020.html, it's quite
amusing. They a) omit the fact that adult cycling levels went way up
after the helmet law, b) do not include the data showing that even for
children, cycling levels eventually returned to pre-helmet law levels,
and c) don't mention that even if there had not been an all ages helmet
law enacted, there would still have been a helmet law for children. That
site is junk science at its worst. Of course that's not surprising when
you look at the supporters, it's a collection of the worst offenders
when it comes to using junk science and statistics
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1121.html. It's not clear which of those
people are pushing the junk science and statistics and which of them
were simply gullible enough to believe it all.