On Tuesday, December 3, 2013 7:21:18 PM UTC-5, sms wrote:
On 12/3/2013 3:51 PM, James wrote:

Statistics show marked drop in mode share when MHLs were
introduced. Recent studies show the MHL is still a key issue to
dissuade people from riding.

No way. No statistics show this.

As usual, what Mr. Scharf really means is "No statistics known to a Scharf show this."

Among people who have studied this issue - and there are very, very many - it's extremely rare to find someone claiming that mandating helmets does not reduce cycling. But then, Scharf has always been a rare bird.

The report by the government committee that generated this topic found that 16.5% of respondents said a main reason they don't cycle is that they don't like wearing a helmet. According to Scharf, those respondents must all be liars.

As James said, after the mandatory helmet laws were enacted, there was an immediate and large reduction in cycling - a drop exceeding 30%, IIRC. This paper http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...01457596000164 documents that drop, as do many other sources. Yes, there were Scharfian efforts to hide the drop, efforts by those who had worked to pass the law, but those efforts were exposed in other papers.

Then there's the incontestable effect of the MHLs on bike share schemes. Even Scharfian misinformation can't hide the fact that MHLs have kept Australian bike share from coming close to usage levels in other countries.

Cycling rates continued to increase
even in places where MHLs were introduced.

"Rate" according to what denominator? Not per capita. Not as a percentage of mode share.

Whether or not the rates
would have increased more without an MHL is unknown.

:-) Unknown to some, I suppose!

So many factors
contribute to cycling rates that it's not possible to isolate the cause
of an increase or decrease to one specific factor.

NONE of the many factors that might cause decreases in cycling changed suddenly at the same time Australia's MHLs were imposed. Things like amount of motoring, climate, fuel prices, distance traveled to get to work, condition of the road network, etc. underwent no sudden change. Yet cycling dropped suddenly and markedly, precisely when the MHLs went into effect. Furthermore, telephone surveys indicated that people gave the MHLs as the reason they rode less. What more evidence would you need?

BTW, there were other simultaneous changes that might have increased bike use: Much stricter enforcement of drunk driving laws, and harsher enforcement of other motoring laws. Those might have caused some to, say, bike to the pub instead of drive, or to say "traffic should be safer now, so I'll bike." But cycling fell over 30% anyway.

What you'll now see from the AHZs is an admission that cycling rates
increased even after an MHL was introduced with an additional claim that
the increase did not keep up with population growth and hence was
decrease percentagewise. If this is true, then they insist that the
reason for the percentage decrease is an MHL. Of course the reality is
that it could be for a variety of reasons from the demographics of the
population increases to changes in fuel prices to global warming.

I think we're dealing with a man who hasn't the dimmest idea what "correlation" means.

- Frank Krygowski