On Monday, October 29, 2012 9:55:13 AM UTC-6, Andre Jute wrote:
THE CASE FOR A MANDATORY CYCLE HELMET LAW
(IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA)
by Andre Jute
It is a risible myth that your average American is a tall-walking free
individual untrammeled by government: he is in fact just as much
constricted as a European soft-socialist consumerist or Japanese
collective citizen, though it is true that the American is controlled
in different areas of his activity than the European or the Japanese.
To some the uncontrolled areas of American life, for instance the
ability to own and use firearms, smacks of barbarism rather than
liberty. In this article I examine whether the lack of a mandatory
bicycle helmet law in the USA is barbaric or an emanation of that
rugged liberty more evident in rhetoric than reality.
Any case for intervention by the state must be made on moral and
statistical grounds. Examples are driving licences, crush zones on
cars, seatbelts, age restrictions on alcohol sales, and a million
other interventions, all now accepted unremarked in the States as part
of the regulatory landscape, but all virulently opposed in their day.
HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING?
Surprisingly, cycling can be argued to be "safe enough", given only
that one is willing to count the intangible benefits of health through
exercise, generally acknowledged as substantial. Here I shall make no
effort to quantify those health benefits because the argument I'm
putting forward is conclusively made by harder statistics and
unexceptional general morality.
In the representative year of 2008, the last for which comprehesive
data is available, 716 cyclists died on US roads, and 52,000 were
injured.
Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
The most convenient way to grasp the meaning of these statistics is to
compare cycling with motoring, the latter ipso facto by motorists'
average mileage accepted by most Americans as safe enough.
Compared to a motorist a cyclist is:
11 times MORE likely to die PER MILE travelled
2.9 times MORE likely to die PER TRIP taken
By adding information about the relative frequency/length/duration of
journeys of cyclists and motorists, we can further conclude that in
the US:
Compared to a motorist, a cyclist is:
3 to 4 times MORE likely to die PER HOUR riding
3 to 4 times LESS likely to die IN A YEAR's riding
Source:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=htt...ite/Banco/7man...
It is the last number, that the average cyclist is 3 to 4 times less
likely to die in a year's riding than a motorist, and enjoys all the
benefits of healthy exercise, that permits us to ignore the greater
per mile/per trip/per hour danger.
This gives us the overall perspective but says nothing about wearing a
cycling helmet.
HELMET WEAR AT THE EXTREME END OF CYCLING RISK
What we really want to know is: what chance of the helmet saving your
life? The authorities in New York made a compilation covering the
years 1996 to 2003 of all the deaths (225) and serious injuries
(3,462) in cycling accidents in all New York City. The purpose of the
study was an overview usable for city development planning, not helmet
advocacy, so helmet usage was only noted for part of the period among
the seriously injured, amounting to 333 cases.
Here are some
conclusions:
• Most fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
fatal crashes, but 13% in non-fatal
crashes
Source:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/download...ike-report.pdf
This concatenation of facts suggests very strongly that not wearing a
helmet may be particularly dangerous.
• It looks like wearing a helmet saved roundabout 33 cyclists or so
(of the 333 seriously injured for whom helmet use is known) from
dying.
• If those who died wore helmets at the same rate of 13% as those in
the study who survived, a further 22 or so could have lived.
• If all the fatalities had been wearing a helmet (100%), somewhere
between 10% and 57% of them would have lived. This number is less firm
to allow for impacts so heavy that no helmet would have saved the
cyclist. Still, between 22 and 128 *additional* (to the 33 noted
above) New Yorkers alive rather than dead for wearing a thirty buck
helmet is a serious statistical, moral and political consideration
difficult to overlook.
SO HOW MANY CYCLISTS CAN HELMETS SAVE ACROSS THE NATION?
New York is not the United States but we're not seeking certainly,
only investigating whether a moral imperative for action appears.
First off, the 52,000 cyclists hurt cannot be directly related to the
very serious injuries which were the only ones counted in the New York
compilation. But a fatality is a fatality anywhere and the fraction of
head injuries in the fatalities is pretty constant.
So, with a caution, we can say that of 716 cycling fatalities
nationwide, helmet use could have saved at least 70 and very likely
more towards a possible upper limit of around 400. Again the
statistical extension must be tempered by the knowledge that some
impacts are so heavy that no helmet can save the cyclist. Still, if
even half the impacts resulting in fatal head trauma is too heavy for
a helmet to mitigate, possibly around 235 cyclists might live rather
than die on the roads for simply wearing a helmet. Every year. That's
an instant reduction in cyclist road fatalities of one third. Once
more we have arrived at a statistical, moral and political fact that
is hard to igno Helmet wear could save many lives.
THE CASE AGAINST MANDATORY HELMET LAWS
• Compulsion is anti-Constitutional, an assault on the freedom of the
citizen to choose his own manner of living and dying
• Many other actitivities cause fatal head injuries. So why not insist
they should all be put in helmets?
• 37% of bicycle fatalities involve alcohol, and 23% were legally
drunk, and you'll never get these drunks in helmets anyway
• We should leave the drunks to their fate; they're not real cyclists
anyway
• Helmets are not perfect anyway
• Helmets cause cyclists to stop cycling, which is a cost to society
in health losses
• Many more motorists die on the roads than cyclists. Why not insist
that motorists wear helmets inside their cars?
• Helmets don't save lives -- that's a myth put forward by commercial
helmet makers
• Helmets are too heavily promoted
• Helmet makers overstate the benefits of helmets
• A helmet makes me look like a dork
• Too few cyclists will be saved to make the cost worthwhile
THE CASE FOR A MANDATORY HELMET LAW IN THE STATES
• 235 or more additional cyclists' lives saved
• 716 deaths of cyclists on the road when a third or more of those
deaths can easily be avoided is a national disgrace
• Education has clearly failed
• Anti-helmet zealots in the face of the evidence from New York are
still advising cyclists not to wear helmets
• An example to the next generation of cyclists
• A visible sign of a commitment to cycling safety, which may attract
more people to cycling
© Copyright Andre Jute 2010. Free for reproduction in non-profit
journals and sites as long as the entire article is reproduced in full
including this copyright and permission notice.
I have a thought experiment that I haven't replicated yet. Place a helmet on top of a hard round surface. Lift a bowling ball approximately, 1 centimeter above the helmet and drop it, continue ding this one centimeter increment at the time until the helmet cracks. Not sure how hight I would like to lift the bowling ball before it does crack the helmet, but I am certain that I wouldn't like to have the bowling ball fall over my head event below the cracking threshold.
Many would argue that the forces created by a bowling ball may not be the same one from a bike accident. But, I have been in two bike accidents over a period of 25 years, where I cracked a helmet. I am glad that my head w/o a helmet did not have to absorb the same impact. maybe, the reason that I am kind of dumb is that the helmets did not protect me enough.
Regarding those who want zero government control, I wonder where they live. If the own or rent property, if there are paved sidewalks and street outside of their homes, if they don't walk naked whenever they want to, if they use public transportation, or private transportation, or bicycles, or skateboards, or eat in restaurants, or at home, or have their own little private gardens and grow their own food, or take subways, or go out and vote, work, or do anything at all in their lives, they live under "social rules" directed by government. Without them society would simply collapse.
Im not saying that government control is good or bad. But wanting to avoid government control by not wearing helmets, or seat-belts, or joining perma-culture then you are totally naive. Our entire lives are control by a system of government that regulate most of what we do. Thats the case for all societies.
If you want no government control, living alone outside of the grid is the only solution. Buying a bike, from manufacturing to selling, to shipping, to getting it at the bike shop, or at home, or at the swap meet is controlled by government ordinances of all kinds. So, you have a bike, but you think that you are fighting government control by not wearing a helmet? Lol.