Ontario Helmet Law being pushed through

Ken [NY] wrote:

.... an attempt to drive every bike thread off-topic into right wing
nonsense.

You're immune to reason, Ken. I'll try to keep that in mind if I'm
tempted to reply.

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

Steven M. Scharf wrote:


Paul R wrote:

Actually, MHL will cause both to happen - lots of people will buy helmets
and lots of people will stop riding. Most experienced cyclists do not
wear
helmets (at least in Toronto). The vast majority of casual cyclists do
not
wear helmets. They will either buy one and continue cycling, break the
laws
and ride without a helmet or stop cycling.

Lot's of people will buy a helmet and then realize they hate wearing
it and
stop cycling. The fewer cyclists on the streets, the more dangerous
are the
streets for cyclists. Period.

Geez, talk about speculation and conjecture gone wild.

I'm not in favor of MHLs, but where on earth did you come up with all this?

There have been several papers on cycling safety which noted the "safety
in numbers" effect. One informal one is "Stepping Stones to Bicycle
Safety" by Malcolm Wardlaw, at Bicycling Life.
http://www.bicyclinglife.com/Library/SteppingStones.htm
Other articles in refereed journals have noted the same effect.


What will actually happen is that the law will be ignored or withdrawn
after the clueless politicians that pushed it through are made to
realize how stupid it is to waste police resources on it. They’ll make a
speech deploring the millions of lives that will be lost as a result of
the law being eliminated.


Rescinding these laws has been very, very rare. In fact, the statistics
that indicate the laws failures have a difficult time finding publishers.

Some people have proposed having MHLs written (assuming you can't
prevent the law itself) so that they have a "sunset" provision if it's
proven they don't work. And the "proof" should be in serious head
injuries per cyclist mileage, not merely in terms of "percentage of
cyclists wearing helmets," since by that standard, every cyclist who
quits riding is counted as a _success_!

So far, AFAIK, no laws have been written that way. It's as if the
lawmakers don't want to know.

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

Frank Krygowski wrote:

Some people have proposed having MHLs written (assuming you can't prevent
the law itself) so that they have a "sunset" provision if it's proven they
don't work. And the "proof" should be in serious head injuries per
cyclist mileage, not merely in terms of "percentage of cyclists wearing
helmets," since by that standard, every cyclist who quits riding is
counted as a _success_!

So far, AFAIK, no laws have been written that way. It's as if the
lawmakers don't want to know.

Or perhaps they've been reading the helmet wars threads on r.b.misc and
don't believe a consensus could be reached on whether the law worked or not.
;-)

Austin
--
I'm pedaling as fast as I durn well please!
There are no X characters in my address

Frank Krygowski writes:

Ah. Interesting conjecture. But I see you've posted no evidence to
support it - as usual.
Read the ****ing newspapers.

:-) Wipe the froth off your mouth and keyboard, Bill. You're losing
control yet again!

You sound like the fundamentalist Christian I once argued with briefly
as I rode to work on my bike. I mentioned that his groups gory anti-
abortion sign was a hazard as it was placed so as to prevent eye
contact with drivers stopped at across street. His reply was that I
was riding on a very dangerous road (4 lanes, 35 mph speed limit,
completely straight, few intersections, few driveways, and bike lanes
for added room.) I suggested that the most dangerous thing on the
road was his f___ing sign. He looked shocked and said, "Did you use
the 'F' word?"

Rant all you want, Frank, but this is well-known stuff and common
knowledge. All you have to do is to keep up with current affairs.

See
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/12/05/MNW14097.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1996/12/31/NEWS8420.dtl
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1996/09/12/MN74703.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1996/09/11/MN57241.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1995/11/14/EDITORIAL4921.dtl

Thanks - but what you've given there isn't much in the way of data.

It's a hell of a lot more data than you've produced.

Actually, the sites you referenced talked about just one cyclist
fatality and _three_ gravely injured pedestrians - at least one of
which was a head injury. It wasn't clear if they were fatalities or
not.

Actually, the sites talked about bad driver behavior.

Got data?

You are repeating yourself. I've shown you plenty of data and you
are ignoring it as usual, and repeating yourself.

--
My real name backwards: nemuaZ lliB

Frank Krygowski writes:

Steven M. Scharf wrote:

What will actually happen is that the law will be ignored or
withdrawn after the clueless politicians that pushed it through are
made to realize how stupid it is to waste police resources on
it. TheyÂ’ll make a speech deploring the millions of lives that
will be lost as a result of the law being eliminated.


Rescinding these laws has been very, very rare. In fact, the
statistics that indicate the laws failures have a difficult time
finding publishers.

Maybe because the statistics you refer to are bogus? That's the usual
reason for not being able to get them published. :-)

Oh, and whether the laws are actually rescinded doesn't particularly
matter if they are not enforced and the public doesn't know about
them.

--
My real name backwards: nemuaZ lliB

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 18:49:37 GMT, Chris Phillipo
wrote:

This is quite interesting, time to make up your mind. Either MHLs cause
people to buy more helmets or it causes people to stop riding. You are
really going to have to pick one or the other to be credible. Would you
like a pair of John Kerry brand flip flops?

Here is what happens:

Pre-law wearing rate: 50%
Post-law wearing rate: 90%
Deterrence rate: 30%

Year 1 result: A lot of helmets get sold
Year 2 result: A lot less bikes get sold
Year 3 result: as year 2
Year 4 result: as year 2
Year 5 result: as year 2

etc.

So, you get a one-year bonus of lots of foam hat sales, followed by
the collapse of your market.

There are no winners from MHLs, or at least there haven't been thus
far. Other than the politicians who can count on the handwringer vote
next time (although the chances of this effect lasting more than one
election are slim).

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 02:38:21 GMT, "Steven M. Scharf"
wrote:

What will actually happen is that the law will be ignored or withdrawn
after the clueless politicians that pushed it through are made to
realize how stupid it is to waste police resources on it.

LOL! Yeah, right. Politician puts hands up and says "sure, we made a
mistake." Alternative hypothesis: law is seen to be widely flouted,
so politicos try to "fix" the problem with large-scale clampdowns on
those lawless unhelemted cyclists.

Or perhaps they'll compromise, and pass a law that says that head
injuries incurred in a bicycle crash are not covered by Canada's health
care coverage, unless the cyclist was wearing a helmet. Kind of similar
to the states where you can be exempt from the motorcycle helmet
requirement if you pay for extra insurance.

Personal injury weasels already ask for - and often get - reduced
compensation when the cyclist was not wearing a plastic hat, even
though the collision may well have been vastly beyond the theoretical
capabilities of the PFDB.

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/down...negligence.pdf

Strangely the same thinking does not appear to apply to car drivers,
who suffer head injuries in roughly the same proportion, and who could
obviously wear helmets - really strong ones - without the issues of
sweating and overheating that cyclists get.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 05:50:02 GMT, (Bill Z.)
wrote:

Maybe because the statistics you refer to are bogus? That's the usual
reason for not being able to get them published. :-)

Actually it's not quite true, they are published - by the relevant
road ministries of the countries concerned. That's how the CPSC got
their data showing risk per cyclist increasing by 40% as helemt use
rose from 18% to 50%, and how Australian and New Zealand statisticians
found out that there was no change in %HI for cyclists over and above
that found for pedestrians.

The medical press are interventionist by nature, so these facts, plain
as they are, were not of interest to them. Some are changing in this
view as they begin to realise the inherent weaknesses of observational
studies, after a well-publicised series of fiascos.

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/web/...tional_Studies

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 18:42:06 GMT, Chris Phillipo
wrote:

if we are to beleive the zealots,
everyone will stop riding and no one will be buying a helmet.

As a point of simple fact, the helmet debate, as with most acrimonious
debates, is characterised by two camps: zealots and sceptics. Zealots
refuse to read or acknowledge the evidence proposed by sceptics.
Sceptics read both sides of the argument and believe somethign in
between.

A zealot statement might be: helmets do nothing.
A zealot statement might be: helmets are the be-all and end-all of
cycle safety

A sceptic would say: "Arguments that appear to disavow the efficacy or
utility of cycle helmet wearing, or on the other hand claim it as the
major influence in reducing injury to cyclists, are both wide of the
mark. In particular, campaigns seeking to present cycling as an
inevitably dangerous or hazardous activity, or which suggest that
helmet wearing should be made compulsory, risk prejudicing the
delivery of those very benefits to health and environment which
cycling can deliver: they also serve to confuse the general public
about the wider social and economic advantages of cycling. As a
result, the NCS Board is anxious that the question of wearing helmets
is placed in its proper context"

Now you see why the sceptical view - which is in this case undoubtedly
the correct one - never gets seen among the flying soundbytes :-)

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 02:30:00 GMT, Bill "Laa laa I'm not listening"
Zaumen wrote:

Peter, you are wasting your time. As far as Zaumen is concerned there
are only two types of people in the world: people who agree with him,
and liars.

Guy, of course, is lying again.

I rest my case.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University