THE CASE FOR A MANDATORY CYCLE HELMET LAW 
(IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA)

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.