A professor at an Australian university has likened opponents of compulsory cycle helmet laws to “climate change deniers and the anti-vaccination groups” following publication of a study which claims that legislation introduced across the country almost three decades ago has resulted in cycling fatalities falling by almost half.
The study, conducted by researchers at NSW Sydney and published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, claims that the number of cyclists killed in road traffic collisions has fallen by 46 per cent since the legislation was brought in by the country’s eight states and territories between 1990 and 1992.
According to the study, "There were 1,144 cycling fatalities in the period 1990-2016 and, using the pre-legislation trajectory as a guide, our model estimates 2,476 cycling fatalities from 1990 to 2016 if bicycle helmet legislation had not been introduced."
Emeritus Professor Raphael Grzebieta of UNSW’s Transport and Road Safety (TARS) Research Centre, attacked what he termed an “ill-informed, small but vocal group of anti-helmet advocates who claim that the MHL has been a disaster for cycling in Australia.”
He said: “This is simply not true. These advocates are no different to the climate change deniers and the anti-vaccination groups and belong in that same category of people that do not believe in scientific evidence. It would not matter what you present to such people. They will always live in denial.”
The study’s lead author, Professor Jake Olivier of UNSW’s School of Mathematics and Statistics and Deputy Director of TARS, said: “There was an immediate 46 per cent reduction in the rate of cycling fatalities per 100,000 population following the introduction of bicycle helmet legislation in Australia,” he says.
“This decline has been maintained since 1990 and we estimate 1,332 fewer cycling fatalities associated with the introduction of bicycle helmet legislation to date.”
But he said that he did not expect opponents of mandatory helmet laws to change their views as a result of the research.
“It is one of those things where it has been repeated so many times that people just believe it to be true, and won’t question it because they’ve heard it so often,” Professor Olivier says.
“These are the people who have made calls to repeal or weaken bicycle helmet legislation in Australia. The results from this study are not supportive of those initiatives.”
Professor Grzebieta added: “If Australian helmet laws were repealed there would be a sudden uptake in the rate of serious head injuries and fatalities among cyclists involved in a crash.
“The subsequent increase in hospitalisation costs would further exacerbate the already overwhelming demand for crash trauma treatment at hospitals and cause a significant increase in health costs.”
The authors called for more segregated cycling infrastructure to be introduced in Australia, which the said was sorely lacking compared to some European countries – an appeal that will be seized upon by “anti-helmet advocates” who will point out that in places like the Netherlands and Denmark, helmet use is very low yet they are the safest countries for cyclists.
Professor Olivier insisted that “this senseless focus on helmet legislation detracts from the more important concerns about construction of dedicated cycling infrastructure, education of all road users, and supportive legislation to protect cyclists, such as minimum passing distances”.
Organisations such as Cycling UK maintain that the effect on wider public health due to people being deterred from cycling by being made to wear a helmet outweighs any argument for legislation to make them compulsory being enacted.
But Professor Grzebieta rejected that argument, saying: “There are numerous claims that the benefits of cycling far outweigh the ‘disbenefit’ of introducing mandatory helmet laws.”
He added: “We are highly sceptical of this claim and suspect poor assumptions are being made in the scientific methodology.”
Previous research on the subject includes a 2010 study by Dr Chris Rissel of Sydney University’s School of Public Health, who maintained that levels of cycling had dropped by around 30 per cent in Australia since the helmet laws were brought in.
He also said that other factors were at work in bringing down the number of cyclist casualties, including the greater use of random breath-testing of motorists.
Add new comment
45 comments
While I personally wouldn't go cycling without a helmet, I wouldn't go as far as saying making it compulsory and thereby a criminal offence to not do so is the right approach. Given the fines some Aussie states issue for non-use of a helmet are far higher than speeding fines, and other general driver related ones, it seems rather backwards.
Possibly doing a survey to find out why people don't feel safe cycling in Aus might be an idea, as the standards of driving I see coming out of there, and in particular their attitude to cyclists HAS to be putting people off.
The Prof comes across as a helmet evangelist, not an impartial sifter of evidence.
We need BTBS back with balanced knowledge of this area.
And the number of cyclists on the roads has fallen by how much since the legislation was brought in?
I feel that without that figure, the casualty numbers are not exactly as meaningful as they could be...
Exactly, and this very obvious misrepresentation of linking injuries/head of population instead of actual meaningful injuries/cycle unit of time or distance traveled is so dishonest that it makes it impossible to take anything they say seriously.
The IMHO somewhat silly helmet debate, has always reminded me of the old lady ouside the Synagoue. A man is run over on the zebra crossing he does not look good, an old lady comes out of the Synagogue "What happened?" she said "he was hit by a car that did not stop" says a fellow worshiper, Give him some Chicken Soup" says the old woman, "How will that help" says one of the people helping the man, "How can it hurt" says the old woman!
The Moral? Until someone can give me an unassailable reason that helmets can make an injury worse I will continue to eat Chicken Soup have a nice day!
Your conclusion does not follow from your story. If you pursue the analogy with your story it is that helmets have no effect, so you have wasted money on the soup/helmet.
There's a benefit at low speeds in an urban environment, however this has to balanced against the fact your head is now bigger and more likely to hit things, rotational neck injuries, some studies suggest motorists give you less room so your are more likely to be in a collision or run off the road, in general people take more risk where there is use of safety equipment.
Whether you wear a helmet should be around your journey environment and speed and general risk appetite, but what you do should not imply all cyclists should follow suit.
Your story just tells me if i want chicken soup then maybe i should get run over.
Also there is evidence, you are more likely to get close passed when wearing a helmet and your helmeted head is more likely to hit something than a non helmeted one. Step away from the soup.
This is a popular line of reasoning, but it's rationalisation. How can I say that so surely? Because the same rationale should apply to Britain's greatest producer of traumatic head injury, the car crash. And in a car you're not doing any work and are in a climate controlled environment and you have an easy place to store your helmet, so why isn't everyone wearing helmets to drive?
And the answer is that in UK driving culture driving is a safe enough normal, everyday thing that nobody can be bothered. Dutch cycling culture is like UK driving culture: it's safe enough not to bother with the faff. UK cycling culture is dominated by sports cycling where there is a culture of helmet wearing and an assumption that cycling is highly productive of head injuries. It might be if you're in bunch sprints every weekend, but for A to B transport it simply isn't true. For utility cycling safety is about the same things as it is for pedestrians: do not collide with moving motor vehicles, and anything else is window dressing. Adding a lightweight helmet based on a standard that expressly said that it was not for collisions with (motor) vehicles and where the test spec is a plain fall to the ground is window dressing.
"Our study shows that when petrol prices were twice as high, there were fewer automobile road casualties, thereby proving the assertion that lower petrol prices cause more death"
-Professor Obvious
"In another study, we determined that amputees were less likely to sustain limb-breaking injuries and that people without drivers licences were more rarely ticketed for speeding"
The report conclusion says: "In the absence of robust evidence showing a decline in cycling exposure following helmet legislation or other confounding factors, the reduction in Australian bicycle-related fatality appears to be primarily due to increased helmet use and not other factors." I don't fancy paying £28 to access the full report, but that sounds like they didn't look too hard at bicycle use before and after mandatory helmet use.
I have access. They add the following. I'm assuming the references are given on the linked to page, even with a paywall (they usually are).
and
They also do similar rough estimate comparisons to discount things like improved road safety.
IMO, the comments by the authors outside of the publication seem very strong compared to the findings they published.
Thank you for those quotes.
Any report which references the Cochrane review without pointing out that it was a travesty which didn't follow any of the guidelines for Cochrane reviews and was done by the world's greatest helmet proponents can safely be filed in the bin.
I feel this should be then compared to the number of acual cyclists too.
I get the feeling there was probably a 46% drop in number of cyclists too.
during my breif (5 month) visit to the land down under I think I could have counted the number of cyclists i saw each week on one hand. and that was in brisbane during the summer-autumn!
Having read the paper, they focus on injuries by total population but NOT by the number of people cycling, and in the conclusion they dismiss the evidence suggesting that helmet laws decrease cycling rates, but don't assess it themselves. This is a huge methodological error, and I'm suprised it got published
Pages