Right now, as part of Bike Month in Vancouver, there is a crack down on the helmet law. The police are handing out tickets, as my roommate just got one and I just got an email for someone who has been ticketed 2 days in a row. So what gives? Is this right or wrong? Well like most things I have an opinion, but its not as straight forward as some might think.

The Email

From: Adrian
Subject: [Feedback] Road safety negatively impacted by the inappropriate enforcement of legislation.

Dear reporter,

I feel there is a story here and have made a long winded e-mail to describe my point of view. Please read it and I hope it provides enough inspiration to make it into your publication. My contact information is at the bottom of the e-mail.

i have a fiew photos I took when I fond my self a victim of a police campaign targeting cyclists without helmets this month during BEST's "Bike Month" I have now been ticketed 2 days in a row. While I am a cycle and safety
advocate: the following statement and letter to city officials sums up my position.

1. I have 2 friends in the police force both recently said to me they have a lot more free time because of budget cuts. I asked why if they are salary employees do the budget cuts affect them - they told me they are not
   allowed to work as much overtime, they maintain that the police are still understaffed.
2. Given the police are understaffed cyclists with out helmets are what I would say low on the priority list. If cycle safety is high priority target road users who threaten cycle safety.
3. Targeting cyclists on bike paths, on consecutive days, discourages them form using the bike path (to avoid a ticket a cyclist should now just use a more dangerous road!)
4. Cycle safety is a product of cyclist awareness and obeying the rules of the road, "if my wife and child are hit by a car that didn't see them while falling to indicate on a right turn, or pulling out from a parking lot without checking for bikes; or opening the car door onto them, or pulling into a driveway without checking for bikes, I am would be wrong to say you are so lucky you were wearing a helmet, when they are in fact unlucky that those motorists were unaware of there responsability - when those motorist could have avoided the situation by following the law. (the above 4 accidents have all happen to me and I feel lucky that my wife and child
   are not yet victims ) I was not warring a helmet during any of the crashes but sustained multiple imageries in all cases none to my head. There is no luck there just the absence of driver education.
5. This long winded paragraph above serves to put the focus on safety is a separate function that is not guaranteed by warring a helmet, I chose not to wearer a helmet to bring attention to the pitiful band aid approach to cycle safety by mandating helmet use. ICBC has some interesting statistics helmet use seems irrelevant. www.icbc.com/library/research_papers/traffic/pdf/Traffic_Collision_Statistics_2004.pdf
   (search: "bicycle")
6. Given the health benefits, the low cost infrastructure, and the climate benefits of cycling the city should be promoting cyclists by making it safer for them not by targeting and penalizing them at the same time
   advocated are promoting bike use. Below is a letter I am witting to city officials.

I would like to bring your attention to a failure of legislation in the protection of cyclists. Cyclists are a legitimate and recognized part of traffic and they have a legal right to safe riding conditions on our province's roads.

There are countless benefits to cycling, and the following two examples serve to justify my statement that cycling is good for the province:

1. The positive impact cycling has on the climate and local air quality as well as
2. the health benefits of regular exercise which lessen the burden on our medical system.

With the above in mind I would expect public policy to encourage such an activity and protect those who choose to cycle.

About five years ago I chose to commute regularly by bike. This year I sold my car so that my bike became my primary mode of transport. As a cyclist I can attest to a variety of traffic laws that are not enforced on a regular basis that have a direct impact on a cyclist's safety. On four occasions I have been struck from my bike by an automobile; in all cases the automobiles were not abiding by the rules of the road and oblivious of
the presence of a cyclist.

In light of my experiences, addressing road safety, particularly that of cyclists, would be best served by addressing the causes of the problem. Distilled down, this can be attributed to driver and cyclist education.

This month I saw my first public advertisement targeting drivers and focusing on the presence of cyclists on the road. I applaud ICBC for investing in such a campaign. This may have purposefully coincide with the variety of cycle advocacy groups who are actively involved in the promotion of cycling this month. While ICBC's campaign is a start in addressing the safety of cyclists it is not under the influence of legislation or the law.

Law enforcement can play a positive role in creating a safer environment for all road users. If the safety of cyclists is a goal it would be prudent for law enforcement to target road users who violate those laws.

This morning (June 26th ) and yesterday morning (June 25th ) while cycling to work, along with many others, I was the target of an intentional police clamp down on the use of cycling helmets. While cycling helmet laws are
intended to provide safety to cyclists, intentionally penalizing cyclists for not wearing helmets does not address the underlying safety concerns with cycling. In exercising my choice whether or not to wearer a helmet, my choice does not jeopardise other road users. It has even been argued that motorists may be more sensitive to cyclist safety in seeing them not wearing a helmet.

Given that there are cycling advocacy groups promoting cycling this month it would not only be appropriate but ethical to have road law enforcement work at the same time at making cycling safer by getting at the root of
the problem.

Targeting of cyclists by enforcing helmet use discourages cycling and is a superficial approach to promoting safety, in that the safety of cyclists is primarily dependent on education and behaviour of other road users and
secondly on that of helmet use.

I would expect that this issue be taken seriously and the appropriate measures be taken to make cycling safer, while promoting this mode of transportation as a legitimate and recognized part of traffic. Law enforcement could focus their efforts in protecting cyclists without penalizing them, especially during the cycle advocacy campaigns.

Wease's Response

I thought I would start by saying that I personally wear a helmet at all times and do not quite understand your insistence to ride without a helmet. I do however strongly support your stance that resources may be put to other services. But before I do get to that I wanted to make the point that if you do receive a head injury, which could have been reduced through helmet usage, then you are taxing a common resource (medical) unfairly. If such an incident did occur I find it unlikely that you would cover your own medical costs, so I suggest that you take care in your attempt to attack helmet laws in a public forum.

From my perspective, the problem is not that helmet laws exist, but that they exist for the wrong reason, to avoid building proper, safe, cycling infrastructure (as you eluded to - although you focused more on education). Rather than having safe bike routes that are separate from cars (or more public education for that matter), helmet laws are seen as a simpler and quicker fix. The problem is that they don't really accomplish this task.

Even if we are willing to ignore other injuries associated with car/vehicle collisions and focus only on head injuries, one must realize that bicycle helmets were only designed to accommodate falls from the bike to the road. Like what might happen if you hit a patch of ice and crash your bike. Helmets were NOT designed for bike car collisions, they are not motorcycle helmets afterall - compare the two if you haven't before.

Of course as I say this, I cannot present to you a definitive source to site on the subject. As it stands the scientific consensus on the subject is mixed do to the difficulty in assessing helmet effectiveness in bike/vehicle collisions. It does not mean helmets are not effective, it simply means there are confounding factors that make it nearly impossible to properly assess helmet effectiveness. Reasons include, confounding effects of general driver education programs and under reporting of injuries. For example if, helmets do help and I am in a bike/car collision and I emerge out without a concussion, who will I report this to? No one.

Rather than attacking helmet laws, I would suggest taking a less direct tactic of suggesting we, as a society, do NOT invest enough resources into cycling in general. You may wish to instead cite the general lack of knowledge on helmet effectiveness when commenting on helmet laws. Why do we invoke laws when there is not clear evidence one way or another? That is of course if helmet laws are in place to safeguard car/bike collisions.

Even at that, some may argue that helmet laws exist for general cyclist safety, where there is fairly clear evidence that if you fall off your bike (non-vehicle) you are better off with rather than without a helmet. But again this has to be tempered because this evidence tends to come from sporting studies where people are pushing the handling envelope of a bicycle. When you look at commuting, we are again run into a number of confounded variables, including society, culture and economics (i.e. we have more than one factor changing in the same direction so we can't say which one is causing what).

To help you in your efforts (or anyone else) I have attached a PDF of a recent article on this subject to this post (go to the bottom). It provides some interesting points and does a nice job of surveying the available studies on the subject. I do not have time to write up anything on the subject as I would need to do a lot more research on the subject before I would feel comfortable saying anything on the subject. Perhaps you may wish to take this approach.

Finally, your whole argument is based on the belief that other issues affect cyclist safety more than helmets (which I agree with). If that is true, then as cyclists don't we have have an obligation to prioritize these sorts of issues over ones that provide an inconvenience (such as helmet laws). Personally, even if helmets had absolutely no effect I would wear one, and fight for the bigger issues until the day all cyclists can ride safe in the streets, then I would fight to have the archaic and misappropriated helmet laws removed.

[Edit: I attached the Sec 14 from the ICBC Traffic Collision Statistics paper. If you look at the numbers the majority of accidents can be attributed to either driver or cyclist inability to yield the right of way or inattentivenesses. Both are similar percentages for cyclist or car drivers at fault. Clearly, education or improved infrastructure can help reduce both these causes. As I stated before, I am in favour of infrastructure cause you just can't teach a car driver a new trick! Finally, figure 14.03 (below) shows a 9.5% difference in head injuries. Again I do not know how they collected these numbers (i.e. what constitutes a "head injury") so the real difference may be different due to underreporting or misclassification (I would suggest the *real* effect may be larger). I would also suspect it would be even larger if all the helmet wearers where wearing motorcycle helmets (an obviously impossible request). ]