This is one of many lawsuits against helmet manufacturers for downplaying brain injury risks while wearing a helmet. The injured person lawyer said:

“If they had told the truth, and said, ‘You have a 50 percent change of getting a concussion with this helmet,’ what mother or father would let their kid play football in a Riddell helmet? And you can still buy this helmet today.”

Helmets provide the illusion of protecting against severe brain injury, despite not being designed to provide such protection. According to recent scientific research, severe brain injury is caused by rotational acceleration, that helmets cannot protect against.

According to the Toronto Star reporting on this lawsuit:

“Increasingly, what helmets have become are talismans. Riddell (and every other manufacturer) understands that no space-age resin, no lightweight polymer, no amount of high-tech bafflegab is going to fully protect you if you nail something hard and fast at just the wrong angle. They manufacture the illusion of full protection …
What they’re selling is witchcraft.
The fault here does not lie with the manufacturers. It lies somewhere within the culture.
…
There is very little difference between wearing a helmet and wearing a piece of the true cross. Both are faith objects.
The power of any talisman is that its protective aura is self-reinforcing. As long as you aren’t hurt while you’re wearing it, one presumes the talisman takes the credit.
…

the surest way to protect against brain injury is to either engage in pastimes that
A) don’t require helmets or
B) have adapted themselves to relatively safe, helmetless participation.

…
With the helmet goes a misplaced sense of invincibility.”

As Jerry Seinfield noted, a key issue is the culture surrounding helmets:

The deficiency in US football helmets is the same deficiency that has been known for decades in bicycle helmets. Helmets cannot protect against rotational acceleration, the main cause of severe brain injury. Additionally, bicycle helmets have a design flaw that increases the risk of brain injury:

“Protecting the brain from injury that results in death or chronic disablement provides the main motivation for wearing helmets. Their design has been driven by the development of synthetic polystyrene foams which can reduce the linear acceleration resulting from direct impact to the head, but scientific research shows that angular acceleration from oblique impulse is a more important cause of brain injury. Helmets are not tested for capacity to reduce it and, as Australian research first showed, they may increase it.“

Helmets should not be misrepresented as protecting against brain injury when they are not designed to do so. Helmets have been promoted by claiming they would protect against brain injury. Such misleading statements have led to people overestimating the benefits of helmets, taking more risks, then realizing too late that helmets are not designed to protect against brain injury or neck injury, as reported in the New York Times:

“the increased use of bike helmets may have had an unintended consequence: riders may feel an inflated sense of security and take more risks.
…
The helmet he was wearing did not protect his neck; he was paralyzed from the neck down.
…
”It didn’t cross my mind that this could happen,” said Philip, now 17. ”I definitely felt safe. I wouldn’t do something like that without a helmet.” “

A cracked helmet is a helmet that has failed. It is more likely to be an indication of an accident that wouldn’t have happened without the helmet, than “proof” the helmet saved your life. 

Many people look at a cracked or broken helmet and believe it is “proof” it saved their life. Actually, it is proof it failed to protect. In a serious accident, bicycle helmets tend to break into pieces and absorb little energy. Technically, a cracked helmet is a helmet that has failed to work as intended:

“The next time you see a broken helmet, suspend belief and do the most basic check – disregard the breakages and look to see if what’s left of the styrofoam has compressed. If it hasn’t  you can be reasonably sure that it hasn’t saved anyone’s life.“

Polystyrene-based helmets protect by absorbing the energy of the impact through compressing the polystyrene. If the polystyrene has broken into pieces but not compressed, it has failed. Yet ironically we mistakenly believe that the broken helmet saved us.

Statistically, we can expect a severe head injury once every 8,000 years of average cycling.
Yet for helmet believers, every damaged helmet is “proof” it saved them.
On the other hand, cyclists who don’t wear helmets tend to ride slower and have fewer accidents. Most of them have neither accident nor head injuries, yet they don’t preach that their lack of helmet saved them.

It is natural to assume a helmet saved us, as it justifies wearing it, and fits with helmet advocates exaggerated claims. However that doesn’t mean it is true. We don’t know what would have happened without a helmet. Cyclists, with and without helmets, get hit by cars; the survival rates are identical. Most bicycle accidents do not result in serious head injuries, with or without helmets. Helmet wearers tend to overlook this, and eagerly attribute their lack of head injury to their helmet, even though the outcome would have been the same without one:

“see the double-standard of finding it entirely logical when helmeted cyclists who survive collisions report that wearing a helmet saved their life. It is a powerful emotional argument, but logically, statistically, and scientifically, it is erroneous for the same reasons it would be erroneous to say that not wearing a helmet saved Gene Hackman’s life. If a cyclist wears a helmet and they emerge from a collision alive, that implies correlation, not causation.”

Polystyrene based helmets are not designed to protect in a serious accident:

“In cases of high impact, such as most crashes that involve a motor vehicle, the initial forces absorbed by a cycle helmet before breaking are only a small part of the total force and the protection provided by a helmet is likely to be minimal in this context. In cases where serious injury is likely, the impact energy potentials are commonly of a level that would overwhelm even Grand Prix motor racing helmets. Cycle helmets provide best protection in situations involving simple, low-speed falls with no other party involved. They are unlikely to offer adequate protection in life-threatening situations.“

Helmets make little difference in a serious accident, as Dr Hooper reports:

“Looking at evidence, it does not matter if people are wearing a helmet or not, any serious accident on a bike is likely to kill them,”

Not matter how strongly people believe in “helmets”, there is not much a piece of polystyrene can do in a serious accident.  After being asked

“Can your helmet save your life?”,

a helmet manufacturer salesperson shrugged and laughed uncomfortably, before responding:

“Can it?” “Well, not save your life, no.”

A cracked helmet may indicate a cyclist not riding cautiously enough, perhaps lured into a false sense of safety. After the helmet law was introduced in Australia, the risk of accidents more than tripled, while the risk of head injury increased. This is unlikely to be a coincidence. It is ironic that a cracked helmet is hailed as “proof” that it helped, while the accident may not have happened without the helmet.

It is easy to be mislead, especially after a traumatic experience. It is important to be realistic about helmets capabilities, and to base that assessment on facts. Overestimating their protection can be dangerous. After a serious accident, it is too late  to discover that helmets are not designed to protect in a serious impact.

Bicycle helmets can be insidious:

1. At first, they seem to “protect”, although the protection is limited.
2. On the other hand, they tend to increase the risk of accidents. In case of an accident, they provide less protection than we have been led to believe. They are not designed to protect in a serious accident.

Does this protection really compensate for additional accidents?

A government official tried to justify the legislation by regurgitating the usual nonsense:

“Wearing a secure helmet reduces the risk of brain or head injury by up to 60 per cent”

This is based on an old discredited “study” funded by the government. The number of people who believe such nonsense is dwindling. The government fails to mention that helmets increase the risk of accident and injury.

Increasingly, people who challenge a helmet fine in court escape it. This might explain why the police now rarely book cyclists for not wearing a helmet in NSW (except in the Pyrmont bridge in Sydney). It is pointless harassment: most people give up cycling, those who still prefer to ride can challenge the fine in court.

In Queensland, Jasdeep Atwal successfully challenged a helmet fine in court, asserting the rights of the Sikhs to ride bicycles. The efforts of the Sikh community have led the government to reform the law to add religious exemptions from the helmet law in Queensland.

A 1996 cycling survey in Sydney revealed that cycling counts were 48% below 1991. According to the census, cycling in Sydney slightly decreased between 1996 and 2001.

This indicates that the risk of accidents more than tripled, consistent with other studies.

The study reports a reduction in head injuries since 2006. This coincides to a resurgence in cycling, with many of the new cyclists not wearing helmets. Head injury rates decreased while fewer cyclists wore helmets. Oblivious to this, the study attributes the reduction in injuries to spending on cycling infrastructure that occurred mostly in Sydney after 2009.

Oddly, this study was used as the basis of a newspaper article defending the helmet law. The usual scaremongering tactics are there, suggesting that helmets protect against serious brain injuries, even though they are not designed to do so. The propaganda did not fool many people though, as the comments below the article highlight.

Despite the large increase in head injuries while cycling almost halved, the study claims:

“the benefit of MHL to lowering head injuries”

Oddly, the study fails to mention the reduction in cycling.

What’s going on?

It is odd for a study to ignore the increase in accidents and injuries, and the decrease in cycling after the helmet law. The rise in injuries is obvious from the main graph in the study. This blindness to negative side-effects of the helmet law is similar to another study affected by confirmation bias.

This study was funded by a government who, struggling to justify its counterproductive policy, is funding more “studies” to defend it. This trend was reported here.

This did not fool a UK reporter:

As the fallout from Australia’s failed bike sharing schemes continues, it seems we haven’t seen the last of government-funded research showing that helmet laws are great actually, thanks very much.
…
The authors, Olivier, Walter and Grzebieta, previously published a paper in 2011 claiming to “end the debate about the effectiveness of cycle helmet legislation”, but which was severely criticised by fellow boffins
…
the government of NSW has commissioned research which (surprise!) finds the effect of their helmet law is massive and sustained, ignoring the uncomfortable fact that helmet wearing rates have actually fallen back significantly without any accompanying jump in head injuries.
The authors fail to consider long-term trends in admission protocol when comparing arm:head injury admissions over two decades. They also include all types of minor flesh wounds, bruising etc. which you would certainly hope would be prevented by helmet use, rather than looking at a reduction of critical injury / death which is what public health policy should be worrying about, when the alternative is serious sedentary disease.
It’s generated some nice headlines and superficial reinforcement for the helmet law (which is probably what the government were really trying to commission), but this is far from the conclusive study that is being spun in the media.
Opposition to helmet legislation in Australia continues to grow and academics on the other side of the fence are unlikely to struggle to dismiss the conclusions of this paper.

For years it has been ingrained in to folk that go hill-walking that it
is *essential* to wear “stout footwear with proper ankle support”, with
the latter taken to mean a high lacing cuff and the phrase really
meaning big, stiff hiking boots.

In more recent times folk have started to realise that this is a lot of
tosh, and in fact the literature on foot injuries tells you
counter-intuitive things about how and when feet get injured (like more
often in shoes than barefoot). Such people have started taking to the
hills in sandals and trainers, realising that the human foot isn’t an
evolutionary misfire but is perfectly capable of looking after itself as
long as the user engages in the ancient Zen mind-trick known as “looking
where they’re going”.

But you tell this to the boot die-hards, and they look at the scuffs on
their dreadnoughts and say they prefer intact toes to bloody puddings on
the end of their feet, and how their boots have saved them from terrible
injury etc. etc.

I used to preach the gospel of Big Boots too, but entering a Mountain
Marathon had a curative effect. All these people doing this regularly,
faster and over rougher terrain than I usually do, and hardly a pair of
boots in sight, perhaps they know something I’ve not been accepting?
c.f. cycling trip in Amsterdam and helmets…

This analogy is from by Peter Clinch, from Dundee, Scotland.

I love this part:

the ancient Zen mind-trick known as “looking where they’re going”

This highlights the difference in philosophy between the two groups. One trusts the capabilities of the body, prefers less equipment, and takes responsibility for being cautious enough to avoid injuries. The other relies on technology to compensate for higher risk taking.

The belief in the “protection” provided by shoes is not much different from the belief in the “protection” provided by cycling helmets:

• Both appear to “protect”, even though they can result in increased injuries.
• Both seem so “obvious” than few people question them.
• Both are harmful in ways that are counter-intuitive.
• Both have their strong advocates who show an almost religious faith in them.
• Both tend to induce a false sense of safety, resulting in increasing risk taking and increased injuries.

In cycling, as the shoulders are much wider than the head, most falls do not result in the head touching the ground. Should it happen, the scalp makes the head slide, reducing friction and rotation. This reduces the risk of brain injury through rotational acceleration. However, with a helmet, the larger volume of the head makes it more likely for the head to hit the ground. If it does, the polystyrene helmet tends to stick to the road and generate high rotational acceleration, increasing the risk of serious brain injury. This is an odd form of “protection”.

It is strange how we can so easily be fooled into accepting “protective” equipment that is not necessary, and can even be harmful. After the helmet law was introduced in Australia, the risk of accidents doubled, while the risk of head injury increased. The commercial interests of helmet manufacturers have been a big influence in pushing for helmet legislation, funding favorable “studies” and inducing fear through scare-tactics advertising. It takes independent thinking to escape such insidious influence.

Next time somebody tries to sell you “safety” equipment, do not blindly accept it.
Ask whether the risks warrant additional equipment.
Consider whether the “safety” equipment could be doing more harm than good.

This site is interesting as it presents a broad range of common-sense arguments, taking the perspective of public health. This is broader than the narrow perspective that helmet zealots insists on, claiming that their exaggerated estimates of helmets effectiveness is all that matters, while ignoring the increase in accidents and injuries, and the decrease in public health from discouraging cycling.

Some New Zealand politicians have privately admitted that the helmet law is a failure, and that they wouldn’t mind if it fell quietly into oblivion.

This article highlights how the debate has reached the mainstream media in New Zealand, following research  published by Colin Clarke in the New Zealand Medical Journal in 2012.

It is an interesting approach to increase awareness of the harm done by the helmet law. The loss of health benefits from the reduction in cycling contributed to 53 premature deaths per year. This undermines the helmet believers classical emotional argument: “if it only saves one life”. Despite being unproven, it still fools people.

One cyclist association, the Cycling Advocates’ Network has denounced the helmet law as a failed experiment doing more harm than good, calling for an independent review.

The New Zealand government seems a little bit open minded. They are honest about the limited capabilities of “helmets”, but still don’t acknowledge the harm that the helmet law has done to cycling levels and cycling injuries.

Many comments below the article highlights that many people are aware of that the law has been counterproductive. Some comments suggest that the helmet law is not strictly enforced.

This research is also reported in this article, that mentions an earlier research done last year by the Transport and Health Study group, an independent British society of public health and transport practitioners and researchers.  It is called Health on the Move 2, a book aimed to be “a clear and comprehensive account of what would constitute a healthy transport system.”

This is not primarily about cycling. This group of researchers cannot be labeled “anti-helmet”, as some people like to denigrate those who dare to question their beliefs.

The section on cycling can be found here. It is a summary of the recent research on helmets and the helmet law. The report is written in a neutral tone, yet you can sense the frustration of the researchers here:

“The failure of mass helmet use to affect serious head injuries, be it in falls or collisions, has been ignored by the medical world, by civil servants, by the media, and by cyclists themselves. A collective willingness to believe appears to explain why the population-level studies are so little appreciated. …. 

The disconnect between received wisdom and the facts is stark.“

These are strong words for a group of researchers for whom cycling is not the core focus. It is no surprise to those who have been trying to get helmet zealots to pull their heads out of the sand. It can be frustrating to get people to admit that their cherished beliefs could be wrong, and that they made a mistake, especially when they have no incentive to do so.

It is positive to see such articles in the mainstream media. It shows that the media is starting to pay attention to what is really going on, rather than to pander to common prejudices. New Zealand may not be far from repealing this counterproductive law.

Contrary to popular belief, helmets main impact on safety has not been the protection they provide, but the increased in the risk of accident associated with them. Although helmets do protect, they have not protected enough to compensate for this increased risk of accident.

Although the motivation for wearing a bicycle helmet is to reduce the risk of death & serious brain injury, the net result of imposing a helmet law has been to increase the risk of death & serious injury.

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Two types of injuries

Broadly speaking, there are two types of injuries relevant to bicycle helmets:

1. Minor injuries like bruises and lacerations to the skull.
2. Severe injuries like brain injury, skull fractured, or neck injury that can lead to disability.

“Looking at evidence, it does not matter if people are wearing a helmet or not, any serious accident on a bike is likely to kill them,”

Wearing a helmet can induce cyclists to take more risks, sometimes with serious consequences:

“the increased use of bike helmets may have had an unintended consequence: riders may feel an inflated sense of security and take more risks. …

The helmet he was wearing did not protect his neck; he was paralyzed from the neck down. …

”It didn’t cross my mind that this could happen,” said Philip, now 17. ”I definitely felt safe. I wouldn’t do something like that without a helmet.” ”

While helmets can reduce minor head injuries, they can also increase the risk of neck injury.  Contrary to popular belief, helmets are not designed to protect against severe brain injury, and may aggravate it some circumstances.

Yet most  helmet studies fail to distinguish between minor and sever injuries.  Minor and severe head injuries are lumped together into a category called “head injuries”. The much larger number of minor injuries masks the trend in severe injuries. An apparent reduction in minor head injuries can mask an increase in severe injuries.

What does the data tell us?

Accident avoidance vs protection

Although helmets do protect, they have not protected enough to compensate for the rise in accidents.  The net safety effect of imposing helmet has been to increase the risk of  injuries, both head-injuries and non-head injuries, and both minor and serious injuries.

However, the sharp increase in the risk of accident is the most significant impact of helmets on safety. Why wear a “safety device” that increases the risk of accident while failing to protect sufficiently to compensate for this increased risk of accident?

There is an odd discrepancy between the motivation for wearing bicycle helmets (to reduce the risk of death & chronic disability), and the result of the helmet law, that has been to increase the risk of death & serious injury.

Did you believe the hype that “helmet save lives”, then started to take more risks when riding, until you had a crash?  Would you have had such a crash without the false sense of safety provided by your helmet?

Has the helmet law has been beneficial or harmful to you?

Share your story here.

Its origins are briefly described here.  In India, the government was concerned about the large number of venomous cobra snakes in the city.  It set a bounty for dead cobra snakes.  Some people responded by breeding cobra snakes as a way to earn income.  Once the government realised that, it cancelled the program.  Cobra breeders then set the worthless cobra free.  The wild cobras multiplied, making the problem worse than before.  The apparent “solution” had made the problem worse.

This effect has also been labelled the law of unintended consequences, described here.  One of its most common causes is the failure to take into account people’s reactions.  Some bureaucrats assume that people are like passive pieces on a chess board, that they can manipulate through legislation.  This ignores that people react to policies.  Many government policies are well meaning, but the way they are implemented lacks imagination and foresight.  People react in unanticipated ways that can make the policy perverse.

History is full of perverse government intervention.  The alcohol prohibition in the 1920′s in the US is one.  In the US, the “war on drugs” has the perverse result of having a record number of people in jail, yet drug use increased.  Perverse policies can go on for years before they are reversed.

In the case of the bicycle helmet law, the main reaction to the legislation has been to give up cycling.  An independent assessment estimates that cycling levels were 50% below previous trend by 1996.  This has the unintended consequence of loss of health benefits from regular exercise.  It also has another unintended consequences: according to the well understood “safety in numbers“ phenomenon, a 50% decrease in cycling results in a 51% increase in the risk of accidents.  This corresponds to the 50% increase in the risk of death & serious injury observed after the helmet law.

This reaction seems to have taken the bureaucrats by surprise.  That is odd, as there were warnings this would be the case.  In 1985, cycling declined sharply in schools that mandated bicycle helmets.  It seems that the core issue is not an inability to foresee the negative side-effects of a legislation.  It is more likely a dogmatic approach.  This is confirmed by the attitude of many bureaucrats who exaggerate the benefits of polystyrene-based helmets, while ignoring the decline in cycling and the increase in the risk of accidents.

Why the emergence of such a dogmatic approach?  It was the result of the way the law was introduced.  The Royal Australasian College of Surgeons lobbied for more than 10 years for a helmet law.  By then, they and the bureaucrats & academics they had influenced had built up a huge emotional stake in this policy.  Part of the lobbying involved sponsoring “studies” exaggerating the effectiveness of helmets while ignoring the increase in accidents.  This reinforced the belief that helmets can only improve safety, and were seen as the magic solution to cycling safety. The resulting group-think meant that the belief in helmets remained unchallenged, despite being groundless.  This obviously seemed a “good” policy, that did not require much due diligence.

By the time and evidence emerged that the helmet law had failed to reduce injuries, this emotionally committed group did what most people would have done in such circumstances: try to justify themselves.  If it meant commissioning “research” obfuscating the failure of the helmet law, so be it.

The damaging unintended consequences should have been enough to end this disastrous experiment.  However, bureaucrats and politicians who have managed to convinced most people that “helmet save lives” through misleading advertising have no incentive to admit they made a mistake.

Abstract

Cycling was rising strongly in Australia before the helmet law, by 10% per year.  This uptrend was replaced by a sharp decline of 30 to 40% after the helmet law. 

A government-funded study has misrepresented a bicycle rally passing through a counting site as a revival in cycling numbers, obfuscating the decline in cycling after the helmet law.

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Bicycle travel in Australia was increasing by 10% a year from 1986 to 1989, before the introduction of the helmet law. This uptrend was replaced by a sharp drop after the helmet law, showing a decline of 30 to 40% according to several independent surveys. An independent assessment estimates that cycling levels were 50% below previous trend by 1996.

The police harassing cyclists not only deters those cyclists, but also many others who do not want to risk harassment. Those who have given up cycling because of this are not easy to see. The thousands of cyclists fined every year for riding without a helmet are only the tip of the iceberg.

The Monash University Accident Research Centre (MUARC) has published many studies defending government policy, funded by the Victorian government. In the early 1990’s, MUARC conducted several studies, like this one, claiming that the helmet law had reduced head injuries. They ignored that when the lower number of cyclists, and safety benefits from pedestrians at the same time period, are taken into account, the risk of head injuries for cyclists actually increased. It is odd that such a fundamental mistake as failing to adjust for the number of cyclists favors the legislation while the government funds the “research”.

MUARC also conducted this study that appears to indicate that adult cycling recovered two years after the helmet law in Melbourne. With government funded studies, the full study must be read carefully to figure out what is really going on.

According to the same study, child cycling did not recover.

The helmet law resulted in a sharp drop child cycling.

 Why would adult cycling recover but not child cycling?

A bicycle rally passed through one of the survey counting site in 1992, but not in 1991. At that site, there were 72 cyclists counted in 1991, and 451 cyclists in 1992, more than 6 times more. That is 30% of all cyclists counted on 1 out of 105 counting sites. Excluding that site, there were 27% fewer cyclists in 1992 than in 1990, similar to 1991, like what was observed for child cyclists.

The whole point about those comparisons is to keep everything else the same – same sites, same observation periods, same time of year, so that you are measuring the effect of the intervention, not random noise. The study authors knew about the bicycle rally passing through one of their counting site in 1992, but not in 1991. Yet they included it in the study, claiming that:

“Another explanation for some of the increase in bicyclist numbers in 1992 is related to the fact that there appears to have been a bicycle rally passing through one of the sites …
From a statistical point of view, however, an occurrence such as this is a true observation, well within the bounds of “normal” behaviour for that time period, and cannot be excluded from the analysis”

A bicycle rally passed though one of the counting sites in 1992, but not in 1991. This inflated the 1992 count, distorting the results. Despite being aware of that, the study authors chose to include the distorted site in the study. This gives the misleading impression that adult cycling recovered within two years.

The 1992 overall adult cycling count was similar to 1991. One site where a bicycle rally passed through in 1992 but not in 1991 showed a 626% increase. How can it sincerely be argued that this site is within “normal behavior”? It clearly distorts the results. Yet the authors chose to include it, and thus to publish a misleading result misrepresenting a bicycle rally passing through a counting site as a revival in cycling numbers. Such unethical behavior is not unusual among government funded “studies” defending government policy.

Despite being exposed as misleading, this “study” is still used to claim that cycling recovered within two years. Some go even further. A recent “study” commissioned by the Queensland government claims that

 ”In Melbourne adult cyclist numbers doubled after the helmet legislation was introduced”.

, quoting the deceptive study mentioned above. How they arrived at this conclusion is a mystery. This seems like lies building upon lies, in a creepy fashion.

However it may be not be the study authors to blame. This “study” was edited several times by bureaucrats from the Queensland department of transport, in favor of the legislation. This leaves a dreadful feeling of living in an Orwellian world, where bureaucrats try to rewrite history that is convenient to them, obfuscating any trace of their past mistakes.