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  • Meanwhile, the bureaucrats commission another “study”

    Abstract The failure of the bike share scheme in Brisbane led to calls to exempt it from the helmet law. The government response was to commission a study to defend its controversial  legislation. Bureaucrats even edited the “study” in favor of the legislation. Such “research” should not be misrepresented as science. blank A strange “study” The…

  • Official misrepresentation of Australia’s bicycle helmet law

    Abstract The helmet law has failed to achieve its stated goal of reducing the cost of cycling injuries. Several government agencies have obfuscated this disappointing result through misrepresentation. The information below is an extract from CRAG submission to the Prime Minister in 2009. Following this submission, the federal government abandoned its policy of supporting compulsory bicycle helmets. blank Federal…

  • The myth that cycling is dangerous

    You’ve heard it again and again: “Cycling is dangerous” When we keep hearing the same statement again and again, we end up believing it. This is a well-known manipulation technique, mentioned by Daniel Kanheman in his acclaimed book “Thinking fast and slow“: “A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because…

  • The art of politics, and its unintended consequences

    Economic vs political decision making For those frustrated after dealing with uncompromising bureaucrats and politicians who refuse to acknowledge the damage they have caused, the field of economics can explain how such disasters can happen, and the built-in incentives that prevent corrective action. There is a strange discrepancy between economic and political decision making, that…

  • A funny parody of a fearmongering helmet ad

    Listen to this. Contrast it to the original ad. A bicycle activist has created an amusing parody of a fearmongering ad commissioned by a government agency to promote bicycle helmets. The ad makes this extraordinary claim: “Don’t think that little ride to the shops warrants wearing [a helmet]? Well I’ve got news for you. Even on a short ride…

  • Federal government abandons compulsory helmets policy

    The Federal Government instigated in 1989 the nationwide policy of compulsion to wear a helmet, by offering ‘black spot’ funding for roads to the states and territories. All complied by 1992. In 2009, CRAG made a comprehensive submission to the Prime Minister calling for the Government’s policy on helmets to be based on sound evidence of…

  • Political parties supporting cycling

    In Australia, the Liberal Democratic Party supports cycling through its policy opposing victimless “crimes”. It states about the bicycle helmet law: Mandatory bicycle helmets – not only are such laws offensive to liberty, but they do not achieve their aim. You may not be able to vote for the Liberal Democratic Party for the parliament (local Member of Parliament),…

  • US government drops claim that helmets reduce 85% of head injuries

    The US government has dropped its claim that bicycle helmets reduce 85% of head injuries. The claim came from “research” conducted by helmet advocates in 1989. Many researchers have tried to replicate its results, but have been unable to do so. Amid severe criticism, the authors had to re-work their data, and arrived at a lower effectiveness rate. This…

  • Canada: helmet laws have made little difference to head injuries

    A recent Canadian study found that bicycle helmet laws had little effect on head injuries. The study analysed 14 years of data, comparing provinces with and without helmet laws. Unlike other studies in this field, it attempts to remove the effect of confounding factors by controlling for background trends and modelling head injuries as a proportion of…

  • History of helmet law in the US

    Opinion Here are the reflections and impressions of a US resident who has observed the emergence of bicycle helmets in the United States over the last 40 years. While many of these observations cannot be confirmed without dedicated investigative journalism, they are informed by decades of attention to news articles, bicycling publications, bike organization policies,…