BobtheBuilder wrote:Not having read the previous 388 pages, I may be repeating an earlier point ...
If MHL laws were rational and evidence-based, surely helmets would be mandatory for the driver and all passengers in all motor vehicles, where head injuries are so much more prevalent.
I'd love to see the uproar that would cause!
I'm lucky enough to live in a small town where the police don't care about helmets, so I only wear them on the rare occasion when I'm in the uncivilised southeastern states or actually riding fast and dangerous (also rare!).
If you want to have a bit of a read, I came across some old Hansard transcripts, which CRAG had scanned, as records that old have not yet been made electronically. It covers some of the debate on the MHL Introduction in the ACT
https://crag.asn.au/compulsory-helmets- ... -assembly/
It's an interesting read, because during the debate all the same issues about why cyclists have been singles out were raised, and despite all this, it still went through.
Here's a "snippet"
MR MOORE (8.46): I guess the irony that I find in opposing this legislation is that I am probably one of the very few people in this Legislative Assembly who ride a bicycle and wear a bicycle helmet. It would be of interest to me to know just how many other people own helmets and ride their bicycles. It is one of those curiosities, I guess.
It seems to me that in making this decision it is very easy to say that there is a simple black-and-white argument as to whether one should be free to wear a helmet, or whether we should compel because of the measure of damage done in our society. It seems to me that we draw our conclusions, and we make our decisions, after weighing up the cost and the benefit. By and large, having weighed up that cost and benefit, a quite large number of members of the Assembly have come down on the side that the benefit outweighs the cost. That is really what we are talking about this evening.
I do not believe that that is the case here and it concerns me in terms of the precedent that is set. Ms Szuty raised the issue of the possibility of having helmets for people who are wearing rollerblades or who are riding skateboards. I imagine that, if we were to look at the statistics per mile or kilometre travelled on those types of vehicles, we would find a quite significantly higher percentage using bicycle helmets. No doubt in this chamber some time in the next decade we will see legislation that will provide for the protection of rollerbladers, and the users of whatever new invention comes, saying that they should wear helmets. Another interesting point that was raised by someone else is the possibility, if one looks at the statistics, that we should be insisting on helmets for passengers in vehicles, and that is the next logical conclusion.
In looking at these matters, we weigh up the cost and the benefit and make our decision accordingly. Somewhere along the line we are going to have to draw the conclusion that it is no longer our responsibility to interfere with those rights and freedoms of other people and that we should allow education to fulfil the role. That is the point made by Mr Stevenson.
If we were really serious about using the statistics to determine whether people should or should not be wearing helmets, there are some interesting statistics that many of you would have received. I do not know how many of you would have studied them. They were provided to all of us by the Cyclists Rights Action Group. These statistics on fatal crash types come from the Federal Office of Road Safety and are for 1988. These statistics do not tend to vary that much from year to year. This body looked at road user fatality groups. Fatalities of cyclists, thanks to head injuries, accounted for 80 percent of the fatalities. For pedestrians it was 78 per cent, and the statistics go on similarly. So, one could easily make an argument to say that we should be ensuring that pedestrians wear helmets. The arguments that we have heard put initially by the Government in introducing the Bill, and then from others who are supporting the Bill, could be applied quite easily to pedestrians.
Once we have pedestrians wearing helmets, I think we could look at what happens in the home with young children and try to ascertain how many head injuries occur at home. Then we could consider whether or not we should ensure that babies that are being carried around by their parents have helmets on because, after all, occasionally their heads are bumped and so forth. The point I am making, and it becomes clearest of all when you look at vehicle occupants, is that an argument is very easily made for ensuring that helmets are worn under those circumstances. I think there are very good arguments for wearing helmets in motor vehicles. It may well be that shortly we will see people doing that. If we think back a matter of 10 years, it was very rare to see a cyclist wearing a helmet, although, going back quite some years ago to when I was a child, I remember that there were people who wore leather helmets.
The real question is: Where are we going to draw the line? In the chamber this evening, in the final run and obviously after considerable consideration the Liberals have come down on the side of saying that they will support this legislation and there is no doubt that the attempt by the Federal Government to bribe members of this Assembly with the black spot funding has been taken on. That in itself presents a quite significant style of precedent. The Federal Government will give us money if we are very good and do what they think is a good idea. I think that also needs to be questioned.
For myself, I have come down on the other side and would argue that there are some real costs in terms of cycle riding. One of the costs, of course, is the finding that where bicycle helmet legislation has been introduced there has been a reduction in the usage of bicycles. When you are looking at the overall health of the population, you cannot help but ask what that is going to cost us in terms of fitness and what it is going to cost the community in terms of extra hospitalisation and so forth.
It is too early to determine whether or not that result of the introduction of such legislation will diminish as time goes on. I quite accept that that is often the case; that as a reaction to a particular piece of legislation there is a drop-off, for example in this case, in the use of bicycles, but that use will in turn grow. That is a concern, and it is a concern particularly when there is such an emphasis, from an environmental perspective, on trying to get people to use alternative means of transport, cycling being one.
Another factor in this is people’s vanity. There is certainly the argument that people will not now ride bicycles simply because they do not like the way it makes their hair go sweaty, turn into rat tails, turn fizzy, or whatever. I am very fortunate in that, with a bit of barbed wire on my head that counts for hair, it does not really matter very much. We put a helmet on and off and it makes no difference. We do not get too concerned about what our hair is like at any given time.
I think the point is best put in terms of the costs and the benefits. As far as I am concerned in this case, the benefits, while they are clear, can be attained through education, and the costs are simply too great. Therefore, I oppose the legislation. I would like to make a final point about something that has been raised by both the Liberals and Ms Szuty. Attempting to sneak an increase in the overall fine level into this Bill was inappropriate. I spoke to Mr Connolly about this after the Bill was introduced and his reaction at the time was something along these lines: “Well, we get inflation, and obviously there has to be an increase”. But 500 per cent since 1984 is hardly in line with the CPI, even under a Labor government.
You may have noticed some comments about "protecting babies from bumps to the head around the house", and you might have laughed "how absurd", but in fact, there is a helmet available for that too:
http://www.thudguard.com.au/