An interesting talk by the author of a book called Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us).
A few of the things I found really interesting.
3:00 Signs put up encouraging people to merge early on the road due to road works create more congestion, driver frustration and safety issues than if everyone merged at the point of the restriction.
10:00 Being in a car changes who we are as we don’t have the same social intereactions.
11:00 Drivers change their behaviour around cyclists depending on who they are and what they are wearing.
15:00 People drive worse closer to home where they are most familiar with the envrionment
19:00 People have trouble judging how fast they are going after leaving a higher speed environment (like a motorway)
20:00 Small changes in the number of vehicles can have huge impacts on congestion.
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I’ve got 13 minutes through, so just a few observations; he was actually comparing early merging to controlled zippering – humans are bad at judging speed and distance, so controlled environments are better. On that note, it surprises me that more isn’t done to limit speeds to encourage throughput on motorways.
Only anecdotal evidence but I really agree with his point at 11:00 on cyclists.
I never wear a helmet (dont tell the Police) and I never wear lycra or luminous vests. I do however always have bright flshing lights on my bike in poor visual conditions (not necessarily just at night). I always bike in cargo shorts and a t-shirt and usually a windbreaker with waterproof trousers if it is raining. So I basically wear the same clothes I would when walking around the city. I also ride an electric bike which is more of a sit up style.
I find motorists 99% courteous and aware of me and I never have any aggressive episodes from motorists or feel threatened. This is to my own surprise and I am still waiting for it. I cycle on Lake Road every second day.
I am often told stories by lycra cyclists of the aggression they deal with and I am sure this is because all the gear they wear dehumanises them to motorists. They are seen as competing with road space and to be part of this objectionable group of aggressive road users. Their bikes are also usually very expensive and so they are seen as rich boys toys.
In contrast, I think I am seen as a bumbling “wheeled pedestrian” who is just trying to get from A to B. So being aggressive to me (in the absence of me doing something overtly dangerous or illegal) would just be bullying. This is just one of the many, many reasons I dont believe cycle helmets are creating a safer environment for cyclists. Maybe that is why there are only two countries in the world (NZ/Australia) that have adopted them as a blanket requirement for adults, despite many countries considering such a law (Ireland, Spain) and some downgrading their existing law (Israel).
I don’t know. I don’t really seem to get any less trouble in jeans and a tshirt than I do in my lycra. My worst experience (yesterday) was in jeans and a tshirt, even if I was on the drop bars doing 45 when it happened,
Really? I dunno. Maybe I am just lucky.
How aggressive was the incident?
Genuine fear for my life.
Woman came up behind me in narrow lanes, I was doing 40+ the whole time on a steep hill with parked cars on both sides and oncoming traffic, she was hard on the horn and within a few metres of the back of me. Brake checked me down to about 10kmh when I caught back up at the lights too.
Hey, if you had had a video to film it…. then police would’nt even have given her a call, let alone a prosecution for that behaviour.
On the other hand, if she had killed you, she might have had to go to court before being being acquitted of killing you.
Sorry, but really pissed off about our police/courts in this matter.
Agreed, sent a complaint to the police but not expecting anything. It is disgusting what we let drivers get away with, from cyclist/pedestrian intimidation to drunk driving, to speeding, to indicating. we need to learn that driving is a privilege not a right.
Report it on https://forms.police.govt.nz/forms/online-community-roadwatch-report/9
^Did it last night, thanks for the advice though.
Driving is not a privilege it is a right once you pass your licence. That does not mean you have the right to disobey the law or pick and chose which laws you obey and which ones you don’t. The same applies to cyclists who should also be licensed. We’re you speeding when you were doing 40+ in a built up area Sailor Boy? Goosoid is certainly breaking the law when he rides without a lid and selfishly has no regard to the burden he would be on the tax payer if he falls off and has to be institutionalised due to brain damage.
You’re suggesting licencing my 6 year old? Get a grip.
“when he rides without a lid and selfishly has no regard to the burden he would be on the tax payer if he falls off and has to be institutionalised due to brain damage.” The same can be said of any pedestrian, rugby player, and DIY’er on a ladder – maybe we should have a helmet law for all of these selfish people too? And let’s just conveniently forget about drivers putting others in danger by flouting the rules – because hey, that surely can’t be selfish.
The same can’t be said for those things because they have totally different injury rates and epidemiology. The theoretical feasibly of a certain type of injury isn’t the same as it being likely, or it happening relatively often. The pedestrian head injury rate is extremely small compared to cycling, although you to have a point with league. The various forms of contact football have some pretty appalling injury rates, with no help from the cultural disdain for safety from the “harden up you poofter” types. DIY is an issue, albeit a small one, and typically for spinal and large bone fractures where helmets wouldn’t help.You’ll note that ACC spends quite a lot on campaigns to try and reduce that level of injury.
There are also different injury rates between the different types of cycling as well. I wouldn’t even put my MTB on the rack without getting my helmet but when riding around local streets I would feel pretty confident (even with NZ’s lack of cycle awareness) in not having an accident. If I were to venture into the CBD I’d be a bit more circumspect and wear a helmet. At the end of the day I do wear a helmet because I’m not giving any more tax to the govt to waste than I have to. That is my sole reason for donning a helmet to go to the shops. It has almost to do with safety.
Secondly, how many children and adults do you see riding on the road, to and from school every day? (Not many, if any – uh huh). So essentially all these people a breaking the law. What exacerbates this issue is that if one of these cyclists has a crash with a car while doing this, they are automatically at fault (riding illegally). Anyone see a problem with this picture? AT are spending considerable amounts of money on the ‘Travelwise’ program that tries to get more kids walking and cycling to school (including cycle training) but have done virtually nothing to give them ‘subjectively safe’ routes to school so the kids use the footpath which right away means they are breaking the law.
Also, and I say this as a person who works as a Health and Safety contractor, an issue I see is the by simply telling people to wear helmets, no matter what the occasion, we are removing the risk analysis decision making process from their train of thought. This is especially so of children who are being taught that as long as they wear a helmet on a bike they’ll be ok. This may affect their decision making process on all safety issues into the future. I’m already seeing this on a regular basis in the industry I work in.
And yes, the ACC payments for rugby injuries is astounding. Also, given the level of concussions being sustained these days, why is there no national push for headgear to be worn at all levels of rugby union and league? There is also no legal requirement to wear a helmet while horse riding. I’m not arguing there should be as practical people take practical steps depending on the occasion.
Fair enough about it not being an equal comparison, but reducing the level of cyclists’ head injuries, and thereby the tax burden, isn’t going to be solved by mandatory helmets when at the root of the cause is a lack of cycling culture, awareness, and infrastructure. All of which the helmet law doesn’t address – arguably, it exacerbates the problems.
Orange, reducing the severity of cyclist head injuries most certainly is reduced by high rates of helmet usage, and our helmet laws do create a very high level of compliance (although not perfect to be sure). It doesn’t solve the problem, but it does reduce (but not eliminate yes) the amount of people who end up brain damaged and/or require a lot of medical care and rehabilitation.
No helmets don’t change the cycling culture, awareness and infrastructure, but they do protect the brains of cyclists who have to ride under a situation where we are lacking those three things. Fix up the culture, awareness and infrastructure then we can see if we still need the helmet laws.
Bryce, I agree that headgear with rugby should be investigated and you are right about horseriding, it has a horrifically high head injury rate. I would agree that helmets should be compulsory when horseriding too, although there is a a practical enforcement issue in policing paddocks and countryside that we don’t have with policing roads.
I don’t agree wearing a helmet reduces the risk awareness or decision making of a cyclist. Do children or adults really think they’ll be fine in a crash with a helmet on? Surely people realise that they are still going to get messed up with a helmet on. It’s kinda like saying people don’t really worry about car crashes anymore since everyone has been indoctrinated to wear a seatbelt since childhood. People realise that a seatbelt could save their life and prevent worse injuries, but I’m sure everyone realises it won’t stop them getting hurt and potentially killed in a crash.
I don’t think that actually increasing the risk of severe permanent injury is the best method to get people to think safer. If that were the case, we should remove all the seatbelts, airbags and other safety elements from cars so that drivers don’t get lulled into the false idea that they are safe in their cars and have altered decision making processes, right?
I’m fine with people, especially children, breaking the law to ride on the footpath. Yes they are technically at fault but at least under our system they receive healthcare, rehabilitation and compensation just the same. I do it myself where I think it is the safer place to ride, although I usually slow to about walking pace where there are pedestrians around, and give way to pedestrians.
Victoria has a law that lets certain people ride on the footpath, mostly children and people supervising children. Could look at that one here.
I’m just saying, anecdotally of course, that people become less aware of what they are doing as we increase the passive and active safety systems. The best thing we could do to reduce the road toll is to drop the speed limit to 80 km/h on all non-physically divided roads today. Also, every car imported in NZ (I don’t care if it’s new or 2nd hand – exceptions are historic) should have ESP as standard fitment.
If I have some time (not right now), I might start to research injuries and how they relate to different classes of bike riders in NZ society. I would be interested to see where the actual risk lays. Re the footpaths, I have NZTA stats that show how many people have been killed to injured (seriously / minor) while riding on footpaths in NZ in the past 5 years. I can tell you that no one has been killed while doing so and the rate of serious injury, especially in Auckland where a great number of people ride on footpaths, is very low.
If putting myself in the same category as 99% of the cyclists in the world makes me selfish then so be it. There are more cyclists in the Netherlands than in the entire Anglophone world and maybe 1% of Dutch cyclists wear helmets.
They are a waste of time from a safety point of view in any serious crash and lower the numbers of cyclists thereby making cycling more dangerous. The best protection for cyclists is to be part of a group of cyclists. That is why the Israelis ditched the law in urban areas for adults and why Ireland and Spain declined to put a law in place.
Nick R – I know you have a strong contrary view and studies to back it up but I can cite you study for study on the efficacy of cycle helmets – pretty tedious for everyone else. You would have to explain why only NZ and Australia have these blanket nationwide laws for adults. Surely if they are so effective they would have been adopted everywhere, just like safety belts were in cars worldwide.
Licernsing and registration are so ridiculous you make yourself look very foolish by suggesting it. You also show that you are really anti-cycling despite what you may say.
Goosoid, the answer to that might be that New Zealand and Australia are the only places that have both government funded social healthcare and a strong government involvement in population health, and a transport policies/infrastructure that are extremely anti-cycling. Across a lot of Europe they have an environment that is much more conducive to safe cycling, so cycling injury isn’t the same potential burden on population health. In other first world countries such as the US, there is a much reduced role for government intervention in personal safety. The government doesn’t pay for it, individual just go off and sue between themselves or battle with their insurance.
I’m not arguing that helmet laws are always ideal for all countries in all situations, just that they are a good idea for New Zealand under out situation. What works in the Netherlands or Israel doesn’t necessarily work here, either on a practical or legal level. If we have the level of cycle infrastructure the Dutch have, if we had their driving culture, if we had their low urban vehicle speeds, their ‘driver is at fault unless proven otherwise’ approach to crashes that puts the motorist on the constant defensive, then I doubt we would need our helmet laws either.
I hope that comment about licensing and registration wasn’t directed at me, I’ve never advocated such a thing.
No, the comment on licensing and registration were not aimed at you Nick. I realise you are not anti-cycling, just pro helmets.
I dont think that argument is a very good one. Many European countries have cycling environments just as bad if not worse and government funded social healthcare – France and Italy for example both have terrible cycling infrastructure. All of Eastern Europe other than Hungary is terrible for cyclinga nd all have government funded systems. In fact other than the Netherlands, Scandinvia and some parts of Germany, the picture for utility cycling (as opposed to sport cycling) in Europe is pretty bleak.
Canada also has a very good social health system and, other than Montreal and maybe at a stretch Vancouver, not a very nice cycling environment (though I have read reports by people from Portland and Seattle for example that the general environment in Vancouver is not as good as in their cities). Certainly the cycling rates in those countries are no better than NZ or Australia. BC does have a helmet law, Montreal doesnt and has a very high cycling rate, the best in North America.
Israel is not a particulraly good cycle country either. The issue was that the law was seen as holding cycling back and especially threatening their new bike share scheme. So it was curtailed to only outside urban areas and for children. I would certianly support that change here.
Our situation in NZ is not unique by any stretch of the imagination. It is just that some very misguided people who regard cycling as a very dangerous activity agitated to have them brought in. They were wrong and continue to be wrong.
Helmet debate is totally settled for me as I ride a motorbike as my primary transport choice, with cycling, driving and PT being options for some trips.
I have a set of very good fullface motorcycle helmets and there seems to be no debate that this is good practise. Ever since I tipped off a 50cc scooter as a stupid teenager while wearing an open face helmet, shorts and tee-shirt, (leaving some permanent scars), I aways ride my motorbike wearing full set of gear.
Odd thing is that when riding my pushbike, I typically hit speeds faster than I could achieve on the old 50cc scooter. I have a smartphone app that uses GPS to show maximum speeds well over 70kmh (Silverdale hill). Yet on the pushbike, I am wearing Lycra, light fabric gloves and a relatively weak polystyrene helmet.
Basically, I can’t imagine riding any bike without a helmet. I also can’t imagine requiring a 50cc scooter rider to wear a helmet by law but not a road cyclist capable of reaching similar speeds and riding in the same traffic conditions.
I don’t expect my bicycle helmet will make any crashes less painful or save me in the case of car vs bike, but if it reduces brian damage from any impact – and the evidence is good for this, then not only will I always wear a helmet but strongly recommend others do so. Oh and wish that the trend for scooter riders (including those on 150cc Italian machines) to wear styley open face helmets would go away; helmets are not a fashion item and full face helmets are better/safer.
But what about people not in that situation? People who never go above 30?
“Goosoid is certainly breaking the law when he rides without a lid and selfishly has no regard to the burden he would be on the tax payer if he falls off and has to be institutionalised due to brain damage.” – Yes I guess. Just like I had no regard when I played rugby, surfed, did Army training, Jiu Jitsu, tramped in the mountains, did white water rafting and countless other “dangerous” things I have done in my life.
But statistically by far the most dangerous thing I have done in my life is drive a car. And that is encouraged in NZ to a degree that is frightening despite its danger to me and other people.
Actually statistically speaking the rugby would be the most dangerous thing you’ve done in your life (if you count by injury rate), or the white water rafting (if you count by death rate). Not to discount the relative danger of driving though, nor the fact it is encouraged very much in this country despite the risks.
Really? Per capita more people die white water rafting than driving? I would never have expected that. More dangerous than military training?
Rugby – yeah for any injury sure. But I guess I dont think a torn hamstring really counts. I am thinking of serious injuries.
I think with white water rafting Nick was talking about per hour spent.
No not per capita, but as a function of exposure. Like for every hour you spend white water rafting you’d be something like 10.000 times more likely to die than for every hour you spend driving.
Talking in per capita terms is useful for population health burden (i.e. the scale of the problem for the country), but if you are talking about your personal risk doing activities you have to do the rate by exposure time.
Driving isn’t especially dangerous in terms of exposure, but the fact that people tend to do so much of it week in week out greatly increases the chance of injury or death, and makes it a huge burden on the country. So it’s not quite true to say that driving is dangerous, more like driving a couple hours a day every day is dangerous. White water rafting on the other hand is only done for short periods infrequently. Even a real enthusiast would only average a few hours a month I the water I guess. The number of people who drown rafting each year is pretty small, but as a function of the man-hours spent rafting it is very high.
Likewise per capita with millitary training. For a start very few of the general population do military training, so the per capita rate will be very low across the country. If you take a sub population of military recruits, then the injury rate per capita would be higher. If you go to the exposure level of injuries per thousand hours of training you’ll probably find it is quite high, but still nowhere near whitewater rafting and I would say not even the same as rugby.
A good example is base jumping. Because so few people do the sport it is ‘very safe’ in per-capita terms. Deaths from base jumping are very infrequent, relatively speaking, because doing it is very infrequent. But that changes if you start doing it yourself. In exposure terms the death rate is approximately one death per 2,000 jumps, which means you would expect one death for every hundred hours or so you spend actually jumping. In other words an incredibly risky thing to do with your time.
Injury and death statistics are quite complex and people tend to use them very poorly.
Now I like cycling myself and I think we need more of it, and we need to make it more accessible and safer. But I don’t agree it is a particularly safe activity, and I don’t think we should gloss over the fact that there is a very real risk of injury while you do it. I think as a people we are fairly comfortable with the fact that driving, rugby and other physical pursuits are relatively dangerous and that various precautions and safety measures need to be undertaken. Same goes for cycling in my opinion.
Thanks for that explanation, interesting stuff. I guess as I probably only drive about 1 hour a week, I should feel pretty safe!
I disagree with you on the safety of cycling. I am asumming that you are refrring to cycling in NZ and other poor cycling nations, as of course cycling in the Netherlands or Scandinavia is very safe.
I agree on the way you have calculated risk on a time basis and I agree that is much fairer. However, on that basis, cycling is much safer than driving. I am basing that on the analysis in these articles (just a small sample):
http://www.ohiobike.org/misc/CyclingIsSafeTLK.pdf
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/papers/c2014.pdf
What do you think? I just fundamentally disagree that cycling is dangerous, I think we have just been convinced that it is and helmets are one way that has been achieved.
Do you cycle or do you regard it as too dangerous? I know you are not anti-cycling but that is different from actually doing it.
Yes I am referring to cycling in New Zeland and Australia, that’s the only countries I have much experience with.
I do cycle myself, I consider it dangerous, but not too dangerous if you take the right precautions. Personally I wear a helmet, treat motorists like they don’t know I exist, and I avoid certain roads, etc. The same with driving and various other activities I do. Saying something is dangerous isn’t the same as saying it is too dangerous to contemplate every doing. Maybe people use that term differently, by dangerous I mean something that has a real and appreciable risk of injury that requires attention to mitigate. To me describing something as ‘safe’ is saying that the risk of injury is so small that there is no realistic need for any particular precaution.
There are several issues with that sort of research, to the point where I find it hard to make a call on those terms:
-The denominator data is almost always very poor, i.e. how often and for how long people ride is never measured systematically as a whole, and is always a broad estimate based usually on surveys where you ask a small sample things like “how often did you cycle last month”. Same with walking levels, rugby etc. We only have a few things where we do have good measures of base exposure levels, driving is one of them because odometer readings are collected for every vehicle in country, and it’s pretty easy to turn that into person-hours or person-km. Working is another, we know almost to the minute how much time employees spend at work.
-The numerator data is usually collected well (i.e. good records of emergency department presentations and hospital admissions), although there is never any good measure of severity. In our system in Victoria for example a knock to the head that leaves you with a slight headache counts as one head injury. Cracking your skull open, requiring brain surgery and losing your ability to walk or speak permanently also counts as one head injury. Statistically those things are usually recorded as the same, and you have to get to the level of death before you get a distinct datum.
-The fatality measure. Dying is actually pretty hard and doesn’t happen that frequently, it is the severe injuries that are arguably the bigger issue. If you measure and report the death rate you are excluding everything except the most horrifically extreme cases. Consider the death rate with skiing, basically non existent in New Zealand? Then consider the injury rate with skiing, dozens per day at the height of the season.
So many studies do things like look at the injuries with helmets and without, then claim that there injury rate is exactly the same. Often it is, because any time you crash a bike you’ll probably have some injury. Same as when you crash a car you’ll have some injury whether your seatbelt is on or not. What they infrequently do is look at the specifics of the injury (in the ED for a skinned elbow, or in the ED with a major concussion), and they almost never consider the severity of the injury (a head injury that requires observation for a mild concussion, or a head injury that leaves you in a coma for two weeks).
The Ohio paper you have cited is guilty of this issue, lumping all presentations to emergency departments as the same. Who knows what the severity of those were, or what they were for. It latter talks about brain injuries, again with no measure of what sort of brain injury it was, or the outcomes for the recipients. It also uses ‘participants’ as the denominator, who knows where that came from. Probably some survey that asks a question like “have you cycled in the last year” to a sample then scaled that up according to the national population.
The Wardlaw paper looks like it measures cyclist and pedestrian deaths as a result of traffic incident (i.e. hit by a car/truck and died on a public road), and uses traffic survey measures of cycling and walking exposure. That’s a pretty small subset for the dependent variable, and arguably a poor choice of independent variable as a traffic survey measure of who is walking/riding down the main road is probably far off actual walking and cycling levels.
Another regular thing from the anti-helmet lobby is included there too, a comparison of an estimate of health benefits and life-hours that come from cycling, compared to life-hours lost to death and/or disability. This approach is perhaps fine at a population level, but it is actually meaningless at an individual level. The simple fact is if you have a disability/death from cycling you can no longer do it and you lose the life hours. But perhaps more importantly, there is nothing about wearing a helmet that reduces the health benefits or life-hours gained by doing exercise on a bike. Helmets and cycling are not mutually exclusive, nor are the health benefits and disbenefits an either or option. Put another way, we can have more people cycling and benefiting from cycling while still protecting them from grievous head injuries.
Now I must admit that I also had a lack of good exposure data in my work, but we did have excellent injury data. What I do know that at an overall level, cycling was the most injurious physical activity/sport we measured in the state of Victoria. It also had an over representation of serious injury alternative to the rest (i.e. higher than average), as measured by the number of days the person was hospitalised for (not perfect, but it does extract out the quick patch up and overnight observation cases from the real serious ones).
My educated opinion was that cycling just didn’t get the hours across the wider population to offset the very high figures on severe injury. If we were talking about something that most people do for several hours a week fine, but we are talking about something that most people never do.
Nick, did you have access to data on what kind of cycling the injured person was doing? Training on a sports bike, mtb’ing, cruising on a sit up, cycle courier, just fell off vs hit by car?
Nick R – you are obviously educated on that topic and your heart is in the right place. We cpould trade studies ad nauseum.
I juts believe you are wrong and the vast majority of countries seem to back up my position. As well as Spain and Ireland, N Ireland and Scotland recently considered such a law and decided the negatives outweighed the positives.
I am not opposed to cycle helmets per se, I just dont think adults should be forced to wear them.
Goose, yes we could battle this out till the end of time, I’ll just wrap up with my general position if that’s ok, :
1) I think cycling is dangerous, to some extent anyway, it involves appreciable risks and requires precautions (like many other activities that we find acceptable).
2) Helmets have a demonstrably significant protective effect against severe head trauma (don’t think anyone denies that).
3) I don’t think wearing a helmet is much of an imposition, no more than wearing a seatbelt is. If you can manage to get a bike, leave it locked up etc, you can use a helmet at the same time.
4) I believe laws requiring people to wear helmets are pragmatic. Many people aren’t and won’t be informed of the risks and issues of not wearing one, so leaving that to personal choice isn’t a good idea because most people won’t be making a properly informed choice. This is particularly important where people don’t have the corresponding choice of healthcare, rehabilitation etc. We all pay for it as a society even if the individual makes poor choices. Part of our social healthcare system is that you lose a lot of freedom to injury yourself at will.
5) Just because other countries don’t have our laws doesn’t mean they aren’t appropriate for us and our conditions. We have plenty of laws that seem strange or constraining to others for good reason (and some bad ones too, to be fair).
6) There is an element of Pascals Wager here. I think the requirement to wear a helmet is pretty benign, but the potential consequences of not wearing one are anything but, so it makes some sense to require them even if there is the possibility they are not effective. Parallel to this is the fact I don’t believe the idea that removing cycle helmet laws will lead to an increase in cycling (and an increase in the corresponding health benefits to offset increased injury rates) and some claim. As I’ve said I think helmets are a minor imposition and way way down the list of reasons why most people don’t cycle in New Zealand. If you change number seven on the list without doing anything for numbers one through six then you won’t see any different (well you will, you’ll see more severe head trauma from much the same number of cyclists). This is the same view I have on free public transport: the cost of a PT ticket is far down the list of things that stop most people using PT. Make it free without addressing service quality, frequency, span of service, coverage etc first and you’ll achieve very little, but impose very large costs on the state. As I’ve said before I think we should fix up all the other problems first then see if we still need compulsory helmets.
Bryce, we had limited data on the kind of cycling. There was a clear distinction between a cycling incident that happened on road (covered by the Transport Accident Commission), or off road (not covered), however what kind of on-road cycling (sports training, recreational, transport etc) was ill specified and only sometimes recorded in case notes. For the traffic incidents we did have quite a good categorisation, i.e. cyclist hit by car, cyclist hit by truck, cyclist strikes car, cyclist strikes wall or building, cyclist strikes pedestrian, collision between two cyclists, cycle crash due to uneven road surface etc. An interesting thing was that a little over 50% of cyclist hospitalisations were from incidents that did not include a third party, the most common type was a cyclist crashing and impacting the road surface due to hitting a kerb, losing control, equipment failure etc. In my opinion that puts paid to the argument that we’ll be fine if we get lots more cyclists on the road (from all these potential cyclists who are just itching to get out and ride if only they didn’t have to wear a helmet), because motorists will become more used to cyclists and learn how to behave and not run them over any more. Well motorists aren’t involved at all in the majority of cycling hospitalisations, in the state of Victoria at least.
Nick R, final para: no road incidents are investigated by the Transport Accident Investigation Commission. Its remit of incident avoidance and prevention is restricted to rail, air and sea – nothing similar happens for road, except Police investigation (which has a very different objective).
Mike, probably not clear but I was talking about my former role when I worked as an injury data analyst in Melbourne, I’m talking about the TAC not the TAIC here: http://www.tac.vic.gov.au/
No Gary, it is a privilege, if your licence can be revoked for abusing the rules on it then it is a privilege.
Also, no like 99% of urban roads in New Zealand the sped limit was 50 in this area. I don’t think there is a single road within 4km of my house that isn’t at least 50, also, if I were speeding then that would make the driving of the vehicle even worse because they would be attempting to pass a vehicle who was already going over the limit.
Also, I find it amusing that you try to hypothesise a crime for me and point out Goosoid’s minor crime when we have a driver speeding tailgating illegally using the horn and using a motor vehicle as a weapon to threaten assault. I ride within the law because I crop more than enough abuse for going about my errands as it is the same can absolutely not be said for any of the drivers.
If you want to licence cyclists then that will make no difference, New Zealand law allows people with regular licences to ride any moped with an engine smaller than 50cc which describes a bike, so both Goosoid and I would be fine.
So you believe you can pick and choose which laws you are going to obey Goose? Do you not think that to be a bit arrogant?
Flaunting the laws are what gives cyclists a bad name and bolsters the arguments of anti cycling groups like the SMB residents.
Funny that the same isn’t true of drivers who routinely run reds and stop signs, drive drunk, pass too close, refuse to give way to pedestrians on crossings and driveways, speed, refuse to use indicators or mirrors.
So you would follow any law? Regardless of its content? You would never exercise civil disobedience to change a law you believe is wrong? Not much moral backbone there.
There is no difference S Boy, rules are rules and no one has the right to pick and choose which ones to follow and which ones to flaunt.
Cyclists and motorists are both wrong if they run red lights. The Goose is wrong if he rides without a lid.
Personally I think it is an awful example to kids to see adults riding without the safety gear. His attitude though is appalling so I guess no one should be surprised.
Pretty much every single motorist in Auckland breaks the speed limits every day. There is a speed advisory sign down the road from me at the moment (you know, the digital read out) and the number of cars that go past it at under 50 is well and truly in the minority. Based on what you are saying all speed cameras should be set at the limit and have zero buffer built in.
+1
Well dont ever leave Australasia because you will see awful examples everywhere.
Law makers are lawyers completely uneducated on the topic and the experts are hardly singing in unison, especially for low speed cycling.
Oh well, for ‘low speed’ cycling that is totally fine. Of course scooter riders who promise to never exceed your magic ‘low speed’ limit of 30 kmh or something will also be excused from warring a helmet. Car drivers who drive slowly can also opt to not wear a seat belt….
Regardless if you are traveling at 10 or 50, being hit by another vehicle will potentially cause brain damage that could be reduced by the simple, cost effective solution of slapping on a lightweight helmet. I just don’t get why anybody would actively choose not to do so.
Except that at low speeds helmets can actively make injuries worse.
Luckily I am usually hit 60+ just like you so the decision is easy for me.
At low speeds, even if* helmets make it worse, I presume you are talking about minor injuries.
I don’t care about scrapes, bruises and sprains. I really care about brain damage occurring.
*I can’t be bothered looking for evidence at the moment
I’ve heard that several times and it sounds like a truism to me, any evidence that is the case?
Even falling sideways off your bike while stopped involves a two metre or so drop to the ground , a helmet would have a protective effect when your head hits the concrete at 6ms-1. Allowing for 10mm of deflection with a helmet takes the force acting on your skull down to one tenth of what it would be withe no deflection.
I worked on a piece of research on people getting “king hit”. Turns out it wasn’t the punch that cracked skulls, those just toppled the victim. It was when their heads hit the pavement that they really got messed up. Those guys weren’t moving at all.
Oh man – this could go on – we are all here in favour of cycling so a bit of a pity to be debating something like helmets.
I agree 100% with your comment before Nick that helmets are not the main reason why the majority of people dont cycle. A feeling of subjective safety is the panacea and that will only be achieved by traffic calming in residential areas and separate facilities on arterial roads – Dutch style in other words. Without a doubt it is all about the three Is – Infrastructure, Infrastructure, Infrastructure.
I do believe however that they put off some groups, such as young women. Epsom Girls Grammar recently found that out of 500 students, 499 would not cycle. The reasons given were cycle helmets and their friends didnt cycle. Safety was up there as well of course.
I read this very good article yesterday by a manufacturer of bicycle helmets about the standards for helmets and how they are tested. It appears they are only useful at low speeds and when no third party is involved.
http://cyclehelmets.org/papers/c2023.pdf
That is why I would support a law for young children (<13) as they can just topple of the bike at any time. However, it has been many years since I just fell off my bike.
Also good: http://www.bicycling.com/senseless/index.html
If I were ever intending on riding at 50 or 60 km/h on my bike, I would indeed wear a helmet even if not required to by law. However, when riding at a leisurely 20 or so, I feel in no imminent danger at all (apart from errant motorists).
Same thing with the difference between driving a car on the road and driving a car on the road while doing the Targa.
What is the one thing that could prevent nearly 1/3 of all fatal motor vehicle crashes and yet is not mandatory under NZ law? (And no, it’s not a lower alcohol limit). Where is the national outrage?
I’ll save you the research: http://www.iihs.org/iihs/news/desktopnews/electronic-stability-control-could-prevent-nearly-one-third-of-all-fatal-crashes-and-reduce-rollover-risk-by-as-much-as-80-effect-is-found-on-single-and-multiple-vehicle-crashes
That US study is a bit old.
“An Australasian study by Monash University on the effectiveness of ESC systems showed they reduced the risk of single vehicle crashes in which the driver is injured by:
32 percent overall
27 percent for cars
68 percent for four-wheel-drives.”
The frustrating thing for me is that the high effectiveness in the US studies is because the popularity of large SUV/Pick-ups there, combined with low seat-belt usage, means that these relatively large unstable vehicles are much more likely to hurt/kill people when they lose control and roll or tumble over.
I used to think that NZ was a bit more sensible and with generally better handling smaller cars (say a Subaru Legacy vs a Ford Explorer), that ESP was less useful here. But for some reason SUV’s are still very popular (and increasing in numbers?) here as well. In some cases like a Honda CRV, they are just a standard Civic chassis elevated (increasing instability) then Honda has to add ESC to help reduce the chance of them going out of control.
I think like ASB, not having ESP is quickly becoming the exception in new vehicles.
No doubt modern cars are getting safer and safer, and ESC is an important part of it. Think it will take the logical extension of ESP – semi or fully automated vehicles, to really reduce car crashes. Will be interesting to see the impact on self-driving electric/hybrid cars on PT and city design though. In theory, shared ownership and other models could become a lot more viable.
Problem is that even introducing the safest car in the world onto our roads does not change the million or so existing cars off the road for a very long time.
All of which has little to do with bike helmets. Much cheaper than ESP and improving car safety is largely irrelevant to parallel efforts to improve bike safety.
I’ll have a look but from memory the Europeans cited the same kind of results. http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/specialist/knowledge/esave/esafety_measures_known_safety_effects/electronic_stability_control.htm
To the point that ESP has been mandatory there since Nov 2011.
Actually, the vast majority of the vehicle fleet changes very quickly once changes like this are implemented. ESP is more than just rollover protection. This is something I have followed very closely during my 20+ years in the new car industry.
My point is that if saving lives and injuries is the most important thing, and given that cycling has important positive health benefits (which a car obviously doesn’t) then why is it seen by, mostly non cycling people, that cyclists should wear helmets rather than encouraging people to do so? It’s the law vs the recommendation part that I hate. Seatbelts were cited earlier but do you know what really changed seatbelt wearing? Auto retracting seatbelts. Making it easy to wear them. How do we solve this on a bike share system while it is law? A helmet has to fit properly to be effective (like a seatbelt) so just any old helmet off the rack may be useless and carrying a helmet around town in case you need a hire bike is silly as well. It seems to me that the cycling population is just an easy target. Remember that the helmet ladies son only struck his head because he was firstly hit by a car. Something everyone forgets.