Reply to editor:
Last Friday's defeat of the Protective Headgear for Young
Cyclists bill was a triumph for common sense. As a result of
the campaign many MPs did indeed become much better informed
about the issues, several of them changing from pro-
compulsion to anti-compulsion on the basis of the evidence
presented to them by cycling organisations (not one of whom
was in favour of the Bill).
Among other absurdities it would have made it an offence to
allow a child to ride a tricycle in the park without a
helmet, while unicycling on a public road would have been
exempt. And of course a child riding a bike without a helmet
would not have been committing an offence at all; the
offence would have been committed by whichever hapless adult
the courts happened to decide was responsible for them at
the time (which could include friends over 16, teachers,
bike shop employees and employers). Mr Martlew finessed the
flaws in his Bill by saying that the law would, in essence,
not be enforced. So why have it at all?
I would like to thank Angela Lee for the statistics
presented by BHIT. Merely comparing them with real (and much
smaller) figures from the Departments of Transport and
Health was sufficient to persuade many people.
It is a source of some regret that opponents of the Bill
were falsely characterised as anti-helmet; this is an
unfortunate conclusion to draw when their judgement is based
on careful consideration of both sides of an argument which
is far more complex than it seems at face value. Cycling
organisations are committed to cyclist safety in the round,
and know from long experience that this neither begins nor
ends with the wearing of a cycle helmet.
Although the Government confirms it knows of no case where
cyclist safety has improved with increasing helmet use, one
can show using Government figures that a universally obeyed
child helmet law which did not cause children to ride in a
less careful manner due to feeling safer, might reduce the
number of children killed on our roads by a maximum of one
per annum. Recent experience in Hull shows that Home Zones
(traffic calmed, human friendly environments) have the
potential to be significantly more effective, and this
benefit is not restricted to the small proportion of victims
who are cycling at the time.
This is hardly a surprise. A dispassionate look at the data
reveals that it is motor traffic, not cycling, which is
uniquely dangerous to children, accounting for 10% of injury
admissions but half of all fatalities. Few of those children
were cycling at the time. Head injury ratios and severity
ratios are comparable for child pedestrians and child
cyclists, although around five times more child pedestrians
are killed and seriously injured.
Anybody who is genuinely concerned about child safety will
surely applaud schemes which reduce danger at source, and
urge Reading Council to consider similar measures. After
all, it is far better to avoid crashes altogether than to
try to mitigate the effects of a small number of them.
Especially when the method proposed has failed wherever it's
been tried.
Guy Chapman chapmancentral.co.ukchapmancentral.co.ukOpen ↗
