Ontario is in danger of passing a mandatory helmet law for cyclists. This sucks. Helmet legislation decreases bicycle use, thereby cause big time health and safety problems. Besides that, it's parochial and insulting and sends a strong message that the government doesn't like bikes. Cyclists need better street design, side-guards on trucks, reduction in speed, bike lanes, and a political environment that welcomes the bicycle as a beneficial and progressive transportation mode. If you truly want to create a culture of safety, foster a culture of cyclists--- people who get excercise, don't pollute, and, compared to cars, hardly ever kill or injure anybody else.
From the National Post:
"At its core, I think this bill is really about creating a culture of safety in this province," [John] Milloy told a news conference.
"If we can create a culture where you wouldn't think of going bicycling or skateboarding or in-line skating without wearing a helmet, I think we would have achieved success."
From The Hammer:
"We have to keep the people of Ontario safe. This is what we have to do to ensure compliance and institute a culture of safety in our province," said an unrepentant Irving Halitosis, Minister for Screwing You Over , the provincial ministry responsible for the bill's enforcement. "I mean, you can't have people running around and eating dinner without helmets on. What if a fish stick jumped up off your plate and whacked you in the forehead? It happened to me, and it's not pretty. I was off work for three months."
People to contact:
Jeff Leal, M.P.P., jleal.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org
Khalil Ramal, M.P.P., kramal.mpp@liberal.ola.org
Ted Arnott, M.P.P., ted_arnott@ontla.ola.org
Ted Chudleigh, M.P.P., ted_chudleigh@ontla.ola.org
Kim Craitor, M.P.P., kcraitor.mpp@liberal.ola.org
Peter Fonseca, M.P.P., pfonseca.mpp@liberal.ola.org
Rosario Marchese, M.P.P., rmarchese@ndp.on.ca
Hon. Dalton McGuinty, Premier, dmcguinty.mpp.co@liberal.ola.org
Ted McMeekin, M.P.P., tmcmeekin.mpp@liberal.ola.org
John Milloy, M.P.P., jmilloy.mpp@liberal.ola.org
Michael Prue, M.P.P., mprue-qp@ndp.on.ca
Kathleen Wynne, M.P.P., kwynne.mpp@liberal.ola.org
Ann Stokes, Clerk, anne_stokes@ontla.ola.org
ARC (Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists), arc@respect.to
Velo Ontario, info@VeloOntario.ca
more info at ARC
I don't recall seeing one helmet in Amsterdam, the single most bicycle friendly city I've ever visited. What really makes it all work there is the lanes. On a typical urban road there's a sidewalk for the peds, a lane for the bikes, a lane for cars, and a lane for transit (busses, trams, taxis).
In a N. America, the idea of devoting law enforcement resources to controlling bicyclists is whack. It's the SUVs driven by cell-phone users that worry me.
I don't really see how it would discourage bike riding. Alberta has a helmet law (albeit a regressive attitude towards biking in general - no lanes for instance) which we bitched about when it first came to pass, but now no one thinks twice about putting on a helmet. And I don't think there are less bikers out there because of it.
Even getting hit by a car at 20 km an hour can still bust your skull. What would be interesting to know is how many head injuries pre capita Ontario has compared to provinces with mandatory helmet laws.
motor vehicle laws applied to skateboarding, bikes, etc... have cost me the chance at ever getting a driver's liscence in this country...good be good thing, no?
* could be a good thing, no?
Mike W, I doubt if the study you call for exists, but this link goes to a study on the introduction of helmet legislation in Australia, based on before-and-after statistics. They found that the legislation "increased overall cyclist hospital admissions, lessened the popularity of cycling, and demonstrably caused injury to public health." The increase in overall injury is likely due to risk perception. In Mayer Hillman's Cycle helmets: the case for and against (London: Policy Studies Institute, 1993) he states: "Cyclists are less likely to ride cautiously when wearing a helmet owing to their feeling of increased security. In this way, they consume some, if not all, of the benefit that would otherwise accrue from wearing a helmet."
I have been lucky enough to absorb this info through the hard work and research of others (props to NSL). This info below from the ARC website contains more good links to empirical studies and analyses on helmet legistlation.
The
Toronto Regional Coroner examined cycling fatalities over a 10 year period and determined that while helmets are an asset, they are not a panacea since helmets do nothing to prevent a collision.
Mandatory helmet laws are by their very nature anti-cycling and there has been a substantial reduction in observed numbers of cyclists in jurisdictions that have introduced them. Helmet laws discourage cycling.
Countries with high cycling use do not have helmet laws. The more cyclists there are the safer it is, so putting policies in place that will increase, not decrease, cycling and walking are crucial for increasing safety and improving public health.
If some road users are to be forced to wear helmets then ALL road users should be. A British coroner compared head injuries of pedestrians, cyclists and vehicle occupants and found that a similar proportion of the deaths in each category could have been saved with the use of helmets.
Helmet laws are based on the assumption that all non-motorized transportation is for sport, while increasingly it is for transportation purposes as well. While voluntary use of helmets for competitive sports and racing is already common and accepted practice, forcing adults to wear a helmet to ride, blade or skate to the corner store is absurd.
It is clear discrimination against users of non-motorized transportation to institute a helmet law that does not include drivers and passengers of motor vehicles. Cyclists don't need a helmet law, they need priority. Helmet use should be left to the individual user.
More good stuff here (thanks also to N). This from a physician, Thomas J. DeMarco: A fundamental problem with emphasizing and legislating helmet use is that it reinforces the popular misconception that road bicycling is dangerous. The predictable result of such a message is decreased ridership, as Mary Chipman astutely warns. Thanks to superior cardiovascular fitness, the average cyclist outlives the average noncyclist, helmet or no helmet. Ultimately, helmet laws save a few brains but destroy many hearts.
Observations in several countries over the past 30 years have demonstrated how road cycling safety is consistently related to the numbers of riders.5 The converse is also true: individual risk rises as ridership declines, a pattern well documented in the US over the past decade. As helmet laws there have become widespread, and as road cycling has become less popular, the rate of injury per active cyclist has risen by 50%.
One of the most interesting aspects of the helmet debates is risk perception. We are familiar with the ironic fact that while we perceive air travel to be dangerous, we are much much more likely to die in a collision on the highway getting to the airport than we are to die in the airplane. This kind of thinking also applies to cycling. It's my guess that people see things that strike them as unusual to be a cause of danger, when in fact it may be the element we are habituated to (cars, in this case) that is the real cause of the danger. This may be part of the reason why non-cyclists put the onus of safety onto cyclists themselves, while cyclists, habituated to the activity, know that cycling is basically safe, and that cars and car-based infrastructure are the source of danger. It's a paradigm shift that may seem sort of obvious to most of us, but is clearly lacking in political leadership. The political push for mandatory helmet laws is an excellent first clue that cycling is not being taken seriously as a transportation option.
If you were going to try to cut down on traffic deaths, which category of deaths should you start with?
U.S. Statistics for 2003 from NHTSA.
Traffic Crash Victims
Occupants
Drivers 26,640
Passengers 10,387
Unknown 105
Nonmotorist
Pedestrians 4,749
Pedalcyclists 622
Other/Unknown 140
Total 42,643
Obviously imposing more rules on the "pedalcyclists" is absolutely the wrong priority. It's those pesky "unknowns". Hundreds of them are dying. Oh, the humanity.
If we gotta have mandatory brain protectors, I'd start with the roll-over prone SUVs that are killing thousands of their occupants. Perhaps that would cut down on Escalade sales. "What? That hat thingy will totally ruin my coiffe!"
Don't know if this constitutes "beating a dead horse" or "preaching to the chior", but here's some more NHTSA stats. They probably are indicative for those Canadians massed near the US border.
In 2002, 10,666 people died in rollover crashes, up 5 percent from 10,157 in 2001. The number of persons killed in sport utility vehicles (SUVs) that rolled over rose 14 percent. Sixty-one percent of all SUV fatalities involved rollovers.
In fatal crashes between passenger cars and LTVs (light trucks and vans, a category that includes SUVs), the occupants of the car were more often fatally injured. When a car was struck in the side by an LTV, the fatality was 20.8 times more likely to have been in the passenger car. In a head-on collision between a car and an LTV, the fatality was 3.3 times more likely to be among car occupants.
Alcohol-related fatalities remained at 41 percent of the total with 17,419 deaths in 2002, up slightly from 17,400 in 2001. Historically, the majority of passenger vehicle occupants killed in crashes were not wearing safety belts; that trend continued in 2002 with 59 percent of deceased crash victims not buckled up.
Evidently, mandatory seatbelts for bicycles will make the world safer for everyone.
You know, it's the pedestrian deaths that seem the most poignant to me. Frankly, all these arguments about public health are useful, but I personally don't really have a big "save-more-members-of-the-human-race" agenda. It's the power imbalance between people in cars and people outside of cars and the overall damned unfairness of the thing that gets me motivated.
I was in the Neatherlands last month and saw hundreds of thousands of bicyclists and not a stich of 'gear" no shoes, spandex, flourescents or helmets, stuff which when I was growing up in Oregon was only worn by actual racers. Gear (and an expensive bike) now seems to be manditory for any American cyclist who wants to be taken seriously.
I hear you, Steve. When bikes are considered to be everyday urban phenomena, then people don't get into the head space that they need some kind of specialised sports gear to operate one. The whole idea of being "taken seriously" is over-rated anyhow.
The closest I saw to "gear" in the Netherlands was out in the agricultural polders. Not only do they have excellent bike lanes in urban areas, they have inter-city routes. I saw a few people going for speed and distance on those routes out in the countryside. But most cyclists are doing routine transportation. Even little kids ride as passengers with no head protection. But isn't it true that most pedestrians go without head protection as well?
I agree with Sally that the mismatch between big hunks of sheetmetal and pedestrians is distressing. I try to convince people that top-heavy SUVs are dangerous for the occupants in part because they're very dangerous for the non-occupants in the vacinity (whether in car, on bike or on foot) if poorly driven.
Over-rated and flat out ridiculous.
I don't know about Alberta, but ...
I was recently in Victoria for a cyling/pedestrian conference, and one thing that struck me is how few people know about the level of cycling that is happening in downtown Toronto.
This summer a nerdy friend and I headed out to a nearby street to do some morning counts to check our anecdotal perceptions about local cycling traffic increasing. Our location, Harbord St., has a bike lane and car lane in each direction, and is also a bus route. Between 8 and 9 in the morning bicycles made up over 34% of vehicles. That is an very high level for a North American metropolis.
If you haven't visited lately, you would be shocked. Shocked I tell you!
Anyway, the other thing is that the cycling population is very non-sporty. Crappy utilitarian bikes. Chain guards. Dress shoes. No helmet. Pretty different than most Canadian cities.
hah that's funny. I'm a good Torontonian, I guess, cause I spent yesterday ploughing my rattley CCM around town, stuck in high gear, with too much weight in the basket setting me off balance, wearing high-heeled boots and panty-hose and a skirt with a broken zipper that kept falling down. Luckily I was also wearing a long black coat -- a heavy one, that dangled precariously near to my spokes.
I'm glad you guys are doing counts...it's good to know that there's a lot of us here. 34% rocks!
Those numbers are amazing. My brother has stories about riding in the snow in Chicago when he lived there. Brrrrr. I see just a handful of cycles on my route to work, and I live in a Mediterranean climate. I see more bikes on the weekends in the hills that I do on the weekdays in the flats.
For the coat in spokes thing, the dutch have plastic guards.
more anti-cycling bullshit. This time in New York.
WTF? Who is that crazy lady, and how did she rise to a position of responsibility in NYC? Here's what I sent ...
I strongly oppose Int. No. 497 and urge you to withdraw it without delay. As an occasional bicycle commuter here in sunny California, I salute the cyclists who brave the weather and traffic of NYC for recreation or just plain old basic transportation. And you want to criminalize bicycling? Are you nuts?
Tell you what. Now that it's off season, buy a cheap ticket to OLD Amsterdam. Wander around that city, and marvel at how efficiently people move themselves, their goods, and their children with bicycles. And notice that almost no one is fat. Then hang your head in shame that you ever had the idea that this activity should be classified as criminal behaviour.
Please withdraw Int. No. 497.
haw! nice letter, Mark.
Hey Fleet Leader,
My name is Ron and I am a safety specialist at Fleet Tech USA, and I came across your company inquiry for information on Fleet maintenance/management solutions and info regarding a Dashcam for your vehicles.
If you are still looking for ways to improve your fleet safety and operation efficiency, we will be happy to offer you a free fleet review that includes a full fleet report that will be sent out with additional information on a couple of here-and-now solutions, especially for you.
If that makes sense, visit our site www.motive.fleettechusa.com and leave your contact information.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Ron,
Fleet Tech USA
Hey Fleet Leader,
My name is Ron, and I am a safety specialist at Fleet Tech USA, and I came across your company information while doing some research on fleet management efficiency and safety.
Fleet Tech USA is an organization funded by the government to promote safety and operation efficiency by assisting fleet leaders with practical solutions, technology recommendations, and gaudiness on how to receive funds for safety solutions such as ADAS, Dashcams, ELD, etc.
Fleet Tech USA has access to most fleet tech companies, municipal DOT agencies, and fleet insurance carriers. And we would be happy to offer you a free fleet review and generate for you a DOT violation report that will show you where are the main challenges and how you can solve them.
You probably don't know, but you can considerably reduce the insurance premium cost and get the best fleet management solution you desire for free or with a significant discount with state grants.
If that makes sense, visit our site www.motive.fleettechusa.com and leave your contact information.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Ron Feldman,
Fleet Tech USA
Fuck off Ron.
|
Ontario is in danger of passing a mandatory helmet law for cyclists. This sucks. Helmet legislation decreases bicycle use, thereby cause big time health and safety problems. Besides that, it's parochial and insulting and sends a strong message that the government doesn't like bikes. Cyclists need better street design, side-guards on trucks, reduction in speed, bike lanes, and a political environment that welcomes the bicycle as a beneficial and progressive transportation mode. If you truly want to create a culture of safety, foster a culture of cyclists--- people who get excercise, don't pollute, and, compared to cars, hardly ever kill or injure anybody else.
From the National Post: From The Hammer: People to contact: more info at ARC
- sally mckay 11-11-2004 6:27 pm
I don't recall seeing one helmet in Amsterdam, the single most bicycle friendly city I've ever visited. What really makes it all work there is the lanes. On a typical urban road there's a sidewalk for the peds, a lane for the bikes, a lane for cars, and a lane for transit (busses, trams, taxis).
In a N. America, the idea of devoting law enforcement resources to controlling bicyclists is whack. It's the SUVs driven by cell-phone users that worry me.
- mark 11-12-2004 3:42 am
I don't really see how it would discourage bike riding. Alberta has a helmet law (albeit a regressive attitude towards biking in general - no lanes for instance) which we bitched about when it first came to pass, but now no one thinks twice about putting on a helmet. And I don't think there are less bikers out there because of it.
Even getting hit by a car at 20 km an hour can still bust your skull. What would be interesting to know is how many head injuries pre capita Ontario has compared to provinces with mandatory helmet laws.
- Mike W (guest) 11-12-2004 8:06 am
motor vehicle laws applied to skateboarding, bikes, etc... have cost me the chance at ever getting a driver's liscence in this country...good be good thing, no?
- a morrison (guest) 11-12-2004 1:14 pm
* could be a good thing, no?
- am (guest) 11-12-2004 1:15 pm
Mike W, I doubt if the study you call for exists, but this link goes to a study on the introduction of helmet legislation in Australia, based on before-and-after statistics. They found that the legislation "increased overall cyclist hospital admissions, lessened the popularity of cycling, and demonstrably caused injury to public health." The increase in overall injury is likely due to risk perception. In Mayer Hillman's Cycle helmets: the case for and against (London: Policy Studies Institute, 1993) he states: "Cyclists are less likely to ride cautiously when wearing a helmet owing to their feeling of increased security. In this way, they consume some, if not all, of the benefit that would otherwise accrue from wearing a helmet."
I have been lucky enough to absorb this info through the hard work and research of others (props to NSL). This info below from the ARC website contains more good links to empirical studies and analyses on helmet legistlation.
- sally mckay 11-12-2004 4:19 pm
More good stuff here (thanks also to N). This from a physician, Thomas J. DeMarco:
One of the most interesting aspects of the helmet debates is risk perception. We are familiar with the ironic fact that while we perceive air travel to be dangerous, we are much much more likely to die in a collision on the highway getting to the airport than we are to die in the airplane. This kind of thinking also applies to cycling. It's my guess that people see things that strike them as unusual to be a cause of danger, when in fact it may be the element we are habituated to (cars, in this case) that is the real cause of the danger. This may be part of the reason why non-cyclists put the onus of safety onto cyclists themselves, while cyclists, habituated to the activity, know that cycling is basically safe, and that cars and car-based infrastructure are the source of danger. It's a paradigm shift that may seem sort of obvious to most of us, but is clearly lacking in political leadership. The political push for mandatory helmet laws is an excellent first clue that cycling is not being taken seriously as a transportation option.
- sally mckay 11-12-2004 6:57 pm
If you were going to try to cut down on traffic deaths, which category of deaths should you start with?
U.S. Statistics for 2003 from NHTSA.
Obviously imposing more rules on the "pedalcyclists" is absolutely the wrong priority. It's those pesky "unknowns". Hundreds of them are dying. Oh, the humanity.
If we gotta have mandatory brain protectors, I'd start with the roll-over prone SUVs that are killing thousands of their occupants. Perhaps that would cut down on Escalade sales. "What? That hat thingy will totally ruin my coiffe!"
- mark 11-13-2004 4:10 am
Don't know if this constitutes "beating a dead horse" or "preaching to the chior", but here's some more NHTSA stats. They probably are indicative for those Canadians massed near the US border.
Evidently, mandatory seatbelts for bicycles will make the world safer for everyone.- mark 11-13-2004 4:33 am
You know, it's the pedestrian deaths that seem the most poignant to me. Frankly, all these arguments about public health are useful, but I personally don't really have a big "save-more-members-of-the-human-race" agenda. It's the power imbalance between people in cars and people outside of cars and the overall damned unfairness of the thing that gets me motivated.
- sally mckay 11-13-2004 5:00 am
I was in the Neatherlands last month and saw hundreds of thousands of bicyclists and not a stich of 'gear" no shoes, spandex, flourescents or helmets, stuff which when I was growing up in Oregon was only worn by actual racers. Gear (and an expensive bike) now seems to be manditory for any American cyclist who wants to be taken seriously.
- steve 11-14-2004 10:16 pm
I hear you, Steve. When bikes are considered to be everyday urban phenomena, then people don't get into the head space that they need some kind of specialised sports gear to operate one. The whole idea of being "taken seriously" is over-rated anyhow.
- sally mckay 11-14-2004 11:41 pm
The closest I saw to "gear" in the Netherlands was out in the agricultural polders. Not only do they have excellent bike lanes in urban areas, they have inter-city routes. I saw a few people going for speed and distance on those routes out in the countryside. But most cyclists are doing routine transportation. Even little kids ride as passengers with no head protection. But isn't it true that most pedestrians go without head protection as well?
I agree with Sally that the mismatch between big hunks of sheetmetal and pedestrians is distressing. I try to convince people that top-heavy SUVs are dangerous for the occupants in part because they're very dangerous for the non-occupants in the vacinity (whether in car, on bike or on foot) if poorly driven.
- mark 11-15-2004 8:30 am
Over-rated and flat out ridiculous.
- steve 11-15-2004 9:45 am
I don't know about Alberta, but ...
I was recently in Victoria for a cyling/pedestrian conference, and one thing that struck me is how few people know about the level of cycling that is happening in downtown Toronto.
This summer a nerdy friend and I headed out to a nearby street to do some morning counts to check our anecdotal perceptions about local cycling traffic increasing. Our location, Harbord St., has a bike lane and car lane in each direction, and is also a bus route. Between 8 and 9 in the morning bicycles made up over 34% of vehicles. That is an very high level for a North American metropolis.
If you haven't visited lately, you would be shocked. Shocked I tell you!
Anyway, the other thing is that the cycling population is very non-sporty. Crappy utilitarian bikes. Chain guards. Dress shoes. No helmet. Pretty different than most Canadian cities.
- carbontax (guest) 11-16-2004 1:13 am
hah that's funny. I'm a good Torontonian, I guess, cause I spent yesterday ploughing my rattley CCM around town, stuck in high gear, with too much weight in the basket setting me off balance, wearing high-heeled boots and panty-hose and a skirt with a broken zipper that kept falling down. Luckily I was also wearing a long black coat -- a heavy one, that dangled precariously near to my spokes.
I'm glad you guys are doing counts...it's good to know that there's a lot of us here. 34% rocks!
- sally mckay 11-16-2004 1:39 am
Those numbers are amazing. My brother has stories about riding in the snow in Chicago when he lived there. Brrrrr. I see just a handful of cycles on my route to work, and I live in a Mediterranean climate. I see more bikes on the weekends in the hills that I do on the weekdays in the flats.
For the coat in spokes thing, the dutch have plastic guards.
- mark 11-16-2004 4:54 am
more anti-cycling bullshit. This time in New York.
- sally mckay 11-17-2004 6:46 pm
WTF? Who is that crazy lady, and how did she rise to a position of responsibility in NYC? Here's what I sent ...
- mark 11-17-2004 7:49 pm
haw! nice letter, Mark.
- sally mckay 11-17-2004 8:09 pm
Hey Fleet Leader,
My name is Ron and I am a safety specialist at Fleet Tech USA, and I came across your company inquiry for information on Fleet maintenance/management solutions and info regarding a Dashcam for your vehicles.
If you are still looking for ways to improve your fleet safety and operation efficiency, we will be happy to offer you a free fleet review that includes a full fleet report that will be sent out with additional information on a couple of here-and-now solutions, especially for you.
If that makes sense, visit our site www.motive.fleettechusa.com and leave your contact information.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Ron,
Fleet Tech USA
- Ron Feldman (guest) 9-10-2022 12:41 am
Hey Fleet Leader,
My name is Ron, and I am a safety specialist at Fleet Tech USA, and I came across your company information while doing some research on fleet management efficiency and safety.
Fleet Tech USA is an organization funded by the government to promote safety and operation efficiency by assisting fleet leaders with practical solutions, technology recommendations, and gaudiness on how to receive funds for safety solutions such as ADAS, Dashcams, ELD, etc.
Fleet Tech USA has access to most fleet tech companies, municipal DOT agencies, and fleet insurance carriers. And we would be happy to offer you a free fleet review and generate for you a DOT violation report that will show you where are the main challenges and how you can solve them.
You probably don't know, but you can considerably reduce the insurance premium cost and get the best fleet management solution you desire for free or with a significant discount with state grants.
If that makes sense, visit our site www.motive.fleettechusa.com and leave your contact information.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Ron Feldman,
Fleet Tech USA
- Ron Feldman (guest) 9-27-2022 4:06 am
Fuck off Ron.
- L.M. 9-27-2022 1:30 pm