On Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 11:30:30 PM UTC, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Tuesday, January 21, 2020 at 4:21:32 PM UTC-8, Andre Jute wrote:
[This is an article I first published on RBT ten years ago on 17 August 2010 at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!ms...ch/ST4zkI8xqGw. I haven't checked the links because there is no point in updating the article since the numbers and the conclusion will be the same to within the margin of error. I republish it because there's a lot of loose talk on a thread currently on the board about MHLs.]

THE CASE FOR A MANDATORY CYCLE HELMET LAW
(IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA)
by Andre Jute
It is a risible myth that your average American is a tall-walking free
individual untrammeled by government: he is in fact just as much
constricted as a European soft-socialist consumerist or Japanese
collective citizen, though it is true that the American is controlled
in different areas of his activity than the European or the Japanese.
To some the uncontrolled areas of American life, for instance the
ability to own and use firearms, smacks of barbarism rather than
liberty. In this article I examine whether the lack of a mandatory
bicycle helmet law in the USA is barbaric or an emanation of that
rugged liberty more evident in rhetoric than reality.

Any case for intervention by the state must be made on moral and
statistical grounds. Examples are driving licences, crush zones on
cars, seatbelts, age restrictions on alcohol sales, and a million
other interventions, all now accepted unremarked in the States as part
of the regulatory landscape, but all virulently opposed in their day.


HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING?
Surprisingly, cycling can be argued to be "safe enough", given only
that one is willing to count the intangible benefits of health through
exercise, generally acknowledged as substantial. Here I shall make no
effort to quantify those health benefits because the argument I'm
putting forward is conclusively made by harder statistics and
unexceptional general morality.

In the representative year of 2008, the last for which comprehesive
data is available, 716 cyclists died on US roads, and 52,000 were
injured.

Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

The most convenient way to grasp the meaning of these statistics is to
compare cycling with motoring, the latter ipso facto by motorists'
average mileage accepted by most Americans as safe enough.

Compared to a motorist a cyclist is:
11 times MORE likely to die PER MILE travelled
2.9 times MORE likely to die PER TRIP taken

By adding information about the relative frequency/length/duration of
journeys of cyclists and motorists, we can further conclude that in
the US:

Compared to a motorist, a cyclist is:
3 to 4 times MORE likely to die PER HOUR riding
3 to 4 times LESS likely to die IN A YEAR's riding

Source:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=htt...Wt7vubH xju7Q

It is the last number, that the average cyclist is 3 to 4 times less
likely to die in a year's riding than a motorist, and enjoys all the
benefits of healthy exercise, that permits us to ignore the greater
per mile/per trip/per hour danger.

This gives us the overall perspective but says nothing about wearing a
cycling helmet.


HELMET WEAR AT THE EXTREME END OF CYCLING RISK

What we really want to know is: what chance of the helmet saving your
life? The authorities in New York made a compilation covering the
years 1996 to 2003 of all the deaths (225) and serious injuries
(3,462) in cycling accidents in all New York City. The purpose of the
study was an overview usable for city development planning, not helmet
advocacy, so helmet usage was only noted for part of the period among
the seriously injured, amounting to 333 cases. Here are some
conclusions:

• Most fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
• Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.