Robert Hurst on Maryland's Proposed Mandatory Helmet Law
Well OK it's really Colorado's bill but our bill is very similar. Some Highlights:...
Did it work? Did bike helmets Save the Children? Well, kids don't ride bikes nearly as much as they did in decades past, that's for sure, so there are fewer children injured or killed in bike wrecks. Mission accomplished, according to some. It's interesting how closely the sharp decline in kids' bicycling matches the steep ramp up of childhood obesity (and X-Box thumb injuries). Did we trade some juvenile bike wrecks for lifelong heart disease, strokes and cancer? That's messy, messy stuff, don't think about it.
Interestingly, bike helmets have also provided easy answers for people not directly concerned with promoting safe bicycling.The helmet nannies, most of them, don't even ride bikes themselves. Not at all. What they do is drive. And when they see someone riding a bike out there on the street, they think to themselves, man, that guy is a crazy person. I would never do that. And if they see someone riding a bike while not wearing a helmet -- double take -- that there is an affront to civilized society! That is a hostile act! Incredibly, unacceptably dangerous, and downright irresponsible. But this here, what I'm doing -- swerving all over the freeway at 70 mph while trying to keep a hot mocha latte from slurping onto my pants suit -- is not dangerous (on any one of many levels) or irresponsible, and of course would not require any sort of protective headgear. A mandatory bike helmet law serves these non-bike-riding citizens by confirming their modal biases, and, in turn, their basic lifestyle choices, for which they are always catching grief. In this way proposals for helmet laws pick up steam from outside the bicycle universe.
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This version of the MHL is also interesting in that it would apply to 18-and-under rather than the typical 16-and-under. So here we would actually be discouraging bike commuting by young workers of driving age, in favor of putting them onto the highways in their Hondas with aftermarket exhaust, careening at 70 while 'sexting' and scarfing McMuffins, proven deadly dangerous to themselves and everyone on the road with them. Oh, and playing their rock-and-roll music. Dang kids.
Hey, it seems like an easy answer to me: One of the best ways -- easiest ways -- to improve this country, right now, on multiple levels, profoundly, would be to encourage transportational bicycling among 16-to-18 year-old would-be drivers. House Bill 10-1147 [our bill is House Bill 140] goes the opposite direction. One stated goal of the legislation is to reduce health care costs. History shows us that helmet laws do the opposite. Opposite, opposite, opposite. But figuring these things out would require facing some messy corners of the truth, and people just aren't up to it. It's much easier to be counterproductive while carrying the shiny box. Messy truths are bad politics.
... <a href="http://www.industrializedcyclist.com/20110_Mind_Suck.html">http://www.industrializedcyclist.com/20110_Mind_Suck.html</a>;
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