From: mcrae@husc8.harvard.edu (Andrew McRae)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.new-zealand
Subject: Re: Kevlar vests to be made COMPULSORY for pedestrians in NZ
Date: 17 Nov 92 05:37:35 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Nov17.003737.17520
Reply-To: mcrae@husc8.harvard.edu
Originator: mcrae@husc8.harvard.edu

In article <58sis-b@massey.ac.nz>, news@massey.ac.nz (USENET News System) writes:
> Cycling is not an inherently dangerous activity (certain types might
> be, such as racing, but general cycling is not).

It's a lot like flying -- actually doing it is pretty safe, the difficult
part is what happens when you _stop_ doing it. :-)

>                                              As such people should
> not be forced to protect themselves, though if they wish to they may,
> as it violates a fundamental principle that people should be protected
> from injury by others (or from their own activities).

OK, so I don't understand.  What's the "fundamental principle" that's being
appealed to here?  Is there something inherently _wrong_ with protecting
other people from injury?

>                                                    NO OTHER section
> of society is forced to protect themselves from injury in this way.

Motorcyclists have to wear helmets, motorists have to wear seatbelts,
and those are just the obvious ones.  But I suppose these are going
to count as "inherently dangerous activities"...

> Will such an action reduce the road toll? Maybe, but probably not the
> accidents. On Friday I (unusually) came to work by car, whilst driving
> down a residential street I was overtaken as I was clearly going too
> slow - i.e. 50 Km/h in a 50 Km/h area. Will cycle helmets stop that
> driving from being a criminal? Today on the way to work (on my bike as
> normal) I approched a pedestrian crossing at which half-a-dozen
> children were waiting. I slowed down, and given my high regard for
> motoring standards, also pulled OUT towards the centre of the road to
> CLEARLY indicate to the vechicles behind that I was stopping IN FRONT
> of them to allow the children to cross. The vechicle, with plenty of
> stopping distance before the crossing, just pulled out and overtook on
> the crossing. Would my wearing a cycle helmet have protected those
> children?

Well no, but nobody ever thought that the point of cyclists wearing cycle
helmets was to protect _pedestrians_ from injury! The fact that enforcing
the wearing of cycle helmets won't solve _all_ traffic problems doesn't
mean that it's a bad idea, surely. 

> Come on what do you Kiwi's think?

I think that enforcing the wearing of cycle helmets is a good thing. The
way that bicycles are designed these days, in any accident (no matter how
slowly you're going) there is a _big_ risk that you will be thrown over
the handlebars and will land on the ground head-first -- anything which
stops the bike is likely to cause this to happen.  Head injuries are
nasty.  They are far more likely to have seriously debilitating long-term
effects than are injuries to any other part of the body.  The wearing of
a bicycle helmet greatly reduces the risk and likely seriousness of this
kind of injury.  These are similar to the reasons why the wearing of
seatbelts and motorcycle helmets are enforced, and have the potential to
carry the same weight.

Of course the same kind of considerations can be brought out in regard to,
say, enforcing the wearing of bulletproof vests by pedestrians. But in
that case we're talking about a _much_ rarer event. (In NZ anyway -- in
this part of the world, hunters shoot people who are jogging or even
sitting in their own back yards, and get acquitted.) There comes a point
where a little added safety is overridden by a lot of added inconvenience,
and where that point is has to be decided in each case -- presumably that
was the whole point of having people look into the issue and make
recommendations.  Presumably, they decided that in this case the same kind
of considerations that underlie laws about seatbelts and motorcycle
helmets held sway. 

Blaming injuries to cyclists on criminal activities won't carry any weight
either -- it's just not true that speeding and reckless driving cause all
serious injuries to cyclists.  You can quite easily get permanent brain
damage by falling five feet and landing headfirst on a hard surface -- and
that can happen if you hit a toy while riding around the back yard.

<flame, but a flame with a _message_>
The kind of people who put forward arguments saying that things like this
are "interfering with our freedom" as if it were a sacred principle should
go and set up their own society somewhere so they can show us things
"should" work. What's more, they should be absolutely consistent and not
take advantage of the things which have been contributed to our lives by
people who didn't worry about what was in it for them, and who were more
interested in getting things working. Then they could revert to their own
"state of nature", and never bother the rest of us again (after all, we'd
have the guns). Better yet, they wouldn't have Usenet access.
<end of flame>

OK, I'm sorry everyone, but it's past midnight and I had a bad day.

(Besides, I have wonderful inductive evidence for the value of cycle
helmets: I have been knocked off a bicycle onto the road four times -- two
cars, a truck and another cyclist -- and all were before I started wearing
a helmet... :)

-- 
Andrew McRae                       Internet: mcrae@husc.harvard.edu
                                     BITnet: mcrae@HUSC
Newsgroups: soc.culture.new-zealand