Bicycle helmet laws = bad?

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"The Dangers of Helmets", a British Medical Journal article arguing against bicycle helmet laws:

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/321/7276/1582#SEC4

The basic arguments are:

1. Requiring helmets gives an impression that cycling is more dangerous than walking or driving, this scares off people who would be healthier if they cycled.
2. If a helmet is a legal requirement, people will think that simply having one is adequate, instead of learning how to bike cautiously.
3. Helmets don't actually protect riders (justification provided via a cartload of what is, to my eyes, rather questionable statistical analysis.)

Thoughts?

Comments

Re: Bicycle helmet laws

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1) is unassailable, I agree
2) some thoughts about addressing the issues

The cost-effectiveness of enforcing a helmet law is an open question, because there are many ways the law can be enforced. There are also aspects of bicycle use that make law enforcement for it very different than, say, for driving motorcycles or cars.

The biggest difference is that bicycles themselves aren't registered. You can't write a ticket for a rider who has just gone past without a helmet, because you can't efficiently pursue or track or stop them, and there's no license plate to read to know who to blame. For the same reason, you can't write a ticket for an improperly configured bicycle or one parked in the wrong spot. Your only option is to somehow "boot" the bicycle or have it hauled away, and both of these options are extremely expensive.

Basically, what this and other issues boil down to is, you can't enforce helmet use during helmet use because it's dangerous, and you can't enforce it at other times because bikes aren't traceable.

So why don't we leverage helmet use into the registration of bikes, and enforce it en-masse?

The state could get together with helmet manufacturers and importers and tell each one to burn a bar code into the underside of their helmets. Any helmet with a bar code then becomes a "state approved" helmet for use while bicycling, and if you get injured while you are not wearing a state approved helmet, you are disqualified from state or govermnent medical fee compensation. If you have your own health insurance, then good for you ... the burden to the taxpayer is avoided either way.

Every helmet sold has a bar code embedded in it, but also comes with a weatherproof sticker much like the license-plate registration stickers sold for cars. When you buy the helmet, the bar code in the helmet is registered to you, the purchaser. Then you take the matching sticker and put it on the trunk-bar of your bike.

You could conceivably leave the helmet at home and go riding without it, now, but either way, you have to own it. So you might as well use it. Meanwhile, a couple of cops come along with a pickup truck and some cutting tools, and stop at any of the large tangle of bicycle racks in the city. There, they proceed to cut out and collect every bike that lacks a sticker, all at once. They all go back to a warehouse and are then auctioned to bike dealers. They took your bike? Sorry, no sticker. You obviously should not have been riding it in the first place. Go catch a bus.

You could take this a step further and declare that your helmet must be locked up with your bike, as proof that you used the helmet. Then the cops can also cut out any bike with a sticker but without a helmet, and since the sticker is associated with your helmet, they could hold it for 30 days or so, and if you show up with the matching helmet and pay a small fine, the bike is returned to you. Or perhaps delivered (on the same pickup truck) to the rack from where it was taken, so that you don't have to transport your bike from the warehouse/police station if you are unable.

This same mechanism could be used as a deterrent of thievery in large cities. For example, the city could designate a chunk of some parking garage or park space a "bike parking facility". Enclose the whole thing in hurricane fence and post a guy there with a couple of security cameras. His job is to accept bikes from people who come in and show a matching helmet, and put the helmet on a shelf. Then later on, those same people pick up their bikes by showing ID that matches the helmet. Their ID is linked to their face and their face is linked to the bike they are seen wheeling out the front gate by the camera. If they wheel out a bike that isn't theirs, this can be discovered by playing back the log. The cops can go right to their door. You can set up a facility exactly like this in any large department store or restaurant cluster: All you need is a room with one entrance, a desk, a camera, and an array of racks. You can even train the busboy to do it. Bike thievery in the city drops like a stone, and helmet use goes WAY up, both at once.

Thoughts?