Helmet laws worth revisiting

Wearing a bike helmet while riding has now been compulsory in New Zealand for 24 years.

That’s a generation of people who have been brought up with the habit of wearing a helmet. But the law is not perfect, and it could do with some tweaking rather than a wholesale change.

There are still those who refuse to wear helmets, technically flouting the law, while the enforcement of that law appears to be waning. In 2013-14, some 11,310 fines were issued. In 2016-17, that number had dropped to 4413.

Groups, such as Choice Biking, believe the helmet law puts off a huge number of people cycling.

The counter argument is that helmets save lives and prevent serious injury, which they undoubtedly can do, and that taxpayers will largely pay for any care for people badly harmed in any accident or crash – all because they weren’t wearing a helmet.

That is a valid stance, but to attempt to shut down debate on any potential amendments to the law goes too far.

Laws are not always permanent and they aren’t always perfect. They are a reflection of a certain time and a particular set of circumstances.

The push for making helmets compulsory gained momentum in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Back then roads were not a sharing place, they were the domain of cars and trucks. The idea of a dedicated cycleway would have been laughed at, as was the idea of wearing a giant Stackhatstyle helmet.

People like Palmerston North woman Rebecca Oaten, aka The Helmet Lady, fought long and hard for change. Her son Aaron was paralysed and brain damaged in a fall from his bike after he was struck by a car in 1986. He was not wearing a helmet.

The efforts of Oaten and others were a much-needed catalyst for change, a wake-up call for a complacent society. Any alteration of the law would build on their work, not diminish it.

Over time, perceptions of cycling and the environment for the activity have made an evolutionary leap. We’ll never be the bike-loving Netherlands and we have a long way to go before riding bikes is embedded in our culture. But we can push in that direction.

A minor amendment to the law could exempt areas, rather than who should wear helmets. One example that could be looked at is dedicated cycle trails, river trails, and places where the path or road isn’t shared with cars and other heavy vehicles. You could still make it compulsory for children to wear helmets. If a change in the law did happen it’s not as if people would start throwing away their helmets.

The habit of wearing one is well entrenched and most people would still keep wearing them.

Surely the end game is to encourage more people to ride bikes – the health benefits alone are reason enough. One way to do that is to offer some flexibility and a degree of choice. -Stuff