Sample conversation at the traffic lights this morning:
Him: So you don't think the rules apply to you then?
Me: Excuse me?
Him: No helmet. Where's your helmet?
Me: You a policeman, are you?
Him: The rules are there for a reason.
Me: And yet, per kilometre travelled, there are more head injuries from walking and driving than there are on a bicycle. Does that give you a reason to wear a helmet then?
Him: The rules apply to everyone.
Me: But do you only do things because the rules tell you to?
[The lights change. Exeunt.]
12 comments:
Meanwhile, the war on savers continues (RBNZ cuts the OCR again).
But everyone like s following all the Reserve Bank's rulings. They know best. They only make them up for our own good, you know.
Have this same conversation about once ever six weeks with an old guy in the park, dogs on leashes only, where I let our little toy dog run free.
Yet if you were in an accident & required taxpayer healthcare as a consequence of not wearing a helmet, it would be provided no questions asked. Stupid hypocritical cunt.
Bob that's a good reason to make health care user pays, is it not?
Sure. But until that happens libertarians who don't want to wear a helmet should wear a vest with instructions not to receive medical treatment without being billed first.
Bob
What ever point or argument you had you lost the moment you used the English language to insult like a socialist instead of a reasoned discussion. Like one that shouts the moment you do you lose.
You lost your argument the moment you inferred that only socialists use insults. You're another fatuous cunt.
Well that escalated quickly.
What bothers me the most is that skateboarders aren't also required to wear a helmet. Especially here in hilly Dunedin, it makes no sense.
"per kilometre travelled, there are more head injuries from walking and driving than there are on a bicycle"
Show us the references for that and I will be really interested in the debate.
Two refs for you, linking to further references:
1. "Over half of all head injuries occur in motor vehicles and more people were hospitalized after walking down the street than riding on a bicycle. Consider another statistic: According to a 2006 French study, pedestrians are 1.4 times more likely to receive a traumatic brain injury than unhelmeted cyclists. We can also approach it from the perspective of injuries per million hours from a 1996 Australian study looking at head injury risk before the beginning of any helmet laws:
"Risk of head injury per million hours travelled
"Cyclist - 0.41
Pedestrian - 0.80
Motor vehicle occupant - 0.46
Motorcyclist - 7.66
"In each of these three examples we see that cyclists are not the group at highest risk for serious head injury.
"Let's be clear. I am NOT trying to say that studies definitively show that cycling is safer than driving or walking. The studies that are out there give us mixed messages about the relative safety of the different modes of transport. What I am saying is that these statistics raise an interesting question: If we're so concerned about head injuries, why aren't we wearing helmets all the time? Why do places that have mandatory helmet laws for cyclists not have them for drivers or pedestrians? The same 1996 Australian study suggests that a mandatory helmet law for motor vehicle occupants could save seventeen times more people from death and serious head injury than a similar law for cyclists.
"Yet, despite the clear threat of fatal head trauma from these other activities, virtually nobody insists that people wear helmets in these situations."
Why it makes sense to bike without a helmet
2. “This evaluation of NZ’s bicycle helmet law finds it has failed in aspects of promoting cycling, safety, health, accident compensation, environmental issues and civil liberties. It is estimated to cost about 53 lives per year in premature deaths and result in thousands of fines plus legal aspects of discrimination in accident compensation cases. Road safety and cyclist’s safety should be improved by coherent policies, which support health, the environment, and without the legal requirement to wear a helmet.”
Evaluation of New Zealand’s bicycle helmet law – Colin Clarke, NZMJ
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