How much safer do helmet laws really make us? Its a pretty simply question; the answer to which one would hope would form the basis of the government’s justification for the law in the first place. Yet in all the responses to ours and our reader’s letters, state governments have as yet been unable to answer this simple question.

The graph below shows the cumulative safety improvement of various transport modes in Australia over the period 1989-2010. The data comes from the Australian Fatal Road Crash Database and is normalised at 1991, the year helmet laws were introduced.

Without looking at the legend, see if you can tell which line represents cycling fatalities. Pretty tough isn’t it – click on the graph to see one with a legend.

The government claims that since the introduction of mandatory helmet laws, the number of cycling fatalities has decreased.  And they are absolutely correct – they’ve gone from over 50 in 1991 to under 40 in the last few years.  Yet this period has also been accompanied by a significant reduction in cycling numbers since the introduction of those laws.

How much of the fatality reduction has come from helmet efficacy and how much from fewer people cycling? Its hard to tell exactly because only very limited exposure data is kept for cycling in Australia (however the RTA, VicRoads and WA Transport all reported 30-40% reductions in cycling immediately after the introduction of helmet laws).

But while the data here doesn’t support any claim about cycling levels or safety-in-numbers, it does allow us to refute the claim that helmet laws make cycling safer.

To put it simply, if helmet laws had any impact on cyclist safety, then we would expect to see a reduction in head injuries and fatalities of cyclists, relative to other transport modes. Clearly, this is not the case.  It may well be the case that some other factor occurred at the exact same time as helmet laws to make cycling more dangerous at the exact same amount that helmets made it safer, but without any evidence of this mystery factor, the official data from the Department of Infrastructure directly contradicts state government claims about helmet law efficacy.

What do you think? Is the government justified in mandating helmet laws when no evidence from the last 20 years supports the claim the helmet laws make cycling safer?  Why don’t you tell you local MP what you think.

  • Ateam

    helmet = safer. no doubt. I have been cycling for 6 months and come off by bike twice, both times the helmet has come off beaten up and my head in pretty good shape – pity i wasn’t wearing any protection on my shoulders…

    • http://dave.kinkead.com.au Dave Kinkead

      @ateam do you mean ‘helmet = always safer’ or ‘helmet = sometimes safer’. I agree with the last but not with the first. As proof, just look at Australian fatality data: the majority of cyclists killed were wearing a helmet, which evidently did nothing to help in their very unfortunate cases (for those who survived, a helmet may well have made a difference).

      The real question here is does ‘helmet = sometimes safer’ justify forcing all cyclists to wear one. ‘Helmet = sometimes safer’ for motorists as well so shouldn’t they have to wear one if cyclists do?

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  • Dougfacio

    I agree the helmet law is excessive intrususion into our basic liberties.  Look at how the State geos to war and makes its citizens who join the military Kill, this afar more inhuman and unsafe form of conuct dont you think then a law legislating us to wear a helmet as if were were sheep..  Of course a GOVT has no right to mandate this law, yet anglosaxons feel a divine rverence to authority, look at our history.. and violence..

  • Sanevoice

    This graph is useless without supporting data. The %age reduction p.a. means nothing if you don’t control for the baseline number of riders, bicycle miles travelled. It’s also not clear, though I guess one may assume that you’re talking about % annual change in the number of fatalities? If so, then the compounded change is a large reduction in fatalities against a dramatic increase in rider numbers? Unless I’m reading it wrong, this graph doesn’t support your argument at all.

    • http://dave.kinkead.com.au Dave Kinkead

      The data source is provide in the text http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/roads/safety/road_fatality_statistics/fatal_road_crash_database.aspx 

      The point you make about exposure is correct but exposure is not necessary in this case to refute the claim that helmet laws have made cycling safer.  If helmet laws worked, we would expect to see a greater improvement in cycling fatalities vs the improvement for non-helmeted options but as you can see, that is not the point.  Improvements in cycling safety since 1991 have been from exogenous causes common to all transport modes (changes to 50kph, stricter drink driving laws etc).

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  • http://www.facebook.com/joel.coulson Joel Coulson

    Helmets help prevent skull fractures, that much is proven by a number of studies. So it should really be pretty obvious that a helmet is going to reduce the risk of a fatality in an accident where your strikes the ground. Why would you want to needless put yourself at additional risk when there was a protective device out there that could make your ride safer?

    On another note, how do you chaps feel about wearing seat belts or driving cars with airbags? Are they also a ridiculous impingement into your god given liberties?