Next time I get booked (if I ever get booked again because no kidding I'm starting to feel there's an UNWANTED poster of me in NSW police stations!), I'm ditching 'necessity' and am going to try my luck with 'self-defence.'
All things considered, I genuinely believe that the NSW government's regulation 256 imperils me by compelling me to wear a helmet. That helmets do 'anything' protective apart from protecting you from fines is 'anything' but conclusive , and certain traffic incidents reveal that helmeted cyclists die from closed head injuries (ie no fracture to their skulls but damage within their brains including diffuse axonal injury). Governments would be well aware that research literature describes diffuse axonal injury (DAI) as the commonest cause of death from head injury in road accidents and acknowledges DAI as the cause of chronic intellectual impairment.
So in the (unlikely) event that I do get booked again, I intend to raise section 418 of the Crimes Act and see how I go - and yes I know, I know, before you all start quoting Burgess & Saunders to me, I'm well aware that the nexus may be deemed not close enough...but let's just see...because after all we all know that the Crown bears the onus of proving that I did not act in self-defence rather than me actually having to prove that I did...
...and from what I can gather, they would have to establish that I did not believe on reasonable grounds that it was necessary in self-defence to ride a bicycle without a helmet. So they can either establish that:
(1) I had no such belief
or
(2) there were no reasonable grounds for my belief.
If they end up failing to establish (1) or (2), I would then be entitled to be acquitted of any would-be-future bicycle helmet crime charges - YAY...in anticipation...
...although here in Australia pigs will be flying before that ever happens!
Perhaps if you do you should quote helmet testing experts...
ReplyDelete"In other legal cases with which I have been involved, where a cyclist has been in collision with a motorised vehicle, the impact energy potentials generated were of a level which outstripped those we use to certify Grand Prix drivers helmets. In some accidents at even moderate motor vehicle speeds, energy potential levels in hundreds of joules were present."
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1081.html
Wow! that's amaing - thank you for that!
ReplyDeleteExcellent idea Sue!! All your legal training is paying off! :-)
ReplyDeleteInteresting to see the cyclehelmets comments about the joule rating of bike hats . . . very interseting I shall point more people to there when they argue the panacea of bike hats to head trauma
Keep up the good work!
Jamie :-)