(Photos: Pip Abbott, Nepal)
In my opinion when we look into the claims made by bicycle helmet proponents, it is clear those
claims have been overstated.
The emotional attachments Australian governments have to helmets are principally the upshot of over-investment in tax-payer funded repetitivie studies.
By insisting helmet laws are matters of necessity and public safety, helmet proponents have misled all of us, politicians included. But as
less and less Australians take up driving, and more and more take up cycling, the
need for helmet laws today is being questioned around Australia.
Notwithstanding the actual situation, helmet proponents still submit we need helmet laws to protect us, and still submit they need more money for their repetitive studies to prove their pre-ordered conclusions (good science starts with conclusions, right?!).
In behaviour somewhat analagous to the
power industry, it appears to me that bicycle helmet law researchers are also 'gold-plating' by continuing to access research grants for 'same-old, same-old' projects arguably not required after 20 years of 'same-old, same-old' projects.
Surely at some stage a politician somewhere in Australia is going to realise the unassailabe fact that bicycle helmet laws do not provide the protection stated in helmet law represenations despite
last ditch attempts to maintain they're still justified...
- they're not.
No, upon my reading of the facts, they're a costly tax-payer funded exercise, pedalling academic tenure and political regulation, simultaeously waving flags for dubious marketing spin.
