- Having a five-point harness for every car is compulsory (alright, I'll admit this is somewhat overkill and rhetorical)
- Cars are certified yearly as being road safe (not the case in all states in the US, but I think this is the case in the EU)
- Drunk driving has extremely severe penalties (10+ years in prison) beginning with the first offence.
The motorist is driving a much more dangerous vehicle capable of causing serious injuries to themselves and other parties. Let us all behave in a responsible manner.
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/S-F-attorney-who-killed-...
/wears a helmet when cycling.
Maybe you haven't noticed, but at some point, a meaner nastier criminal justice system does little or no additional good at the expense of harming innocent people. That point's long been passed with DUI laws, and people still do it.
If a person can't be trusted to put either the bottle or the keys down, then they need to be restrained. I'd rather find a cheaper way than prison, but it's insanity that you can drive drunk and receive a punishment that serves as almost no disincentive to continue to do it.
Agree, and I think a similar approach should be followed regarding civil penalties for not riding your bike with a helmet. $5 fine – okay, I'll take it. $100? That's a quarter or half of what my bike costs.
Yes, at the time of manufacture. How about maintenance? If your car has severe mechanical problems, you are endangering everyone around you (and of course yourself as well).
> I don't think many people die in cars today in 10 mph wrecks
Not that many cars go 10mph. Why should it be some kind of benchmark for car safety? Freeway speed limits are usually between 55 and 70mph, and are violated with a level of casualness that varies by state.
If you kill somebody when you're behind the wheel, and you were sober?
You'll usually get dinged with "failure to yield", which basically means "there was an accident and it was your fault because your car was where it was when it had no right to be". Like turning when the intersection isn't clear or something.
That comes with a $500 fine. A $500 for taking a life by negligence.
Yeah, besides airbags and seat-belts, we collectively don't give a crap about vehicular safety.
One thing that is interesting is that compulsory wearing of helmets has not decreased fatalities to any great extent. But if I ever have an accident I am sure glad that I wear one.
Yes, this sounds pretty good. I think the situation on car safety is much better in the EU and other countries compared to the US.
> But if I ever have an accident I am sure glad that I wear one.
As will I. I do wear a bike helmet a lot. What pisses me off is that I can be fined $100+ for not wearing it when the guy next to me with a car that seems to be running on coal and two tires with questionable pressure goes scot free.
I don't think that's the point: I don't think most bike fatalities are from the kinds of injuries that helmets mitigate. I think the point of helmets is reducing the incidence and severity of a certain class of non-fatal injuries that are experienced without them.
First, Amsterdam had similar problems to the US in the post-war era until the 1970s. That is, the cities were being rebuilt for cars, bicycling infrastructure became worse, and traffic deaths rose. The city had to be re-engineered to get where it is now. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=3&v=XuBdf9jYj7o for a video.
Second, and concerning topology, look to Trondheim, Norway as an example of a bike-friendly city with hills. And from what I've read, Portland, Oregon is also pretty bike friendly, with similar topology to Seattle. So, why can't Seattle be more like Portland in this respect?
I'm not sure what this means... are you talking I5 and 99 ? There are underpasses and overpasses for those.
Montreal has hellish weather, mountains (it's literally the name of the city) and expressways.
They manage to have fantastic cycling as well.
Helmet laws make the general public less likely to cycle, and as many would then drive instead, thus have an overall negative effect on public health.
I think my favorite stupid argument though is that it increases the size of the rider's head, which increases the likelihood of ground collision in an accident. As though it's so easy to stop yourself from falling as long as there aren't two inches of material strapped on your noggin.
The basic fact is that if you do have a head injury on a bike, a helmet is likely to reduce the severity of it. Everything else is an unquantifiable argument about human behavior.
The main negative effect of helmet laws that I've seen cited is that they reduce the popularity of cycling as a transportation mode, and that can have extremely negative effects on public health (due to increased driving, reduced physical activity, and indirectly as a general damper on pro-cycling sentiment and infrastructure changes).
[I think Australia's helmet law is one of the main examples people talk about.]
In any case, the helmet discussion is a silly one. You wouldn't argue that the victims in a school shooting should have been wearing bullet-proof vests. I mean, I'm sure there are studies on the remarkable efficacy of bullet-proof vests when faced with bullet impact, and clearly everyone of us should wear one. But we don't, because we fully understand that a much more sane course of action is to make sure there are no high-powered bullets hitting school kids.
Similarly, when faced with the impact of a 2 ton car at speed into squishy flesh it is a hopeless task to effectively diminish the forces involved with a piece of styrofoam. The clear factor in traffic mortality is the presence of machines with enough power to satisfy the electricity demands of a suburb street. There is no solution that doesn't involve eliminating the source of danger.
That said, I wouldn't go near a motorcycle without a helmet. You're going to fuck up and hit your head eventually.
Are you using New Zealand as an example of how to effectively enable cycling? Are we talking about New Zealand the island east of Australia, or another one?
NZ isn't an island (chain) to the east of Australia, Australia is a continent to the west of New Zealand :P
Same with seatbelts, frankly.
As a cyclist myself, I ride with or without helmet based on conditions. On my road bike or mountain bike? Helmet, always - I've had enough concussions to know I don't want another. My cruiser - usually no helmet, but it's use is almost exclusively below 10mph and on a bike trail, not roads.
Much healthier to be able to be assertive and occasionally accelerate away.
Or how about you stop using the law (violence) to protect people from themselves.
EDIT: Laws like this are also a great excuse for police to harass people. We don't need more of these.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/29/business/a-bicycling-myste...
> The number of head injuries has increased 10 percent since 1991, even as bicycle helmet use has risen sharply, according to figures compiled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. But given that ridership has declined over the same period, the rate of head injuries per active cyclist has increased 51 percent just as bicycle helmets have become widespread.
...
> Many specialists in risk analysis argue that something else is in play. They believe that the increased use of bike helmets may have had an unintended consequence: riders may feel an inflated sense of security and take more risks.
Cars are more reckless around bicyclists and drive closer to them when they see they are wearing a helmet:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10bike.html
We also see here that bicycles are the lowest risk of head injury while traveling streets and sidewalks:
http://www.howiechong.com/journal/2014/2/bike-helmets
Turns out you're much more likely to suffer a head injury in a car, or walking than on a bicycle. Should helmets be mandated for driving and walking? Evidence suggests it would make more sense for those activities.
Wearing helmets increases the likelihood of neck injuries: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457500...
Feds had to stop claiming bike helmets prevent 85% of head injuries (a commonly cited statistic) after their statistical analysis was found to be bogus:
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19036/feds-will-sto...
