Vancouver helmet ordinance

Last month, the Vancouver City Council considered a proposed mandatory helmet law for children riding bicycles. On Monday night, the Council will hear testimony on an expanded version of the same law, which would require not just children but people of all ages riding bicycles, skateboards, scooters, in-line skates or roller skates to wear helmets.

If you live or bike in Vancouver, please go and tell the Council what you think of this law. The Council Meeting starts at 7:00 pm at City Hall (210 E 13th St.), and the helmet ordinance is the last item on the agenda. If you wish to testify, especially if you want to talk first, get there before it comes up and fill out a yellow card. Or you can email Mary White, the Council Secretary, your testimony if you can’t make the hearing. You can also email the Mayor and Councilors directly. Remember, be brief and clear, and bring written copies of your testimony to give to the Council.

The Clark County Youth Commission proposed this new law, and the expansion to include adults was suggested by the Vancouver Bicycle Club. There’s no question that both groups are motivated by their concern for the safety of kids and adults riding bikes, and the importance of adults wearing helmets to set a good example for their kids, and we share that concern. Yet while we respect very much the intentions of this proposal, and share their frustration at the unacceptably high number of kids and adults who are hurt riding bicycles every year, the BTA is very worried about the possible secondary effects of a helmet law.

In 2005, Vancouver was honored with a “Bronze” Bicycle Friendly Community designation by the League of American Bicyclists. We fear that the unforeseen consequences of this law could break the city’s momentum, make Vancouver bicyclists less safe, and undo the hard work already done by the city and the VBC to help Vancouver’s citizens choose biking for transportation and for fun. Alternatively, a major bike safety and encouragement program and an evaluation program could be a landmark change for Vancouver, and an example to the nation.

The BTA strongly encourages all adult cyclists to wear helmets, and requires them for children in our youth programs, and we can say with confidence that putting on a helmet makes you safer – and yet we are not confident that passing a mandatory helmet law makes bicyclists, as a group, any safer.

We fear this law will reduce the number of adults and children riding bikes in Vancouver. Around the world, bicyclists’ safety correlates with rates of bicycling – in other words, we have “safety in numbers.” The BTA’s position on any policy that reduces bicycling is that it must have a large positive effect that overpowers the detrimental effects of leaving fewer bicyclists on the roads.

A mandatory helmet ordinance in Vancouver may reduce rates of bicycling. Studies of helmet laws passed in the US only examine changes in the number of bike-related head injuries seen by hospitals after passage of a helmet law; none have looked at concurrent changes in the number of people riding bicycles. Head injuries almost always decrease after passage of a helmet law, which is initially encouraging, but because researchers have not tracked changes in the total number of bicyclists, we can’t know whether the rate of head injury decreased among bicyclists, or whether the number of head injuries only decreased because of an overall decline in bike riding (see this article for background).

One study of a 1990 helmet law passed in Australia did address this question – with disheartening results. The increase in helmet-wearing after passage of the law was significant, but was smaller than the decrease in the number of people riding bikes; in other words, more people were discouraged from cycling than were encouraged to wear helmets. Bike-related head injuries declined after passage of the law, but non-head injuries fell by a similar amount.

Pedestrian and bicyclist safety generally follow similar trends on a given road system, so the Australian researchers looked at changes in pedestrian injury at the time of the law. They found that while deaths and serious injuries to bicyclists fell by 1.7% over four years, in the same period the rate for pedestrians fell by 2.5%, calling into question whether the helmet law could be credited with this change in bicyclists’ safety.

Would the same thing happen in the United States? There are no localized studies to enlighten us, but a national study of head injuries and helmet wearing by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission found that head injuries per cyclist increased by 51% from 1991 to 2001, even as helmet wearing became widespread over the same period.

We are concerned about the reallocation of police resources away from other priorities. Laws aren’t free, and enforcing this law will take police time. Unless new money is made available to the Vancouver Police, the department will need to reallocate resources away from other priorities to enforce the helmet law. If the police move away from enforcement against non-traffic infractions, perhaps the effect on road safety will be minimal; but if time currently spent ticketing crash-causing bicyclist behaviors (like red-light running and riding at night without lights) or crash-causing motorist behaviors (like speeding and not yielding to bicyclists in bike lanes) is now spent ticketing cyclists for not wearing helmets, will that improve or degrade bicyclists’ safety on the roads?

There is no question that wearing a helmet protects one’s head in the case of a crash – but there are many crashes in which a helmet doesn’t save a life, a limb, or a terrible injury. Preventing those crashes from happening in the first place would likely have a bigger safety impact on all bicyclists than a helmet law, and would have the added positive effect of making bicycling attractive to more people.

If the Council does not expect the police to allocate time to enforcing this law, but wants to make a strong statement about the importance of helmets, we believe an ordinance to that effect that also designates funds for getting that message out to bicyclists (and their parents) would be a better way to increase helmet use and bike safety in Vancouver.

If passed, this law should be part of a comprehensive bike safety and encouragement package for Vancouver. We are coming to grips with the reality of climate change; oil is more expensive every year; car crashes are the leading cause of death in the United States for everyone aged 3 to 33; Clark County and the Portland region are choked by traffic; children are suffering more than ever before from obesity and asthma due to inactivity and air pollution. This is not a good time to discourage bicycling.

If the Council is determined to pass a mandatory helmet law, we hope it will be part of a citywide movement to make bicyclists safer, more comfortable, well respected and more numerous every year. Vancouver’s neighbor to the south, the City of Portland, has had great success in increasing bicycling while decreasing injury rates by providing places where bicyclists can ride slowly, comfortably, and away from cars.

A comprehensive bicycle program for Vancouver that included a helmet law could set a great example for other US communities. Such an effort should include:

We have no doubt that this mandatory helmet law is proposed and supported with all of the best intentions and a great deal of caring and concern for our most vulnerable roadway users. We know the Vancouver City Council wants to encourage bicycle safety as well as helmet wearing, and that the Mayor, in particular, is an enthusiastic cyclist who wants to take Vancouver from “Bronze” to “Silver,” and maybe, one day, to “Gold.” We want that too – so we’re asking the Council to take this proposal and turn it into an inspiring bike safety package we can all get behind.