This site exists because it has to.  My view is that people should be free to choose, based on their own assessment of the evidence, their own cycling, their own area and their own routes.  Others disagree.  They believe that cycling is so dangerous, and helmets so marvellous, that no cyclist – especially no child – should be allowed to ride without one.  They have even drafted a law, which was defeated, which would have made it an offence to allow a child to ride a toy tricycle in a playground without an ANSI approved helmet.

And anybody whose assessment of the risks and benefits is at odds with theirs is not only wrong but should not be legally entitled to that opinion.

They are, in a word, obsessed.  Obsessed with compulsion.

Once upon a time I worked for a man who was disposed to getting fixed ideas.  He was dead set on the idea of automated testing of every item coming off the presses (it was a press moulding company), but my colleague had worked out that by making the mixing process more consistent – at much lower cost – testing could be reduced to sampling a few from each batch.  “Great!” said Harry.  “We’ll get on that next, after automating the testing process”.

So it is with the obsessive-compulsives: they want to start by making everybody wear a helmet.  And stop with that, too.  Forget the causes of collisions, go straight to the helmets.  Forget the fact that head injuries are a minority of cyclist hospital admissions, forget the fact that almost all the serious injuries are the result of being hit by cars, where helmets are irrelevant.  Forget the fact that the countries with the best safety record have no helmet laws and negligible helmet use, and the ones with helmet laws have the worst safety record, not to mention the highest levels of obesity.  The answer is helmets, and if that’s not your answer then you must be asking the wrong question.

According to the obsessive-compulsive view of the world, there is only one significant difference between the cyclists in any of these pictures.

Spoilt Children

The obsessive compulsives have been rebuffed numerous times: a private member’s bill and tabled amendments to the Road Safety Bill in the Lords being the latest examples.  But, like a spoiled child, they are not going to stop complaining until they get what they want.  They have lobbyists working for them, they have persuaded Halfords to support a law (although Halfords have a poor reputation among cyclists they are technically the largest single bicycle retailer in the UK, since most are independent – they also appear to be the UK’s largest retailer of devices designed to allow motorists to speed with impunity); they have persuaded the BMA to change from a policy based on an extensive review of the evidence to one based on dropping melons on the floor and the absurd fiction that helmets prevent 85% of injuries, a statistic so widely criticised that only the ignorant and the mendacious would use it).  It was Lenin who said that a lie told often enough becomes the truth: the skilled and persistent liars in the pro-helmet lobby have succeeded in having the 85% lie accepted as the truth.

And now BeHIT, the shield-bearers for the obsessive compulsive movement, have set up a website called Parents for Helmets, a piece of blatant astroturfing.  They are actively recruiting parents of injured children, not to  help them but to use them to push an agenda.  This shroud-waving is so cynical that I have written it up as a case study: a tale of two children.

Keep off the grass!

BeHIT, the shield-bearers for the obsessive compulsive movement, have a campaign called Parents for Helmets, a piece of blatant astroturfing.  They are actively recruiting parents of injured children, not to  help them but to use them to push an agenda.  This shroud-waving is so cynical that I have written it up as a case study: a tale of two children.

Nanny knows best

The helmet lobby contains a significant number of people who seem obsessed with compulsory use; it’s as if they don’t believe in their ability to sway people with rational argument and reject out of hand every opinion which conflicts with their own.

Oh, wait, that is actually a pretty accurate description of some of them.

Pictured here are Angela Lee of single issue pressure group BHIT (pronounced Be Hit) and Eric Martlew, MP for Carlisle in Cumbria.  As you will probably guess from their less than sylph-like forms, Eric and Angie are not cyclists.  Like many non-cyclists, they view cycling as a dangerous activity – but unlike most they actively promote this falsehood.

Above all, they want cyclists to wear helmets.  Angie has a reasonable reason – she works in a hospital casualty department, interventionist medics are inclined to “injury prevention” activism – but Eric’s reason is a bit more puzzling.  He was once nearly hurt when he came off his bike.  Apparently.  It’s not that there are votes in “think of the children!”, honest.

It doesn’t matter that no helmet law has ever resulted in a measurable reduction in head injury rates – just count the riders who no longer ride as having been saved by the law!

Why are they so dangerous?

On the face of it, it should be easy enough to deal with these people.  After all, there is enough evidence that laws are ineffective, and enough informed debate over the faults with the commonly-cited pro-helmet research that any reasonably balanced assessment will conclude that, whatever your views on helmets, laws are undoubtedly not justified.  But there are some problems here:

• First and foremost, most people are not cyclists.  They don’t care if a helmet law wipes cycling off the map.
• TRL have noted that motorists’ attitudes to cyclists accord with “the psychological targeting of an ‘out’ group”, so there is plenty of reason to suspect that some at least will subconsciously support measures which place the focus on those to whom they know they pose danger.  There is a sense of unease sitting in a metal box and seeing others getting about without polluting the planet.
• “Think of the children!” always sells.  Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, and “think of the children!” is the last refuge of those whose arguments do not stand up to logical analysis.
• The obsessive-compulsives only have to get a “yes” once, whereas those who oppose legislation have to get a “no” every time.  Once a government has adopted a policy or law, political reality makes it impossible for them ever to admit they were wrong; a law, once passed, will never be repealed.

The leading compulsionists are not cyclists.  All politicians care about are votes and “winning” the argument.