Question:
About automobiles, even with airbags etc. the leading cause of death for motorists is head injuries. In fact head injuries are the leading cause of death for ALL road users. Pedestrian and auto head injuries far outnumber cyclist injuries every year.

We would have scores less head injuries if we wore helmets all of the time. In the name of safety are you willing to do this? Why, or why not? Do you want someone else deciding which risks you should take? Joe-Motorhead thinks bicycling's dangerous to begin with. Do you want someone deciding which risks your kids should take?

Answer: So not only are child cyclists only 11% of total road deaths, even before the helmet laws, the proportions of child cyclists dying of head injury are no different to those of car occupant or pedestrian fatalities. Deaths from head injury child under 13 were 7.4 times more common from car or pedestrian accidents than cycling accidents. I'll leave you to decide whether helmets for children on bikes or in cars would be more effective. Most of the children in cars would have been wearing seatbelts or child restraints.

If you look total numbers of head injuries, then figures for Western Australia (WA) showed cycling accounted for 3.1% of total head injuries and 6% of head injuries in children - hardly a leading cause of head injury!!!

I have to point out that 1992 was just after the helmet laws in WA, but an analysis of emergency room data on cycling accidents in Victoria showed 10.9% of child cyling accident victims had head injuries in the year before the law, compared with 10.0% in the 3.5 years afterwards. Therefore the helmet laws have made very little difference to the percentage of child accident victims with head injuries, so the argument for WA in 1992 should still stand.

Wearing rates for cyclists as a whole in Victoria went up from 31% to 75%, so the lack of a large reduction in head injuries was probably due to incorrect wearing and an exaggerated belief in the protection of helmets, rather than disobedience of the law.