🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <485l3f$j5h@nnrp.cs.ubc.ca>,
Geoff Guenther <guenther@cs.ubc.ca> wrote:

>Yes, perhaps all motorists should be forced to wear helmets, but what
>difference does that make to cycling and helmet laws?  
>
>None.

It makes quite a lot of difference, because it exposes the motivations
of those who are implementing the laws. Those I have heard from
who support the law claim that they support it because they wish
to reduce injuries and cut down medical costs. However, the fact
that few of these people are cyclists, and that the vast majority
of these people do not support manditory helmet laws for those in
motor vehicles, despite the fact that such laws would be several
orders of magnitude more effective at reducing injuries and cutting
down medical costs, shows that these people must have some other
motivation. I suspect the motivation is that it makes them feel
better because they feel they've done something useful. The
inconvenience of wearing a helmet doesn't bother them, because it
doesn't affect them.

>The fact that there are more pressing matters which
>the government ought to be looking at as well does not preclude the
>fact that perhaps they should also be looking at some less important
>issue.

Indeed it does. Would you stand for a government that, for example,
was busy debating whether or not some clean-air laws were to become
effective in five or seven years if Vancouver's system for purifying
drinking water was currently failing and complete failure was
expected within a year?

Governments always have more issues to look at than time available
to look at them. A responsible government looks at more important
issues before less important. A responsible government will take
action to prevent hundreds of deaths each year before it will take
action to prevent a dozen.

>For the record:  I do know people who say they will quit cycling when
>the new helmet laws come into effect.  They may only be pleasure
>cyclists, but we may end up seeing a reduction in the size of the
>cycling community come next September.

The irony of this is that in the long term this measure will likely
cause a greater overall reduction in health and cost our medical
system more. There are a fair number of people out there for whom
cycling is one of their major sources of exercise, but inadvertently,
because they don't cycle for exercise, they cycle for transportation.
If they switch to motor vehicles for those short trips which they
would otherwise have done by bicycle, they will be damaging their
own health and further damaging the environment as well.

cjs
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Curt Sampson    curt@portal.ca		Info at http://www.portal.ca/
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