BICYCLE HELMET
RESEARCH
FOUNDATION
cyclehelmets.org
Home page
Main topics
News Headlines
Frequently asked Questions
For Policy Makers
Research evidence
Misleading claims
Helmet laws
Analysis
Search Engine
Australia
Canada
New Zealand
UK
USA
Other countries
Full index
Links
BHRF
Policy statement
The Case for Not Wearing a Bike Helmet
Helmets have been mandatory in the pro peloton for well over a decade. Where’s the data that it’s helping?
read more ...
Bicycle Network campaigns for helmet law reform
Australia's Bicycle Network has come out in favour of reforming Australia's mandatory bicycle helmet law.
read more ...
Cycling Tips: Commentary
Commentary: Why I stopped wearing a bike helmet
by Peter Flax
read more ...
Bicycling Magazine
It’s Okay If You Don’t Wear a Bike Helmet
read more ...
Carlton Reid, transport writer
I Do Not Wear A Bicycle Helmet
read more ...
More on Why We Shouldn't Have Mandatory Helmet Laws
Over on VOX, Joseph Stromberg rounds up the studies about bike helmets and concludes that if you want to get more people to ride bikes, then you shoul
read more ...
Give Kids Bikes, Not Helmets
Why helmet giveaways are an act of surrender
read more ...
Enough with the Smashed Watermelons! Helmet Mania Is Scaring Kids Away from Biking
Free Range Kids
read more ...
According to a paper presented at the 2nd Conference of the American Society of Health Economics at Duke University on 24 June 2008 by Christopher Carpenter (University of California, Irvine):
Intended and Unintended Effects of Youth Bicycle Helmet Laws
Over the past 15 years, 21 states have adopted laws requiring youths under a certain age (generally 16) to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle. Previous evaluation research finds that these laws significantly reduced youth bicycling fatalities, and the prevailing view is that fatalities fell because helmet use increased. In this paper we confirm that helmet laws reduced fatalities, but we uncover robust evidence of an alternative and unintended mechanism: helmet laws significantly reduced youth bicycling. We find this result in standard two-way fixed effects models of self-reported cycling behaviors, as well as in augmented triple difference (DDD) models that explicitly account for cycling behaviors of youths just above the helmet law age threshold. The reduction in cycling also obtains using independent samples of parental reports of child bicycling behaviors. Our evidence on the effects of helmet laws on helmet use is mixed, though in all cases we find that previous approaches common in the public health literature dramatically overstate the true effects on helmet use. A full cost-benefit analysis of helmet laws should take into account the previously ignored reductions in youth cycling
Tue 24 Jun 2008