Minister rejects NSC helmet law call

national | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Tuesday June 08, 2004 11:50

by Shane Foran - Irish Cycling Campaign

galwaycyclist at yahoo dot co dot uk

Dublin CC: http://www.connect.ie/dcc, Galway CC: http://www.eirbyte.com/gcc, Cork CC:http://indigo.ie/~woz/ccc

087 9935993

Minister of State has stated categorically that the Government has no plans for a compulsory cycle helmet law, effectively rejecting recent calls for such a law from the National Safety Council. Cycle Campaigners are to step up their calls for the retraction of the discredited claims being made by the NSC and the dismissal of the NSC staff involved.

Dr. Jim McDaid, Minister of State at the Department of Transport has stated categorically that the Government has no plans for a compulsory cycle helmet law, effectively rejecting recent calls for such a law from the National Safety Council.

The minister’s statement came in reply to a parliamentary question by Mr. Ciaran Cuffe T.D. Irish Cycling Activists reacted furiously when, NSC Chairman Mr. Eddie Shaw and Chief Executive Mr. Pat Costello recently organised a media event where they called for the imposition of cycle helmet laws such as those seen in Australia, particularly for children. No representatives of Irish cycling bodies were consulted on this proposal and no cycling representatives were invited to the media event. It subsequently transpired that the NSC board neither considered, nor approved, any such proposal at their meeting the week before. Cyclists subsequently held a protest outside the Department of Transport on Friday 28th of May, to call for the dismissal of the NSC staff involved.

The Australian helmet law is widely viewed as a disaster and is as a classic example of self-defeating and failed legislation. The main effect of the Australian helmet laws was to put many people off cycling for no demonstrable safety benefit. Indeed, detailed analysis of the Australian data indicates that the helmet laws resulted in increased risk of accident and injury for cyclists. Similar indications have been reported for New Zealand and Canada. Within days of the NSC claims being released, scientific rebuttals were made available by the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation, an international coalition of cycling safety experts. The relevance and/or claims for every one of the NSC's supporting documents has been discredited on detailed scientific grounds. Link: http://www.cyclehelmets.org/mainframes.html#1092.html.

Despite this, as of Friday 4th June, no apology or retraction has been issued by the NSC. Irish Cycle Campaigners are to step up their calls for the retraction of the discredited claims being made by the NSC and the dismissal of the NSC staff involved.

David Maher (086) 347 5357 PRO of the Irish Cycling Campaign (Dublin)
Shane Foran 087 9935993 PRO of the Irish Cycling Campaign (Galway)
Darren McAdam-O’Connell 021 4899970 PRO of the Irish Cycling Campaign (Cork)

The Cyclists’ Experience of the Australian Helmet Laws
http://www.eirbyte.com/gcc/submission/oz_experience.html

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Comments (5 of 5)

Deaths per population

by Phuq Hedd

Tue Jun 08, 2004 23:01

"John, Dunaree". The number of people cycling has been shown to have decreased, so there would obviously be lower levels of injury and death. Pretty obvious eh?

"so far the only established effect on cyclist numbers has been a decrease of 36% in the number of cyclists crossing the inner canal cordon." GCC - 2002/2003 news. http://www.eirbyte.com/gcc/news3.html

If we can extrapolate that decrease in the number of people that ride a bicycle to a national level then we'd expect (without any other influences) a 1/3 decrease:

Year...|...# Cyclists...|...# Pedestrians...|
------------------------------------------
1996...|......22............|...........115...............|
1998...|......14............|...........114...............|
2002...|......14............|...........86.................|
------------------------------------------

If the effect started to manifest itself in 1998.

The fact that the actual number of fatalities is _higher_ actually bolsters the argument being made by the GCC. Thanks for bringing this up.

Poll in Irish Times.

Tue Jun 08, 2004 22:44

Personally I'm in favour of helmets. The main beneficiaries of the increased protection as the result of compulsory usage (by all people at all time) would be motorists and pedestrians. I can't see why anyone would want to deny motorists the protection of compulsory helmets when they obviously do such good for cyclists.

Cigarettes kill you!!!

by reminding everyone how moronic they are.

Tue Jun 08, 2004 20:23

Migrants come here to work in the strongest economy in the world RA RA RA, you know the one that made all the houses really expensive yet cant persuade any Irish people to come home.

Let's let them cycle on around the European city with the fewest cycle lanes and the poorest transport infrastructure without helmets, they'0l think we're not a nanny state, and then here's what we'll do-
Bertie- write a letter to all the diplomats, tell them to distribute photos of Critical Mass to their pals, with the order "run this person over".
It's ok, they're rich foreigners (with condoms and diplomatic immunity) and they wont get arrested. Bertie, Bertie, are you listening? What are you doing with that Ouija board?

Blame the victim

by kevin kelly

Tue Jun 08, 2004 20:22

kplcards at yahoo dot com

Bicycles don’t kill - automobiles kill.

The so called national safety council don’t give a F*** for road safety , they never have .

In most places in Ireland it is now to dangerous to let your kids out in a public place for fear of them being killed , many country roads are to dangerous to risk walking on , few people will now risk cycling and I don’t blame them , automobiles poison more people to death then they crush to death - and the national "safety" council recommend increased speed limits and launch sports cars with top speeds of 135 mph at there press conferences .

In 1995, according to the WHO statistics, there were two million traffic accidents resulting in 120,000 deaths and 2.5 million injured people in the whole European region.

You can tell if someone is lying by judging there actions against there words , the council are lying - they have done nothing to increase safety and have put up a smoke screen of PR to prevent any real action being taken and have attempted to shift blame to victims .

"Pay attention or pay the price" get in the way of my car and I have a right to kill you ...

Helmets for cyclists

by John

Tue Jun 08, 2004 19:23

Nobody should be fooled by any research done by the Galway Cycling Campaign.They
are always wrong. In Oct 1998 they wrote the following to Minister Bobby Molloy as part of
their campaign against increased use of seat-belts by drivers. And I quote:

"Using the Irish road death figures from 1996
as a starting point, then on a yearly basis at
least 5 additional cyclist fatalities will occur
and there will be at least 10 additional
pedestrian deaths (as a result of increased
seatbelt usage by drivers). And, if a simpler
Newfoundland type accident pattern were to
occur in Ireland there would be of the order
of 44 additional deaths."

So what happened?

The following are the figures for the number of
cyclists and number of pedestrians killed on Irish roads 1n 1996, 1998 and 2000:

Cyclists Pedestrians

1996 22 115
1998 21 114
2002 18 86

In other words, the Galway Cycling Campaign got it totally wrong. And they are wrong again
about helmets for cyclists. Everyone interested
in saving lives should support the NSC.

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Minister rejects NSC helmet law call

Comments (5 of 5)