Page 580 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 19 May 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
incurring a head injury, than bike riding. Without statistical data we cannot know for sure, but it is an intuitive position that I would accept as fairly self-evident.
The main opponents of the Bill, the Cyclists Rights Action Group or CRAG, also argue the question of the equity of introducing compulsory helmet wearing. They claim that they are being picked on as a small minority and that it is pure political cynicism to target a group which has less political clout than either pedestrians or motorists.
Madam Speaker, even if we accepted the premise that bike riding is not more dangerous vis-a-vis head injury than walking or driving - and, from what I have said above, I do not accept that premise - I believe that this argument is also flawed. It is not cynicism but simple commonsense that the Government should seek to ameliorate the head injury statistics wherever it is politically possible to do so. We would never make progress in any direction if governments were unwilling to move in one area because of political opposition in another.
Madam Speaker, CRAG also reject the idea that the proposed legislation is an appropriate way of ensuring that children wear helmets, saying that "protection of children is a parental responsibility". However, the protection of children in many areas is also a community responsibility. Governments are regularly required to intervene to protect children where parental responsibility has proven to be inadequate. In a letter to me on 11 May the president of CRAG pointed out that 41 per cent of cyclists killed in 1988 were under the age of 16. Surely this represents an example of the inadequacy of parental supervision on these occasions.
Another argument put forward is that, while the Government may be acting reasonably as far as the wearing of helmets is concerned when cyclists are on the road, it is not reasonable for cyclists to have to wear them when on arguably less dangerous terrain such as public parks. They also say that there will be problems in enforcing the law and that this will encourage people to be law-breakers. My view on this is that if we accept that government has a responsibility to protect children, and we do, it is important to ask: What is reasonable in the exercise of that protection? In this case I think we need to ask whether or not it is reasonable to assume that we can rely on children to always make a distinction between riding on the road and riding in other public places such as parks. I do not believe that it is reasonable.
There are, in any case, Madam Speaker, other practical difficulties in making a distinction between different public places and attempting to enforce such a distinction in the courts. It could be argued, for example, that, were the Government to legislate for the wearing of helmets only on roadways and were there to be a bike accident in a public park, the Government could be held liable for not extending the same protection to cyclists in parks that it had extended to cyclists on the roads. Whatever one may think about the logic or fairness of such reasoning - and I make no judgment about it one way or the other - the fact is that it is not unusual for the courts to find governments negligent where it is felt that reasonable steps could have been taken to avoid what are judged to be foreseeable threats to public safety. Given that bike riding in parks is not without risk, this could certainly be argued.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .