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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4679 ..

ATTACHMENT 2

CYCLISTS' RIGHTS ACTION GROUP

President: : W.J. (Bill) Curnow

Hon. Secretary: Janne Crump

27 Araba Street

ARANDA ACT 2614

Tel. 06-2515357

18 October 1996

Mr A. Whitecross MLA

Leader of the Opposition

ACT Legislative Assembly, Fax No: 2050135

Dear Mr Whitecross,

Your letter of 15 October 1996 advised, in reply to mine of 17 May requesting your support for an examination of the helmet wearing law for cyclists, that Labor will not support an enquiry until such time as strong evidence is produced that cycle helmets increase the risk of injury. I provide such evidence herewith.

To my knowledge, the first relevant evidence is a statistical study of 8 million casualties over 15 years in the USA by Rodgers, Journal of product Liability, Vol. 11, pp. 307-317, 1988. He concluded that "there is no evidence that hard shell helmets have reduced the head injury and fatality rate" and "the bicycle-related fatality rate is positively and significantly correlated with increased helmet use." This study was not brought to the attention of legislators when the helmet laws were introduced here.

New South Wales and Victoria

D.L. Robinson, a statistician at the University of New England, has adduced evidence in an article "Head injuries and bicycle helmet laws", published in Accident Analysis and Prevention, July 1996, copy being delivered to you today. For NSW, she found that neither the number of head injuries, nor the number of injuries to other parts of the body, declined as much as the estimated amount of cycling. For Victoria, her Table 5 suggests that, "for the same the same child cycle use as before the law, there would now be no fewer head injuries and more total injuries".

Subjoined hereto is my own analysis of data for NSW, which supports the following appraisal: "Contrary to the general trend to improved road safety, for those still cycling after the law the risk of head injury would seem to have increased by up to 25 per cent and other injury by up to 69 per cent."

ACT

For the ACT, a note left with your staff on 23 April states that cycling on cycle paths declined by 37 per cent on average - see "Bicycling in the ACT - a survey of bicycle riding and helmet wearing in 1992", Project No. 93-4, ACT Department of Urban

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