Cycle Helmets: "Liberty or death; don't tread on me"

The journal of medical ethics has published a report on cycle helmets. The abstract is below, for convenience:

"Many jurisdictions require cyclists to wear bicycle helmets. The UK is currently not one of these. However, an increasing number of interest groups, including the British Medical Association, want to change the status quo. They argue that mandatory cycle helmet laws will reduce the incidence of head injuries and that this will be both good for cyclists (because they will suffer fewer head injuries) and good for society (because the burden of having to treat cyclists suffering from head injuries will be reduced). In this paper we argue against this position. We suggest that cycle helmets may not be especially effective in reducing head injuries and we suggest that the imposition of such a restrictive law would violate people's freedom and reduce their autonomy. We also argue that those who accept such a restrictive law would be committed to supporting further legislation which would force many other groups – including pedestrians – to take fewer risks with their health. We conclude that cycle helmet legislation should not be enacted in the UK unless, perhaps, it is restricted to children."

The ethical issues for me are:

1) Should people be compelled to take steps to improve their own safety, and to what extent?
2) If the answer to (1) is yes, then surely this must be applied  to all - in this context, pedestrians and car occupants as well as cyclists.

The technical issue remains whether cycle helmets are in fact a safety aid. It is desperately counterintuitive to say otherwise, but:

(a) There is such a thing as risk compensation: The safer you feel the more risk you are likely to take - you have (it is argued) a 'risk barometer'.

(b) A helmet's role in any neck injury could be that of making it worse. It is bigger than your head and therefore more likely to be hit and a loger lever in the twist.

And finally, we know that helmet compulsion leads to less cycling - a disbenefit that is lilely to outweigh any benefits of helmet wearing.

Institute of Advanced Motorists Cycle Helmet Poll

http://www.iam.org.uk/iam_polls/

Poll closes on 17 April. There is a reasonable range of questions, and not too many, and the chance to comment as free text. This is your chance to plug road danger reduction and point out that the benefits of helmets accrue to pedestrians and car occupants just as much as cyclists.

I am definitely against cycle helmet compulsion, and a cycle helmet sceptic in that I haven't been convinced that the benefits / advantages of cycle helmets outweigh the disbenefits / disadvantages, but this does not mean that helmets don't have benefits. If they do have benefits, and if compulsion will help realise them, then why should pedestrians and car occupants not be compelled to wear them too?

Helsinki cycling study

http://www.bikexprt.com/research/pasanen/index.htm

The author comes down in favour of helmet compulsion where there is a low cycling rate anyway, and against the (segregated) cycle tracks that are a feature of many continental cities and often held up as best practice.

He says that cyclists are better off in mixed traffic than on (segregated) tracks.