The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.-- Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green
I've got my helmet on
Nothing can do me wrong-- The Bobs
Perhaps as a defense against automobile culture or in obedience to a more deep seated consumer culture, those of us who continue to ride no longer get on a bike just to go where we are going, or even just for the simple pleasure of taking a look at what's around the corner.When I leave the house on my bike, I'm not just going for a spin, and I've usually spent 20 minutes setting up and getting myself appropriately attired for my training ride. I'm not a kid on a bike living out a protracted youth, but an aging weekend warrior, preparing myself for battle in an obsessive-compulsive ritual. Those who commute, don't simply get on a simple bicycle and ride to work in their "street" clothes (except for Jeff Davis), as countless people do in other countries . . .
[Editorial note: . . . but I still do! :-)]
-- Tony de Jong, Alberta Bicycle Ass'n, 1999
Basic situation: in an MHL town, county, province, park, or state, you can get a hefty ticket if the cops catch you riding a bike with your noggin bare, hatted, ski-masked, or anything but helmeted.
The URLs on this page and the main Bike Page will lead you to more statistics, counter-statistics, sermons, flames, etc. than you will have the patience to wade through. I've collected a few relevant soundbites if you prefer the condensed edition :-)
What follows is my personal take on the issue, or rather the related issues that it raises; this is not to be construed as an endorsement or condemnation of helmet wearing per se, but a meditation on what the Helmet Wars mean, what all this fuss tells me about the world I'm living in. In fact, this isn't even an essay, more like a series of related rambles, musings, and the occasional rant.
I'll admit right up front that I'm not in favour of MHL. So you pro-helmet fanatics can start gnashing your teeth already :-) I sincerely doubt that helmet wearing has harmed very many people, apart from a tiny handful of unfortunate schoolchildren whose legally mandated helmets have strangled them. In fact, helmeting may be the sensible choice for some riders (especially the more extreme downhill MTB-ers). However, I think the decision to helm or not to helm should be a personal one; "nanny laws" do bother me, and so does the general climate of US politics and popular opinion regarding bikes. I think the MHL syndrome is more indicative of social prejudices and spin control than of genuine attestable risk and prevention.
This essay is long and rambling, so I've tried to chop it into sections more or less by theme:
Our correspondent reports on the Helmet Wars
Let's see if I can sum up the arguments on each side, without
being grossly unfair. The pro-helmet lobby in the US wants
MHL for all cyclists. Their reasoning is as follows:
The opposition point of view is varied.
My own viewpoint is somewhat askew from either of the extreme
camps; though I share the skepticism and the distaste for nanny-laws
expressed by the MHL opposition, I wouldn't accuse MHL proponents
as being outriders of the new Nazi State either. (The new Corporate
HMO State maybe, but I doubt goose-stepping is on the agenda;
you might sprain something doing that.) Some are quite sincere persons,
who imho have an exaggerated perception of the riskiness of cycling.
Those who assert that MHLs are some kind of conspiracy to pave the
way for centralized thought control are also guilty of exaggeration.
I do think one can make a case for MHLs as a symptom or indicator
of the consumer/corporate/car culture, a troubling sign of the
normalization of the excessive and damaging use of cars
and the marginalization and stigmatization of
cycling and other non-automotive means of getting around.
We might also see them as an indicator (not a conspiracy,
please) that controlling individuals is an easier
target than challenging privileged institutions
In fact, I'm more interested
in MHL as a symptom than as an absolute phenomenon. So far, my
own state of CA has not tried to impose all-age helmet law.
I have heard it said that the city of San Francisco has one,
but cannot confirm this; those who live there don't seem to
know about it, anyway. Chico and Bidwell Park have
all-ages MHL, but I am unlikely to bike through either of
those places anyway. So it's still a philosophical
issue for me.
And what a fascinating philosophical issue!
Why is it that in some countries in Europe where cycling is
far more universal a transport
mode than in the US, hardly anyone wears a helmet yet bike
accident casualties are remarkably low? Why is it that in the
US, when one raises the subject of bicycle safety, there is only
one popular answer: Bike Helmets? How has the bike safety issue
in the US been turned away from Livable Cities, traffic calming,
reduction of auto use, etc. -- and solely focussed on plastic hats?
Why are bike injuries and fatalities so heavily publicized, whereas
fatalities from other traffic-related causes are often hardly
discussed at all? Why is bike riding being singled out as
a Traffic Safety Issue?
And why, in allegedly liberty-loving America, where handguns
are easily available, gun control is repeatedly defeated,
universal healthcare is barely on the political radar, and
Less Government is the motto of the day, is there such popular
support for Big Brother helmet laws? It just don't seem Amurrican,
nohow.
So who am I to talk about these things?
Well, for a start, I ride a bike every single day. And I have
never worn a helmet except when a bike shop made me wear one
to take a test ride on one of their bikes.
I have ridden a bike, on a regular commute/shopping
basis (not just for recreation) in the USA for over 20 years. In
that time I have had not one serious accident, despite putting several
thousand miles on various bikes. I also never had a serious accident
in any car I ever drove. Therefore, my perspective is that of a
person who either has good judgment or good luck (maybe both).
It's true that cars have tried to kill me :-) but I always
assume that all people in cars are Mafia hit-persons hired to
eradicate me, so I'm expecting it. Maybe that's why they failed.
Or maybe my time as a motorcyclist sharpened my reflexes and
sense of self-preservation; the stakes are higher when the bike
weighs 500 lbs and travels at 60+ mph. Who knows? Perhaps it
has something to do with obeying vehicle code, carrying lights
at night, using a rear-view mirror, and similar competent riding
techniques which are almost never mentioned by "bike safety"
programs because they are so busy promoting helmets.
I am also a small-craft sailor (another activity which many
landlubbers would describe as horrifyingly dangerous), and I
appreciate and respect the need for safety equipment on boats.
I comply with Coast Guard regulations. However, note that
the USCG does not mandate that you wear a life vest. It does
mandate that you carry aboard your boat sufficient PFDs (life vests)
in good condition, to equip every person aboard. In other words,
you must offer your crew and passengers the option of
wearing a vest, and you must provide them in case of emergency.
You must not prevent people from having access to safety gear.
But the USCG will not pull you over and ticket you for not
wearing yours. I consider this a very reasonable form
of enforcement; thou shalt not be an irresponsible skipper,
but thou shalt be considered an adult and entitled to make
thine own assessments of conditions, risk, and so forth.
The USCG is not your nanny, and that seems appropriate to me.
Small craft sailing (and recreational boating in general)
are considered dangerous by most people; in a typical year there are
between 800 and 900 fatalities in the US, about comparable to
deaths by aeronautical mishap. Keep those numbers in mind as you read on.
Dangerous as compared to what??
A lot of my friends in college were sincere environmentalists
and radicals of various stripes. Nowadays almost all of them
own shiny new cars. I seem to be the last one carting the
groceries home on a bike. In fact, my friends are driving
their shiny new cars distances of 3 miles and less to get
to their jobs, 2 miles and less to go to the store. They
are not ignorant. They know this is the most polluting
and least fuel-efficient use of an automobile. They know
that traffic is spoiling the coastal town we all love.
They feel the guilt!
But when I ask them why their bikes sit
idle in the garage, almost every one of them will say, "It's
just too scary. I don't feel safe on a bike. Bikes are
dangerous."
Certainly the propaganda campaigns carried out by helmet
law lobbyists have created a widespread public consensus that
bikes are very dangerous. Actual mortality and accident statistics
don't seem to bear this out (more below), but often the propagandists
don't bother with numerical analysis: they go for the gut reaction.
The BHSI (Bike Helmet Safety Institute), a zealous but not
demented helmet advocacy group, has compiled many first-person,
heart-wrenching accounts of bike accidents in which the narrator
inevitably concludes "when I looked at the damage to my helmet
I just knew it had saved my life." The language of these
first-person minatory tales is colourful and scary. You can
see that even a few of these would make a big emotional
impact on the naive reader.
Unfortunately, without analysis
of the helmet damage by a very well-equipped forensic lab, these
assertions are not substantiated. In fact, they are no more
automatically credible than the equally sincere protestations
of those who credit their lucky rabbit's foot, angelic intervention,
prayer, psychic foreknowledge, or other unverifiable causes with their
survival of some traumatic event. The anecdotal testimony of
this extraordinarily accident-prone group of cyclists is no
more conclusive than my own "charmed life" as related above.
I therefore dismiss this type of "Jesus healed me" evidence
and would prefer to stick strictly to the published literature
and statistics.
Does the published literature, including actuarial and highway
fatality statistics, support the idea that bicycles are very
dangerous?
What am I looking for in the published literature and the statistics?
There are three essential questions here for me.
The first two questions, being philosophical and interwoven, lead me
on a meander that lasts for several pages. The last, being more rooted
in fact, gets a separate page all to itself.
(1) Is bike head injury
fatality a significant risk to me and to society, justifying governmental
intervention and curtailment of my individual freedom? As a sub-issue,
is it the government's appropriate business to dictate my risk-avoidance
strategy to me? If so, under what circumstances? and what are the
implications?
(2) what does it mean that here in the US, there is such a fuss
and furore over bike helmets in general? Are there other things that
we are not making a fuss about, that are scarier than bikes?
The art of government is very often the art of prestidigitation; make
the audience look where the real action is not happening.
(3) Do helmets actually do what they are said to do, i.e. protect
one's noggin and consequently one's life in crash situations? Is the
fad for helmets based on factual evidence of their correct design
and engineering for the purpose, or not? If they don't actually
insure the rider against fatal injury or lifetime debility, then why
are we embroiled in this debate?
Cause of Death | Fatalities Per Annum |
Cigarettes, smoking | 400,000 |
Adverse reaction to prescription drugs | 110,000 |
Cigarettes, 2nd hand smoke | 53,000 |
Automobile accident | 40,000 |
Air pollution | 30,000 |
Accidental poisoning | 17,000 |
Falling down | 12,000 |
Skin cancer | 9,600 |
Stepping on a land mine (not USA) | 9,600 |
Murder, all assailants (women victims) | 5,000 |
Murder by domestic partner (women victims) | 1,500 |
Recreational Boating | 900 |
Cycling | 900 |
Seeing monsters under the bed?
Here I offer some serious and not-so-serious reasons for people's
willingness to believe that bikes are terribly dangerous.
Anyway, there you have some possible reasons for the otherwise
incomprehensible public enthusiasm for enforced helmeting in
the so-called Free World.
One last, and I think more relevant, reason is simple faddishness
and conformism.
It's hard to shake. It's the Pink Monkey phenomenon.
All through history and all over the world,
people have sought some excuse for stigmatising and punishing
anyone who is different from the crowd. We'll make up a new
fashion or behaviour rule or fad, and within a tiny time period,
mere weeks, kids in high school or college will be mercilessly
mocked and teased (or even beaten up) for not conforming
to it. We'll decide that some toy or attitude is "old hat"
and within a month or two, allegedly adult persons will be
sneering at anyone who "still does/believes/owns that."
Some politician will perceive a PR oppo, and next thing you
know, "suspected Communists" will be losing their jobs and
receiving death threats.
F'rinstance, after a handful of shooting incidents in US
schools, various public responses were possible. We could
have had a go at gun control. We could have examined the
bullying and sadism, the tormenting of "different" kids
that go on in our schools unremarked or even encouraged
by the staff. We could have taken a look at violence in
the US in general -- after all, kids behave as they have
learnt to behave, so where did they learn this? But no,
the actual fallout of these incidents is (among other things)
a corporate hotline 800 number that kids can call to rat
on any of their classmates who seem "weird" or "different".
We opt for the simple strategy of imposing superficial
conformity, as if that would fix any of the problems
festering underneath.
What I perceive beneath the righteousness of the helmet
evangelists is that good ol' human taste for enforcing
conformity. It is so much easier to feel good about bullying
a nonconformist if you can convince yourself that you only
have their best interest at heart -- or the interest of
society. Everyone does X, they say, or everyone should
do X, and so must you. And don't argue about it. Only a
really stupid person would not do X.
Well, er, umm, I thought one of the points about civilization
and democracy and all that was that we agree to respect each
other's stupidity (or what looks like your stupidity to me and
mine to you), as long as we are not actively harmed by it.
This leads us inevitably into a digression on the social
contract, and the nature of harm and responsibility.
Sub-clauses of the social contract
A quick review of basic social contract theory:
it seems fairly obvious that if you crank your stereo up to
top volume at midnight and wake the neighbourhood, you're
being pretty stupid. But more importantly, you've
infringed upon the social contract, upset and disturbed the
people around you and caused them a measure of harm -- and
so it's reasonable for the police to come and persuade you
to be quiet so your neighbours can sleep. No matter how
you may whine about it, common sense says you've broken
a basic rule of community living.
The reason I don't want my neighbour to play mega-loud
music at midnight is not ideological. I don't think music
is bad, or stereos are a bourgeois indulgence. It's
not aesthetic, either, it's not that I despise his CD
collection (it's rather good actually). Nor is it
because I'm terribly concerned that it's bad for him
not to be sleeping; I just want to
sleep, and if he prevents me from sleeping I get mad.
That's a legitimate reason for wanting to constrain another
person's behaviour.
(By the way, there's no fine for disturbing the peace in my
town; I only wish that the police would hand out
$80 tickets on such occasions.)
It's similarly obvious (to me anyway) that puffing smoke in
other people's faces is a violation of the social contract;
but committing slow suicide privately by nicotine strikes me
as tragic, not criminal. If there is criminality involved
it lies with the drug dealer, not the addict.
It's not obvious to me that not wearing a bike helmet
constitutes anything like a violation of the social
contract. Who is harmed, supposing for a moment that
any harm at all will ensue? Only the helmetless
rider. Since when is it reasonable for me to advocate
a law preventing you from doing something that I feel
is bad for you? Well, OK, here in the US we have
the DEA. But most rational people think the War
on Drugs is ridiculous. Same rational people, however,
without even pausing to think will tell you that it's
"stupid" to ride a bike without a helmet and "should
be prohibited."
Arguments like "anyone who rides without
a helmet is exposing other cyclists to the disgusting
and traumatic experience of having to scoop that stupid
person's brains off the track," as expressed in the online
helmet wars, strike me as pure bombast. How many people have
ever actually been present at a major injury accident, let alone
personally intervened by dabbling in blood and body
parts? And yet there are thousands upon thousands of
fatal and major injury accidents happening every day in
all walks of life -- particularly on highways.
Claims that unhelmeted riding is a socially actionable
offense against others don't cut it with me, any
more than claims that gay couples holding hands in
public are doing some kind of harm to conservative passersby.
The only rational claims that have been made involve public
safety and social costs, and as we've seen above, bike
accidents are the tiniest drop in a huge bucket, most
of which we are ignoring with both hands.
How could MHL possibly hurt me?
If you've stuck with me thus far, you've started to get
some intimation that I don't think MHLs are well justified :-)
So I think they're a waste of public time and money.
But a lot of things are a waste of public time and money,
and I don't bother writing lengthy essays about every
one of them. Would I go so far as to say MHLs do harm?
Well, I agree with those physicians who concluded that the overall
health benefits of cycling, not to mention the benefits to others that
accrue when we get out of our cars, far outweigh the risks.
If MHLs discourage ridership (and there is evidence to that effect),
then that would be a form of harm.
I also agree in principle with those who say that laws should
prevent us from hurting each other, not restrain us from doing
anything that someone somewhere considers risky. Heck,
people like risk. It's part of our nature. We like
to test ourselves -- our reflexes, our smarts, our guts.
It's stupid to think that a world with all the voluntary
risks carefully removed will be a happy world. And it's
annoying to have other people presuming to decide for us
how we should assess and manage our own risks. To restrict
citizens' freedom and keep us in a state of childish tutelage
seems to me a form of harm.
But all this is pretty darned abstract. Let's get out of the ether
and into the realm of the physically specific again: let's
talk concretely about these hifalutin concepts like risk
assessment, risk grouping, and personal freedom of choice.
Let's consider one particular case. How could MHLs hurt me,
personally, by restricting my individual civil life?
I am not biologically suited for the
region I now inhabit. Neither are a lot of us North
American invaders, but let's not go there right now.
As a pale North European type,
I'm in the second highest risk category in the world
for skin cancer and sun damage in general (second
only to albinos). When I ride my bike, I wear a hat;
just like my dermatologist told me to. I told my
dermatologist that I didn't want to die from skin
cancer; that, to me, was an unacceptable risk. She
said, "Wear sunscreen and wear a hat with a big floppy
wide brim. And I mean on every sunny day, and
any overcast one when you're out for more than an
hour." So I thought about that. I don't like hats
that much, but on the other hand, I don't like painful
sunburns or the feeling that I'm doing something for
which I'm in a particularly risky category. And
cancer's a bad way to go. So I wear the damn hat.
Mostly. And I loathe slimy, disgusting sunscreen,
but I wear it. Mostly.
If I wear a bike helmet, I lose that wide hat brim that
my doctor told me very seriously to wear. Now, in my
humble opinion it is my business, and no one else's,
to figure out which risk is more urgent for me. Weighing
the odds, the figures, and my own unique exposure,
I figure the skin cancer is scarier and more immediate
than the face plant. I already have skin abnormalities,
but I have a flawless safety record. So I ignore the
helmet and wear the hat. And thus I get yelled at :-)
I don't mind so much being yelled at (after all, if you're
a woman who routinely cycles everywhere, you do eventually
build up a kind of immunity to having various things yelled
at you -- and sometimes even thrown). But it's really going
to piss me off if police officers start ticketing me for my
own adult and informed strategy of risk avoidance. No one
should be able to force me to risk skin cancer because
of their own unfounded fear of bikes, any more than I should be
able to prohibit you legally from eating a steak just
because BSE makes me a tad nervous. I would consider
that harm. It might even be enough to make me move to
the Netherlands -- or any other place where the government
is willing to treat me like a grown-up.
What price "irresponsibility"?
Back to the big picture. There are larger social trends
in motion here.
I worry about the trend represented by HMOs and nanny laws.
Will there come a time when the HMO will refuse to pay for services
if the customer refuses to adopt a diet dictated by the HMO, or
refuses to attend mandatory exercise classes, or declines
mandatory office procedures? ("I'm sorry sir, if you don't
report for your scheduled sigmoidoscopy we're going to cancel
your coverage altogether.")
Will my HMO cancel my coverage
if I go out without a hat? Will my HMO cancel my coverage
if I ride a bike? Will my HMO refuse to cover my medical
expenses if I have a bike accident without a helmet on?
What if it isn't my head that was injured? Will my HMO
cancel my insurance because I sail a small craft? Will
some non-sailor decide that sailboats are very dangerous
(all those moving parts) and therefore all sailors must
wear helmets? You never can tell where these trends will
lead.
Seems like the insurance companies have changed their
nature a lot in the last hundred years. Like a lot of
rich folk who made their
packet in gambling, they've gone off the whole risk
thing a bit and are now seeking a sure bet :-)
Nowadays it seems like the commonest answer to "how come
this dance isn't happening this year," or "what happened to
the field trip," is "we couldn't get insurance." Litigiousness,
encouraged in greedy people by greedy lawyers, plays into the
same sad trend: people's lives are starting to be strangely
constrained and boxed in by the insurance companies and
the lawsuits. Rather than gamble on your
health and safety, they're starting to want to control
your health and safety (according to their own standards) so
as to protect their cash. [There are rumours as of this
writing (Spring 2000) that an insurance company is about
to sponsor an all-ages MHL for the entire state of CA.]
Or so it seems to me. It starts with the HMOs dropping the
"high risk" patients (even though the whole theory of insurance
is that the healthy people in the center of the bell curve
help pay for the frail people at the edges), and edging out
the older subscribers. And where does it go after that?
Is it possible that at some point we will all be out in
front of our corporate workplaces in the morning, being directed in
mandatory mass exercise sessions? Will we grant health care only
to the "well behaved," and who will determine the standards?
I'm not saying there's no problem with autopathy. Deliberate
actions of individuals do cost us a lot to remedy. You can
make a pretty strong case that cigarette smoking is a costly
autopathic behaviour (cancer treatment is ungodly expensive).
But if we start down that slippery path, where do we end up?
At what point should some vaguely computed "social cost"
take precedence over individual freedom of choice and
independent exercise of judgment? Who gets to compute that
cost? How rigorously are the numbers checked, and what
special interests are standing by, salting the soup? We
know that risks and statistics are grossly misrepresented in
the media and by corporate interests and ruling elites worldwide.
Why should we trust these same proven liars any further? We
know that governments, no less than corporations, hate to
admit they've made a mistake :-) We know that governments,
especially in the US, are saturated with massive bribery from
business interests; and we know that the books get cooked.
To what extent dare we hand over our individual powers of
judgment, decision, and choice to these people?
Punishing the innocent?
What the heck does corporate America want anyway?
At heart they seem to want
everyone to sit "safely" at home and watch advertising on TV,
or web surf (to shop, naturally, heaven forbid we should surf
for real information)...
If it turns out that this sessile
lifestyle impairs our health, then by all means we should
get in our cars and drive a few miles to a health club, where
at great expense we can get the same amount of exercise that
a walk to the grocery store and back would have provided for
free. But we won't walk to the grocery store if we think
walking is dangerous. No, we'll continue to spend 20 percent
of our income on the family car, and another hefty chunk of
change on the spa membership. It's all good for business.
So I worry about the range of activities which, between the HMOs
and their corporate brethren running the media, will come to be
defined as "risky." A group in Tokyo is already suggesting that
school children would be safer if they were made to wear helmets
while walking to and from school. So now walking
is dangerous? And you thought I was exaggerating, right?
If you'll forgive a sour dystopian moment here, at what point will
we not be legally permitted to do anything at all unless we buy, buy,
buy a heap of plastic accessories first? And how many people would
be out of their cars by now, if the insistence on helmets, helmets,
helmets hadn't convinced them that cycling is terribly dangerous?
No, I am not happy with an America, or any country, in which simple,
basic, and healthy activities like walking and cycling are
perceived as dangerous, aberrant, and in need of tight regulation,
protective gear, and police surveillance.
Really, what is dangerous and aberrant is driving everywhere in 2-ton
steel cages (almost all cyclists who die on
the road, by the way, are killed by cars).
Even the
Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute says that
[Editor's note: This statistic is not quite right. It would be
more accurate to
say that we kill more car passengers every two years on
our highways than the total number of Americans killed as a result
of our 10-year involvement in Viet Nam. But it is still a sobering
number.]
This to me is a counsel of despair. One would think that the
appropriate response would be for the BHSI to mount at least
as aggressive a public campaign against automobile use as they
do for helmets; yet this very telling text is hidden many layers
deep among their pages, far from the home page. We are advised
to "rage against it" but not to try to do anything about it,
other than go out and buy a helmet, make an individual
accommodation to an intolerable social problem. Cocooning
comes to the bike culture?
Passing laws to constrain the behaviour of cyclists as a way of
increasing cyclist safety, to me, is too much like enforcing
curfews on women to reduce attacks upon women. It's for
each woman to decide how safe or dangerous she is on that
walk across town or that camping trip in the desert -- else
we become prisoners in our homes, wards of the state.
Many Islamic nations claim that the imposition of the veil
upon women is for women's safety, because it asserts their
respectableness and hides their "provocatively beautiful"
faces from untrustworthy men. The average American woman
of any spirit says Bulls**t! If the men are doing the
assaulting and harassing, we need to deal with their
behaviour, not put sacks over all the women's heads.
When we think about gun violence in schools, do we start by
passing laws mandating the purchase and daily wear of Kevlar
vests for all school kids? No, we try to stop the shooting
(even if we go about it wrong-headedly). When
we think about cyclists getting killed by cars, we need to get
closer to the cause: we need to stop the killing, and it
is being done by the cars. No amount of helmet is enough
to stop a charging SUV. Even an elephant gun wouldn't do it.
The only thing that's going to stop that SUV is (sorry,
all you libertarians) laws limiting its aggressive behaviour;
laws banning it from residential areas and city centres;
speed bumps; normalized gas prices; and such like things
that only an outraged and activist citizenry can achieve.
We don't need to "rage against" the empire of the automobile,
we need to organize against it.
A citizenry deluded into believing that cycling is dangerous,
not cars, that helmets are the only practical or possible response
to the danger posed by cars, and so forth, will never become
activist. The consumer-oriented "buy a helmet and be safe"
solution defuses social action, offers a weak individual
solution with no challenge to the status quo, rather
than the bold national change of direction we really need.
In Holland and some other European countries, the solution has
been to slow down the cars, restrict auto access to city centers,
and provide first-rate bikeways. The result has been the
world's best bike safety record -- despite an almost zero
helmet-wearing population! -- and a tremendously positive
health and environmental benefit from so many people riding
bikes daily instead of driving. Here in the US we regard the
dangerous and irresponsible use of automobiles as given, as
an immutable fact. We need to get over that; it's as silly
as assuming that "boys will be boys and bring their Uzis to
class with them" -- and handing out the Kevlar.
This is where I get frustrated with the BHSI -- they know this
very important fact, that cars are, as they say, The Problem;
but they will not say it out loud -- only quietly, on a back
page, in the closet. It should be said loudly and repeatedly
and on the front page. We should hire skywriters.
Otherwise there is no chance of social
change, just an endless and fruitless attempt to adapt to
ever-degrading conditions. When we have dozens
of schools and police forces and cities promoting and enforcing
helmets, and not one agitating for limits on automobile
access and use, there's something terribly wrong -- and the BHSI
is, no matter how good their intentions, contributing to this
wrong by "picking the easy target". Do we have a traffic safety
problem? You bet we do -- there's a safety issue for bikes,
pedestrians, kids at play, animals, or anyone who breathes.
And an even bigger one for the car drivers themselves!
What is the source of the problem? Very simple: massive overuse of
a very attractive luxury item (the automobile). What's the
solution? To put cyclists and pedestrians into full body armour,
issue respirators to all the citizenry, and lock up all the animals
in zoos? That's the way we're headed. But we've got the wrong
end of the bull by the horns here :-) To solve a problem, you
have to look at the root of the problem, not try to paper over
the symptoms. If you want your beloved spouse to get over
the alcohol problem, you don't do it by adapting and enabling
and patching it over -- or by frantically casting around for
something and someone else to blame.
Cycling is not dangerous or aberrant behaviour. Cycling is
not the problem. In fact, it's socially responsible, constructive,
good behaviour that ought to be encouraged with both hands.
What is dangerous and aberrant is guzzling down the world's
irreplaceable petroleum reserves for frivolous purposes. What
is dangerous and aberrant is releasing endless quantities of toxins
into the world's atmosphere and waterways, with no clear understanding
of the consequences and no care for tomorrow. Not to mention using
taxpayer dollars for all of the above, thus robbing the citizenry twice:
once for the encouragement and subsidy of negative behaviours,
and then again later for the cleanup costs. Now that's sociopathic.
That's the behaviour we need to modify.
So this is just another architect's note about the scale of this drawing.
Our cars are killing as many people every two years as our US troop
body count from the whole decade we were in 'Nam. Where are the
protesters? The fact that we aren't upset about this is deeply
revealing. The fact that we're focussed on how "dangerous" bicycles
are is even more revealing. Can we spell "denial"?
. . . and some have risk forced upon them
Aside from Big Risks and Little Risks (and the difficulty
of distinguishing them through a blitz of propaganda and
negative but accepted social customs) there's another
division of risks into two species.
There's a big difference between a risk we are exposed to by
free choice, and a risk to which we are exposed all unwitting.
If you buy a house in a landslide area, and you know all about
the area and all about the house, and you are an able
carpenter, you will not be distressed when a little earth
movement cracks a wall or bends a pipe. You knew what you
were getting into. But if you buy a house in a supposedly
clean and upper-crusty neighbourhood and then, a few years
later, find out that you're living on top of a toxic land
fill and your kids are not likely to grow up healthy, then
you are, I would expect, righteously angry.
Though I may seem at previous points in this diatribe to be
flirting with logical positivism or Libertarianism, I'm not
really -- so relax. I do believe that the homeowner in Case B
is quite right to be righteously angry. Yes, we could say that
it was her responsibility to research every detail of the last
50 years of history in the area where she's buying a home. But
that's not reasonable in a highly organized society, any more
than you expect to catch, kill, gut, skin, and roast your own
cow for dinner. You expect to be able to trust the
specialized functionaries with whom you do business. You expect
not to be grossly deceived in business dealings, whether by
outright lies or by secrecy. This is what is meant by "full
disclosure" in real estate and other dealings; it's dishonest
to conceal from a business partner or customer important information
that would radically alter their perception of the deal.
So, unlike logical positivists, Republicans, and corporate
legal counsel, I don't assert that consumer lawsuits are a bunch
of malarkey, or that we are just plain crazy to try to eliminate
lead and PVC from kid toys (or from industry at large),
or to take some kind of action against
owners of highly unsafe workplaces, or to demand that our food
is honestly labelled and that toxic substances are controlled.
We should not be exposed to risks without our informed consent.
Consent alone is not sufficient, if it's not informed.
Or in other words, if you're gonna put GMO products in my food,
darn it, I want a label that tells me so. It doesn't matter
whether I'm right or wrong to be concerned about GMO foods,
what matters is that I have a right to know, and a right to
make my own decisions about what I eat.
Hell, if I get arrested in this country I have more right to
information about the terms of my arrest than I do about
the foods I'm being sold. There's no Miranda law for GMO.
All the ecological crises of our time are splendid, terrifying
examples of people being exposed to risk without their consent
or understanding. A low-income person unable to prevent
waste incinerators or dumping sites from being established in
her neighbourhood; an entire native people displaced by deforestation
and massive hydro projects; the apparently wealthy and prosperous
woman condemned to early death by her mother's use of DES:
our world is full of environmental victims, people who have had
a dreadful cost imposed on them in exchange for some alleged
benefit. Usually the benefit is not experienced by them directly,
and if anyone had asked them, "would you like to trade an early
death for the benefits of PVC garden furniture and plumbing?" or
"we will pay you a good salary, but is it OK with you if you die
painfully of cancer about 20 years before your time?" they
would have firmly declined.
But the way of our world today is that the deals we make with
the Devil are secret. No one offers us the parchment and pricks
our thumbs. Our consent is assumed, and we suffer the consequences
without ever having agreed to the trade. And these risks, the
risks of living in the world of synthetic estrogens, a damaged
atmosphere, polluted air and water, uncontrollable climate change,
BSE, DDT, elevated background radiation, the threat of nuclear
war (whether limited or global), the threat of another Chernobyl;
these risks no one seems to be doing much about, legislatively
speaking. If anything, the WTO and its sibling organizations
are asserting loudly that we're a damned ungrateful bunch of
Luddite ignorami if we presume to criticize this deal we
never got to sign.
These risks we are all exposed to, through no choice of
our own, these seem to me a suitable and very urgent target for
legislation and prosecution. If there's bullying to be done
and submission to standards to be enforced, it's overdue
for our corporate friends in high places. Compared to their
suicidal and murderous practises, and the suicidal and
murderous practises they encourage and create among all
of us, the fatality rate and the social cost imposed by bike
accidents are "way down in the noise" as we say in signal processing.
It troubles me deeply that so much public focus, so many laws, so
much municipal time and energy, so much zealotry and officiousness
and righteousness are all devoted to policing and controlling an
inherently harmless behaviour, effectively distracting us from so
many far more terrible dangers.
The mote in our neighbour's eye, and . . .
Are there any conclusions to be drawn here? Aside from the
conclusion that I've been going on rather too long?
I was brought up by parents who lived through World War II, and one
lesson I learned from them is very simple: there is no such thing
as Safe. Anything can happen to anyone at any time. The only
thing you have, from moment to moment is the freedom to experience
your own life and make your own decisions. It is a freedom you
can lose at any moment, a fragile thing, but the central ingredient
that makes any life enjoyable and satisfying. To be forced to do things
takes the fun out of them; ask any worker whose management penalizes
folks who skip the company picnic :-)
There's a reason why people dislike slavery and seek to escape it,
why we don't like being bullied. Even if the master is kind and the food
plentiful and the work not too arduous, the slave wants to
run away; we thirst for autonomy, for self-determination, for not
being ordered around by bosses and masters and Big Men. Or even by
faceless bureaucrats or smothering nannies. It doesn't
have to be complete autonomy; most of us can deal with prohibitions
on harming others, if we are just allowed to make the ordinary decisions
for ourselves, the simple ones like what to wear and what to eat
and what to do for fun and whether to go out for a walk... and the
big ones as well, like whether to permit ourselves to be kept
alive on life support machines after we're unviable, or whether to go
through the hell of surgery and chemo and radiation if the odds of
survival don't seem worth the misery.
In any society that claims not to
be fascist or dictatorial, we should have a right to make those
kinds of choices. We should not be forced or bullied into
anything for our own good, only out of harming others. I
do, on reflection, firmly believe this. I have wept over women
who could and would not free themselves from abusive husbands and lovers,
but on no account would I have those women arrested and imprisoned
to "save" them from the danger they were too foolish or too
besotted to walk away from.
In my lifetime I have seen more and more fences go up, more and
more warning signs, more and more absurd product instructions written
for suicidal idiots ("Caution: do not attempt to carve meat while
rotisserie is in operation."). I have seen my world become more
and more like a kindergarten for backward children.
Yet at the same time I have seen more and more dreadful risks undertaken in
secretive and colossal arrogance. I have witnessed an endless, mindless
search for ultimate personal safety, in bewildering parallel with the grossest
stupidity and the most obviously dangerous and destructive social
behaviours.
It makes no sense to me; and the MHLs seem to me just one more symptom of
this very grave social problem; our unwillingness to look squarely at
the real risks and dangers, the outright madness of our time -- and the
accompanying tendency to bully and blame and enforce conformity on
others, using fabricated or grossly exaggerated dangers as our righteous
excuse.
We beat our kids, and criticize our neighbour for his unpainted fence.
We agonize over a half pound of weight gain, and are sure that
global warming can't really be such a big deal.
We make sure to be terrified of people of colour, certain that
they are all dangerous criminals; and we trust the inside traders
and S&L sharks who steal our life savings.
We scrub our toilet bowls and sinks until they shine like hospital
equipment, to preserve ourselves from germs and disease; and the
cleaners we use are toxic.
We're so terrified of Communism that we stockpile enough nuclear
weapons to kill every person on earth ten times over; and the stockpiles
start to leak.
We're so terrified of disease that we demand (and prescribe) antibiotics
for every little sniffle, thus steadily weakening the effectiveness of
antibiotics and blithely inviting the next truly serious epidemic.
We recycle every scrap of paper in the house, then drive our SUV
to the park with our bikes on top of it.
We engineer a "Green Revolution" to feed the masses, and in so
doing destroy the farmland and the biodiversity humanity needs
to survive.
We fear body fat more than starvation.
We smoke cigarettes, and we call the helmetless bike rider reckless.
We drive cars, and we call bicycles dangerous.
People! You go figure.
In the USA, the only form of transportation recognized as necessary,
adult, and normal is the automobile. Bike riders, of any age,
are perceived as "kid-like' even if not literally young --
irresponsible, impractical, immature, not real
adult citizens. After all, what's the primary form of legal ID in
the US? Your driver's license. If we talk about traffic calming
initiatives, gas taxes, reduced speed limits, and other desperate
measures for slowing down the destruction of our country and our planet
by universal automobile use -- people get really incensed. How dare
we interfere with their driving habits? How dare we make
it one penny more expensive or one second less convenient for
them to drive? They paid a lot for those cars, and dammit they
have a right to enjoy them fully. We are messing with the civil
liberties of Adult Citizens here, folks -- watch out! The ready
recourse to MHLs strikes me as the familiar tendency to impose
surveillance and restriction on second-class citizens: in this
case, cyclists.
The surveillance and restriction may be justified by all manner
of fancy language, but the effective social purpose is to
formalize and emphasize the lower status of the target population.
No, but seriously,
cyclists present a problem to the corporate state because bikes are
so darned efficient; cyclists just plain need less and buy less.
Now that's a social crime, if you like: to live frugally.
So there's a massive drive to accessorize bikers, to turn cyclists
into good little consumers just like car drivers. Thus, ridiculously
expensive shoes, strange spaceman outfits, and fancy aero helmets.
Nah, I don't think the BHSI is a tool of the helmet industry -- in fact,
they soundly criticize the industry for representing those cool new
aero helmets as good safety designs, when they aren't -- but
certainly there are large profits to be realized if MHLs force millions
of bikers to buy helmets. Whereas, stopping millions of people from
smoking would not generate profits. Conclusion: in a capitalist
state where corporate interests strongly influence government,
we tend to accept legislation that causes consumer spending, but the
big business guys immediately bar the door to any legislation
that would curtail consumer spending.
We kill more car passengers on our highways every year than the
number of Americans killed in the ten years and more of our
involvement in Vietnam. But the public outcry that would accompany
such a rate of carnage associated with any other activity in our
society is strangely absent. We have a national blind eye for the
costs of car ownership, and for the damage done by the individual
passenger car to our health and our environment. Since the passenger
car is The Problem in cyclists' deaths, and a big factor in major
cycling injuries, some of that attitude will inevitably affect the
bicycle rider. Rage against it if you will, but meantime wear your
helmet. We believe that you would need a helmet even in the best
of all possible car worlds.
de@daclarke.org
De Clarke