mattsccm wrote:"think that we are already at the point of its personal choice, I am against compulsory, unless stats later prove over whelmingly its safer.
Like with motorcycles and car seat belts. "
Compulsion is still wrong though. "its my head" etc.
Motorcycle helmets and car seat belts...
The game there is that we can be reasonably sure that in a crash you're better off wearing one, but that's not actually what you need to know for policy. For that we need to know if overall public health goes up or down if the measure is used, and that's not very clear cut, even for car seat belts with all that crash-test dummy data showing how good they are at preserving people wearing them in crashes.
The only country that has ever showed a significant gain after seat belt legislation is the UK, but it was coincident with other factors like the introduction of evidential breath testing. If you look at the time profile of when most casualties came down it coincided with chucking out time at the pubs. What did happen after compulsory seatbelts came in was pedestrian and cyclists casualties went up, as all those "safer" drivers used up their risk reductions. Rear seatbelts coincided with an increase in injuries.
Yes, really. Check out John Adams' "Risk" for more, but seatbelts are such sacred cows that saying such things, even when they're true, in a general setting will get you labelled as mad. Helmets are heading the same way, so we must keep harping on as doing nothing amounts to encouraging them in the present climate.
Pete.
Often seen riding a bike around Dundee...