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Wear a bike helmet or pay $50 in Vancouver


Head injuries
Head injury statistics from the CDC
The Vancouver City Council approved a new helmet law for bicyclers and skaters. According to this Columbian article, the vote was 5-1 with newly elected Pat Campbell the lone dissenter. Councilman Campbell argues in the following audio that this was not something that the police should be hassling people over.

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(bikeportland.org has the comments from the rest of the city council).

On the one hand, it seems that this encroaches on our individual liberties. On the other hand, it seems reasonable to mandate helmet laws to prevent head injuries which can be extremely expensive to treat and end up costing all of us one way or another in higher health costs.

Here is an article from the Austin League of Bicycle Voters that argues the jury is still out on whether bike helmets are a good idea.

I wish for a better way to get the message out that bike helmets save lives than having the police stop people and hand out fines.

What do you think? Please sound off on this recent action in the discussion link below.

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This entry was written by bushtool and posted on March 3, 2008 at 2:28 pm and filed under Civil rights, Local issues. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

2 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

(listed oldest to newest)

  1. My husband has a 5″ long and 1″ wide scar on his glute from being hit by a car and thrown off his bike so that his head hit the pavement and the handlebar of his racing bike was impaled in his left cheek (sorry, honey). But he walked away because he was wearing a helmet - which was split in two and held together only by the plastic shell.

    I think this law is terrific - especially in making parents aware and giving them an incentive to nag their tweens and teens into actually wearing the damn things.

    [Reply]
    1. Above comment written by slimNo Gravatar on March 3rd, 2008 at 3:19 pm (replies, if any, are attributed separately above).

  2. I hate this law, and I hate that it boils down to six people how make this kind of decision that affects everyone, I for one hated the helmets my parents made me wear as a kid and would always remove it once out of sight and I alway got in trouble for it, once I was 18 I loved the fact that I could do whatever I wanted and not have to ever wear that stupid helmet, now I have a skin disease that makes wearing hats very unconfortable and reddins my skin causing my hair to fall out, I ride my bike every day I have never been hit by a car I am not that stupid and I watch out around me. but now I have to wear a smelly sweaty crappy helmet because some stupid lady once hit a biker when she wasnt paying attention. my plan is much more simple get that stupid chick off her cellphone and off the road.

    [Reply]
    2. Above comment written by SuperManNo Gravatar on July 31st, 2008 at 7:17 pm (replies, if any, are attributed separately above).
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