Posts by Carol Stewart
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to linger,
OK, having done more reading, including this 2015 meta-analysis by some public health folks in Ontario, I understand the arguments being advanced here. One question I have is whether the observed reduction in cycling participation following the NZ helmet law can be completely attributed to the law (taking account of those implementation features you mention), or whether there were other concurrent societal factors that may have played a role.
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Cochrane reviews are useful for assessing public health interventions which is what is under discussion here. Yes sure they are a little out of date. I'm quite willing to familiarise myself with recent risk analysis work.
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to Bart Janssen,
So I searched the Cochrane reviews for a complete unbiased meta-analysis, and found two that seem relevant.
One concludes:
"Helmets reduce bicycle-related head and facial injuries for bicyclists of all ages involved in all types of crashes, including those involving motor vehicles. Our response to comments from critics are presented in the Feedback section."And the other concludes:
"Bicycle helmet legislation appears to be effective in increasing helmet use and decreasing head injury rates in the populations for which it is implemented. However, there are very few high quality evaluative studies that measure these outcomes, and none that reported data on possible declines in bicycle use." -
There's a parallel discussion going on over at Sciblogs.
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Hard News: Fear of Cycling, in reply to Moz,
Yeah fair enough. It's a reasonable distinction between cycling as a sport and as transport.
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It's interesting that it's now become commonplace for skiers and snowboarders to wear helmets, without any element of compulsion.
In countries without a helmet law as the number of cyclists increases the rate of accidents per hour of cycling decreases.
Does this account for the nature of the cycling infrastructure? There's quite a difference between countries where you can sail around on relatively flat spacious cycleways and the reality of New Zealand cities. In Wellington, for instance, between my house and my work there is approximately 100 vertical metres of altitude, nasty weather, and narrow congested busy roads with a poor surface. Journeys by bike involve girding one's loins.
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I'm very proud of my son's high school (Wellington High School) for being the first in NZ to have the option of unisex toilets. They got a fair bit of crap from Family First about it too.
People seem to manage the unisex toilets on planes without too much drama. And in tramping huts, and in increasing numbers of public places. -
Thanks Hilary. Your mother was such a talented poet - I loved reading these, particularly:
Grandson’s visit
We compare notes
On his parents
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Feed: World of Food 5: Andorra –…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Cool! I've been to the Pyrenees, over on the French side, and the food was very interesting. Garbure soup and boudin noir (black pudding). And galettes.
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The people knitting the Pussy Hats for it in the States have caused a wide-spread shortage of pink wool.
I'm going to the Wellington march, and am churning out a few Pussyhats as well. Here's the pattern for craftily-minded readers.