Mayor Menino’s bike safety summit
Comments(12) Somewhere between 100-200 people showed up at BU’s Morse Auditorium for the mayor’s bike safety summit yesterday. i was among them.
First off, kudos to MassBike for providing free bike parking.
Second, kudos for the mayor for showing up … I had thought this event would be “endorsed” by him but not attended. Nice to see him.
Third, major props to the mayor and bike czar Nicole Freedman for sticking their necks out re: bike helmets. Menino described how a helmet may have spared him from a serious injury when he was struck by a car last year, and urged everyone in the room to get over their hair etc. concerns and strap in. Even more gratifying was to hear Nicole point out that the student killed a couple of weeks ago wasn’t wearing a helmet. The silence on that fact from all sorts of cycling advocates has been deafening.
Fourth, it was useful to hear from several constituencies re: their cycling plans. In fact, I wish they had taken more time. For whatever reason, the bulk of the time was given to event attendees to speak their mind and pose “questions” which were usually lengthy (and thinly veiled) comments. My guess is they did this so that people would feel “heard” but a lot of it was the usual venting with not too many productive questions.
Fifth, one of the more productive questions yielded the most disappointing moment of the evening. One man observed that if helmets save lives, as the mayor and Nicole memorably reminded the crowd, then why are they not required under state law? To my grave disappointment, this wholly rational suggestion was met with boos. I was shocked and almost got up and left. What is it with the cycling crowd? Good grief.
That said, many thanks to the mayor and his staff for orchestrating the event. Time well spent.
While I choose to wear a helmet, I think what gets people (Including me) upset is the idea that Eric Hunt died because he wasn’t wearing a helmet. He died from being run over by a bus, and no helmet in the world will protect from the massive injuries caused by that sort of collision.
There’s a lot of junk science on the helmet-injury statistics that the public health commissioner was spewing. There’s a big difference between correlation and causality- were the helmetless riders who were injured also taking other stupid chances? Riding the wrong way? Without lights? Also, what proportion of the cyclists hurt or killed had head or brain injuries? That’s never unpacked, and it seems a spurious and insulting point when someone dies from massive internal injury from their body being run over by a large vehicle.
ditto on the un-careful use of statistics at this meeting. however, there is plenty of non-junk science (New England Journal of Medicine article, among others) demonstrating the safety benefit of helmets. Moreover this seems an almost obvious point; I don’t think (m)any people argue that they are safer in a crash when they are *not* wearing a helmet.
Re: Eric, there are multiple accounts of this tragic event; no one knows exactly what happened except perhaps the driver, who has incentives to represent the situation in a way that is favorable to to MBTA. Some say the cyclist was stuck in the tracks; others say he was overtaking the bus. We don’t know the precise circumstances, but all account corroborate that he was not wearing a helmet. I agree that we cannot state definitively that his life would have been saved he had been wearing a helmet, but again it’s hard to argue that he was safer because he *wasn’t* wearing one.
Kudos on your decision to wear a helmet, and for setting an example for others. I look forward to the day when it is the norm and not the exception, and preferably the law.
So, regarding helmet use.
1) The fixation on helmets after a cyclist’s death makes an implicit suggestion that it was his fault. I’m all for helmet use, and I wear one most of the time, but I’m not a fan of the posthumous (or even post-accident) sentiment. The high-heeled cyclist is right, in that (as of now) we don’t know what caused Eric’s death.
No one is arguing that he was safer without a helmet, but bringing up a cyclist’s lack of head-wear is a way of shifting the blame. That’s why people boo.
2) Regarding the law, we already have a law mandating that everyone under the age of 17 wear a helmet.
3) Regarding the NEJM article, I assume you mean Thompson et al., 1989? We all know that helmets reduce head injuries, but the question here is regarding the policy decision to make them mandatory. The more appropriate citation could be found here:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/do-bike-helmet-laws-discourage-bicycling/
The freakonomics blog has a link to a publication about the consequences of helmet use laws. Although they are effective in preventing cyclist deaths, they also reduce ridership by a small percentage. Keep in mind that this is for kids, who are mostly riding in the relatively safe roads of the suburbs.
The concern over mandatory riding laws is that it will reduce ridership at a time when cyclists are trying to grow their numbers. More of a presence on the roads will make everyone safer, by making urban cyclists into less of a marginalized group.
Overall, I understand your concern. You want more people to wear helmets, sure, me too. But there is a counterargument here that I’m not sure you are recognizing.
Mandatory bike laws are not an ideal solution, and would come with significant trade offs.
cyclostat, thanks for the pointer to this paper. It is quite carefully done for the most part, improving upon the Thompson et al. paper, but there is a real problem with its conclusion about the reduction in ridership: it’s mostly a “California effect.”
On p. 15 the authors state that they dropped CA and FL from the sample in order to ensure that there wasn’t just a state-specific effect at play. But in the lower panel of Column 6 in Table 5, where they do this, the statistical significance of the effect is lost entirely. (The coefficient is -.030 with a standard error of .019). This is in the “triple differences” models , which are the best methodology they present in this analysis. This may seem like nitpicking the statistics, but this is what I do for a living.
This means that California is driving the results. That might not worry me so much except that CA’s bike law (from Appendix A) is for kids aged FIVE and under. In other words, this effect is driven entirely by the parents of these youngsters and tells us next to nothing about whether adults would decrease their ridership given helmet laws.
So, I don’t accept the counterargument. Even if I were to accept the conclusions of this study, I’d find it an odd argument that cyclists would accept a 19% increase in fatalities in order to prevent a 3% drop in ridership. And again, I think adults are a bit more rational than the kids in this study (esp. the 1-4 year olds).
Then again, sometimes I wonder. There are still people who argue there is no safety benefit to wearing a helmet, and those who while they admit the safety benefit think people should decide for themselves (some of such people would repeal seat belt laws.) I’ve also heard experienced cyclists say that they are so skilled that helmets make them less safe somehow.
To some extent, I can understand. After my mother was killed in a car accident *because* she was wearing a seat belt – I prefer not to elaborate on the circumstances, as I survived the accident – I seriously thought about consciously objecting to seatbelt use. But it makes more sense in my view to play the odds, so I wear one.
To the earlier point of “that’s why people boo”, I heard things differently at the event. Nicole Freedman made the observation that the student was helmetless at the time of his fatal collision, and I didn’t hear any response to her statement. The groans came more than a half hour later when someone at the microphone asked why helmets aren’t mandatory (without reference to the incident). So, I don’t think that connection exists.
I don’t disagree that it could be taken as implicitly shifting the blame to make said observation, and I thought it was sloppy to cite statistics like “82% of cyclists who died in accidents aren’t wearing helmets” w/o also stating what % of cyclists wear helmets more generally (btw, it’s about two-thirds in the Carpenter/Stehr study above).
That said, I find it disingenuous of the cycling community to rail angrily against the MBTA etc without acknowledging the absence of a helmet.
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
I think what’s happening here is that we’re both sort of skimming this Carpenter article and taking parts that support our argument. Honestly, I’m just using the finder function.
BUT, in the analysis where the drop California, the effect is still significant (same deal with Florida). It’s only for the interaction between Helmet Law and Age, where dropping California is no longer significant. The main effect of helmet law is in the upper panel, not the lower panel. (Maybe I’ve misunderstood this, please let me know if I have).
Also, the paper says that California passed two laws: one in 1987 for children under 5, and one in 1993 for children under 18.
Nevertheless, you’re right that the trade-off doesn’t seem fair. An increase in ridership, which would come with an increase in fatalities.
My other concern is that mandatory helmet laws would be enforced like running red lights in enforced. ie: You can violate the law as much as you want, but then for a week around one specific intersection, everyone gets tickets.
oh no actually I screwed up – there were indeed two CA reforms; I assumed one per state and missed the second. thanks for catching this! I stand corrected embarrassed as I thought I had given it a more careful read.
that said, I still maintain that it’s a California effect. col 6 of table 5 has two panels. the first (upper) is simply a “time-based” effect which is essentially doing a before vs. after comparison using the policy reversal. the shortcoming of this approach is that there is no “control group”, so if there were other things changing in CA around the same time those might create spurious results.
the second (lower) panel goes one step better by not only comparing before vs. after, but also by introducing a control group of those cyclists no affected by the reform. that’s the “under helmet law threshold” interaction in the lower panel. that gives you a real control group, and that’s what makes this analysis in the lower panel of table 5 a really strong technique.
in other words, the lower/second panel asks “were riders under the age of 18 any less likely to ride after the law than were those unaffected by the law?” alas, that’s where the significance drops out when CA is excluded.
at least that’s my read – maybe I missed something, though I used a similar difference-in-differences plus control group approach in the following paper:
http://www.mit.edu/~mmarx/marx strumsky fleming 2009.pdf
back to the overall point, I suppose one could make the argument that if there’s enough of a ridership increase then maybe we hit a “tipping point” at which the critical mass makes it a lot safer … even safe enough not to use a helmet. My gut says we’re far from that point in Boston though!
And you make a good point about enforcement. It’s not as if the don’t-park-in-the-bike-lane laws get enforced now…though I’m not sure that means we shouldn’t have the law in the first place…enforcement can always be tightened.
Hi… I really have enjoyed reading your blog. I know what it is like to start cycling with a long commute (I live in Medford and work downtown) and I have been happy to read about your triumphs, as I have commisterated with your set backs. That said, I read your entry on the Bike Saftey Summit on Friday, and a response has been brewing in my head all weekend.
I wear a helmet every time I get on a bike, but it really bothers me that when every time we talk about “bike saftey,” the first thing that comes up is always helmet use. Every single day of my 16 mile commute I encounter at least one driver who is doing something that could endanger my life. I am sure I am not alone in this. After these incidents, I am often struck by how the helmet on my head can only offer protection for my head — leaving the rest of body vulnerable to all kinds of injuries. Anyone who has ever been hit by a car and survived can attest to this. Helmets save lives, no doubt, but only when you land on your head.
Making helmets compulsory by law is very easy for the City to do. With minimal effort or political danger, Menino can flourish a new law and claim that he is doing something for “bike saftey.” A much more effective but politically difficult route would be to actually enforce existing traffic laws around the safety of cyclists; increase penalties for hitting a cyclist; run campaigns encouraging drivers to look when they change course or open their doors; enforce the integrity of bike lanes; or any number of things that would actually make cycling safter in this city.
Cylcing in Boston is dangerous, no doubt. Instead of basically saying: “tough shit, wear a helmet, good luck,” let’s push for better cycling infastructure and driver education. Let’s not let City officials get away with only an easy, bandaid measure.
This is not really an issue about some people wanting to maintain their freedom not to wear a helmet, it is also an issue about how we as a culture give priority to the powerful. Yes, wearing a helmet can save your life in accident with a more powerful vehicle. But isn’t it better to put our efforts into helping these more powerful vehicles prevent accidents?
thanks for reading, Jess.
if my semi-didactic tone on helmet laws make it seem like I don’t care about improving biking infrastructure (lanes, paths, etc.) then I have certainly left you with the wrong impression. I wouldn’t be commuting if it were not for the Southwest Corridor bike path, the Jamaicaway path, the lanes on Washington St., and so on. I think all of these measures are essential and am delighted at the progress being made in Boston.
Something tells me it’s not that easy for the City to change the law or they would have done it already – it’s a state law. I guess there could be a different law in the city but who knows. In any case, I don’t get the sense that the city is saying “wear your helmet and deal with it.” Rather, mine is the impression (perhaps falsely) that Menino and Freedman and others (even the MBTA head) are serious about improving things. At least I hope so.
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