France makes cycle helmets compulsory for under-12s - and wants kids to nag their parents to wear one too

https://forum.cyclinguk.org/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=111335

Quite bit of discussion and information is provided,

e.g. 'A recent report indicated that cyclists wearing helmets had more than twice the odds of suffering an injury than cyclists not wearing helmets, whether riding for transportation or recreation, see Porter AK, Salvo D, Kohl HW, Correlates of Helmet Use Among Recreation and Transportation Bicyclists, AJPM 2016' and

'In New Zealand, from 1989 to 2011, average time spent cycling (on roads and footpaths) fell by 79% for children aged 5-12 (from 28 to 6 minutes per person per week) and 81% for 13-17 year olds (52 to 10 mins/person/week).
Adult cycling declined from 8 to 5 minutes/person/week then trended back up to 8 minutes. Graphs of cycle use over time provide strong evidence that the requirement to wear a helmet discouraged cycling. The reductions in cycling were accompanied by increased injury rates. Between 1989 and 2012, fatal or serious injuries per million hours of cycling increased by 86% for children (from 49 to 91), 181% for teenagers (from 18 to 51) and 64% for adults (from 23 to 38).'

90 euro fine.
How much for running over a cyclist?

Given the massive amount of head injuries in cars, maybe car drivers need to start wearing helmets.

Simpson Bandit for me.

Evaluation of Australia's bicycle helmet laws, The Sports Science Summit, O2 venue London UK http://www.cycle-helmets.com/au-assessment-2015.pdf   provides some useful information.

France should have a public inquiry and look closely at the evidence. The evidence suggests children will be discouarged from cycling, e.g. For Australia there was strong evidence of cycling reducing in parts of the country following legislation, e.g. In Melbourne, road surveys revealed 30 more teenagers wearing helmets compared with 623 fewer cycling. In NSW, surveys showed 569 more children were wearing helmets compared with 2658 fewer cycling. For New Zealand, cycling usage reduced by 51%.

Erke and Elvik 2007 examined research from Australia and New Zealand and stated: "There is evidence of increased accident risk per cycling-km for cyclists wearing a helmet. In Australia and New Zealand, the increase is estimated to be around 14 per cent." The findings were based on six reports, four from when legislation was in place.

Erke A, Elvik R, Making Vision Zero real: Preventing Pedestrian Accidents And Making Them Less Severe, Oslo June 2007. page 28 https://www.toi.no/getfile.php/Publikasjoner/T%C3%98I%20rapporter/2007/889-2007/889-2007-nett.pdf

"Spain requires anyone riding a bike outside urban areas to wear one, except when they are riding uphill"

WTF - this is like one of those mediaeval laws rumoured to still exist in places like Chester and York. The epitome of unenforceable, surely: seems the product of a proper gerrymandering.

'No, m'lud, the incline was about to hit 1°... No? OK, then I'd just passed a goat wearing a fedora so assumed I was in a town'...

Do we have to have this conversation all over again...

Hard to believe that just as one country removes its helmet law, another country adopts one.  Olivier Schneider is of course right, and this has nothing to do with making cycling safer.  The only real question is why the government have introduced it, apparently without bothering to look at the data.  I'm not sure if it's comforting or not to find out that it's not just our politicians who are more convinced by opinion rather than data.

Look forward twenty years and the great French obesity/diabetes epidemic because kids won't ride bikes any more, and they won't when the grow up either.

Incredibly short sighted, counter-productive and just plain stupid, especially when two reports came out last week telling us that we need massive expansion of cycling to prevent modern illnesses caused by our sedentary life styles.