Safe cycling less about helmets and more about considerate road users

Despite the confidence with which Brian McDonald (December 15) states that helmet use should be encouraged, there is little firm evidence that mandatory helmet laws do anything to increase safety levels for cyclists.

It appeals to common sense that if everyone wears a helmet, then there will be a huge reduction in head injuries, but the 1990 introduction of a mandatory helmet law in Australia has shown little reduction in the number of head injuries, despite a collapse in the numbers of people cycling.

In fact, the overall injury rate of cyclists has actually increased on their 1990 levels, despite the law’s aim of increasing the safety of cycling.

So far this year in Ireland, 11 cyclists have died, the worst since 2008.

But this is from a joint low of five deaths in 2010 and 2013, and this has fallen from an average of 23 cyclist deaths per annum in the mid 1990s, despite a vast increase in the numbers of people cycling.

This huge drop in cycling fatalities is largely down to a ‘safety in numbers’ effect — the more people cycle, the more careful and considerate other road users are.

In Dublin, where cyclist numbers have more than trebled in a decade, both deaths and serious injury rates have fallen to a quarter of their previous levels in the same time.

When cycling deaths are as low as they are small statistical fluctuations can easily give the impression that things are out of control.

But they’re not. On average, the roads have never been safer for Irish cyclists.

Peter Barry

St Lukes Cross,

Cork