Showing posts with label Cycling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cycling. Show all posts

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Helmet laws hit the headlines - again

The public debate about mandatory helmet wearing laws in Australia has raged since Sue Abbott won an appeal to the District Court last August defending her failure to wear a helmet. Since then media coverage on the matter has been generally poor, often confusing the effectiveness of helmets in reducing head injuries following a fall, with the net social benefits of the law itself.

The debate

The debate is about mandatory helmet laws (MHL). The pro-choice side advocates repealing the law so that helmet wearing is voluntary (not compulsory non-helmet wearing as some mistakenly believe).

The argument is about whether the law itself provides net social benefits – not about whether an individual rider involved in a fall is more or less likely to injure their head by wearing a helmet. Evidence points to the fact that yes, a falling rider with a helmet will, on average, suffer less severe head injuries than a bareheaded rider.

But is this a justification for a law?

Not at all. You see wearing a helmet while walking and driving will also prevent head injuries in the case of an accident. But one side of the debate seems happy to leave these other activities alone, even though it fits logically with their argument. 

Health Costs

Indeed, supporters of MHLs often cite taxpayer-funded public health care as a justification. Yet this makes no sense whatsoever for the MHL debate, the tobacco taxes, or any other preventative health care issue.

As I have said before 
…that increasing preventative health care, while having the benefits of a healthier and long life, often come at increased total lifetime health costs, rather than decreased costs as is often proposed. Remember, we all die some day, and any potential cause of death postponed will allow another to take its place, which of course has its own health costs.

Alternatively, a more healthy existence may make us more productive for longer and lead to us contributing more in taxes over our lifetime than the potential increase in health costs which were paid through the tax system for our preventative care.

Governments, and subsequently economists, worry about these things because many health care costs are borne by others though tax revenue, yet the net economic effect is anything but straightforward.

The arguments 

The only argument remaining in favour of MHLs is that we are saving people from themselves. It is a pretty weak argument for making law in my view.

The pro-choice advocates usually cite a variety of factors to demonstrate that any benefits an individual may receive by wearing a helmet can be significantly offset by their own risk compensation and the changes to the behaviour of other road users.

For example
  1. Drivers will pass helmeted cyclists closer than bare headed cyclists (with cyclists with long blonde hair getting the most room).
  2. Helmets make cyclists feel safer, and they adjust by taking more risks (risk compensation
  3. Helmet laws decrease the number of cyclists on the road, making car drivers less familiar with cyclist behaviour and making each remaining cyclist less safe.
  4. Helmets increase diffuse axonal injuries of the brain and neck due to their increased diameter (and increased the likelihood of impacts due to the larger volume). As Sue Abbott argued in her court case – a helmet can increase angular acceleration which an oblique impulse imparts to the head, increasing the risk of damage to the brain, especially diffuse axonal injury 
  5. Helmets can be a hazard in many circumstances (with many child deaths recorded as a result of helmet wearing) 
  6. Any deterrent to cycling is likely to increase time spent on sedentary activities, further contributing to the obesity epidemic. 
  7. The law allows governments to appear to be acting in the interests of cyclist safety, while neglecting other measures to improve cyclist safety, such as bike lanes or driver education.
Added together, mandatory helmet laws are not a clear winner on any social benefit measure. 

Missing the point

Most media commentary has missed the point of the debate. The pro-choice side does not argue that helmets are worthless for any individual rider if they are to hit their head. They simply claim that helmets are not as effective at reducing injuries as they are made out to be and the many flow-on social effects that further reduce cyclist safety are not considered.

Even academics have a hard time finding strong evidence that helmet laws have reduced head injuries significantly. The Voukelatos and Rissel paper I referenced in a previous post, showed evidence that the benefits of helmet laws in reducing the ratio of head to arm injuries for hospitalized cyclists was insignificant compared to other road safety improvements in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was later retracted after criticism over data inaccuracies (corrected data in the graph below), with the critics now publishing their own study using similar statistics to examine the effect of the law in NSW. They find that there is a statistically significant impact of the law in reducing the ratio of head to arm and leg injuries.

Unfortunately, their model also found that the helmet law led to fewer hospitalisations of pedestrians with arm injuries.

For cyclists who do fall in a manner leading to significant injuries, a helmet may reduce head injuries. That it is so difficult to see the effect of helmet laws in the data suggests that any benefits of helmet wearing must be very small, even at an individual level. MHL supporters usually feel that helmets prevent almost all head injuries. But this is not the case. They at best provide a marginal improvement in head safety.


I hope this brings a bit of perspective to the issue for readers who stumble across helmet headlines.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Realities of cycling

I've probably whinged about the inadequacy of bike lanes before, but this guy makes the point with a little more style. Enjoy the video.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Housing stimulus idea

From Crikey:

Local bike paths mean higher house prices

That is one housing stimulus package I would be happy to see implemented.  From the comments section:

More accurate take on alternate headline –
Bikeways found to be desirable trait amongst urban home buyers.
Temporary shortage of bikeways elevates prices in areas with bike paths.
Once all areas have bike paths, price distortion will be nil.

Captain Planet

Monday, November 15, 2010

Updates and a CityCycle apology

Plastic bag banning continues to gain momentum

Well known demographer Bernard Salt had a stoush with Dick Smith in a little documentary a few months ago discussing Australia’s population growth.  Now he is back with more nonsense.

Brisbane’s CityCycle scheme, from my observations, appears to be well used.  I was pessimistic about the potential take-up rate of the scheme, but in the past six weeks of operation I have seen 27 people using these bikes – about 26 more than I expected. I do however live across the road from one station, work in a building adjacent to a station, and cycle past another half dozen twice per day.

Interestingly, I have seen one person using the scheme helmetless and smoking while talking on a mobile phone (I don’t have a problem with this if they are not riding dangerously, which they weren’t), and one bloke walk up to the bikes in work attire and promptly retrieve a helmet from his backpack before shooting off on a hire bike.  I can only hope that with more (are there more cyclist, or just people deciding to use the scheme to avoid bike theft and wear and tear?) cyclists there will be a strong push for more user-friendly bike lanes.

And just for fun, a hilarious rap battle between Keynes and Hayek to entertain the inner economics nerd.


Monday, October 18, 2010

Counterintuitive findings?

Pool fences
Could Queensland’s new tougher pool fence laws offer an opportunity to study the Peltzman Effect? Will we now feel that pools are no longer a safety hazard for toddlers and drop our supervisory guard? One man, who refuses to comply with the laws, has argued this exact point and is strongly supported in his views (if you can trust the newspaper comments).

In one case, a pool owner living on a canal has had to fence their pool, yet is not obliged to fence off access to the canal.  One does wonder about how far governments can go to protect us from our own behaviour.

Pool fences are only there to protect kids from parents who don't. There are no fences around all the lakes in Brisbane, Southbank's lagoons are not fenced, the Brisbane River is not fenced. Why? Because we are responsible enough to ensure our children don't get into danger in these areas.

What further astounds me is that lack of evidence in the pool fence debate. In one of the more interesting studies I could find, 52% of pools where toddler drowning events had occurred in Western Australia where compliant with the pool fence legislation (compared to 40% for randomly selected pools).  There was no further discussion of this key point – that statistically it appears more likely to drown in a fenced pool that an unfenced one (I would be very interested if anyone can find a more thorough study of the effectiveness of pool fence laws).

While this is just a small sample from one State, and I would question whether general conclusions can be drawn, some more rigorous examination of the effectiveness of pool fence laws is seems appropriate before toughening the laws.  Is the government really going to do the same thing and expect different results?

Cycling by the road rules
The Council is inviting CityCycle subscribers to undertake a Cycling Confidence Course to improve their bicycle skills and brush up on their knowledge of road rules.

Maybe that's a bad idea. Recent research suggests that people obeying road rules are more likely to be killed by trucks than those who disobey the rules by, for example, running red lights. 

Women may be overrepresented in [collisions with goods vehicles] because they are less likely than men to disobey red lights.

By jumping red lights, men are less likely to be caught in a lorry driver’s blind spot. Cyclists may wait at the lights just in front of a lorry, not realising that they are difficult to see.

In more than half the fatal crashes, the lorry was turning left. Cyclists may be deceived by a lorry swinging out to the right to give itself room to make a left turn.

I can’t agree more with these findings.  Every day I see cyclists waiting in the blindspot of a car or truck at traffic lights, and occasionally see a cyclist sneak up the left side of a bus while it is turning left.  I hope Brisbane City Council’s cycling confidence course acknowledges that sometimes it is safer to break the rules.

Congestion (queuing) as an efficient allocation mechanism
I have raised the idea in the past that road congestion is in fact an efficient allocation mechanism provided that there is prior knowledge of expected travel times.  Now, from The Australian we have this:

Sure, if we invested enough in roads, all cars could travel at the speed limit. But the costs of thus expanding road capacity would greatly outweigh the value motorists place on the savings in time and discomfort.

Exactly the same applies to road charging. With charges set sufficiently high, remaining drivers could go at speeds rivalling the Melbourne grand prix. But even Mrs Moneybags, rocketing in her Ferrari, would not value the benefits enough to offset the welfare loss to the peons forced by the high charges to walk to work. Add to their loss the costs of implementing the road charging scheme and the efficiency loss is all the greater.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Common sense and the CityCycle launch


I am pretty sure no one in Brisbane has ever said they do not ride for want of a bicycle. Nevertheless, Campbell Newman has spent $10million of ratepayers money on hire bikes to solve this none existent problem.  

I could be argumentative and say that if access to bikes was a problem, you could have bought 20,000 of them for Brisbane residents for that price (at $500 each – 33,000 at $300 each). 

After a dramatic week repairing bike stations that were installed backwards, today, Brisbane’s CityCyle scheme was launched, with 500 bikes at 50 stations across the inner city.  To my surprise there were actually some people waiting to use the scheme today.

There are few optimists left in discussion of bike hire schemes in Australia. Melbourne’s scheme, for example, is not quite off to a roaring start – 0.5% utilisation or 70 trips per day after three months.  I could repeat myself and highlight that the success of this scheme depends on its convenience to users.  Helmet laws and lack of road space are key impediments to convenience. Indeed, I proposed that a car hire scheme would be a better way to encourage cycling.

Brisbane is trying to overcome the helmet problem by giving away 2000 of them, but Council admits the helmet requirement shrinks the potential user base.  Tourists are apparently they are not a target market for the scheme. 

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Dutch Cargo Bike Review

Note: A follow-up (3yr) review is here. I am now a local ambassador for Dutch Cargo Bikes. If you would like to test rise this bike in Brisbane (or a three wheeler) email me at cameron@dutchcargobike.com.au  
I almost convinced myself not long ago that a bicycle for carrying children was a completely unjustified expense.  Luckily I didn't. Because my sparkling new bakfiets.nl cargo bike, supplied through Dutch Cargo Bike, arrived several weeks ago. And I'm excited. I've also convinced myself that in reality it isn't expensive, and in fact represents great value for money.

In the past three weeks I've used the bike daily for the commute to work, to the shops, to day care, to pick up my wife from yoga – you name it. It is now time for an early review. But first, I need to explain how this value conscious economist ended up with a $3000+ bike.

For the non-cyclist the prices of these bikes can be a shock. Bikes are meant to cost hundred, and second hand cars are meant to costs thousands. We have trouble seeing where all the money goes on a bicycle! But as avid cyclists would know, high quality equipment still costs money in the world of bikes, and this bike is extremely high quality.

You need to understand that the ongoing costs for cycling are extremely low, and lower with higher quality components.  I can imagine in 5 years when our youngest child is happily riding themselves we might have less use for the bike, but it would be reasonable, given the high quality of all the parts on this bike, to expect the bike to be very good condition.  If the bike sold for $2000 in five years time, you are looking at a total 5 year total cost of around $1300 (including servicing, tyres etc) or less than $300 per year, or $5.70 per week –a little more than one bus fare – which is a bargain for a young family given the great health and social benefits from family cycling [1].

I believe this bike represents good value for our family, so what are my first impressions?

The Dutch Cargo Bike team arranged delivery and assembly at my local bike shop.  What first struck me about the bike was the attention to detail – rubber antislip coating on the floor of the box, with a ledge for kids to use to help them climb in, a magnetic latch for the very stable four-prong kick stand (apparently a patented design by Maarten van Andel), and built in elastic straps for securing loads to the heavy duty rear rack. Not to mention the very bright generator light as standard equipment (which I now just leave on at all times).

The bike rides incredibly smoothly.  In fact I can cross manoeuvrability from my cons list and shift it to the pros list. After a bit of practice you can steer this puppy easily through tight gaps, even loaded with four children. And slow, well, it’s actually not as sluggish as I expected either.  After a week of riding this fairly weighty beast my legs seem to have built up the strength to ride at breakneck pace and tackle those hills that seemed so intimidating at first.

The box is extremely strong.  It looks like flimsy plywood in photos, but is almost one centimetre think, does not scratch easily, and does not flex under heavy loads. I've taken all my mates for a spin, and even loaded with my wife, child and dog (80kg) on board it feels solid and safe.

The most unexpected benefit of the bike is that after a laid back ride and lots of smiles and waves from passersby, you always arrive happy.

fn.[1] The alert reader will note there is an opportunity cost to the forgone $3000 that could have been alternatively invested, say at 5%, which adds another $150 per year.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Helmet law research hits the headlines

Helmet laws hit the headlines with a new Australian study proclaiming their ineffectiveness at providing safety to cyclists, while in Canada the debate is heading the other way (due to this study - sorry I can't get the full text to review the methods).

The Australian study neatly controls for the number of cyclists and distance cycled by comparing the ratio of head to arm and hand injuries resulting from cycling activities from hospital records. A change in this ratio (lower head injuries per arm and hand injury) would be a clear indicator of the success of helmet wearing in preventing head injury.
The figure above shows the ratio (ICD9) from 1988 to 2000. Helmet laws were introduced in 1991, and self-reported compliance for two age groups (<16years and >16years) are plotted from 1991 to 1995.

The essential argument is that the large decline in the ratio of head to arm injuries occurred before the helmet law, and much before compliance with the law. In the two year period where helmet wearing took off following the legislation (1991 to 1993), the ratio dropped from 0.8 to 0.75 – hardly a success. The drop in the two years preceding the helmet law was from 1.15 to 0.8.

The author suggests that other road safety measures contributed to the decline, while the law itself would have contributed to a decline in the number of cyclists (some evidence for the decline is here) which itself made cycling more dangerous and lead to a flattening of the trend -

The reduction in numbers of people cycling may have actually increased the risk to the remaining cyclists because of Smeed’s Law and the safety in numbers hypothesis.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Bakfiets – is Australia ready for the cargo bike revolution?

Note: I bought a Bakfiets long cargo bike in September 2010 from Dutch Cargo Bikes and couldn't be happier. A follow-up (3yr) review is here.  I am now a local ambassador for Dutch Cargo Bikes. If you would like to test ride this bike in Brisbane (or a three wheeler) email me at cameron@dutchcargobike.com.au  
Recent discussions on cycling culture and the imminent arrival of our second child have resulted in an obsession with cargo bikes or Bakfiets (Dutch for boxbikes). These bikes are taking the world buy storm, and have now made their way to Australia, with the market well served by DutchCargoBike.com.au, who offer a variety of models.

I want one, exactly like in the photo above, but I don’t know why.

Economists generally believe people know how to make decisions that maximise their welfare. But in many cases we can’t know how much we will enjoy our consumption decisions in advance, since we have never experienced them before – such goods are known as experience goods.

Having already test-ridden one and been impressed, I am now attempting to evaluate the bike's worth by first itemising the pros and cons. Any assistance or insight or suggestions are appreciated.

Pros
Can handle a load of groceries plus children for short trips
Can pick up hitchhikers
No parking or fuel costs and only minimal maintenance
Fun

Cons
$3150 for the bike
Over $4000 if you want electric motor assistance
Plenty of hills in Brisbane
Size and manoeuvrability
Extreme summer heat (can buy a shade for the kids though)

More importantly, to determine the value to our family of the bike I have been thinking in terms of marginal utility. Instead of thinking how good or practical the bike could be in isolation, I think in terms of how much better having the bike would be compared to our current situation.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Cycling culture through economist eyes



I have been fortunate enough to travel widely in the past decade and sample the breadth of human experience. Today I want to focus specifically on the evolution of cycling culture around the globe.

I have taken note of the popularity of my recent post on the proposed bicycle hire scheme in Brisbane and want to expand some of the points I made about the incentives to (or not to) cycle, and compare the diverse cycling cultures around the world.

The comparison will consider such obvious differences across countries such as speed, cost and safety, but focus on the historical development of cycling culture across countries. I will finish with some ideas about how to cities can embrace cycling as a legitimate mode of transport.

Monday, April 19, 2010

CityCycle scheme, bicycle helmet laws, and a better alternative


In my bio I promise to turn ideas on their heads to gain a better understanding. In this spirit I ask the following question of Brisbane City Council’s proposed CityCycle bicycle hire scheme – is it better for council to subsidise a bicycle hire scheme to stimulate bicycle use, or is it better for council to subsidise a car hire scheme to encourage bicycle use?

(And yes council will have to subsidise the scheme through the donation of public space, and possible contributions to ongoing costs, as has happened with such schemes in Europe, even though hire costs and advertising on bikes provide the main sources of revenue for the operator).

I suggest the latter may be preferable. Here is my logic.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

100th post: Bicycle registration?

I wanted to write a beautiful piece reflecting on two years of blogging for this event – my 100th blog post. But instead, I’ll get down to some nitty gritty analysis of contemporary issues with an economic and environmental twist.

Today’s topic is cycling.

After a charity ride from Brisbane to the Gold Coast last weekend, the local rag has ignited the dry tinder of cyclist resentment present in the Australian motoring psyche (remember the Rex Hunt incident?). I want to deconstruct the emotional Cyclist V Motorist debate to see which positions hold merit, and what type of government intervention could provide benefits for all involved.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Should

It’s weird word, and one that I hear much too often from the environmentalists in my social circle. We should care for the environment, we should turn off the lights, we should drive less, we should eat organic food, we should should should should. Where does it end?

And isn’t it amazing how many people are happy to should you without a solid principle upon which to base their assertion.

I had a guy once pull up next to me on his push-bike at traffic lights after he saw me roll through the previous red light. He told me I should obey the lights, and clothed his statement in the authority of his role as a bike shop attendant who hears drivers complain about cyclists flaunting road rules. “No worries” seemed like the most polite palm off I could manage, considering I felt like telling him to mind his own business and wishing he’d get knocked off his bike.

That afternoon, returning home along the same stretch of road, I followed another cyclist who happened to run a red light. I stopped, as there was traffic coming. But I caught up to him a couple of intersections later. I didn’t think there was anything to say, he was acting as I would expect a cyclist to act but it was the same guy who gave me an earful in the morning! Want a hypocritical bastard.

I wasn’t in the mood for confrontation (I rarely am) so I just said g’day, and rode on my way. I hope he felt like a tool, because it must have been fairly obvious I’d seen him run the light.

I thought originally his should proposition was that we should all obey road rules. But by evening, it looked like his should proposition is that we should look after our personal safety before road rules, but make sure everyone else is doing the 'right thing'.

But it brings me to my point about should. Where does the authority to should someone come from? Most of the greenies get their best information from the hippie papers, and unwashed websites, and very few would understand an academic journal should they ever learn how to find one. A loose translation of should is “let me tell you how to behave” – but that wouldn’t go down so well.

But the real problem is that the ‘should-ers’ generally have the best intentions. They genuinely believe what they say, and that they are on some kind of mission to rescue the world from the ‘unshould’; those who independently determine their behaviour.

I should resolve never to should anyone again. My wife would appreciate that.