4 hours transiting in an airport bar in LA and I just can't help revisiting the notion that notwithstanding the lack of ethical and informed consent, Australian governments actually played a part in a global randomised control trial on mandatory bicycle helmet laws.
Needless to mention this experiment would never have passed an academic ethics committee at any respected institution but even so we were willingly and very obligingly offered up to be the helmeted guinea pigs - the far more dangerous role by a country mile!
And yes, very unsurprisingly the world concluded that they'd be mad to go down the Australian pathway no matter what their resident commercially driven helmet proponents say.
You can be sure the latter will not give up and will continue to pester relentlessly in the hopes that other governments will crack like ours did - because basically that is how Big Oil works. Hopefully those governments will hold out and not capitulate like Australian ones, big suckers that they were (are still) for Big Oil and the car culture...
...one big proverbial sigh from me as always!
With the criminalisation of upright citizens who exercise choice of riding sans helmet, it is appropriate that you deliver the message to conference that Australia hasn't change all that much since the Tolpuddle Martyrs were exported to Oz 200+ years ago. The corporatist-state has merely replaced governors in the colonies in the oppression of any dissenter of the status-quo, and who are we as citizens to question the helmet paradigm?
ReplyDeleteAs always, I totally agree with you - corporate helmet law sucks!!!
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