"Bicycle helmet laws could do more harm than good"
The New Scientist magazine has this piece:
Helmet laws like those in effect in Australia levy a substantial cost on healthcare systems because savings from fewer head injuries pale in comparison to the costs incurred by decreases in cycling, a mathematical model concludes.
Piet de Jong, a mathematician at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, estimates that bicycle helmet laws would cost the US $4.8 billion per year, Netherlands $1.9 billion, and the U.K $0.4 billion.
However, one critic contends that de Jong's methods overestimate the health benefits of cycling, as well as the drop in cyclists caused by helmet laws.
"There's a lot of uncertainty around it," de Jong admits. "I try to reconcile all these various numbers or proportions that impinge on the question of whether helmet laws are very useful." . . . .
Labels: Economics
posted by John Lott at 9:27 PM
1 Comments:
Markie Marxist sez: "But the loss of benefits to health is nothing compared to the value of ramming another law down people's throats and forcing them to comply. We Marxists can't fully establish totalitarianism in America unless we do that often enough to get people used to it. Then we can do it more and more, until people get perfectly accustomed to us completely owning them. Some people want to own pets; we Marxists want to own people. It's a commie thing. Besides, pets wouldn't pay us taxes."
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