As a further contribution to the debate on the justification for mandatory legislation on wearing seat belts and cycle helmets, I would like to up-date those reading Comments on John Adams blog on the subject to the latest exchange of emails with Rob Gifford, Director of PACTS.

I have emailed him today as follows:
“I do not apologise for pressing you to respond to the challenges to PACTS’ position on the consequences of mandatory seat belt wearing (and its relevance to decisions on the desirability of making cycle helmet wearing mandatory). In view of the need for policy to be based on reliable evidence, in this instance owing to its implications for the future role of cycling and walking, it is very much in the public interest that this debate is brought to a satisfactory conclusion. It is for this reason that I am posting this as a further comment on John Adams’ blog on the subject and assume that you agree on the desirability of, and support for this procedure.

I hope that I am right in anticipating that your immediate reply to my email of 24 September below which simply states

“Thanks for your reply. Perhaps I did not make myself clear enough. PACTS is not claiming the 50,000 lives saved. That figure is taken from the Department for Transport”,

I assume that this is the precursor to a fuller reply. Failure to provide that could be interpreted as reflecting an inability to do so.

Mayer

It might be unpopular to say so, but we in the developed world are very safe. Injuries kill a rather small percentage of us; most of us escape a violent end and die of heart disease or cancer. Could it be that the low-hanging fruit in the world of safety has all been picked?

Perhaps Prof. Adams’ observations about the ineffectiveness of seat belt legislation may have been the first sign that this point had been reached. That legislation seemed to be a reasonable measure to implement. I thought so too, until I looked at what happened in my own province of Alberta, the last jurisdiction in Canada to pass such a law (and one not included in Prof. Adams’ publications). Following the passage of the law, the crash rate jumped by about 25% and the fatality rate for motor vehicle occupants had no significant change, which appears to be evidence for the risk compensation hypothesis.

What is troubling is that it now seems to be the case that little or no risk assessment is done before imposing safety regulations on some activity, and no assessment of effectiveness is done afterwards. (Or the assessment does not take into account changes in exposure to risk, like reduced cycling levels after a helmet law, or the assessment is focused entirely on measuring compliance with the law, rather than measuring any benefit.)

In Canada, there have been recent safety regulations and campaigns for compulsory ice hockey helmets for recreational ice skating, compulsory 4-sided fencing and life jackets for children in private swimming pools, and banning of book shelves over 5 feet tall. Taken together, and assuming the measures were 100% successful, they would save about 25 lives a year. But you would not know that from the materials used to promote them.

The measures that Prof. Walker recommends for improved road safety (mobile phone bans, better street design, restrictions on younger drivers) sound reasonable, but I hope that we would not make the same mistake made by those who (in good conscience, I believe) promoted seat belt legislation. We should see if they really do make a significant difference, and if they do not, they should be repealed. It is a pity that it is so politically difficult to admit that reasonable-sounding legislation was ineffective and ought to be undone.

On reading it, I find it difficult to know where to begin?
In this reply, the 60,000 lives (not 50,000) that he claims have been saved by seat belt legislation amount to an average of 2,400 lives each year. But he also cites Broughton’s much lower estimate of 370 lives a year, and refers to his own estimate in Significance (June 2008) in which a “net” saving of 164 lives a year ” is calculated to take account of the fact that the saving has to be “appreciably offset by extra deaths among pedestrians and cyclists”.
Even if we were to accept Broughton’s estimate and Gifford’s calculation of a net annual rate of 164 lives saved, that adds up to just over 4,000 for the 25-year period, that is less than 7% of the 60,000 cited!.
Moreover, John Adams’ graph, on which remarkably no comment is made –
http://john-adams.co.uk/2009/09/16/seat-belts-again-2/ casts doubt on Gifford’s contention that the law has saved the lives of any motorists. Furthermore, if it were true that shifting the burden of risk from car occupants to cyclists and pedestrians saved more motorists’ lives than were lost in dead pedestrians and cyclists, I would be intrigued to know whether he would still support such legislation particularly in the light of the fact that pedestrians and cyclists are at far more risk from the carelessness of drivers than the reverse?
As the Director of PACTS, a body highly influential in the political domain, I feel Rob Gifford must put the record straight on this aspect of road safety if we are to avoid running the risk of further damaging legislation being introduced on the back of fallacious evidence.

Mayer Hillman
Policy Studies Institute