Editorial: Helmets vital for cyclists

Breakfast TV isn't usually offensive - unless you're a particularly sensitive soul (or if Paul Henry's involved) - but when its guests are allowed to encourage people to cycle without helmets, you have to question the worth of the segment.

TVNZ's Breakfast show yesterday posed the question, "Is it time to rethink the mandatory helmet law?".

Of course it's not.

But if you listen to their guest - cycling advocate Tim Gummer - New Zealand, with its helmet law is the laughing stock of the cycling world. If cyclists must wear helmets, he says, why shouldn't pedestrians wear them while crossing the road?

Asked what was the worst thing about the helmet law, Mr Gummer said the fact it put people off cycling.

He said this was because helmets had connotations of danger.

He didn't say whether seatbelts put people off driving.

Mr Gummer pooh-poohed the idea that cycling without a helmet was dangerous. "So's driving," he said.

At least he didn't roll out the old argument that more people die of obesity because they don't want to cycle with a helmet - therefore the helmet law is killing fat people.

I wonder what Mr Gummer would say to the parents of the teenage Bay of Plenty cyclist who's today in hospital with serious head injuries after crashing into a truck yesterday afternoon. He hadn't been wearing a helmet.

People who go out of their way to spread the message that helmets are not necessary, not cool, or even dangerous should be ashamed.