Vancouver council members voted 5-1 to make it illegal to ride a bike, skateboard, scooter, unicycle, in-line skates, or roller skates without a helmet. The vote was taken without much public input or awareness. The ordinance went into law on Tuesday March 25th. It affects these riders in any public place.
Wearing a helmet is a great safety precaution that I personally recommend, but making it a law is unnecessary. This well-intentioned ordinance really bothers me because it seems so innocent, but it really is another restriction on our liberties.
The idea that government should create a multitude of laws and ordinances for our safety isn’t rational. It isn’t that wearing helmets is a bad idea. I wear a helmet while I ride my bike. Where does it stop though? Maybe everyone that walks outside should wear helmets. Should we wear helmets while driving our cars?
Statistically it would be more effective to have everyone that is traveling by car wear a helmet to protect their head in the case of an accident. It would certainly be safer for all of us to wear helmets while driving. The idea of using laws to make us safer ultimately gives government too much power to dictate the parameters of our existence.
Another thing to consider is that this law will ultimately do more to discourage people from skating or biking then it will gain by saving lives. As a society that is struggling with air pollution and obesity, we need to encourage all forms of travel that burn calories instead of fossil fuels. Now is not the time to encumber people who aren’t burning fossil fuels to get everywhere.
The idea of the skateboarding community being forced to wear helmets bothers me. Skateboarders have always been a fringe group of lost souls. Early on, skateboarding was rejected by society as legitimate recreation. It was relegated to the counter culture and it ultimately became a culture of its own. The skateboarding community has been a target of local governments and business from the beginning. This led to the motto, “skateboarding is not a crime.”
Making skateboarders wear helmets starts a battle that will hurt this group. It is another opportunity for authority to marginalize them. Most of them probably won’t wear helmets. This will lead to conflict with police officers. Do we really want to introduce more of our youth to the judicial system?
This ordinance also highlights a growing hypocrisy in our society. It is hypocritical to remove our freedom to risk our own lives, in the name of public safety, and yet allow us to endanger others all the time. For example I have the freedom to get in my car and drive all over the city. By doing this I am degrading all of our safety by polluting the air, yet it is unlawful for me to drive around risking my own life by not wearing a seatbelt. A fast food restaurant can sell me food that is dangerous to my health and well being, but I am not allowed to burn those calories without a helmet.
This ordinance should be reduced in its scope to include only those of us who ride in traffic. That would be cyclists and electric or gas scooters who commute or get around town on the surface streets. Leisure rides in local parks, residential neighborhoods, and sidewalk skateboarders need to be exempted from its language.
Making these groups wear a helmet in every public place is only going to decrease the number of people exercising, increase the people using cars, and increase potentially negative interactions between police officers and people traveling by skate, bike or scooter.
