Last night I was threatened with arrest for not wearing a bicycle hat sold as a helmet.
That’s right, I don’t wear a bicycle helmet. I follow the international safety standard which, unlike the Australia standard, has been proven in the real world.
Some rough stats are: you are 10 times more likely to die from a car hitting you, when you are wearing a helmet, than anyone in the Netherlands without a helmet.
Clearly the helmet is not giving us the safety edge you might have hoped for, in fact that’s one seriously worrying correlation.
But never mind the stats or the facts: facts like the science used to bring in the law was flawed; the fact that case-studies across the globe provide real-world evidence that no helmet is the safest option; or the fact that the helmet is a poor substitute for proper bicycle infrastructure, which is really the only thing that makes a difference.
Never mind any of the facts.
The strangest statistic for Melbourne’s poorly thought through bicycle helmet law, is the policing of it.
The policing behaviour of the Victorian police force when it comes to the bicycle hat is a fascinating fact.
The first kind of policing goes like so: cops who clearly see me not wearing a helmet, either drive past or pretend not to see me even though I’m in the bike lane next to them.
This is the most common behaviour exhibited by the police. Which is great because less taxpayer’s money is wasted on paying for a judge just to hear me talk about not wearing a bicycle helmets.
The second most common police response is they will ask me why I’m not wearing a helmet, I will then tell them I follow international safety standards and wearing one infringes my civil rights, and then they write it down and leave.
This one I love the best because it’s always the bike cops who never send me the fine. Good for them, clearly riding a bicycle makes you smarter.
It’s the third, and luckily the least common, kind of police response that baffles me the most because it has nothing to do with safety.
It goes something like the encounter I had last night.
I pull up at the lights next to a police car. Policeman winds down window and asks where my helmet is.
We get in to a heated debate about helmet safety, he doesn’t like my attitude and my refusal to get off my bike so he opens door in to my bike and knocks me off balance so I stumble in to the car lane.
Policeman then gets out of his car with a king-sized metal torch which he holds above my head and threatens me with arrest.
By this stage, I was wishing I was wearing a helmet because my head has a seriously large weapon hovering over it.
I’m then forced to dodge out of his way and cross the road against the lights all to avoid one very young, very volatile , very aggressive policeman dragging me in to a cell for the night because I value my life and abide by internationally proven safety standards, or worse getting a king-sized crack in my skull from an out-of-control constable wielding a deadly weapon.
Like wow! You’d have thought from his response that he was dealing with someone wielding a deadly weapon and threatening lives, not with a petite-sized lady quietly taking herself home on a humble bicycle, whom, after much research, chose to go with world experts advise on bicycle safety.
What’s most disturbing is that it’s always the policeman who have never ridden a bicycle in their life that are the most aggressive and uninterested in the bicycle safety facts.
Those that do ride are always particularly interested in hearing about international bicycle safety and best practice, and have never issued my with a fine, threatened me with arrest, or wielded weapons at me.
So I congratulate the bicycle police force on their evident concern and dedication to hearing the facts, but I request they investigate the very strange fact that their car-driving counterparts behave very badly.