It is good to ask the questions

Lloyd Burr writes:

Will he look into getting rid of seatbelts in cars? What about aircraft safety briefings? We ask how far is too far for the Regulation Minister’s red tape crusade.

A lot of people seem to have got outraged that David Seymour even asked for advice on the issue of compulsory cycle helmets for cyclists. I think it is a good thing to have a Minister who will ask for evidence about whether something is actually providing more benefits than costs.

In London, people can wander up to a ‘Boris Bike’ rack, hire one and cycle around the city without having to worry about wearing a helmet.

When you’re done, you park it up at another rack and you’re good to go. It’s a similar system in New York and Los Angeles. In the Netherlands, it’s like this but on steroids. There are special bike highways and massive bike parking lots.

Helmets aren’t mandatory in those places – so why are they mandatory in New Zealand? This was a question a staff member of Regulation Minister David Seymour’s asked, and so the ministry looked into it.

As Burr helpfully points out there are lots of places where helmets are not compulsory, so looking at the issue is worthwhile.

“The long and the short of it is, there are a lot of countries where they don’t require you to have a helmet, but they also seem to have cities that are more set up for cycling,” Seymour says.

“London is better set up for cycling. They have slower traffic, more cycle lanes and so on. I would argue having a helmet law and still being able to share the road and drive at a decent speed is probably better for New Zealand,” he says.

That’s a useful thing to know. If you wanted to do away with compulsory helmets, you would need to have slower speed limits.

The argument in favour of not making them compulsory is that doing so discourages cycling (which is healthy for people) and more people would cycle if they were not compulsory.

Interestingly for Seymour, Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick – a person often dubbed his political nemesis – supported calls to scrap the helmet law in 2016 when she ran for the Auckland mayoralty.

No courage when she suggested it of course.

What about airline safety videos? It’s mandatory to watch them even if you’ve watched them hundreds of times.

“There should be a test. If you can pass the test, you never have to watch another one,” he says jokingly (we assume).

“The torture of continually having to watch it would be enough to motivate people to pass the test. It’d be better than anything NCEA has ever thrown up.”

That’s a great idea. I would happily sit a test to avoid having to pay attention to the same video as I have heard 500 or so times before.