CyCling safety

no-go on northern irish helmet billattempts to introduce a cycle helmet compulsion law in northern ireland appear to be dead in the water. the proposal has run out of time to be voted on before the Northern Ireland Assembly’s elections in May and looks unlikely to be reintroduced in its current form.

the proposal was first introduced by northern ireland assembly member pat Ramsey in august 2010. assembly members voted for the proposal to be scrutinised by the Assembly’s environment committee and then reintroduced with the committee’s recommendations.

However, assembly elections will be held in may, and the Cyclists (protective Headgear) Bill has not passed through the committee quickly enough to prevent it missing the deadline for the session’s last proposals.

for the bill to go any further, it will now have to be reintroduced in the next parliamentary session. However, after the initial bill enjoyed a small margin of support, the environment committee raised some critical issues with it, rendering this an unlikely scenario.

Ramsey himself admits as much. Reportedly he told a member of CTC, the UK’s National Cyclists’ Organisation, that “the bill as proposed will not be going through”.

among the concerns raised by the committee was that helmet compulsion could deter people from cycling and may therefore be counter-productive in terms of public health, could damage business and be an inappropriate use of police time.

members were also worried about the bill potentially creating unnecessary friction between police and communities, which is particularly undesirable given pre-existing sensitivities around the police within certain communities in northern ireland.

CTC policy coordinator Chris Peck told CW that an already critical committee seemed queasy about the bill.

“We want to push road safety initiatives that make it safer and encourage cycling — something that a helmet law would not do,” he said.

NI cyclists are still free to ‘dare to bare’

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