Bike Helmets, Children, and Libertarian Philosophy

To the Editor:

In response to Ted Roberts’s article criticizing the admonishing of children to use bicycle helmets (“Take Your Bike Helmet to the Safety Museum,” February), I’d like to offer a couple of unscientific, anecdotal items from my own experience.

One is from a few decades ago, when I was a student. A friend of mine was a regular bike rider in the northern suburbs of Boston. . . . On one occasion he was riding through Inman Square in Cambridge. A “square” is defined in that part of the world as a place where streets meet at an angle, which is not a right angle. . . . You can go straight or take a slight right turn when going through. My friend went straight. A driver decided to take a right turn at the same time and in the same space. Newtonian physics operated as expected. My friend had a helmet and was quite sure he was saved from serious head injury by it. He was, I should note, a libertarian like me, and would not have advocated that anyone be compelled to wear a helmet. The environment he was riding in was quite a bit different from the nearly deserted park Roberts described. So at least the context of the traffic situation needs to be taken into account.

Around 1990 I was riding on a state road in Hollis, New Hampshire, a suburban . . . area with houses, flea markets, and occasional remnants of farms. As I was headed north, a Dalmatian ran full speed into me and knocked me over. I bumped my head on the ground, but wasn’t more than scratched. I was wearing a helmet, as I normally do. I am sure the injuries would have been significantly worse if I hadn’t been. The idiot dog wasn’t trying to hurt me; like the driver in the earlier incident, it just wanted to get from where it was to where it was going and didn’t realize that two objects can’t simultaneously occupy the same space.

There is nothing statist about taking reasonable precautions against injury. And personally, I rather like the image of wearing a helmet “like a fullback, like an infantryman.”

On a more serious note, I need to respond to Roberts’s misuse of statistics: “Just guess where most injuries occur?” More injuries occur driving cars than jumping over Niagara Falls; that doesn’t mean that jumping over Niagara Falls is safer. More injuries occur while driving because people spend far more time driving than bicycling or falls-jumping. Per mile ridden—which is what counts to the individual, and isn’t libertarianism about individuals?—riding a bicycle on a moderately trafficked road at 10 mph is significantly more dangerous than driving a car on the same road at 40 or on an interstate at 75. A car is full-body armor compared to the protection one has on a bicycle.

But thanks for reminding me that I should get my bicycle out again, as soon as the snow starts melting.

—Gary McGath
By e-mail

To the Editor:

I enjoy Ideas on Liberty tremendously but I take great exception to the article by Ted Roberts, “Take Your Bike Helmet to the Safety Museum.” As a magazine aimed at a younger audience, publishing this drivel is totally irresponsible and demonstrates, at least, that nobody in your editorial department rides a bike beyond your lovely campus.

Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, is on Route 9, which is a route often used by recreational bikers (non-professional bikers) who share the road with automobiles, trucks, buses, and motorcycles and face the same issues (wet and potholed streets, drunks, pranksters, and inattentive soccer moms in their SUVs crammed to the roof with screaming kids) as autos do. The difference is that the bike rider is riding a 20 lb. vehicle with most of his skin exposed except for his lycra shorts and shirt. If a rider is knocked to the ground or falls from his bike at normal riding speeds of up to 25-30 mph he hits his head. I can assure you that when a head meets pavement, an immovable object or an oncoming car, a helmet can mean the difference between a broken collarbone, scrapes, and bruises and death or a vegetative state.

Riding in a city at any speed is dangerous and riding off road in the woods, mountain biking, always involves falls, rocks, trees. Why do you think serious recreational bikers wear helmets, because they don’t like the wind in their hair? Why do they wear protective glasses?

To make bike helmets for kids a libertarian issue is nonsense, and Mr. Roberts must have a lot of time on his hands and Ideas on Liberty must have a lot of empty space for this to get into print.

—John Myers
By e-mail

To the Editor:

If Ted Roberts wishes to take his bike helmet to the safety museum, he is surely welcome to do so. As for myself, having had three bike spills over the years—once from crossing a wet railroad track at a sharp angle, another when a pickup truck pulled out in front of me and, most recently, because a dog cut across in front of the bike—I shall continue to faithfully wear my helmet. In none of these accidents would I likely have suffered a brain concussion, but in two of them I would have had some lacerations on my scalp. I’m not sure of the statistics, but I understand that half of bicycle accident deaths are due to head injuries.

One can pay some outrageous prices for bike helmets, but satisfactory headgear can be purchased for $30 or less. I highly recommend wearing a suitable bike helmet, but whether it should be made legally mandatory is a separate area for discussion.

—Phil Clark
Carthage, Ill.

Ted Roberts replies:

I am pleased to receive Mr. McGath’s comments: happy to see that, like myself, he is a believer in the value of anecdotal/personal experience, since his response to my fulminations was two personal anecdotes. That’s a lot better than “data” from the Bike Helmet Manufacturers or Centers for Disease Control—fine organizations, but alas, concerned with growth, not truth. As I said, personal experience is not scientific, but it’s eminently reliable. Mr. McGath makes the very good point that the biking environment has a lot to do with risk of injury. That’s why my thesis was directed at kids who pedal the byways of the neighborhood. If I pedaled to a Manhattan office via the Long Island Expressway, I’d seriously consider headgear. Mr. McGath also mentions that we drive more than we bike—ergo more automotive head injuries. Mile for mile, he says the bike is deadlier. I’m not so sure. Could be. But regardless of the comparative safety of car and bike, wearing the helmet in the car might help, right? I mean, why be half safe?

But my article was not only about the risk of biker head injuries. It’s about the price of prevention, which Mr. McGath does not address. As he says, you can hurt your head falling off a bike. No doubt about it. It is a finite possibility. Of course, even on neighborhood streets you can meet a wayward Mack truck that sneers at your helmet and mashes you into a hamburger. But the pertinent question is not entirely the possibility of head injury. The question is what you’ll pay to prevent injury to you or your child. And the price is steeper for the child with a mind still unformulated. You do not want to implant the scary-world syndrome.

Beside my dining-room window stands a large Bradford pear tree. But even on windy days we have a serene supper without fear that the pear tree will join us at the dining-room table. There is a real probability—akin to head injury on a bike, I’d guess—that the tree will topple. I could call in an arboreal specialist (tree trimmer) and a stonemason (bricklayer) to build an expensive bulwark between that ten-ton tree and my family. But I’m not inclined to pay the economic and aesthetic costs. It’s all about costs—like everything else in life.

Most of my answer above also applies to Mr. Myers and others. But if I were Mr. Myers and wanted to argue with Ted Roberts about his bike-helmet thesis, I’d find and then clearly state egregious accident statistics regarding the probability of head injury. Then I’d relate that danger to the other perils that beset humanity like drowning, traffic accidents, starvation, terrorism, electrocution, and spills out of lofty windows. Having proved the eminence of cracked skulls due to bike mishaps (if such an eminence exists), I’d attack the cost side of his tradeoff. (No, not only the price of the helmet.) I would try to prove them inconsequential compared to the risk of injury.

Mr. Myers does none of this. You can fall off your bike on Route 9, he says. You can be hurt. Yes, I agree. But that is not the point of my essay. The point is that the mind of a child is as vulnerable to fear as it is to pavement. That point went unnoticed by Mr. Myers and others.

It’s not a libertarian issue? Since when do libertarians honor convention? If we didn’t think adventurously, if we didn’t respect the tradeoffs inherent in managing an intelligent life for us and our kids, we’d all have voted for Al Gore. Did he not promise a governmental safety net for all who were oppressed by life’s uncertainties: the poor, the disadvantaged, the clumsy bike rider? Would Mr. Myers have popped a joyful wheelie when we were Gored with National Bike Helmet legislation! That’s not a libertarian concern?

Charity versus Self-Interest

To the Editor:

I must object to Donald Boudreaux’s article “Self-Interest, Part 1” (February 2003). Its premise is that Michael Milken, whose company went bankrupt, “surely” contributed more to society than Mother Teresa, whose religious order thrives long after her passing. Yet the article ignores this sharp contrast in long-term impact.

The reality, to coin a term from the article, is that charity has many powerful economic advantages over commercialism. For example, there are almost no transaction costs in charity—no paperwork, no middlemen, and not even identification requirements. Charitable transactions do not feed government, while commercial ones do generate taxes, including support for ruthless foreign regimes. Moreover, charity is not limited to an agreement between buyer and seller on a specific product or service, as commercial transactions are. In sum, selflessness epitomizes ideals that free enterprise can only strive to attain.

There are many activities where charity has trounced commercialism in the free market. Blood donations, for example, are more easily solicited by appealing to selflessness than by paying compensation. Medical care in general did better when its backbone was charity rather than Medicaid and Medicare. Education, too, was on a higher level when selflessness was its foundation rather than unions and compensation.

Economic freedom does not result from attacking those who donate their time or money rather than accumulate it. Truth be told, capitalism depends on the freedom to give. Unfettered charity is not the rival of free enterprise, but its foundation.

—Andy Schlafly
Far Hills, N.J.

Donald Boudreaux replies:

I hope that I didn’t overstate my argument that self-interest is essential to the great and prosperous society that we Westerners enjoy. Of course Mr. Schlafly is correct to suggest that charitable impulses, and actual charity, often achieve many goals that would not be achieved otherwise.

My point was not that charity has no value, but, rather, that the value of self-interest is too often overlooked by those who celebrate other-regarding motives.

But while space does not permit me to address all of Mr. Schlafly’s points, I must express my disagreement with his claim that Medicaid and Medicare are the “backbone” of modern medical care. These unfortunate government programs do play a large role in today’s health-care market, but they are not its backbone. The backbone of modern medical care is the profit-seeking efforts by private firms to develop new drugs and medical devices, by physicians to provide effective care, and by private insurance companies to supply health insurance.

Guns and Barn Doors

To the Editor:

I enjoyed James Bovard’s February “It Just Ain’t So” about gun control. However, I take exception to his analogy [in this sentence: “Banning guns in response to high crime rates is like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped.”]. I tend to think banning guns in response to high crime rates is like removing the doors from the barn to protect the other horses. This captures the complete idiocy of gun-control policies. First of all, there won’t be any horses left; second, removing the only means of protection of whatever horses may be left won’t make them any safer; and third, it allows any foreign horses (or other critters) to enter the barn easily.

It just don’t make any sense!

—Gordon Smith
Boulder, Colorado