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The man behind the push to make bike helmets compulsory more than 20 years ago has hit back at a pair of academics from Sydney University who are now calling for the laws to be overturned.
Associate Professor Chris Rissel and Dr Alexander Voukelatos from the university's school of public health have looked at the number of cyclists admitted to hospital in New South Wales with cycling-related head injuries between 1989 - before helmets were mandatory - and 2008.
They say the greatest drop in head injuries was in the '80s, before the laws were introduced, because of road safety campaigns and speed controls. Professor Rissel says the number of head injuries has reduced only slightly since then, creating a case to overturn the helmet law.
"As the compliance of people wearing helmets increased you would expect a marked drop in the rate of head injuries and that's not what you see in the data," he said.
"What it does is it puts people off cycling and makes people think that cycling's a dangerous activity, even though it's a really healthy thing to do and it increases people's physical activity.
"People who ride short trips down to the shops, or ride in parks or just going along quiet streets, their risks are very, very low."
Given the findings, Professor Rissel is now seeking a community prepared to take part in a trial of optional helmet-wearing.
But Professor Frank McDermott, former chair of the Victorian Road Trauma Committee, RACS, and the man who spearheaded the original campaign to make bike helmets compulsory in Australia, says any sort of repeal would be taking a giant step backwards.
Professor McDermott says he finds the study's claim that the number of bike-related head injuries have remained the same since 1991 "quite surprising".
"The paper by Rissel has many deficiencies," he said.
"It has no direct measurements, only the ratio of arm versus head injury (which can be altered by changes in either), inconsistent injury data, no specific helmet wearing data, inclusion of only inpatients (which are a serious but minority group of cyclist casualties), and no data on deaths pre-hospital and whether they were or were not wearing helmets."
He says there is a lot of research which supports the wearing of helmets.
"We originally looked at the data across Victoria. We compared for all of Victoria the head injury frequency in motorcyclists and pedal cyclists," he said.
"At the time, motorcyclists wore helmets but not many pedal cyclists did. We found that the bicyclist who had less severe crashes had about three times the head injury, so that's when we got voluntary wearing on the way.
"After that we did a study on 1,710 Melbourne and Geelong bicycle casualties. About a quarter of them were wearing bicycle helmets and the head injury frequency was reduced about 50 per cent in those wearing bicycle helmets."
Professor McDermott says there is no question that if the current laws were overturned, head injuries would rise.
"It'll be as backward a step as it would be to tell motorists they don't have to wear seatbelts," he said. Christian King from Brain Injury Centre Australia, an online service for people who have been affected by traumatic brain injury, agrees.
He says it would be "an absurdity" if the legislation were overturned, or even challenged.
"You've got one of the most complex entities of our universe and if you smash it up against the inside of a skull, well, it's going to really affect the cognition," he said.
"It depends on the angle and velocity of the head hitting an object as to what part of the brain is compounded into the inside of the skull, but it only has to travel less than a quarter of an inch before it impacts on the skull.
"I say prevention is better than a cure."
Saving lives
Reaction from cyclists has been mixed.
Rob Rodgers, 60, from Carindale in Brisbane's east rides to and from work every day. He says he is in favour of wearing a helmet.
"I'm personally in favour of them because I wouldn't be here if I wasn't wearing one several times in the last 10 years," he said.
Mr Rodgers says he remembers his first accident well. It was on the day of the 2002 Bali bombings - October 12.
"I came off my bike head first at about 40 kilometres an hour in under a couple of seconds," he said.
"I went from on the bike head first straight into the road and my helmet ended up in about six or seven pieces.
"Then it was about December 6 last year where I had another one where I hit my head pretty badly.
"Certainly the one side of my head, judging by the damage to the helmet, would have been severely rubbed away if I wasn't wearing one."
Jim Whimpey, 22, from Ashgrove in Brisbane's west says helmet laws are putting people off cycling.
However, he says he is lucky to be alive after an accident on his bike last year.
Mr Whimpey, a competitive and commuting cyclist, broke 21 bones in the crash and says although his helmet played a part, law or no law, he would have been wearing one.
"Even if helmets weren't compulsory, I would still wear a helmet the majority of the time," he said.
"I race and train often at high speed and on busy roads so it makes sense to wear a helmet when the risk is higher."
Mr Whimpey says removing compulsory helmet laws might encourage more people to use their bikes for short trips.
"The people who aren't riding now because of helmet laws are likely to be riding slowly, short distances, along safe routes where the risk is very low," he said.
"But the more cyclists on the road the safer it is for each cyclist as an individual, and helmets are a barrier to getting more people cycling.
"More cyclists also means less cars and higher demand for safe cycling infrastructure."
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