In my last blog I noted that Benny Peiser and Sir John Houghton were having an argument in The Observer about something regarding man-made global warming that Sir John might, or might not, have said.

To recap, Peiser had quoted Sir John as saying “Unless we announce disasters no one will listen”. Sir John, in a letter to the Observer (14 Feb), denied ever having said any such thing and demanded an apology. He said

Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, writing about my work as the chair of the first IPCC Scientific Assessment, quotes me as saying: “Unless we announce disasters no one will listen,” thereby attributing to me and the IPCC an attitude of hype and exaggeration. That quote from me is without foundation. I have never said it or written it.

Although it has spread on the Internet, I do not know its origin. In fact I have frequently argued the opposite, namely that those who make such statements are not only wrong but counterproductive. This quote is doing damage not only to me as a responsible scientist but also to the IPCC which in its main conclusions has always worked to avoid exaggeration. I demand from Dr Peiser an apology that he failed to check his sources and a public retraction of the use he made of the fabricated quotation.

Peiser replied the following week (21 Feb) admitting that he could find no evidence that Sir John had spoken these specific words. He offered an apology, of sorts, before plunging the knife further in:

I regret the use of a derivative quotation that has been attributed to Sir John Houghton for many years (“Unless we announce disaster, no one will listen”). A reference to Sir John’s accurate statement would have been more appropriate: “If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster.”

Sir John found this non-apology unsatisfactory and complained the following week (28 February) that he had been quoted out of context. He added what he insisted was important context:

I am pleased to accept Dr Peiser’s apology for his use of a false quotation (”unless we announce disaster, no one will listen”) that bolstered his accusation that both I and the IPCC deliberately exaggerated the evidence for human induced climate change and its likely consequences.

The new quote Dr Peiser has found is from an interview in 1995: “If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster. It’s like safety on public transport. The only way humans will act is if there’s been an accident.” The first sentence requires the second two sentences to provide the context for the whole quotation. It is wrong to describe the false quotation as derivative from or supported by the quotation from 1995. Their contexts are very different as is what they say. The 1995 quotation describes how attitudes might change in response to disasters after they have actually occurred. It cannot be used to prove that I am alarmist or that I promote exaggeration.

This can best be described as a non-defence against a non-apology. Although Sir John denies ever saying “Unless we announce disasters no one will listen” he clearly believes it. For years he has been brandishing his hockey stick, warning of impending disaster if we don’t mend our ways. Quoting himself from his 1995 interview casts his view of disasters and man-made global warming in an intriguing light. In the same interview he also said.

God tries to coax and woo, but He also uses disasters. Human sin may be involved; the effect will be the same.

And

God does show anger. When He appeared to Elijah there was earthquake wind and fire. Our model is Jesus. He was a man as well as being divine and He certainly showed anger.

Here the disaster he (Sir John) is clearly announcing is the forthcoming punishment that He (capital H) will inflict upon us for our sinful ways. Global warming seems a somewhat arbitrary and indiscriminate punishment for Him to inflict upon us sinners – why does He not choose one or all of the afflictions He had at his disposal when dealing with Job instead? Here the global warming debate enters difficult theological territory. The indiscriminate nature of the punishment Sir John believes He will choose raises the thorny – and, so far as I am aware, unresolved – question of why the innocent and righteous should be made to suffer.

Sir John Houghton thinks so. Former director of the Met Office, former chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, and former co-chair of the International Commission on Climate Change he is an influential voice in the global warming debate. He is currently demanding, in a letter to the Observer, an apology from Benny Peiser, a man-made global warming agnostic who, he claims, has put words in his mouth that he has never spoken:

“I demand from Dr Peiser an apology that he failed to check his sources and a public retraction of the use he made of the fabricated quotation.” The particular words complained of are “Unless we announce disasters no one will listen”.

I have no evidence that he has ever spoken, or written, this specific sentence. But on the subject of disasters he has in the past made similar, divinely inspired, comments about disasters and global warming:

·      “God tries to coax and woo, but he also uses disasters. Human sin may be involved; the effect will be the same.”

·      “If we want a good environmental policy in the future we’ll have to have a disaster.”

These quotations are from an interview entitled “Me and my God” in the Sunday Telegraph on 10 September 1995.

Sir John, in this interview, is also quoted as saying: “God does show anger. When he appeared to Elijah there was earthquake wind and fire. Our model is Jesus. He was a man as well as being divine and he certainly showed anger.”

Clearly missing from the  IPCC’s impressive body of expertise is that of theology.

See Is God Green? for an earlier commentary on this subject. For those with online access to Nature, the published version can be found here.

Faithful followers of this website may recollect an earlier blog, “Bicycle bombs: a further enquiry and a new theory”, in which I called attention to the fact that, despite the absence of evidence that anyone-anywhere-ever had been killed by a pipe bomb disguised as a bicycle, Westminster police were impounding bicycles parked near Whitehall and Parliament Square on the grounds that they could be bombs. I ventured to describe this behaviour as paranoid.

Through the wonderful grapevine that is the Internet I have just learned of the case of a person of some eminence falling victim to this policy, – twice – and twice being compensated by the police for her broken lock.[1]

Completely independent of my inquiries into the justification of such a policy, she inquired under the Freedom of Information Act how many bicycle bombs had been discovered in London since 2002.

She ran into the stonewall known to the cognoscenti as an NCND reply. The relevant authorities Neither Confirm Nor Deny anything: they had determined they said “that in all the circumstances of the case the public interest in maintaining the exclusion of the duty to neither confirm nor deny outweighs the public interest in confirming or denying whether the information is held.” Yes. Read it again. It’s (sic).

The reply goes on: if they were “to confirm or deny whether the information is held we consider that it would demonstrate the level of awareness that the police and other bodies have within this specific area, which we consider would not be in the interests of national security because it would alert terrorists as to whether or not their activities have been detected.”

Let’’s pick this apart. I have broadcast appeals on the BBC Today Programme, the BBC World Service, and various websites for evidence about the number of people killed, worldwide, by pipe bombs disguised as bicycles. So far the number returned is zero. So, if there have been some unsuccessful ones intercepted by the police or intelligence services, the terrorists will know about them. It must be conceded that there might have been some, like the Detroit underpants bomb, that simply failed to detonate. But whenever the police discover what they believe is a real bomb the event is highly public. Neighbourhoods are evacuated and cordoned off and the bomb squad sent for. In the case of “suspected” bicycle bombs in Westminster the police simply take them to the police station.

Given that the worldwide success rate for bicycle/underpants bombs is, so far, zero we must conclude that the authorities’ reluctance to disclose the information requested by the above mentioned persecuted eminent person is being withheld for reasons of embarrassment. The authorities have no justification for confiscating bicycles. They are simply paranoid.

They have one further argument:  “to confirm or deny whether the information is held would increase the fear of crime. This in itself is an objective for those committed to facilitating the cause of terrorism.” Duh!?  They publicly treat every bicycle in Westminster as a suspect pipe bomb and then say that to confirm that they know anything about what is going on would make us more fearful.

To disclose what is almost certainly the truth (we can but speculate), that bicycles pose no terrorist threat, and are an environmental and public health boon championed by most other branches of government, would briefly embarrass the Westminster police, but would help to inspire public confidence that the terrorist threat is being confronted with a sense of proportion.

I am grateful for a question posted today by Carsten Jasner in response to an earlier post of mine - Seat belts again. It has prompted another look at the data:

“Very interesting! But when the number of car occupant deaths increases while the number of all road user deaths decreases – how can the number of pedestrians and cyclists [deaths] also increase?”

Figure 1, all road accident deaths, shows that a well-established downward trend was interrupted (by the seat belt law?) and replaced by a slightly rising plateau. After the seat belt law (arrow) total deaths did not fall below the 1983 level until 1991.

Figure 1

For many decades, as car ownership increased in Britain the number of people moving about in cars also increased while the numbers moving about on feet or bicycles, and exposed to the risk of road accidents, fell sharply. Part of the decline in walking and cycling can be explained by the shift to car travel; another part by the fact, that as the volume of metal in motion increased, children were withdrawn from the threat, while vulnerable adults, especially cyclists, withdrew themselves. Figure 2 shows a dramatic decline since 1930 in the ratio of pedestrians and cyclists killed to car occupants killed - from 5.95 in 1935 to 0.47 in 2006.

Figure 2

Figure 3 zooms in on more recent years. Between 1970 and 1982 the ratio dropped from 0.96 to 0.81. In 1983, the first year of the seat belt law, the ratio jumped sharply to 1.00, before resuming its historic downward trend, but it did not drop below 0.81 until 1989. This sharp jump is of course exactly what one would expect in the light of the decrease in car occupant deaths and increase in pedestrian and cycling deaths coinciding with the seat belt law noted earlier. The step change in the trend suggests that each year since 1983 the seat belt law continues to deserve credit for the deaths of vulnerable road users, who but for the law would still be with us.

Figure 3

“Moral hazard” is a term that dates back to the 1600s. Until recent times its use has been mostly confined to the insurance industry to refer to behaviour that responds to changes in perceived risk.

The industry has noticed that people who have contents insurance are less careful about locking up. It has also noticed that drivers of cars with ABS brakes (superior brakes) did not have fewer accidents – they had different accidents – accidents consistent with high-performance cars, which is what they had become.

Why “moral” hazard? Clearly the insurance industry was disconcerted by behaviour that upset the calculations of its actuaries. Such behaviour had to be wrong – immoral. But such behaviour is universal. Risk management is an exercise that involves striking a balance between the potential rewards and losses of decisions made in the face of uncertainty. A less judgmental term to describe this phenomenon is risk compensation. Legislators and regulators routinely ignore it.

Britain is suffering simultaneously from under-regulation and over-regulation. The deregulation of the financial markets under Margaret Thatcher gave a relatively small number of bankers free rein to contrive incentive structures that paid them fabulous rewards for taking risks with other people’s money. Meanwhile other spheres of activity are being suffocated by an excess of regulation, the most egregious example being the Independent Safeguarding Authority. This new bureaucracy, created as a response to the murder of two young girls in Soham, is charged with vetting an estimated 11.3 million people before they will be permitted to work, or volunteer with, children or vulnerable adults. The vetting involves a Criminal Records Bureau check on all 11.3 million after which “we will decide on a case-by-case basis whether each person is suited to this work”.

Leaving aside the mind-boggling expense and bureaucracy required to perform this feat, its effect is almost certain to be perverse. A CRB check will be seen as an insurance policy; behaviour that might previously have aroused suspicion is now less likely to be questioned because some superior authority has certified the suspect as “safe”.

After the Thatcherite deregulation, under New Labour we have had the Better Regulation Commission, the Better Regulation Executive, the Better Regulation Advisory Council and now BERR – the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. All these attempts at reform have explicitly acknowledged the damage caused by excessive regulation and have been powerless to resist it. Fundamental to this failure is a blindness to risk compensation.

Every perceptible safety measure that does not make the people want to be safer will provoke offsetting behaviour. The effect can be seen wherever one looks – from protective equipment on the sports field, to the settlement of flood plains protected by higher levees, to bailed out banks. It can be found on the road and in the bed – condoms are seat belts for sex concludes one study that invokes risk compensation to explain the failure of both safety measures to deliver the protection they promised.

Which takes me to my final point. The College of Emergency Medicine is leading a campaign to make cycle helmets compulsory. If successful it will result in a significant decline in cycling with a loss of attendant social, environmental and health benefits with no life saving benefit. It will kill off London’s new cycle hire scheme. In support of their campaign they cite the “success” of the seat belt law. But the law has failed and should be repealed. The Parliamentary Advisory Council of Transport Safety resolutely refuses to acknowledge evidence of this failure (click here, here and here). In its blindness to risk compensation and its consequences it risks helping to create a new, genuine, moral hazard.

PS    The Manifesto Club campaigns against the hyperregulation of everyday life. It has a refreshing website - http://www.manifestoclub.com/.

Found on an excellent website - http://www.copenhagenize.com/

18 September 2009

“Here’s an appropriate little ‘wedgie’ in the Fear of Cycling series. The Isle of Wight County Press Online [big name for a little paper :-)] reports that the Hampshire Constabulary has cut off supplying unclaimed stolen bikes to a charity that sends bikes to Africa.

They are, get this… afraid of being sued if someone gets hurt whilst using one of them. You’d think that they were talking about barrels of toxic waste.”

Here’s the link to the article.

(If experiencing problems with IE7, please try Firefox, Opera or Safari)

To Robert Gifford

Executive Director, The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety

Dear Rob

Failing a response, I propose to draw this one-sided correspondence to a close. I believe that I have established:

a. that the claim that seat belts have saved 60000 lives since the implementation of the seat belt law is nonsense, and

b. that it is your (PACTS’) view that a measure that could be demonstrated to save the lives of motorists would be OK so long as the number of vulnerable road users killed as a result is smaller. I pressed you on this point in open letters 2 and 3 and you have not, as yet, denied it.

When you sent me the paper by Richards et al that I discussed in my third open letter you said the paper “highlights the difference between the number of lives saved overall through the use of seatbelts and the number saved through the implementation of legislation in 1983.” I take it from this that you accept these “highlights” as validation of the claim still on your website that seat belts have saved 60000 lives since 1983.

In my third open letter I said that with such a sudden large increase in the wearing of seat belts (140%) one should see a sudden large downward step in the established downward trend. I asked “Where is it?” I have found it! I was looking in the wrong place.

In the graph below I have reconstructed the analysis of Richards et al that highlights the difference between the number of lives “saved” overall through the use of seatbelts and the number “saved” through the implementation of legislation in 1983.

To accept the claim in the paper by Richards et al that seat belts saved 2500 lives in 1983 you have to believe that 1869 extra lives were saved by seat belts compared to the year before. Since you cannot see such a dramatic effect in the graph of actual fatalities you are forced to believe that in 1983, coinciding with the implementation of the law, there was some dramatic increase in danger on the roads that, but for the seat belt law, would have killed 1869 more car occupants. Even people who can believe six impossible things before breakfast would find that a bit of a stretch.

Why am I doing this? Why am I trying to resolve this issue via open letters on my website? I have no personal desire to cause embarrassment, but earlier attempts to sort this out via personal emails have run into the sand.

In a parliamentary debate in 1979 William Rodgers, then Secretary of State for Transport, claimed “On the best available evidence of accidents in this country – evidence which has not been seriously contested – compulsion could save up to 1000 lives a year” (Hansard, March 22, 1979). This clearly did not happen, but the myth has grown and PACTS has been complicit in this growth.

Consider the following more recent parliamentary exchange in a debate about compulsory cycle helmets:

Mr. Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab): There are some who would accuse my hon. Friend of extending the nanny state. Does he agree that the same arguments were used in the 1960s and 70s against the wearing of seat belts, and that the legislation passed in that respect has reduced the number of deaths and the personal tragedy experienced by families whose members would otherwise have died on the roads?

Mr. Martlew: My hon. Friend is perfectly right. We have always seen a knee-jerk reaction against such measures, whether on the wearing of seat belts or preventing drink-driving, but, after a while, such things become common sense and we wonder why we did not do them before. (Hansard 23 Apr 2004 : Column 529)

Your website proclaims that PACTS was set up “as part of the fight to get mandatory seatbelt wearing turned into legislation.” The “success” of the seat belt law might fairly be described as PACTS’ foundation myth. It is not a bit of harmless exaggeration.

You have accepted that the law caused an “appreciable” number of extra deaths among pedestrians and cyclists. Further, as we have seen above, the myth is now being invoked to promote another myth about the efficacy of cycle helmet legislation. So profoundly embedded in the parliamentary mind is the “success” of their seat belt law that no one saw reason to question the assertion of Mr Jones. A compulsory helmet law would significantly impair efforts to promote cycling and kill the London cycle hire scheme; no potential user of the scheme would want to put on a sweaty helmet that did not fit, and no scheme has been proposed to provide clean well-fitting helmets for spontaneous users. For a comprehensive over-view of the cycle helmet law debate please visit nohelmetlaw.org.uk.

To Robert Gifford

Executive Director, The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety

Dear Rob

Thank you for sending me a paper claiming that seat belts have saved 57000 lives in the UK between 1983 and 2007.  Is this the source of the 60000 claim posted on  your website in 2008?

I have discovered that the paper you have sent me (by DC Richards, R Hutchins, RE Cookson, P Massie and RW Cuerden) is accessible on line at http://cdm266301.cdmhost.com/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/p266401coll4&CISOPTR=3062&filename=3063.pdf starting at page 223. (Not entirely straightforward; this link takes you to the conference website – a search for “Richards” will take you to the paper. It is a large file, about 10mb and takes a while to download.)

The paper documents an increase in seat belt wearing rates for drivers of well over 100%. I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the data represented in their Figure 6.

Figure 6. Effect of seat belt legislation on seat belt wearing rates for car drivers

It then estimates that seat belts are 61% effective in preventing fatalities in crashes. The fact that wearing a seat belt considerably improves one’s chance of surviving a crash is also not disputed.

It then calculates (their Figure 5) how many lives have been saved by seat belts since the UK law came into effect.

Figure 5. Number of car occupant casualties prevented by seat belts

It also presents a graph showing how many fatalities remain. (their Figure 4)

Figure 4. Fatal and serious car occupant casualties

And herein lies a mystery.

Richards et al have charted a large increase in the use of a safety measure that provides significant protection in crashes. This measure they claim saved over 2500 lives a year (and rising!) in the first 8 years of the law. With such a sudden large increase in the adoption of such an effective safety measure one should see a large downward step in the established downward trend. Where is it? One cannot see any effect in the graphs here and here . Richards et al don’t even look for it; their graphs don’t start until 1983. They appear remarkably uncurious about why it should be that in the first eight years after the law the more lives seat belts were saving (Figure 5), the more car occupants were being killed (Figure 4). And they display no interest in the possibility of risk compensation: “factors such as any change in driving behaviour for occupants who do / do not wear a seat belt were not taken into account” (p 229).

Further they make no comment on the fact that the reduction in driver fatalities that did occur in 1983 (the year in which evidential breath testing was introduced) consisted almost entirely of drivers with alcohol in their blood.

Great Britain driver deaths by place and alcohol level in dead driver. Source: Broughton and Stark 1986

Three questions:

1. Do you consider that the paper by Richards et al validates the 60000 claim still on your website?

2. If so can you explain the absence of the large downward step that should appear in the graphs here and here ?

3. Can you explain why seat belts were so extraordinarily selective in saving the lives of drivers who had been drinking?

Finally you say:

“I do not wish to be drawn into the debate about the benefits/disbenefits of cycle helmets. PACTS’ aim must be to improve the safety of all classes of road user and tackle the issue of the disproportionate risk placed upon those least able to protect themselves.”

It was not my intention to draw you into a debate about the benefits/disbenefits of cycle helmets; the PACTS report on this subject seems to me to be admirably clear and balanced. But I am interested in PACTS’ aspiration to “tackle the issue of the disproportionate risk placed upon those least able to protect themselves.”

I am seeking confirmation of a point I raised in my last open letter. From your Significance article it appears that it Is PACTS’ position that a measure that saves the lives of motorists is justified so long as the number of vulnerable road users killed as a result is smaller. Is this your position?

To Robert Gifford

Executive Director, The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety

Dear Rob

I’m sorry but I must persist. The power and endurance of the myth that PACTS and RoSPA have built around the seat belt law takes a lot of deconstructing. So long as belief in the efficacy of the law persists it will continue to serve as one of the principal arguments of the campaigners for compulsory cycle helmets.

Seat belts and helmets are routinely linked. Injury lawyers argue helmetless injured cyclists risk having their compensation reduced for contributory negligence in the same way that unbelted motorists would. (see also here) Earlier this year the Mississippi Senate threw out a bill to repeal the State’s mandatory cycle helmet law on the grounds that “the helmet requirement was similar to the state’s seat belt law, designed to protect people from avoidable injuries.”

You say in response to my earlier letter “While I entirely accept that the piece on our website referring to the estimate of 50,000 lives [60000 actually] could have been more appropriately worded, I cannot share the view that seat belts have not been an effective contribution to casualty reduction.”

Short of a complete public retraction I cannot imagine an “appropriate” way to refer to the 60000 claim. The claim that the seat belt law has saved 60000 lives is ludicrous. I accept that the number was not your invention, but so long as it remains on your website, it strongly implies to the reader that PACTS considers the claim to be valid.

I ask you to re-read this passage on your website:

“On the 31st January 2008, the 25th anniversary of the law change which made front seatbelt wearing compulsory was celebrated. PACTS itself was set up by Barry Sheerman MP as part of the fight to get mandatory seatbelt wearing turned into legislation. Eight years later it became compulsory for all backseat passengers to use seatbelts and it is estimated that since the introduction of the first law change in 1983, seatbelts have prevented 60,000 deaths and over 670,000 serious injuries.”

As most parliamentarians, and the rest of the world, will read it, PACTS is celebrating its role in saving 60000 lives. Indeed this piece of self congratulation identifies the seat belt law as the foundation stone of your organization.

In your article five months later in Significance (June 2008, sadly available free only to those with institutional access to electronic journals) you concluded that in the first year of the law it had saved not 2400 lives but 164 net. Here (for those without access to electronic journals) is Table 1 from your article.

In your article from which this table is taken you say: “The best estimates … are that extra deaths to vulnerable road users did accompany the introduction of mandatory wearing of seat belts.”

In your response to my article advocating repeal of the seat belt law you do not comment on my point that most of the decrease in car driver deaths in 1983 consisted of drivers who were over the alcohol limit (down 14%), and that this coincided with the introduction of evidential breath testing. Do you think that this change in the law with respect to drinking and driving had no effect?

In your Significance article you are clear that you believe the law has saved the lives of people in cars at the expense of vulnerable road users: “The picture shows a clear reduction in death and injury to car occupants, appreciably offset by extra deaths among pedestrians and cyclists.”

You then proceed to defend the law as follows: “It would … be a severe constraint on the use of safety measures if any measure were to be ruled out for which the larger number of deaths and injuries saved were differently distributed among road user groups from the smaller number resulting from the measure … The wearing of seat belts is therefore not exceptional among safety measures in that extra deaths and injuries that may arise from wearing occur in part (only in part because, if wearers drive more riskily, some of the extra deaths and injuries will occur to vehicle occupants) to different road user groups than those among which deaths and injuries are prevented—though the difference is perhaps sharper for belt wearing than for many other measures.”

I take this passage to mean that you think a measure that saves the lives of motorists is OK so long as the number of vulnerable road users killed as a result is smaller.

In the light of that argument I would welcome your comment on this analogy: an Organ Harvester Lottery in which healthy people will be selected at random to “donate” organs to people in need of them. One heart and one liver could save two lives at the cost of one – slightly better than the ratio that you argue justifies keeping the seat belt law. Throw in two kidneys and you get a four to one ratio of lives saved to lives lost. This is a gruesome but not wholly inappropriate analogy given the myth circulating at the time - (and still) that the success of the seat law was responsible for increasing the shortage of donor organs.

I do hope that you will take the trouble to comment on my website. Now that the campaigners for compulsory cycle helmets are on the march again that part of their “evidence” invoking the “success” of the seat belt law needs renewed scrutiny.

Best wishes

John

To Robert Gifford

Executive Director, The Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety

Dear Rob

This claim made over a year ago is still on the PACTS website:

“On the 31st January 2008, the 25th anniversary of the law change which made front seatbelt wearing compulsory was celebrated. PACTS itself was set up by Barry Sheerman MP as part of the fight to get mandatory seatbelt wearing turned into legislation. Eight years later it became compulsory for all backseat passengers to use seatbelts and it is estimated that since the introduction of the first law change in 1983, seatbelts have prevented 60,000 deaths and over 670,000 serious injuries.”

I have demonstrated the claim to be nonsense: click here and here. A while ago I invited you to post a comment on this demonstration of nonsense on my website. You have declined to do so, so I now issue a more public invitation.

Borrowing from Churchill - the lie has got all way round the world before truth has got its pants on. If you Google the claim you get thousands of hits. Legislators like to believe their laws make a difference. If the BBC, the DfT, PACTS, RoSPA and Google all tell them their seat belt law has saved 60000 lives they will be inclined to believe it.

Why does it matter? The Association of Paediatric Emergency Medicine and the College of Emergency Medicine are now lobbying vigorously for a law that would make cycle helmets compulsory for children, and ultimately for all cyclists . Campaigners for cycle helmet laws routinely cite the “success” of the seat belt law. Their argument is seductively simple: seat belts and helmets reduce injuries in crashes; seat belt laws have saved lives and so would a helmet law.

The PACTS website is one of the ways in which your advisory council conveys advice to parliament. On this issue it has misled parliament. If parliamentarians are misled about the “success” of their seat belt law they are in danger of making the same mistake with a helmet law. I suggest that if you cannot refute my demonstration that the claim that the seat belt law saved 60000 lives is false, you should not just quietly remove it from your website, but retract it in a highly public manner.

The PACTS 2004 Parliamentary Briefing on cycle helmet use and effectiveness presents the case against compulsion in a clear, balanced and convincing way. It would be a great pity if it were to be undermined by pro-compulsion campaigners citing other PACTS “evidence” for the efficacy of the seat belt law.

I know it is difficult to admit to a clanger. But if you had devoted a moment’s thought to it you would have noticed that the DfT’s claim that the seat belt law had saved 60000 lives was preposterous. If you and RoSPA persist in endorsing the DfT’s claim you will assist in the promotion of a further nonsense that will inhibit efforts to increase cycling.

Best wishes

John