Why the BC Government must repeal the bike helmet law.

Vancouver businessman / entrepreneur Thomas Beyer, arrived in Canada in 1986 with less than $1,000 in his jeans to pursue his MBA at the University of Alberta. Today he oversees real estate assets worth over $100M for Prestigious Properties, and is also an elected director and Treasurer of UNA (University Neighborhoods Association) at UBC. This article is reprinted with kind permission from the author.

 

Vancouver has decided, like 500+ other cities, to introduce bike sharing. A noble idea, a useful one even that will reduce car use and might even contribute positively to alleged man-made global “warming”. The far bigger impact, frequently overlooked, is public health. Based on history in other jurisdictions the proposed bike-sharing program will be a financial disaster, and poor public policy, if it’s introduced with the (provincial) helmet law intact.

If the provincial helmet law was repealed, it would benefit public health and promote more bike-use including bike-sharing. Amend British Columbia's bike helmet law to allow adults to make their own choices based on their skills, bike path availability, speed, traffic density, etc. Personally I wear a helmet when off-road biking with a mountain bike, due to speed and dangerous terrain, but would prefer not to do so around Stanley Park's paved path, along False Creek or around UBC. It’s fair to assume others would too, so why discourage them? 

In Australia, bike share programs have failed in both Melbourne and Brisbane due to bike helmet laws in those cities. Yet, the bike-hire scheme in the city of Sydney—where riders are not forced, legally to wear helmets—has succeeded. In both Israel and Mexico laws have been changed prior to introducing bike share schemes to accommodate them and ensure program success. Former city councillor / cycling advocate Peter Ladner has predicted the bike share program in Vancouver (and at UBC) will fail due to the provincial bike helmet law. Most other major cities like New York, Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto, and almost all European cities with a far deeper history of bike use allow bike share with no helmets.

Increasingly, experts around the world are encouraging people to bike, and/or participate in bike-sharing plans, and, in turn, more and more riders question helmet laws in place (such as in B.C, Melbourne and Brisbane). In spite of the fact The New York Times reported that in New York, where there were 21 cyclist fatalities last year, where the transportation commissioner (Janette Sadik-Khan) is always photographed on a bike and wearing a helmet, the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has rejected calls by the City Comptroller (John C. Liu) for a mandatory helmet law when New York’s 10,000-cycle bike-share program rolls out next year, for fear it will keep people from riding.  

A similar situation prevails in British Columbia where bike-sharing programs are about to be launched in Vancouver and at UBC. UBC professor Kay Teschke  (http://cyclingincities.spph.ubc.ca)  does extensive research in public health and cycling. Her main arguments are essentially that biking’s societal benefits outweigh its risks somewhere between 9:1 and 96:1, depending on assumptions used. Wearing a helmet vs. not wearing a helmet has a very small overall effect on cyclers’ risk. Cycling, per trip taken, is not any more risky than driving or walking actually as per these statistics:

• Transit bus travellers (US): 0.4 per 100 million person-trips
• Drivers and passengers (BC): 10 per 100 million person-trips
• Pedestrians (BC): 15 per 100 million person-trips
• Cyclists (BC with helmet law): 14 per 100 million person-trips
• Cyclists (BC without helmet law): 19 per 100 million person-trips
• Motorcyclists (US): 537 per 100 million person-trips 

We could argue that since wearing a helmet will also have a health benefit for pedestrians or drivers, why single out cyclists? Perhaps we should make biking illegal altogether as it is just too dangerous with several people killed every year and many severely injured (despite helmet use).  

Our societies have far too many unnecessary rules and regulations which are intended to treat symptoms vs fix causes. The British Columbia bike helmet law is one of them. In fact, helmet laws don't aim to prevent injuries in the first place, they just aim to mitigate injuries once an accident occurs. A much better strategy would be to invest in safe cycling infrastructure that prevents accidents in the first place, such as dedicated biking lanes, dedicated traffic signals or dedicated over and underpasses. This is the route Europe went, and Vancouver is now attempting in building out its dedicated cycling infrastructure.

Teschke also found that helmet laws reduce cycling rates (e.g. Australia) and thus have a net negative public health effect. A more technical discussion is on Teschke’s site or here http://www.cycle-helmets.com/robinson-head-injuries.pdf 

In Vancouver the helmet law is expected to add substantial costs due to the helmet vending infrastructure, borne entirely by the taxpayer. It will also force the city to have few large bike stations instead of many small bike stations as helmet vending machines are expensive and have a large footprint. Having many small stations spread out evenly would be much better for the bike share program and more amenable to businesses. Most businesses would love to have a small bike share station nearby, but they don't like stations taking up half a block in front of their store, blocking access.

Many aspects have to be considered in this bike-bike helmet debate: public health, public expenditures, road safety, civil liberties, freedom of the individual, role of government, public deficits, taxation levels, and so forth. 

Responsible adults should be able to make their own choice. A bike share program is hard to adapt in the first place, and with a helmet law in place, as in BC, it will fail and be a waste of tax payers' money - unless the bike helmet law is repealed.

 

 

 

Elections and quality candidates: it's a numbers game.

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I believe there are lots of people feeling uninspired, perhaps even depressed in the aftermath of the BC election on May 14. As voters we had two poor choices and in the end, when push came to shove, people voted for the leader and party they felt would do the least damage. I doubt that many of the less than 25% of eligible voters that cast a ballot for the BC Liberals did so because they were sincerely inspired by our premier's campaign and message. Hell, we were hard pressed to find the Liberal brand and Christy Clark's name on some of the campaign material for front runners in the party. Anybody who went to Mike de Jong's website, who didn't know him already, would have had to play a guessing game to figure out what party he belonged to. In the end we took the devil that we knew.

It's unfortunate we're in the state we're in right now. Believe me, I'd be happy if the BC Liberals surprised us and turned into a fiscally responsible, inclusive, free enterprise, believable, and free from the politics of fear party. However if history is anything to go by, the odds are against this happening.

People complained about the quality of the candidates we had. Indeed, I heard CKNW's Bill Good and Vaughn Palmer during the campaign discussing various excuses for not voting and one highlighted was "nobody's good" enough. Palmer's antidote, which I liked, was if you don't like the choice then run yourself. That's a good one, but I think the real problem is that we don't have enough good choices because there are just not enough in the talent pool to start with.

Think about it, everything in life is a numbers game. You don't marry the first person you date. In sales you're taught that for every sale you make, you've got to work through a number of prospects. The more prospects to begin with, the greater probability of more sales; and if you begin with less, you can expect less.

The fact is, there's not a huge pool of talent to pull political leaders from in BC. Somebody may change my mind on this but today I don't believe a leader of a party should be someone who's never been elected to public office, so we need to up the game a bit in terms of participation. How are we going to do that if we cut people's heads off, either before they start or after they're underway for some of the most benign stuff imaginable? I still cannot believe that some otherwise seemingly intelligent people gave my twitter comments a second thought, let alone took the time to comment on them; even more surprising was that they had any impact on my standing within the BC Conservatives.

I've had conversations with some in the media and I've yet to see someone quote me, so I'll say it here; we are insular and provincial in BC. And unless we ignore the Alex Tsakumises of the world when they piously bleat about the Premier being unfit for office because she showed some goodwill and good nature by sharing a joke about MILFs with a radio host (who was fired for it btw), or ignore the media prattling on for weeks because of a dancing penis prank on a gay MLA (I've yet to meet gays who don't enjoy dick jokes) we are going to reap what we sow... which is small numbers of people running for public office and even less numbers qualified to run for premier.

I've got two thoughts (besides fascination) when I read about Rob and Doug Ford; one is that it's a shame that Ford's work as a fiscal conservative is being overshadowed by the controversy surrounding him and the other is that I really don't care if Doug Ford sold pot or hash when he was just out of high school nearly 30 years ago (other allegations are more serious IMO, like some of the hypocrisy and denials). I grew up on the North Shore in the 70s and political disqualification for past use of controlled substances would eliminate virtually everybody from there at that time.

Is that what we want?  Do we really want holier than thou'ers running for office in any event? What good after all is somebody who's had no life experience or taken no risk? Wouldn't you think somebody was a little weird if they'd never touched any illicit substance (including alcohol) before or just after they graduated?

Why is humour a no-fly zone in politics? Personally I see humour as a great bridge in forming relationships, keeping perspective and most importantly enjoying life; because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. I give the premier credit for maintaining her sense of humour, or at the least the impression that she maintained it, in a hostile environment.

No wonder we've got better than 52% choosing to ignore the ballot box at election time. I suspect a good number of those people are saying to us that they don't see people they can relate to running for office. Personally, I want somebody with opinions who's not afraid to share them ... and even be wrong about them. It doesn't mean they need to be irresponsible about sharing them, however in the event they are, it should be ok for them to have taken the risk and deal with the consequences. Let the voters decide, uninfluenced by media editorials being masqueraded as news, whether what they did or said was ok or not.

NDP for firing Ray Lam in Vancouver-False Creek in 2009:                                     

FAIL (although he went away quietly which means he might not have been such a great candidate afterall)

BC Libs for forcing John van Dongen to resign as SG in 2009:                                 

FAIL (law's an ass, he knew it, given time he likely would have addressed it)

NDP for firing Dayleen Van Ryswick in  Kelowna - Mission 2013:                          

FAIL

BCCP for accepting Jeff Sprague's resignation in N Vancouver - Lonsdale 2013:    

PASS  (too bad, good guy but alleged DUI is a problem)

BCCP for firing Ian Tootill in Vancouver - False Creek 2013:                                   

FAIL

BCCP for firing Mischa Popoff in Boundary - Similkameen 2013:                           

FAIL

BCCP for firing Ron Herbert in Vancouver - West End 2013:                                   

FAIL ( should've let voters decide on taste)

NDP for keeping Jane Shin in Burnaby - Lougheed 2013:                                        

PASS (although time may prove me wrong on this one.)

People who are risk takers (somewhat) and who have strong opinions coupled with a high degree of integrity are exactly the people we shouldn't be discouraging, rather we need to encourage to them run for public office. I say bring them on... and lots of them. The more the merrier.

Post election wrap: fear, apathy and branding.

May 15th, 2013

Tuesday night produced one of the most stunning turnarounds in BC’s political history with a BC Liberal win that almost NOBODY predicted, nor thought was possible. Congratulations to BC Liberals’ Sam Sullivan for his victory in Vancouver-False Creek. Matt Toner of the NDP ran a very professional and admirable campaign. Sal Vetro of BC First Party worked extremely hard in his grass roots and visible campaign for every one of his 71 votes. Again, a great job.

Branding was nearly everything in this election. In my opinion few deserved to win as an Independent as much as John van Dongen did in Abbotsford. He reportedly spent over $100k of his own money and really went out on a limb in exposing the details of the BC Rail scandal. Yet election night the thanks this Independent received, for his public service, all of his integrity and the investment of his own time and money from the voters of Abbotsford, was to place BC Liberal Darrel Plecas in office. A real shame in my opinion. But then life isn’t exactly fair and neither is politics.

For our part, my all-volunteer team was out working our riding every day. In fact, we were on the street in the biting cold until well after dark on Monday evening just before the election. We had media attention (good and bad), signs in places nobody else did, banners, brochures, newspaper advertising, outbound telephone, social media etc. We worked hard, and I believe we had one of the more visible campaigns.

Nonetheless, I spent the first half of a very short campaign explaining to people why I was a BC Conservative (for the most part this included news, to many, that Stephen Harper was NOT the leader of our party) and then (thanks to a blunder by John Cummins which turned a non issue into a media distraction for those incapable of critical thought) I then spent the other half explaining why I was no longer a BC Conservative candidate.

In addition to branding, this was an election defined by fear and apathy. On the branding side, the Green Party could have had Bozo The Clown running and he still would have attracted 9 or 10% of the votes ( never mind that most I encountered had no idea what was in the ”Green Party” platform, nor had anybody I questioned actually read the “Green Book”). And never mind the fact the local Green Party candidate never showed up at ONE of the many all-candidates meetings that I attended (even those about climate change).

I was on the street every day and at no time to me did it look as if the NDP’s Matt Toner was going  to make it despite the poster boy The Vancouver Sun and The Province made him out to be.
In terms of fear and apathy, despite what some of the know-it-alls in the MSM would have us believe, I can tell you from being out in the riding every day that, while voters were NOT going to vote NDP, at the same time they were REALLY angry and were looking for an alternative to Sam Sullivan and the BC Liberals.

Vote splitting was more media fantasy. On that subject it’s worth noting that vote splitting is really a non-issue when one considers well over 50% don’t bother to vote in the riding.

However…
Branding for my campaign in this race was a challenge, and in the end it was branding that defined the outcome. The gap narrowed dramatically as voters became fearful of the NDP and the support for the BC Liberals then seemed to materialize out of nowhere and galvanize. In fact it was very noticeable in the final 72 hours. The lesson here is that negative advertising DOES in fact work and that voters still see BC as a two party state. Although I was appalled at my own numbers when they appeared after 8pm, I suppose I could be thankful I was not a candidate for the parties I came in ahead of. The silver lining here is that the polls were wrong, dead wrong, and perhaps with that in mind… the voters of the future will vote with their consciences instead of out of fear or based on what the pollsters tell them to believe.

I am very grateful to everyone who provided their support and help over the last seven weeks. Also thank you sincerely to those who believed in me and put an x or a check next to my name on the ballot.

Why the BC Conservatives fired me and why I continued to run.

Thursday, April 25th, 2013 at 5:42 pm  

When I was approached by the BC Conservative Party earlier this year to run as MLA, one of the pre-conditions for me to run was that there would be an agreement that I would not suffer the same fate as Vancouver – False Creek candidate, Ray Lam of the NDP, who I always felt had been treated unfairly by his party when he was ousted during the 2009 election. I gave party officials full access to my social media accounts and I told them I would scrub nothing.

I think voters should get to know the person they elect.

We had an agreement.

They knew what they were getting, and we were good to go. I fully expected some of my comments would raise eyebrows, possibly even the phone call I received from legislative reporter Jonathan Fowlie on Tuesday afternoon. Obviously reporters have better things to do than scour archived Twitter feeds so one has a pretty good idea where the info came from.

Fair game and no big deal.

Jonathan asked me about the tweets, and there was more. For some reason he wanted to know what I thought about pedophiles because I had tweeted agreement with a newspaper editorial to say that Tom Flanagan had been pilloried. Wisely The Vancouver Sun did not run with it, but given the outcome yesterday I can only imagine the ensuing hysteria if they did… even though the word never made it into print.

As expected, the story appeared online on Tuesday night, and in print Wednesday morning. I had informed the party Tuesday afternoon, right after speaking to Fowlie, that they should expect it. However, surprisingly, there was virtually no blowback once the story went to print on Wednesday morning.

All quiet on the western front until Wednesday afternoon when I received a phone call and was told by BCCP headquarters they were “pulling my candidacy with the party.” As I was being told this by telephone, the news was already on Twitter. John Cummins issued a strongly worded news release about the dismissal.

He did what he thinks he had to do in the heat of an election. Fair game…

As good as Fowlie is as a writer, words do not always make the press verbatim. So here is my version, from the horse’s mouth so to speak:
The Hitler comment had nothing to do with humour; rather it was a piece of a conversation about responsibility. I operate on the principle that there are two or more entities involved in communication; the issuer and the receiver(s). Nothing happens with anything until a receiver processes and acts on on words. So in Hitler’s case, there was a whole country of receivers who made choices and became accomplices before and after he became dictator. The twitter conversation was very clear and it was without humour. The exact quote was “Who’s really to blame, Hitler or the people who acted on his words?”

In hindsight, perhaps it could have read “Who’s really more to blame…” but there are limitations with Twitter. Nonetheless, many of my Jewish friends (and I have many) have called to tell me I am right. One whose father is a camp survivor told me yesterday if the word “dictator” were subbed for Hitler, there might not have been an issue with people who were too thick to get it.

Sluts: I referred to the denotation and not the connotation about sexually liberated women. If you don’t like them, and you are a heterosexual man, you’d be one of the few to be that way. There are pictures of me online with Gilbert Gottfried and Bobby Slayton. I like George Carlin. That’s my sense of humour.

I did not know I’d be running when I made the comments and even though I believe in brutal honesty I realize that it would be prudent to temper some comments. To that end I probably would not tweet it today however, there’s little wrong with the denotation and even the modern connotation is being “reclaimed”.

Drugs. They should be legal and controlled. A presidential candidate has run on this policy. The current model has wreaked misery around the planet and does not work. Nothing to be ashamed of. However as I told Jonathan, it’s irrelevant because I am not running federally, I am running provincially.

Here’s an interesting take by Brian Hutchinson in the National Post today.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/04/24/brian-hutchinson-fired-b-c-conservative-candidate-pays-price-for-being-mildly-politically-incorrect/

My name will be on the ballot on May 14^th. We need a strong voice in the legislature and we need a fiscal conservative. I like the BC Conservative platform and I think the party has great ideas. It’s the only party that has offered a credible budget and a plan to get BC prosperous again. Most importantly, I believe transparency is what is required to keep honesty in government.

 

Charity begins at home, as they say, and I felt it was important for transparency to begin with my own activity and thoughts on social media.

Why I may quit Greenpeace and Open Minds

This article was published by my BC Conservative candidate running mate, Duane Nickull (Vancouver-Point Grey) on March 30, 2013. Duane is an environmentalist and like me, a small L libertarian… I like what he has to say.

Posted on March 30, 2013




I must disclose that I have been a Greenpeace member for most of my life. I am an environmentalist and regularly write on this topic. Free enterprise and a good environmental policy are not antonyms, they are in fact two pillars of a modern sustainable culture. The reason I believe this is that there has been a major shift in how people buy in BC. Many of us buy local, we buy hybrids and we buy organic foods even though they all cost more. We support our neighbours and farmers, the small produce suppliers and our blossoming wine industry because we know it is better for the economy and the environment. We also know we cannot put people into poverty en masse.

Wednesday night I received a call from Greenpeace that disturbed me somewhat. One of the three reasons they were calling me was to raise awareness of the importance of climate change and that we should “vote for the climate”. When I asked what that meant, the response was “vote for the party that will keep the tar sands from happening”. He then reported to me in another sentence that “the NDP opposes the pipeline”. The implication being I should vote for the NDP. What does “oppose the pipeline mean”? I have a suspicion that no matter what any party says (perhaps with the exception of the Green Party), that the pipeline will be build. The rational? It is simply the most environmentally friendly way to move the product.

Greenpeace is supposed to be non-partisan. I found it very interesting that the person on the phone did not mention the Green party but rather the NDP. I am not sure why a Greenpeace phone volunteer is spending the money we donate to Greenpeace every month to call me and tell me about our political situation but that is for Elections BC to figure out.

The question that I had to ask when he stated we must oppose the pipeline is “what do you propose will be done in the alternative to move the oil“? There was stunned silence before a reply to the lines of “well we oppose everything about the Alberta Tar sands. If we do not build the pipeline we will cripple that operation“. I had to think about this for a while longer. This was a person who actually believes that if the Northern Gateway Pipeline is not built, the entire oil sands will cease production. Better yet, if we elect the NDP who formally “oppose” the pipeline, we can shut down Alberta’s Tar sands. I am sorry but this is simply not true. If the pipeline if not built, the alternative is trucks and rail. We do not have the rights to restrict traffic on national railroads and highways based on hatred of a particular industry. Those are national resources to which we all have equal rights to use.

If we had that power, I will aver that this is a very slippery slope. For the record, I wish we all lived in a utopian society that did not require fossil fuels, but the reality is we do not and change takes time. There is also an important concept of self government. I do not support BC being able to tell Alberta that they cannot develop their natural resources any more that I would support Saskatchewan being able to unilaterally shut down the BC movie industry based on a belief that they are polluting and films are not necessary. What about fishing? If Ontario could shut down our technology industry over concerns about computers containing dangerous substances, it would put many people out of work. What if someone in New Brunswick stopped UBC building condominiums on un-ceded native territory. This is a very dangerous slope to slide down. I understand the dangers of the Tar Sands project and know we have to change. At the same time, I do not believe our students should graduate with $100,000 of debt. We need balance in all policies.

So how does one stop the Tar Sands? Simple. Refuse to buy anything made with energy that comes from the Tar sands. Stop buying cosmetics, cars, tires, bicycles, electronics, clothes and anything plastic made with Alberta crude. Stop buying New Zealand apples and don’t buy green smoothies from Happy Planet, shipped in plastic bottles. If no one wants to buy those products, the market for that product will dry up very quickly as no manufacturer would allow it in their products. This would cause a slump in demand and a reversal of the trend. While sounding easy though, this equation is not so simple. What if companies like Enbridge actually used the profits from the tar sands to invest into renewable energy sources to prepare the world for a better future? Well guess what? They do this.
Enbridge now generates over 1,365 MW of clean and renewable energy. Do not believe me, read the website page at http://www.enbridge.com/DeliveringEnergy/RenewableEnergy.aspx. By contrast, the BC Carbon Tax has invested zero dollars and produced not one single MW of clean energy. That tax is revenue neutral and only shuffles money around. It also does not stop GHG emissions (read the increased amounts of GHG’s going into the environment on page 66 of the BC Provincial Budget).

So who are the bad guys and who are the good guys? There is no right answer to this question. My only hope is that I can invite anyone reading this to widen their thoughts and be a little more open minded. We all need to work together on this. No matter who wins the Provincial election May 14, we all have a deep responsibility to move forward to clean energy. If you are a protestor, keep protesting to raise awareness. If you have an idea to move to renewable energy, help Enbridge and others use the proceeds of the tar sands to invest into clean energy. They are an energy company. Oil is only one currency in that market. If they invest all their money into oil, they will due as a company when the oil runs out. The people I know at Enbridge told me that they know they need to move off oil to be successful in the future. Some top environmentalists have noted this and are helping them with this change.

We all know oil is running out. We have to reduce GHG’s. I have a plan to use Geothermal energy to both produce clean and renewable energy for British Columbians. We can do this. It is not that complicated but it requires educating people on how this will work.

Conservatives (and anyone else with a sane brain) do not want our planet ruined. We are entrenched to fight against this and restore BC as an economic leader. In the meantime, some have advocated raising taxes on gasoline to cut back on people using cars. Fine, I can personally afford $20/litre gas yet I found even the most hardened environmentalists are stating that this is not going to work for them. ”My life will be hell and my food and transportation bill will be through the roof” they claim. True I replied, but we will achieve the goal of reducing your contributing to GHG emissions. Most of them did not realize this was purely a rhetorical statement and got angry with me thinking it was an attack on their ability to exist. When I pointed out that this is the same logic they are using on others, many then thanked me for helping to raise their awareness.

I am a friend of both clean energy and environmental causes. I will not favor one at the expense of the others though. We all need to work together on this.

 We have an answer to meet the GHG targets for 2020 but also know that we have to measure them in a way that is fair and realistic. Simply outsourcing the GHG’s used in manufacturing to China is not the answer. After all, this is global warming, not BC warming.

Please give this some thought.