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Comment by tomjen3 | Hacker News Reader

Incentives matter, but the effect is never what you want.

Put more bicycle lanes up and people will buy mopeds (which polutes like crazy), or take jobs elsewhere, or something else crazy.

A good example is probably Australia where they made helmets mandatory for adults on bicycles. So many more people choose to take their car that the number of saved lives were offset by the amount of exercise lost.

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So, helmet laws are actually a terrible example of "effects aren't what you want", at least, it's a terrible example if the implication is that we are getting an effect that we don't expect. Now, it's possible that the legislators didn't understand this, but cycling advocates were and are well aware that helmet laws cause reduced bicycle use. Here's an article with sources which claims to be from 2006, the website copyright notice is 2013, so at the very least, it's from right around when Australia implemented it's helmet law. http://bicycleaustin.info/laws/helmet-laws-bad.html

A sizeable fraction of people who were biking regularly chose to switch to cars rather than wear a helmet?

That's extraordinary, I'm not saying it didn't happen but it astonishes me.

Cycling in Australia dropped by about 2% between 2011 and 2013. [1] The biggest issue with helmet laws though is that they significantly neuter bike share programs because people don't want to cary a helmet or use a shared helmet.

[1] page 26 http://www.cycle-helmets.com/cps-2013.pdf

I know that there are unintended consequences of everything. You have to have the courage to reevaluate your choices, not just make a change once and then be done forever.

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