Cambridgeshire Health Authority meeting

This article was published in 2001, in Newsletter 35.

Early in March Lisa Woodburn and I met Tony Jewell and Lesley Plant, of Cambridgeshire Health Authority, Lesley Gordon, of the County Council’s Road Safety department, and David Frost, of Peterborough City Council’s Road Safety Department.

The meeting was initially a discussion of issues around cycle helmets. Many cycling organisations are concerned that cycle helmet promotion presents cycling as a dangerous activity which discourages people from taking up cycling, and that it gives a false sense of security to those who wear helmets, whilst not doing anything to reduce real sources of danger. In Newsletter 19 , see BMA votes to keep helmets voluntary.

Those at the meeting concluded that we should concentrate on areas where we can agree, namely that it is important to promote cycling, and reduce hazards for cyclists.

We asked the Health Authority to help, by ensuring that in the next Crime and Disorder Consultation, driver behaviour is included by all five Cambridgeshire districts, not just Huntingdonshire. (See Newsletter 23 ).

We also discussed the possibility of producing a local cycling handbook, which is something I would very much like to see available for people new to the area, or new to cycling.

Clare Macrae