Bureaucrats 0, Cyclists 0, Police Coffers +158

A classic in bureaucratic short-sightedness. Brisbane and other Australian cities have been coming under fire to provide green solutions to traffic congestion issues in and around the CBD areas. At some point they clued into programs running in Europe for cycle hire stations. Think of them like shopping cart bays scattered around the city where you can hire a bike for a modest fee so long as the bike is returned to any of the other docking stations. A perfect solution for people looking to get between key places around the city without waiting for overcrowded busses, provided they're willing to put in the pedal-power. Sounds like a good idea, a pretty good idea, until you catch one itsy-bitsy detail that differs between Australian and European cities... Cycle helmet laws.

Australia is a nanny state. In participating European cities, wearing a helmet while riding a bicycle is recommended, but optional, however in Australia it is compulsary. And guess what: at cycle hire stations, helmets are not provided.

So people are expected to carry around a bike helmet in their travels so that they can catch a train to the city and ride a bike over the river to SouthBank. Yeah, ok.

A recent protest of sorts to promote the cycle-hire scheme and ditch the goofy helmet law was arranged in Melbourne, where the first few months saw only around 70 trips on their initial 600 bike setup. (After a nice tax-funded $5.5M setup fee) People showed up to hire bikes wearing no helmet or other recommended safety gear. Their point? That in a country where over 1 in 10 people is overweight the focus should be on ensuring cycling is accessible and safe without scaring people away from it. Of course the police showed up in 3 cruisers and issued $158 fines to everyone that rode more than 200m without a helmet, forcing everyone to walk the remainder of the trip. Nice to know the police are handy to stop this kind of nonsense instead of helping people on the trams threatened within an inch of their life. Your average Tram attack in Melbourne according to the driver. Of course if police were there to help out they'd probably be putting themselves in harms way, and wouldn't have collected $158 a head.

So in total, the various state governments will spend over $14M setting up cycle hires that will be woefully under-used due to a dumb-ass law. Maybe they'll plan to raid Police coffers for some of the expected helmet offence revenue.