An article in The Courier of March 1979 foresaw the rise of the bicycle helmet, following an editorial in the paper almost a year before, calling for their introduction.
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CYCLING MUST BE MADE SAFER said the editorial headline of April 1978, noting the increasing popularity of cycling in the city.
An article inside The Courier stated that bicycle purchases had increased sixfold over a decade, and the key to greater safety was education of both cyclists and vehicle drivers.
No child was expected to learn to swim on their own, said the author, yet that was exactly how children learned to ride bikes.
With a front page picture and a full-page advertorial for sports store Merrett-Hassett*, the virtues of the newly- introduced CIG-Cooper SK 600 were loudly proclaimed.
In reality the helmet was already in use in Canada, where it was manufactured as protective wear for ice hockey. (It was also marketed with visors for the use of cricketers and baseballers.)
Local member for Ballarat North for 28 years and a former Creswick councillor, the late Tom Evans MLA, had put a committee together to explore the use of helmets following a visit by the then premier Rupert Hamer, who had supported their use.
It comprised a councillor, two employees of The Courier, a doctor, a schoolteacher and others, as well as Mr Evans himself. The committee recommended the helmet for use after CIG Medishield, 'the safety equipment arm of Commonwealth Industrial Gases Ltd', said it met their criteria.
Commonwealth and Olympic cyclist Ray Bilney also supported the introduction of the helmets, riding from Geelong to Ballarat to raise awareness of the campaign.
Forty years later, the debate over whether helmets should be mandatory continues. While few would argue the wearing of a protective headgear reduces injury, whether a person should be made to wear a helmet by law is still contentious.
Ballarat's Melissa Pirie stresses her objection to being made to wear a helmet is about the law, and has nothing to do with helmets generally. She supports the Freestyle Cyclists movement, which advocates for the right to people to make their own choices about wearing helmets.
She believes the mandatory use of helmets is a disincentive to the wider use of bicycles, which she says has languished since the introduction of fines for failing to wear them. She also believes the law discourages women from taking up cycling.
While she has no argument with helmets being worn in sports racing, riding a bicycle to the shops or to work shouldn't be subject to the same strictures, she says.
"We've been hearing horror stories for a couple of generations about head injuries, but statistically riding a bicycle is very safe," Ms Pirie says.
"We need subtlety in the argument. It's only mandatory to wear a helmet for all ages in Australia and New Zealand, and the fines are massive. The northern Territory have reformed their laws, and we're now seeing higher rates of cycling in that state. My motivation is that normal, everyday riders should be able to choose."
Others disagree. Arguments for the mandatory use of helmet put forward by members of the BalBUG (Ballarat Bicycle User's Group) on social media suggest that, apart from the safety the use of a helmet imparts, not using one gives motorists who are already hostile to cyclists further reason to complain, and that the use should become as second nature as putting on a seatbelt in a motor-vehicle.
Others argued from experiences of accidents and being struck by vehicles of the injuries a helmet saved them from, or of people who died or were seriously hurt through not wearing helmet.
Perhaps one of the most interesting theories on helmet use overall came from Tony Goodfellow.
Mr Goodfellow wrote a thesis on how bicycle riding has been discouraged in Australia, specifically Hobart, since the end of World War II, and says that helmets are just a symptom of a wider dislike of riding by authorities overall.
He gave an example of the Derwent Bridge in Tasmania, which was constructed with pedestrian access and banned bicycles from using it in any way.
"Cycling is not viewed as 'legitimate' transport," says Mr Goodfellow.
"Cyclists are way out-numbered and always treated as an afterthought. It's a shame, because if you look at the history, there were a great many bicycle factories in Ballarat in the last century, but most of them became garages as cars took over."
He says the legacy of anti-bicycle legislation and the poor responses of infrastructure can be seen in the different ways England and Holland treated cycling post-war, where the Dutch governments promoted the use of bicycles and poured funding into the rebuilt cities to make them accessible.
He says the law\s in Holland are also different, with motorists needing to prove they were not at fault in the case of an automobile-bicycle accident.
"Infrastructure, laws and policy must be addressed," says Mr Goodfellow.
"Helmets are just an aspect, an externality of the dominance of cars that has been allowed to happen."
At the same time, a new report released by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Transport and Road Safety (TARS) Research Centre reveals, according to their research, helmets have led to a near halving in fatalities and have saved billions of dollars in medical costs since 1990.
Researchers Professor Jake Olivier of UNSW's School of Mathematics and Statistics and deputy director of TARS Emeritus Professor Raphael Grzebieta have published articles over a number of years in support of mandatory helmet laws.
Their latest research indicates "clear and solid, undisputable scientific evidence that mandatory helmet laws (MHL) were effective in reducing cycling injuries in Australia," they write.
"There was an immediate 46 per cent reduction in the rate of cycling fatalities per 100,000 population following the introduction of bicycle helmet legislation in Australia," Professor Jake Olivier wrote.
"This decline has been maintained since 1990 and we estimate 1332 fewer cycling fatalities associated with the introduction of bicycle helmet legislation to date.
"Australia does not have national road laws as such, but after Victoria brought in mandatory helmet laws in 1990 the remaining states and territories had followed suit by 1992. This study is the first in the world to examine the effects of mandatory helmet laws applied on a national scale where those laws apply to all ages and are dutifully enforced."
Professor Olivier recognises that their research will not change the minds of those opposed to mandatory helmet laws.
"It is one of those things where it has been repeated so many times that people just believe it to be true, and won't question it because they've heard it so often," Professor Olivier says.
"These are the people who have made calls to repeal or weaken bicycle helmet legislation in Australia. The results from this study are not supportive of those initiatives."
Agreeing with the approach taken by Tony Goodfellow, the academics say our conversation needs to shift to cycling infrastructure.
"Both authors call for strategies to improve cycling safety such as appropriately designed segregated bicycle infrastructure, something that Professor Olivier says is sadly lacking in Australia when compared to European countries where there are often clearly designated spaces for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists," the report states.
"This senseless focus on helmet legislation detracts from the more important concerns about construction of dedicated cycling infrastructure, education of all road users, and supportive legislation to protect cyclists, such as minimum passing distances".
Ballarat Police Inspector Trevor Cornwill agrees that helmets are paramount in reducing cycle-related injuries.
"We've seen the introduction of bike helmets for school age children 40 years ago and due to the success of that, it was rolled out to all bike riders over a number of year," Inspector Cornwill says.
"There is evidence to suggest it protects you in the way seatbelts do. It's very difficult to quantify just how many lives have been saved, however there is certainly evidence to suggest that when a cyclist has been involved in a collision it does help to reduce the impact of trauma on the brain.
"For us it is a safety issue well as an education issue. If police see someone riding without a helmet, more often than not they will stop the person and issue them with a warning. If we see people on a regular basis, of course we issue them with fines.
"Victoria Police's point of view is that helmets are a good safety measure. Where we differ from places such as Europe (where people aren't required to wear helmets) is that, particularly in rural communities there are limited bike paths. More often than not we are having situations where bikes share the road with cars as opposed to designated bike paths."
- Merrold -Hassett stores were formed by diminutive Collingwood football champion Thorold Merrett and Australian cricket captain Lindsay Hassett. After Hassett's death Merrett formed Rebel Sports.