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Consider Blanchflower’s bicycle helmet example in the assigned…
Consider Blanchflower’s bicycle helmet example in the assigned article “The Law of Unintended Consequences,” found in the Topic 6 Resources. Clearly more detailed research would be required to support his notion, but he poses an interesting way of considering unintended consequences. Consult your own experiences and those in your immediate circle of influence to generate one potential example of unintended consequences.
“The Law of Unintended Consequences” excerpt:
The law of unintended consequences suggests that any intervention may or may not have the intended result, but will inevitably have unan- ticipated outcomes. Sometimes, these outcomes are positive. The Korean demilitarised zone, for instance, has become a wildlife refuge. It has been claimed that legalised abortion in the US accounted for much of the drop in crime in the 1990s, though this is disputed.
More worrying are the unintended negative outcomes. Drugs can obviously have bad side effects. On US television, adverts for prescrip- tion drugs urge you to go to your doctor and tell him to prescribe you this drug for acid reflux, or blocked arteries, or whatever, even though you are, say, a plumber with no medical training. But then someone quietly reminds you of the awful side effects, which might include dizzi- ness, diarrhoea, constipation, depression and, on rare occasions, death. Sounds great; must rush out to get some.
I began thinking about all this after reading an NBER working paper by Christopher Car- penter and Mark Stehr titled Intended and Un- intended Effects of Youth Bicycle Helmet Laws. More than 20 states in the US have adopted laws requiring young people to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle. The authors found that these laws increased helmet use and reduced youth fatalities from cycling accidents by roughly 19 per cent, which is a good thing. But they also found that the laws significantly re- duced, by between 4 and 5 per cent, the amount of cycling done by young people, which was not the intention.
It’s possible that the kids simply took up other sports, such as skateboarding or inline skating, for which they were not legally man- dated to wear helmets. Helmet laws change the relative prices among these activities.
The moral of this tale is to be careful when making policy, as you may get a response you didn’t plan for.
Blanchflower, D. (2010). The law of unintended consequences. New Statesman, 139(4992), 17.
