Helmet saves life of bike store owner hit by car...... [Archive]

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 8th 04, 08:58 PM

On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 14:15:27 -0500, "psycholist" >
wrote in message >:

>Really? And how many incidents do you suppose never got reported where
>someone fell and hit their head while wearing a helmet. They were fine, so
>they just rode on and nobody knew about it or counted it in some tally.
>Whereas if they weren't wearing a helmet ...

LOL! This is the point where I usually quote my "knitted woolen
balaclava saved my life" anecdote. Quite where people get the idea
that cycle crashes were all fatal before the invention of PFDBs I
really don't know, but all the facts show that head injuries are
highest where helmet use is highest, and lowest where it is lowest.

This is hardly a surprise. The few studies which have attempted to
rank the relative merits of different cycle safety interventions all
appear to put helmets at the bottom, and rightly so, because all the
others focus on crash prevention and reduction of danger at source,
not injury mitigation.

There is also a truly bizarre notion going around that helmets are
designed to save lives, and have some proven efficacy in crashes
involving motor vehicles. The manufacturers and standards bodies say
otherwise.

I wouldn't care, except that several governments now have the official
view that the only thing preventing compulsion is low wearing rates.
That means they interpret everybody who wears a helmet as being a vote
in favour of compulsion. The fact that compulsion has been tried and
failed doesn't seem to cut much ice with the handwringers,
unfortunately, and neither does the fact that cycling is neither
especially dangerous nor especially productive of head injuries. The
head injury rate (%HI) for cycling is pretty consistently the same as
for pedestrians, and in both cases the majority cause of fatal injury
is road traffic crashes involving motor vehicles.

Anybody who is genuinely serious about cyclist safety must realise
that the helmet sideshow is a dangerous distraction from the real
business of cycle safety. Our National Cycling Strategy Board summed
it up perfectly, I think:

"Arguments that appear to disavow the efficacy or utility of cycle
helmet wearing, or on the other hand claim it as the major influence
in reducing injury to cyclists, are both wide of the mark. In
particular, campaigns seeking to present cycling as an inevitably
dangerous or hazardous activity, or which suggest that helmet wearing
should be made compulsory, risk prejudicing the delivery of those very
benefits to health and environment which cycling can deliver: they
also serve to confuse the general public about the wider social and
economic advantages of cycling. As a result, the NCS Board is anxious
that the question of wearing helmets is placed in its proper context."

In the case of the UK, the proper context is that cycling head
injuries account for a tiny percentage of child head injuries, and
exactly ten deaths in the last year for which we have figures. The
leading causes of head injuries in children are trips and falls
(especially from playground equipment), striking fixed objects (i.e.
just plain hitting their heads) and the like. Around six times as
many children suffer serious head injury as pedestrians than as
cyclists, and the %HI is rather higher for ped v car than for cyclist
v car. All this is detail and minutiae. On the other hand, the
leading helmet promoters in the UK publish figures of 88% head injury
saving (lie: TR&T accepted ten years ago that this was wrong); 50
child head injury deaths per year (lie: it's 10; they claim it's an
"estimate based on under-reporting" - of child fatalities?!? Give me a
break!); 22,500 hospital treatments annually (lie: this is treatments
in hospitals, minor injury clinics and GP clinics combined, the figure
for hospital admissions is about 2,000) and so on.

Question: if the case is so compelling, why is it necessary to lie?

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

psycholist

November 8th 04, 09:23 PM

"Just zis Guy, you know?" > wrote in message
...
> On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 14:15:27 -0500, "psycholist" >
> wrote in message >:
>
>>Really? And how many incidents do you suppose never got

Interesting argument. You presented a bunch of data and findings and any
that you didn't agree with you called "lies."

And none of it addressed what I said. If a cyclist has a bad fall and hits
his head and the helmet does its job and he/she gets up and rides happily on
his/her merry way, they don't end up in any statistics. But they were quite
possibly saved from serious injury by a helmet.

As for me, I was hit head-on by a teenage driver talking on a cell phone who
made an unsignaled left hand turn right into my path. It was at an
intersection and there were several witnesses. It was reported that, after
I slammed into the front fender, I then went into the windshield which
launched me straight up into the air. I landed squarely on my head. I
sustained a broken hip, pelvis ankle and a compression fracture of the
spine. I had a major laceration of the lower leg. My helmet was destroyed.
I had NO head injuries. Zero. None.

You can argue statistics and findings and such all day long. They don't
capture the incidents like the one I cited at the outset of this post. Nor
am I aware of any statisticians who were present to record my awful episode.
I don't believe any of the statistics on helmets that I read and hear. I
don't believe anyone is accurately recording these incidents.

You're free to believe whatever foolish thing you want to believe. I'm not
arguing for mandatory helmet laws. I just know that I'm very glad I had my
helmet on when I was hit. And it's my opinion that any serious cyclist who
logs serious mileage is playing a foolish game of roulette if they believe
they'll never get hit. And let me ask you something. If you knew you were
going to get hit, would you rather be wearing a helmet or not?

Bob C.

Bob C.

AustinMN

November 8th 04, 10:08 PM

psycholist wrote:
> As for me, I was hit head-on by a teenage driver talking on a cell phone
> who made an unsignaled left hand turn right into my path. It was at an
> intersection and there were several witnesses. It was reported that,
> after I slammed into the front fender, I then went into the windshield
> which launched me straight up into the air. I landed squarely on my head.
> I sustained a broken hip, pelvis ankle and a compression fracture of the
> spine. I had a major laceration of the lower leg. My helmet was
> destroyed. I had NO head injuries. Zero. None.

I have heard of similar accidents whith similar outcomes without a helmet.
One such story gets posted here from time to time by an eyewitness. Your
experience really is meaningless, no matter how much you believe it.

Think about this. If the helmet protected your head, and your head was
attached to your body, and (I am assuming here) the spinal compression
injury occured when your head made impact, why wasn't your spine protected
by the helmet?

> You're free to believe whatever foolish thing you want to believe.

As are you.

> If you knew you were going to get hit, would you rather be wearing a
> helmet or not?

Based on what I have seen and read about rotational injuries (most serious
of head injuries, and potentially made worse by helmets), I'd rather not
have the helmet. It's safer.

Austin
--
I'm pedaling as fast as I durn well please!
There are no X characters in my address

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 8th 04, 11:26 PM

On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 15:23:40 -0500, "psycholist" >
wrote in message >:

>Interesting argument. You presented a bunch of data and findings and any
>that you didn't agree with you called "lies."

No, there are genuine research papers on both sides, and reasons for
the discrepancy between them, but these claims are lies: the group in
question have made them in advertisements, and the body which
regulates advertisements has ruled that they are lies.

In particular the figure of 50 cycling child head fatalities per year,
also made by their leader on national TV, is a bald-faced lie. It is
over twice the total for all causes, and to say (as they do) that 80%
of fatal child cycling head injuries go unrecorded is simply absurd.
All fatal child head injuries in the last year for which we have
figures, were the result of road traffic crashes; the under-reporting
rate for fatal cyclist road traffic crashes is officially 0%,
according to our Transport Research Laboratory. It is a lie, plain
and simple

>And none of it addressed what I said. If a cyclist has a bad fall and hits
>his head and the helmet does its job and he/she gets up and rides happily on
>his/her merry way, they don't end up in any statistics. But they were quite
>possibly saved from serious injury by a helmet.

And if the cyclist falls off and never hits their head and they
weren't wearing a plastic hat, that doesn't get reported either. And
if the cyclist never crashes in the first place (i.e. to a first
approximation all rides), that doesn't either.

So you have to go to proper, population-level statistics. The CPSC
says that over ten years the cyclist head injury rate rose by 10%,
cycling reduced by 21% and helmet use increased threefold from 18% to
50% - so risk increased by around 40%. That says to me that helmets
are irrelevant in that context, the context of injuries serious enough
to get recorded. Do helmets prevent 90% of trivial injuries? It
wouldn't surprise me, and I wouldn't consider that a compelling case
for wearing a helmet.

>As for me, I was hit head-on by a teenage driver talking on a cell phone who
>made an unsignaled left hand turn right into my path. It was at an
>intersection and there were several witnesses. It was reported that, after
>I slammed into the front fender, I then went into the windshield which
>launched me straight up into the air. I landed squarely on my head. I
>sustained a broken hip, pelvis ankle and a compression fracture of the
>spine. I had a major laceration of the lower leg. My helmet was destroyed.
>I had NO head injuries. Zero. None.

And in a similar crash I too suffered no cuts and only minor
concussion, despite being thrown 15ft through the air. My life was
saved by my Millets knitted acrylic balaclava. And because balaclavas
don't degrade in UV, I still have it to save my life today!

So much for that.

What is scary here is that people prey on the fear of traffic to push
helmets *which are not specified for traffic crashes*. And the more
helmet-saved-my-life anecdotes we hear, the more people are going to
think "shall I blow that stop sign? It's OK, I'm wearing a helmet!"
There is a lot of research which shows that people who perceive
themselves to be protected, take more risks - there can be no possible
good outcome from exaggerating the benefits of helmet use.

>You can argue statistics and findings and such all day long. They don't
>capture the incidents like the one I cited at the outset of this post.

And guess what? They don't need to. Because every single cycle crash
is a unique event. So all we can ever do is collect together enough
of them to draw inferences - the concept of "statistical
significance". The bigger the sample, the more accurate the result.
There are two really big sample sets out there, Australia and New
Zealand - and in neither case was there any ,measurable benefit from
massive increases in helmet use. So either they are essentially
worthless against serious injuries, or whatever benefit they have is
outweighed by risk compensatory behaviour. Bolstered, no doubt, by
the routine overstating of the benefits of helmets. Ask anyone how
good helmets are, they will likely say "they prevent 85% of head
injuries" even though that figure is flat wrong, being derived from
comparing entirely different groups of cyclists. The original
authors' subsequent estimates are much lower, and even then at the
upper end of the range of estimates.

>I don't believe any of the statistics on helmets that I read and hear. I
>don't believe anyone is accurately recording these incidents.

Fine. So you believe that - what - large numbers of cyclists who were
injured when unhelmeted simply went home, but after the helmet laws
they decided to present at hospital to make the figures look bad?

How do you account for the 40% increase in head injury risk for US
cyclists as lid use rose from 18% to 50%? Do tell.

>You're free to believe whatever foolish thing you want to believe.

Me? I don't believe anything. I'm utterly sceptical. I certainly
don't believe people who quote figures which are not just wrong, but
easily checked.

>I'm not
>arguing for mandatory helmet laws. I just know that I'm very glad I had my
>helmet on when I was hit. And it's my opinion that any serious cyclist who
>logs serious mileage is playing a foolish game of roulette if they believe
>they'll never get hit. And let me ask you something. If you knew you were
>going to get hit, would you rather be wearing a helmet or not?

I'd rather be riding my recumbent, where the chance of head injury is
very much less. Oh, wait, I usually am!

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

mrbubl

November 8th 04, 11:41 PM

AustinMN wrote:
> psycholist wrote:
>
>> As for me, I was hit head-on by a teenage driver talking on a cell
>> phone who made an unsignaled left hand turn right into my path. It
>> was at an intersection and there were several witnesses. It was
>> reported that, after I slammed into the front fender, I then went into
>> the windshield which launched me straight up into the air. I landed
>> squarely on my head. I sustained a broken hip, pelvis ankle and a
>> compression fracture of the spine. I had a major laceration of the
>> lower leg. My helmet was destroyed. I had NO head injuries. Zero.
>> None.
>
>
> I have heard of similar accidents whith similar outcomes without a
> helmet. One such story gets posted here from time to time by an
> eyewitness. Your experience really is meaningless, no matter how much
> you believe it.
>
> Think about this. If the helmet protected your head, and your head was
> attached to your body, and (I am assuming here) the spinal compression
> injury occured when your head made impact, why wasn't your spine
> protected by the helmet?
>
>> You're free to believe whatever foolish thing you want to believe.
>
>
> As are you.
>
>> If you knew you were going to get hit, would you rather be wearing a
>> helmet or not?
>
>
> Based on what I have seen and read about rotational injuries (most
> serious of head injuries, and potentially made worse by helmets), I'd
> rather not have the helmet. It's safer.
>
> Austin

We all make choices and decisions on our own perceived wisdom. I am
a firm believer in the right to make a choice, your choice and then
either live or die, literally in some cases with that choice.

In three decades of experience in emergency medicine I have to err on
the side of the Styrofoam hat be that right, wrong or indifferent. My
personal choice and opinion should someone drive up and ask. Your
actual experience may differ.

Where the collective "we" run into problems and challenge is where "we"
support our own opinions onto others to make a less informed choice. As
the adage goes about a horse to water....

If not wearing a helmet on your head is safer for you and yours, more
power to yah and hope you are an organ donor so your choices may help
others.

mrbubl

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 9th 04, 12:17 AM

On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 22:41:11 GMT, mrbubl > wrote
in message . net>:

>If not wearing a helmet on your head is safer for you and yours, more
>power to yah and hope you are an organ donor so your choices may help
>others.

Oops, you spoiled it at the end there. Once again, if the facts are
so clear (a) why do the helmet lobby always give the highest figures
available, even when they know they are wrong, and (b) why do the
jurisdictions which have introduced laws not show the benefit?

That is the fundamental question for me. I am perfectly prepared to
believe helmets might prevent most trivial injuries, some more serious
ones, and even a few major ones. But the real world figures show that
overall there is no measurable benefit from even large scale increases
in helmet use, so there is clearly something else going on. I'd quite
like to know what it is, and preferably without being part of the
experiment. And actually I've not seen any figures which examine the
differential effect of helmets and any other kind of hat against scalp
injuries.

For myself, I reduce my risk of head injury by:

- riding safely and confidently
- planning my route to avoid the more senseless examples of road
planning
- wearing conspicuous clothing and mounting a flag on the bike
- using lights at night or in poor viability (permanently mounted,
dynamo-powered, always there and always ready)
- riding a bike where if I crash I will hit feet first or arse first,
not head first
- avoiding sucker-bait cycle "farcilities" like shared use pavements,
narrow cycle lanes and so on

The government could do some things to make my head safer. For
example:

- enforce traffic laws
- take dangerous drivers off the streets
- enforce meaningful penalties for dangerous and lethal driving
(current average penalty for killing a cyclist is a fine of under
$400 and six penalty points - 12 is a ban)
- shoot clueless traffic planners (OK, sack them, then)
- extend home zones and other traffic calming programmes

All these would benefit me, and make my head safer. Oh, and they
would also reduce the toll of pedestrian head injuries (six times as
many of them). Oh, and they would probably reduce the overall road
death toll as well.

All the above is based on good, sound evidence, some of it from
actual, measurable, delivered reductions in cyclist injuries. I keep
coming back to that because it is important: helmet-centred campaigns
have never to my knowledge delivered any measurable improvement in
injury rates. Looking at the big picture, helmets seem to me
essentially irrelevant. By the time the helmet comes into play, the
safety system has already failed, and if a motor vehicle is involved
all bets are off. Any improvement due to the helmet is blind luck and
nothing else; there must logically be at least as many cases where the
helmet made it worse or caused the crash in the first place, otherwise
we simply would not be having this discussion.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Dan

November 9th 04, 12:42 AM

"Just zis Guy, you know?" > wrote in
:

> On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 15:23:40 -0500, "psycholist" >
> wrote in message >:
>
>>Interesting argument. You presented a bunch of data and findings and
>>any that you didn't agree with you called "lies."
>
> I've seen these arguments so many times and always wanted to say
something but never have. It's so simple, if you don't care about your
safety, then don't wear a helmet. If you hit your noggin', you're gonna
be a vegetable or die more than likely. You're body can take alot of
abuse
but your head cannot. Here in Texas, you have the option, I don't care
what others do to look cool, but I look pretty cool as a walking,talking
Texan that wears a helmet. All I can say is if you don't, instead of a
vegatable that i have to support with my taxes, I hope you die,
painlessly
of course. As an EMT, I was shown a picture of a guy that was riding a
bike
and was hit by a car. The guy was laying on the ground, his eyes open,
looking at his brain laying in front of him that had popped out of the
front of his skull. Maybe, if he had a helmet on, this could have been
prevented, maybe not.

AustinMN

November 9th 04, 01:14 AM

mrbubl wrote:

> If not wearing a helmet on your head is safer for you and yours, more
> power to yah and hope you are an organ donor so your choices may help
> others.
>
> mrbubl

Do you say this about pedestrians that don't wear helmets? Because there
are 5 times as many pedestrians than cyclists that receive head injuries (in
the US).

How about those taking a shower without a helmet? Again, many times as many
people receiving head injuries from shower use than bicycle use. How about
using a step ladder or driving in a car? All many, many times more likely
to result in a head injury. They better all be organ donors so that their
choices can help the rest of us out.

Your statement, on it's face, makes the utterly invalid assumption that
cycling is dangerous. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Austin (who takes real risks by climbing stairs without a helmet)

AustinMN

November 9th 04, 01:25 AM

Dan wrote:
> As an EMT, I was shown a picture of a guy that was riding a
> bike
> and was hit by a car. The guy was laying on the ground, his eyes open,
> looking at his brain laying in front of him that had popped out of the
> front of his skull. Maybe, if he had a helmet on, this could have been
> prevented, maybe not.

Do you honestly believe that a 50 cent piece of Styrofoam that can be
crushed with a finger would protect a skull (which, by the way, is many,
many times harder than the Styrofoam hat) from that kind of trauma? If
that's the extent of your intelligence I don't want you to respond should I
ever need an EMT.

If bicycle helmets could protect from this kind of injury, then they need to
be required for much more dangerous activities such as climbing stairs,
walking, or taking a shower.

Austin

Pete

November 9th 04, 01:28 AM

"Dan" > wrote

> I've seen these arguments so many times and always wanted to say
> something but never have. It's so simple, if you don't care about your
> safety, then don't wear a helmet. If you hit your noggin', you're gonna
> be a vegetable or die more than likely. You're body can take alot of
> abuse
> but your head cannot.

If bike crashes are really that injurious/fatal, and helmets are really that
helpful...why are there still cyclists? Why didn't we all die off in the
~100 years between the invention of the bike, and the invention of the bike
helmet?

Pete

Scott Ehardt

November 9th 04, 01:43 AM

"AustinMN" > wrote in message
...
> mrbubl wrote:
> Do you say this about pedestrians that don't wear helmets? Because there
> are 5 times as many pedestrians than cyclists that receive head injuries
(in
> the US).
>
> How about those taking a shower without a helmet? Again, many times as
many
> people receiving head injuries from shower use than bicycle use. How
about
> using a step ladder or driving in a car? All many, many times more likely
> to result in a head injury. They better all be organ donors so that their
> choices can help the rest of us out.
>

I am not taking sides on this issue, but I will point out that in this form
your statistics are useless. Comparing number of showering injuries to
number of bicycling injuries is completely irrelevant. If you wanted to
prove something going in that direction, you would need to compare "injuries
per man-hour of showering vs. bicycling" or at the least "number of cycling
injuries per cyclist vs. number of showering injuries per showerer"

-Scott Ehardt
http://www.scehardt.com

Scott Ehardt

November 9th 04, 01:46 AM

"AustinMN" > wrote in message
...
> Requires registration.
>

http://www.bugmenot.com/view.php?url=dallasnews.com

-Scott Ehardt
http://www.scehardt.com

mrbubl

November 9th 04, 01:47 AM

AustinMN wrote:
> mrbubl wrote:
>
>> If not wearing a helmet on your head is safer for you and yours, more
>> power to yah and hope you are an organ donor so your choices may help
>> others.
>>
>> mrbubl
>
>
> Do you say this about pedestrians that don't wear helmets? Because
> there are 5 times as many pedestrians than cyclists that receive head
> injuries (in the US).

Numbers..pedestrians vs cyclist. Compare apples to apples and your
actual mileage may vary.
>
> How about those taking a shower without a helmet? Again, many times as
> many people receiving head injuries from shower use than bicycle use.
> How about using a step ladder or driving in a car?

How about wearing seat belts, smoking anything on a regular basis,
drinking alcohol to excess. If there were people that wore an approved
helmet that fell from step ladders or people driving cars in accidents
wore helmets that would present more moot points. How does a race care
driver survive a 100g force crash to walk away?? DId their helmet help?

All many, many times
> more likely to result in a head injury. They better all be organ donors
> so that their choices can help the rest of us out.

That would certainly help the organ availability crisis in the US.

>
> Your statement, on it's face, makes the utterly invalid assumption that
> cycling is dangerous. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Dangerous is a relative term. That pesky proactive action versus
reactive actions come in to play. I don't ride thinking it's dangerous
but have a reasonable expectation that those around me that directly
influence what happens to me share the same expectations.

The beauty is that you can make your own choices.
>
> Austin (who takes real risks by climbing stairs without a helmet)

mrbubl (wears a variety of helmets where appropriate and organ donor by
choice)

Super Slinky

November 9th 04, 02:12 AM

Just zis Guy, you know? says...
> On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 22:41:11 GMT, mrbubl > wrote
> in message . net>:
>
> >If not wearing a helmet on your head is safer for you and yours, more
> >power to yah and hope you are an organ donor so your choices may help
> >others.
>
> Oops, you spoiled it at the end there. Once again, if the facts are
> so clear (a) why do the helmet lobby always give the highest figures
> available, even when they know they are wrong, and (b) why do the
> jurisdictions which have introduced laws not show the benefit?
>
> That is the fundamental question for me. I am perfectly prepared to
> believe helmets might prevent most trivial injuries, some more serious
> ones, and even a few major ones. But the real world figures show that
> overall there is no measurable benefit from even large scale increases
> in helmet use, so there is clearly something else going on. I'd quite
> like to know what it is, and preferably without being part of the
> experiment. And actually I've not seen any figures which examine the
> differential effect of helmets and any other kind of hat against scalp
> injuries.

I dislike wearing helmets and in my instinctive dislike for them I see a
few things that might explain why they don't seem to help much. Helmets
are hot in the peak summer riding months and can increase sweat,
dehydration and heat exhaustion. They do nothing but decrease comfort
and are a distraction. Not only are they hot, but the straps cut into
the skin and there is a fine line between having them too loose and too
tight. I see a high percentage of helmet wearers with the helmet sitting
lopsided on their head. They are one more thing to fiddle with when the
rider could be concentrating on his riding and traffic. Bike helmets
protect the top of the head almost exclusively, the least likely place
for impact. The face, ears, and even the back of the neck have
significant exposure. A blow to the face will mean that the helmet will
deflect the force to the lower face, jaw, etc--not necessarily a
significant help. Helmets make the head a much bigger target. Near
misses become impacts. We actually have good instincts for protecting
our heads and some riders may short circuit these instincts in an
accident and try to protect other parts of their bodies.

Zoot Katz

November 9th 04, 03:29 AM

Tue, 09 Nov 2004 00:47:00 GMT,
t>,
mrbubl > proselytised:
\snip sos
>How does a race care
>driver survive a 100g force crash to walk away?? DId their helmet help?
\whack a doodle etc.

Their helmet has its own restraint system to keep it from breaking
their necks.

Apples and pineapples.
--
zk

psycholist

November 9th 04, 03:42 AM

"Super Slinky" > wrote in message
t...
> Just zis Guy, you know? says...
>> On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 22:41:11 GMT, mrbubl > wrote
>> in message . net>:
>>
>> >If not wearing a helmet on your head is safer for you and yours, more
>> >power to yah and hope you are an organ donor so your choices may help
>> >others.
>>
>> Oops, you spoiled it at the end there. Once again, if the facts are
>> so clear (a) why do the helmet lobby always give the highest figures
>> available, even when they know they are wrong, and (b) why do the
>> jurisdictions which have introduced laws not show the benefit?
>>
>> That is the fundamental question for me. I am perfectly prepared to
>> believe helmets might prevent most trivial injuries, some more serious
>> ones, and even a few major ones. But the real world figures show that
>> overall there is no measurable benefit from even large scale increases
>> in helmet use, so there is clearly something else going on. I'd quite
>> like to know what it is, and preferably without being part of the
>> experiment. And actually I've not seen any figures which examine the
>> differential effect of helmets and any other kind of hat against scalp
>> injuries.
>
> I dislike wearing helmets and in my instinctive dislike for them I see a
> few things that might explain why they don't seem to help much. Helmets
> are hot in the peak summer riding months and can increase sweat,
> dehydration and heat exhaustion. They do nothing but decrease comfort
> and are a distraction. Not only are they hot, but the straps cut into
> the skin and there is a fine line between having them too loose and too
> tight. I see a high percentage of helmet wearers with the helmet sitting
> lopsided on their head. They are one more thing to fiddle with when the
> rider could be concentrating on his riding and traffic. Bike helmets
> protect the top of the head almost exclusively, the least likely place
> for impact. The face, ears, and even the back of the neck have
> significant exposure. A blow to the face will mean that the helmet will
> deflect the force to the lower face, jaw, etc--not necessarily a
> significant help. Helmets make the head a much bigger target. Near
> misses become impacts. We actually have good instincts for protecting
> our heads and some riders may short circuit these instincts in an
> accident and try to protect other parts of their bodies.

Geez. I hope you learned to fit your bike better than you learned to fit
whatever helmet you may have tried. This is just simply ridiculous.

Bob C.

eq2 sux

November 9th 04, 04:36 AM

"AustinMN" > wrote in
:

> Dan wrote:
>> > Do you honestly believe that a 50 cent piece of Styrofoam that can be
> crushed with a finger would protect a skull (which, by the way, is
> many, many times harder than the Styrofoam hat) from that kind of
> trauma? If that's the extent of your intelligence I don't want you to
> respond should I ever need an EMT.
>
> If bicycle helmets could protect from this kind of injury, then they
> need to be required for much more dangerous activities such as
> climbing stairs, walking, or taking a shower.
>
> Austin
>
If you're stupid enough not to wear one, then you won't have to worry if I
respond. Use the protection, it can't hurt and may save your life. BTW, do
you use a seatbelt?

Frank Krygowski

November 9th 04, 04:45 AM

mrbubl wrote:

>
> If not wearing a helmet on your head is safer for you and yours, more
> power to yah and hope you are an organ donor so your choices may help
> others.

The "organ donor" line is common, tiresome, and flat out wrong.

One of my best friends is an organ recipient. After his transplant, he
became an educator for a transplant organization.

He assures me that cyclists never have, and never will, be significant
sources of organ donations. First, there are FAR too few cyclist
deaths. In the US, only about 750 cyclists get killed each year.

Compare with about 40,000 motorists;
roughly 15,000 people who die from falls;
about 6000 pedestrians hit by cars;
perhaps 5000 drowning victims;
not to mention about over 700,000 heart attack victims and 150,000
stroke victims (the main sources of organ donors, he claims).

Furthermore, he pointed out that (contrary to the hype) most cyclist
fatalities are _not_ nice clean corpses that regrettably died from a
light tap on the head. Instead, almost all have been hit by cars and
suffered the sorts of multiple internal injuries that ruin organs.

So, as usual, another trite piece of pro-helmet propaganda is worthless
when examined seriously.

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

Frank Krygowski

November 9th 04, 05:04 AM

Scott Ehardt wrote:

>
> I am not taking sides on this issue, but I will point out that in this form
> your statistics are useless. Comparing number of showering injuries to
> number of bicycling injuries is completely irrelevant. If you wanted to
> prove something going in that direction, you would need to compare "injuries
> per man-hour of showering vs. bicycling" or at the least "number of cycling
> injuries per cyclist vs. number of showering injuries per showerer"

The injuries per hour figures are, unfortunately, very hard to come by.
But most data that addresses this seem to indicate cycling is _not_
unusually dangerous per hour.

One paper examined head injury deaths per million hours for cycling,
walking, motoring and motorcycling. (The data was for Queensland,
Australia). Here are the results:

cyclists: 0.19 HI deaths per million hours
pedestrians: 0.34 " " " "
motor vehicle occupants: 0.17 " " " "
motorcyclist : 2.90 " " " "

(From "Head Injuries and Bicycle Helmet Laws", D.L. Robinson, Accident
Analysis & Prevention, Vol 28, no 4

http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/comparat.html lists estimates of fatalities
per million hours for various activities. Cycling appears roughly four
times safer than swimming, by these numbers - from the largest risk
consultation firm in the USA.

Other sources tell roughly the same story. For example, other athletic
activities cause many more ER visits per hour than cycling does.

The current myth, propagated by the helmet pushers, is that cycling is
extremely dangerous. Obviously, those who can make money selling
helmets don't care about disparaging cycling. Just as obviously, those
handwringers who are anxious to bubble-wrap every little kid, don't care
about disparaging cycling.

But it always amazes me that so many cyclists are eager to jump on that
bandwagon. How foolish!

Cycling is NOT very dangerous. It does us no good to pretend it is!

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

Frank Krygowski

November 9th 04, 05:16 AM

Dan wrote:

>
>>I've seen these arguments so many times and always wanted to say
>
> something but never have. It's so simple, if you don't care about your
> safety, then don't wear a helmet. If you hit your noggin', you're gonna
> be a vegetable or die more than likely.

People have been hitting their heads since prehistory. Cyclists have
been riding without helmets, by the hundreds of millions, for well over
100 years. The idea that every fall off a bike or every bump on the
head is a likely fatality is absolute nonsense.

Cycling isn't even on the map for fatal head injuries! HI fatalities in
the US are estimated to be between 56,000 and 115,000 per year,
depending who's doing the estimating. (The lower figure is probably more
reliable.) Cycling fatalities from _all_ injuries are only about 750
per year. Cycling head injury fatalities are less than 1% of the
country's total HI fatalities!

>Here in Texas, you have the option, I don't care
> what others do to look cool, but I look pretty cool as a walking,talking
> Texan that wears a helmet.

When you're walking, keep that helmet on. There are far more fatal HIs
from simple falls than from cycling.

Keep it on when you're driving, too. Motorists are roughly 50% of the
fatal HIs in the US. Again, cyclists are less than 1%.

I'm trimming your horror story. If you're really an EMT, don't tell us
about pictures you've seen. Tell us about the last 100 serious (say,
hospitalizable) brain injuries you've hauled in.

If your area is representative of national stats, no more than one of
them would be a cyclist.

So: What's the count?

(Hint: The last 3 EMTs I've asked never responded. They all slunk away.)

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

eq2 sux

November 9th 04, 05:30 AM

Frank Krygowski > wrote in
:

> Dan wrote:
>
>>
>>>I've seen these arguments so many times and always wanted to say
>>
>> something but never have. It's so simple, if you don't care about
>> your safety, then don't wear a helmet. If you hit your noggin',
>> you're gonna be a vegetable or die more than likely.
>
> People have been hitting their heads since prehistory. Cyclists have
> been riding without helmets, by the hundreds of millions, for well
> over 100 years. The idea that every fall off a bike or every bump on
> the head is a likely fatality is absolute nonsense.
>
> Cycling isn't even on the map for fatal head injuries! HI fatalities
> in the US are estimated to be between 56,000 and 115,000 per year,
> depending who's doing the estimating. (The lower figure is probably
> more reliable.) Cycling fatalities from _all_ injuries are only about
> 750 per year. Cycling head injury fatalities are less than 1% of the
> country's total HI fatalities!
>
>
>>Here in Texas, you have the option, I don't care
>> what others do to look cool, but I look pretty cool as a
>> walking,talking Texan that wears a helmet.
>
> When you're walking, keep that helmet on. There are far more fatal
> HIs from simple falls than from cycling.
>
> Keep it on when you're driving, too. Motorists are roughly 50% of the
> fatal HIs in the US. Again, cyclists are less than 1%.
>
> I'm trimming your horror story. If you're really an EMT, don't tell
> us about pictures you've seen. Tell us about the last 100 serious
> (say, hospitalizable) brain injuries you've hauled in.
>
> If your area is representative of national stats, no more than one of
> them would be a cyclist.
>
> So: What's the count?
>
> (Hint: The last 3 EMTs I've asked never responded. They all slunk
> away.)
>

I'll see 100 cars before I see a bicycle. So, we talking percentages or
are you just giving lip service for the sake of argueing. If you don't
want to wear a helmet, then don't. but if one person does wear it becuz
of my horror story then maybe that's one less i'll see laying in the
road. No, I'm not really an EMT, I just love saying EMT,jerk.

Frank Krygowski

November 9th 04, 05:41 AM

psycholist wrote:

> If a cyclist has a bad fall and hits
> his head and the helmet does its job and he/she gets up and rides happily on
> his/her merry way, they don't end up in any statistics. But they were quite
> possibly saved from serious injury by a helmet.
>
>...
>
> You can argue statistics and findings and such all day long. They don't
> capture the incidents like the one I cited at the outset of this post. Nor
> am I aware of any statisticians who were present to record my awful episode.
> I don't believe any of the statistics on helmets that I read and hear. I
> don't believe anyone is accurately recording these incidents.

<sigh> Why is this hard to understand?

It's not _necessary_ to have a statistician standing at every accident
site. That's not how this stuff works. If helmets prevent as many
injuries as claimed, then the tremendous surge in helmet use in the past
15 years should have caused a big drop in head injuries per cyclist.
But it hasn't! If anything, more data shows a _rise_ in head injuries
per cyclist. (See http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1028.html)

Some people have claimed that helmets are wonderfully protective, but
that - through amazing coincidence - cycling has gotten much more
dangerous in exact proportion to the helmets' use and protection. It's
a strange argument - sort of like this:

"My rabbit's foot is perfect protection against elephant attacks. Yeah,
I know there weren't any elephant attacks before I got my rabbit's foot,
but there _would_ have been if I didn't have it!"

But even that "reasoning" is belied by studies examining head injury
rates when helmets are forced on people all at once. In some places,
helmet use suddenly tripled (to as much as 90%) because of helmet laws.
One classic paper examined cyclists' head injury hospitalizations
while that sudden increase happened (just before a MHL), and found no
detectable improvement at all. ("Trends in Cycle Injury in New Zealand
under Voluntary Helmet Use", Scuffham, P. et. al., Accident Analysis &
Prevention, vol 29 no 1)

> You're free to believe whatever foolish thing you want to believe. I'm not
> arguing for mandatory helmet laws. I just know that I'm very glad I had my
> helmet on when I was hit. And it's my opinion that any serious cyclist who
> logs serious mileage is playing a foolish game of roulette if they believe
> they'll never get hit.

I understand that getting injured as you did must be psychologically, as
well as physically, traumatic. It's not uncommon for people who survive
an airplane crash to never fly again - despite the airlines' tremendous
safety record. It's not uncommon for people to develop unrealistic
fears of everything from dogs to spiders to canoes, based on one bad
experience.

But I'll take the real-world data over your single experience, thanks.
That data indicates I would have to cycle for thousands of years to get
up to a 50% chance of dying on the bike, even if I can keep doing
thousands of miles every year. My risk per year is literally negigible.
More to the point, my risk is not affected by the presence or absence
of a helmet.

And if I do pay attention to individual experiences, I prefer my own.
I've been riding seriously as an adult for over 30 years now, and as a
kid for, oh, at least 15 years before that. I've never had an injury
worse than a childhood scraped knee. And like almost all the world's
cyclists, I probably never will.

And let me ask you something. If you knew you were
> going to get hit, would you rather be wearing a helmet or not?

Did you mean while walking, where the risk of fatal head injury per hour
is about twice that of cycling? Or did you mean while riding in a car,
where the risk is almost exactly the same?

Or did you mean we should wear a helmet _only_ while cycling? If so...
why only then??

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

Frank Krygowski

November 9th 04, 06:06 AM

eq2 sux wrote:

> Frank Krygowski > wrote in
> :

> Tell us about the last 100 serious
>>(say, hospitalizable) brain injuries you've hauled in.
>>
>>If your area is representative of national stats, no more than one of
>>them would be a cyclist.
>>
>>So: What's the count?
>>
>>(Hint: The last 3 EMTs I've asked never responded. They all slunk
>>away.)
>>
>
>
> I'll see 100 cars before I see a bicycle. So, we talking percentages or
> are you just giving lip service for the sake of argueing.

I've been talking absolute numbers, I've been talking percentages, and
I've been talking risk per hour of exposure. Take your pick. By any of
these measures, cycling is NOT very dangerous.

I'm sorry if this is hard for you to understand. I'm sorry if it
challenges your preconceived notions. But it's fact.

If you don't
> want to wear a helmet, then don't.

Why, thank you for your gracious permission!

but if one person does wear it becuz
> of my horror story then maybe that's one less i'll see laying in the
> road.

Numbers, please! These vague hints of horrors just don't make it. How
many seriously head injured cyclists have you seen lying in the road in
the past ten years? How many seriously head injured motorists have you
pulled out of cars, or off the road?

Nationally, the numbers favor the cyclists. Nationally, the per-hour
figures also favor the cyclists. And if you don't understand "per hour"
let me know, and I'll explain it to you!

No, I'm not really an EMT, I just love saying EMT,jerk.

I have no idea if you are or aren't. I know what's happened with the
last few folks who claimed to be EMTs. When asked for real numbers,
they left in a huff.

Since you're not giving numbers either (and are even changing your
screen name) I assume you're in the same situation: Caught with your
data down!

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

RogerDodger

November 9th 04, 06:34 AM

psycholist Wrote:
> ...You're free to believe whatever foolish thing you want to believe.
> I'm not
> arguing for mandatory helmet laws. I just know that I'm very glad I
> had my
> helmet on when I was hit. And it's my opinion that any serious cyclist
> who
> logs serious mileage is playing a foolish game of roulette if they
> believe
> they'll never get hit. And let me ask you something. If you knew you
> were
> going to get hit, would you rather be wearing a helmet or not?
>
> Bob C.
>
>

Bob, feel free to believe whatever foolish thing you want to believe -
and believe me your beliefs are unbelievably foolish. I for one would
argue that I am in fact safer riding without a helmet (as I do) for the
good reason that wearing a helmet compromises the innate and unconscious
reflex actions that tend to avoid head impacts. The awareness of an
exposed head is has a sort of subconscious programming effect and
ensures that the natural reflexes of avoidance of head impact will
continue to be the priority reaction response in an accident.

What amazes me is how people can be so lacking in psychological acuity
- so foolish as to delude themselves as you do.

Roger

--
RogerDodger

RogerDodger

November 9th 04, 06:53 AM

eq2 sux Wrote:
> ...
> If you don't want to wear a helmet, then don't. but if one person does
> wear it becuz of my horror story then maybe that's one less i'll see
> laying in the
> road. No, I'm not really an EMT, I just love saying EMT,jerk.

Well, whoever you are you appear to be stroking your own self
importance here, Oh what magnaminous benefactance you display - and how
dramatic - one less person laying on the road all because of your horror
story. How old are you - I'd guess ten maybe twelve, or perhaps you're
an adult with the mental age of a ten year old? Well hate to puncture
your pretty little delusion but science and the statistics support the
contrary to your comforting illusion.

Jerk? Oh, that's right - language typical of a brash impertinent ten
year old.
Put your nappies on and get back in your cot.

Would you like a helmet lullaby to help put you to sleep?

--
RogerDodger

RogerDodger

November 9th 04, 07:05 AM

eq2 sux Wrote:
> ...If you're stupid enough not to wear one, then you won't have to worry
> if I
> respond. Use the protection, it can't hurt and may save your life. BTW,
> do
> you use a seatbelt?

Argument befitting a cognitively challenged ten year old- call people
who don't wear a helmet stupid. Stupidity is...a childish behaviour of
calling other people stupid. Definition: stupid people show themselves
by incautiously calling other people stupid. I suspect that the poster
in question might be incapable of recognising his condition.

--
RogerDodger

RogerDodger

November 9th 04, 07:20 AM

mrbubl Wrote:
> ...If not wearing a helmet on your head is safer for you and yours, more
> power to yah and hope you are an organ donor so your choices may help
> others.
>
> mrbubl

Well there you go then... finish it off with a question begging howler.
What moronic drivel - obviously you don't even have enough intelligence
to realise that your petitio principii argument is fatally flawed.

Looks like a compound fallacy - ad bacalum and petitio principii. Look
them up and learn something.
I'd guess you're a brainless dipstick trying to appear intelligent -
you blew it.

--
RogerDodger

Joshua Putnam

November 9th 04, 07:29 AM

In article >, says...

> And none of it addressed what I said. If a cyclist has a bad fall and hits
> his head and the helmet does its job and he/she gets up and rides happily on
> his/her merry way, they don't end up in any statistics. But they were quite
> possibly saved from serious injury by a helmet.

I can't believe I'm getting involved in a helmet thread....

Your argument would work if helmets and bicycles had been invented at the
same time. But they weren't -- we have more than a hundred years of data
on cycling without helmets. So it should be easy to detect a significant
reduction in head injuries from cycling when helmets came along. Except
that cycling head injuries were never very numerous to begin with, and
they haven't shown the sort of dramatic declines that helmet advocates
suggest we should.

So, in your hypothetical, as long as the injury to a helmetless rider was
so minor that no medical attention would have been sought, then no, the
statistics won't include that accident. But if the helmet was really a
dramatic improvement, then when we compared cycling head injury rates
from 20 years ago with those of today, we'd see those non-reported
incidents as a reduction in head injury rates.

Feel free to try to find evidence that this has actually happened at
anything like the rates helmet zealots purport it would.

Now, of course, I do wear a helmet when I ride. They're very good at
reducing the minor injuries from the light impacts they're designed for.

I have no expectation that this magical foam talisman will protect me
from a fatal accident, but it will keep me from getting road rash on my
scalp again, like I did when I was hit by a car, thrown through the air,
and dragged my head down a curb without a helmet. (No serious injuries,
thank goodness, though if I'd been wearing a helmet I'm sure someone
would insist it had saved my life.)

--
is Joshua Putnam
<http://www.phred.org/~josh/>
Updated Bicycle Touring Books List:
<http://www.phred.org/~josh/bike/tourbooks.html>

Peter Keller

November 9th 04, 09:24 AM

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 16:34:51 +1100, RogerDodger wrote:

>
> psycholist Wrote:
>> ...You're free to believe whatever foolish thing you want to believe.
>> I'm not
>> arguing for mandatory helmet laws. I just know that I'm very glad I
>> had my
>> helmet on when I was hit. And it's my opinion that any serious cyclist
>> who
>> logs serious mileage is playing a foolish game of roulette if they
>> believe
>> they'll never get hit. And let me ask you something. If you knew you
>> were
>> going to get hit, would you rather be wearing a helmet or not?
>>
>> Bob C.
>>
>>
>
> Bob, feel free to believe whatever foolish thing you want to believe -
> and believe me your beliefs are unbelievably foolish. I for one would
> argue that I am in fact safer riding without a helmet (as I do) for the
> good reason that wearing a helmet compromises the innate and unconscious
> reflex actions that tend to avoid head impacts. The awareness of an
> exposed head is has a sort of subconscious programming effect and
> ensures that the natural reflexes of avoidance of head impact will
> continue to be the priority reaction response in an accident.
>
> What amazes me is how people can be so lacking in psychological acuity
> - so foolish as to delude themselves as you do.
>
> Roger

I totally agree. I feel much safer riding without a helmet, as I am more
conscious of the fact that I should be riding alertly and safely to avoid
accidents in the first place. (As all bicycle riders, helmetted or not,
should be!) Unfortunately, here in NZ riding without a helmet is not
really an option, as the police here are utterly savage and ferocious in
enforcing this stupid counterproductive law. I simply gave up after
several episodes of starting any encounter with the police from the big
disadvantage that I had already broken the law. But at least I am still
riding, not like many of my countrypeople. The numbers of child bike
riders have reduced by about 80% since this draconian law was passed and
enforced; and the number of lady bike riders by about 90%. It is rare now
to see bicycling commuters less than 35 years old.
I am fortunate to be married to a non-New Zealander, which gives me an
instant emigration possibility which I will probably take up rather soon.

Peter

--
If you are careful enough in life, nothing bad -- or
good -- will ever happen to you.

mrbubl

November 9th 04, 01:49 PM

RogerDodger wrote:
> mrbubl Wrote:
>
>>...If not wearing a helmet on your head is safer for you and yours, more
>>power to yah and hope you are an organ donor so your choices may help
>>others.
>>
>>mrbubl
>
>
> Well there you go then... finish it off with a question begging howler.
> What moronic drivel - obviously you don't even have enough intelligence
> to realise that your petitio principii argument is fatally flawed.

Fatally flawed........you crack me up! Must be from the brain injury
suffered from lack of head protection.

>
> Looks like a compound fallacy - ad bacalum and petitio principii. Look
> them up and learn something.

thank you professori!

> I'd guess you're a brainless dipstick trying to appear intelligent -
> you blew it.

No, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn last night........

mrbubl

Maggie

November 9th 04, 03:01 PM

> > How about those taking a shower without a helmet? Again, many times as
> > many people receiving head injuries from shower use than bicycle use.

Doesn't everyone put their helmet on when they take a shower?
Is it only me?
http://hometown.aol.com/lbuset/

psycholist

November 9th 04, 03:17 PM

"Frank Krygowski" > wrote in message
...
> mrbubl wrote:
>
>>
>> If not wearing a helmet on your head is safer for you and yours, more
>> power to yah and hope you are an organ donor so your choices may help
>> others.
>
> The "organ donor" line is common, tiresome, and flat out wrong.
>
> One of my best friends is an organ recipient. After his transplant, he
> became an educator for a transplant organization.
>
> He assures me that cyclists never have, and never will, be significant
> sources of organ donations. First, there are FAR too few cyclist deaths.
> In the US, only about 750 cyclists get killed each year.
>
> Compare with about 40,000 motorists;
> roughly 15,000 people who die from falls;
> about 6000 pedestrians hit by cars;
> perhaps 5000 drowning victims;
> not to mention about over 700,000 heart attack victims and 150,000 stroke
> victims (the main sources of organ donors, he claims).
>
> Furthermore, he pointed out that (contrary to the hype) most cyclist
> fatalities are _not_ nice clean corpses that regrettably died from a light
> tap on the head. Instead, almost all have been hit by cars and suffered
> the sorts of multiple internal injuries that ruin organs.
>
> So, as usual, another trite piece of pro-helmet propaganda is worthless
> when examined seriously.
>
>
> --
> --------------------+
> Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com, replace
> with cc.ysu dot edu]
>

And equally as usual, another case of COMPLETELY misleading statistics. Of
course cyclists aren't a significant source of organ donations. There
aren't that many of us. What's relevant is to look at the number of organ
donations relative to the number of cyclists. What would also be more
relevant to this newsgroup is to toss out all the incidents involving people
who ride once a decade and focus on those of us who spend hours and hours
training on the road. How many of us, because of all of our hours of
exposure to traffic and all the miles we log, end up having a serious
incident at one time or another?

If I merely consider our cycling club, I can think of dozens of incidents in
the past couple of years where people were hit by cars, dogs ran into the
road and took them out, they went down in a paceline touch of wheels, etc.
I can also recall dozens of statements like, "were it not for my helmet, I'd
have been way more seriously hurt."

Can I cite statistics to back this up? No. Has anyone produced any
relevant statistics that apply to this population of serious cyclists who
log many hours on the roads? NO!

Am I pro helmet law? NO! Am I pro helmet? YES! Above all, I'm anti
statistics. I know statistics quite well and I know they can be quite
limited, quite biased and quite inaccurate.

Bob C.

psycholist

November 9th 04, 03:25 PM

"Frank Krygowski" > wrote in message
...
> Dan wrote:
>
>>
>>>I've seen these arguments so many times and always wanted to say
>>
>> something but never have. It's so simple, if you don't care about your
>> safety, then don't wear a helmet. If you hit your noggin', you're gonna
>> be a vegetable or die more than likely.
>
> People have been hitting their heads since prehistory. Cyclists have been
> riding without helmets, by the hundreds of millions, for well over 100
> years. The idea that every fall off a bike or every bump on the head is a
> likely fatality is absolute nonsense.
>
> Cycling isn't even on the map for fatal head injuries! HI fatalities in
> the US are estimated to be between 56,000 and 115,000 per year, depending
> who's doing the estimating. (The lower figure is probably more reliable.)
> Cycling fatalities from _all_ injuries are only about 750 per year.
> Cycling head injury fatalities are less than 1% of the country's total HI
> fatalities!
>
>
>>Here in Texas, you have the option, I don't care
>> what others do to look cool, but I look pretty cool as a walking,talking
>> Texan that wears a helmet.
>
> When you're walking, keep that helmet on. There are far more fatal HIs
> from simple falls than from cycling.
>
> Keep it on when you're driving, too. Motorists are roughly 50% of the
> fatal HIs in the US. Again, cyclists are less than 1%.
>
> I'm trimming your horror story. If you're really an EMT, don't tell us
> about pictures you've seen. Tell us about the last 100 serious (say,
> hospitalizable) brain injuries you've hauled in.
>
> If your area is representative of national stats, no more than one of them
> would be a cyclist.
>
> So: What's the count?
>
> (Hint: The last 3 EMTs I've asked never responded. They all slunk away.)
>
> --
> --------------------+
> Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com, replace
> with cc.ysu dot edu]
>

As usual Frank, your statistics are entirely without merit or validity.

You say that cyclists account for less than 1% of fatal HI injuries and
that's your argument why we shouldn't worry about wearing helmets. Well,
Frank, what percent of the entire population do you suppose we represent.
Index that figure ... if you know what that means. THEN you'll have a
relevant analysis. Also, index that figure using only those cyclists who
are dedicated roadies who spend hours a week on the road.

I've heard so many lame arguments from people who say they've never had an
incident, but when you grill them a bit, you find out they ride maybe on
average a couple of hours a month or less. I ride a couple of hours a DAY.
The more you're out there, the more potential for something to happen. I
haven't seen any statistics yet that take that into account.

Bob C.

psycholist

November 9th 04, 03:28 PM

"Frank Krygowski" > wrote in message
...
> eq2 sux wrote:
>
>> Frank Krygowski > wrote in
>> :
>
>> Tell us about the last 100 serious
>>>(say, hospitalizable) brain injuries you've hauled in.
>>>
>>>If your area is representative of national stats, no more than one of
>>>them would be a cyclist.
>>>
>>>So: What's the count?
>>>
>>>(Hint: The last 3 EMTs I've asked never responded. They all slunk
>>>away.)
>>
>>
>> I'll see 100 cars before I see a bicycle. So, we talking percentages or
>> are you just giving lip service for the sake of argueing.
>
> I've been talking absolute numbers, I've been talking percentages, and
> I've been talking risk per hour of exposure. Take your pick. By any of
> these measures, cycling is NOT very dangerous.
>
> I'm sorry if this is hard for you to understand. I'm sorry if it
> challenges your preconceived notions. But it's fact.
>
> If you don't
>> want to wear a helmet, then don't.
>
> Why, thank you for your gracious permission!
>
>
> but if one person does wear it becuz
>> of my horror story then maybe that's one less i'll see laying in the
>> road.
>
> Numbers, please! These vague hints of horrors just don't make it. How
> many seriously head injured cyclists have you seen lying in the road in
> the past ten years? How many seriously head injured motorists have you
> pulled out of cars, or off the road?
>
> Nationally, the numbers favor the cyclists. Nationally, the per-hour
> figures also favor the cyclists. And if you don't understand "per hour"
> let me know, and I'll explain it to you!
>
> No, I'm not really an EMT, I just love saying EMT,jerk.
>
> I have no idea if you are or aren't. I know what's happened with the last
> few folks who claimed to be EMTs. When asked for real numbers, they left
> in a huff.
>
> Since you're not giving numbers either (and are even changing your screen
> name) I assume you're in the same situation: Caught with your data down!
>
>
> --
> --------------------+
> Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com, replace
> with cc.ysu dot edu]
>

No it's not. It's more misleading statistics. See my earlier reply.
Without indexing these figures to the population of cyclists ... and mores
specifically, the population of dedicated roadies (for the sake of relevance
to these cycling newsgroups), your figures are MEANINGLESS!

Bob C.

AustinMN

November 9th 04, 04:18 PM

mrbubl wrote:
> RogerDodger wrote:
>> mrbubl Wrote:
>>>...If not wearing a helmet on your head is safer for you and yours, more
>>>power to yah and hope you are an organ donor so your choices may help
>>>others.
>>>
>>>mrbubl
>>
>>
>> Well there you go then... finish it off with a question begging howler.
>> What moronic drivel - obviously you don't even have enough intelligence
>> to realise that your petitio principii argument is fatally flawed.
>
> Fatally flawed........you crack me up! Must be from the brain injury
> suffered from lack of head protection.

Another helmet troll more interested in winning the argument than in
learning the truth.

<plonk>

Austin
--
I'm pedaling as fast as I durn well please!
There are no X characters in my address

AustinMN

November 9th 04, 04:25 PM

Frank Krygowski wrote:
<snip>
> but if one person does wear it becuz
>> of my horror story then maybe that's one less i'll see laying in the
>> road.
>
> Numbers, please! These vague hints of horrors just don't make it. How
> many seriously head injured cyclists have you seen lying in the road in
> the past ten years? How many seriously head injured motorists have you
> pulled out of cars, or off the road?

Indeed! It is interesting that he didn't pull an incident from his
experience, but from a photograph as part of his training!

Having received First Responders training myself, I know that almost all of
those photos are faked, and are intended to weed out those who will crawl to
the side of the road and loose their cookies every time they respond to a
gory scene.

Austin
--
I'm pedaling as fast as I durn well please!
There are no X characters in my address

AustinMN

November 9th 04, 04:29 PM

psycholist wrote:
>
> Frank Krygowski wrote:

<snip>

>> I've been talking absolute numbers, I've been talking percentages, and
>> I've been talking risk per hour of exposure. Take your pick. By any of
>> these measures, cycling is NOT very dangerous.

<snip>

> No it's not. It's more misleading statistics. See my earlier reply.
> Without indexing these figures to the population of cyclists ... and mores
> specifically, the population of dedicated roadies (for the sake of
> relevance to these cycling newsgroups), your figures are MEANINGLESS!

I've always thought percentages and risk per hour of exposure had to be
indexed to something...hm, the population of cyclists! That's it!

Austin
--
I'm pedaling as fast as I durn well please!
There are no X characters in my address

Frank Krygowski

November 9th 04, 04:30 PM

psycholist wrote:

> "Frank Krygowski" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>>The "organ donor" line is common, tiresome, and flat out wrong.
>>
>>One of my best friends is an organ recipient. After his transplant, he
>>became an educator for a transplant organization.
>>
>>He assures me that cyclists never have, and never will, be significant
>>sources of organ donations. First, there are FAR too few cyclist deaths.
>>In the US, only about 750 cyclists get killed each year.
>>
>>Compare with about 40,000 motorists;
>>roughly 15,000 people who die from falls;
>>about 6000 pedestrians hit by cars;
>>perhaps 5000 drowning victims;
>>not to mention about over 700,000 heart attack victims and 150,000 stroke
>>victims (the main sources of organ donors, he claims).
>>
>>Furthermore, he pointed out that (contrary to the hype) most cyclist
>>fatalities are _not_ nice clean corpses that regrettably died from a light
>>tap on the head. Instead, almost all have been hit by cars and suffered
>>the sorts of multiple internal injuries that ruin organs.
>>
>>So, as usual, another trite piece of pro-helmet propaganda is worthless
>>when examined seriously.
>>
>>
>
>
> And equally as usual, another case of COMPLETELY misleading statistics. Of
> course cyclists aren't a significant source of organ donations. There
> aren't that many of us. What's relevant is to look at the number of organ
> donations relative to the number of cyclists.

Fine. Where are your figures for donations per cyclist? Feel free to
dig them up an post them.

Not that it matters much. The sarcastic comment was that cyclists
without helmets are likely organ donors. No matter how you slice it,
it's false.

BTW, another indication of the falsity is to examine the number of
cyclist fatalities per hour or riding, or per year of riding.

From http://www.bicyclinglife.com/Library/SteppingStones.htm

(data is for Great Britain):

"How dangerous is cycling? A quick-cut measure to put the risk in
day-to-day terms is to calculate how many years of cycling there are for
each death. To put it another way, this is the number of years you could
expect to cycle before being killed in an accident. We know that
currently about 170 cyclists get killed per year and from surveys we
know there are about 3 million regular cyclists in Britain. There are in
addition at least another 3 million occasional cyclists, but we will
ignore them here. We divide 3 million by 170 to get 18,000 years.
Now that looks like quite a lot of cycling."

If the typical British cyclist can expect to die only after 18,000 years
of cyclng (on average), how can you pretend this is a signficant danger
- or a significant source of organ donations?

What would also be more
> relevant to this newsgroup is to toss out all the incidents involving people
> who ride once a decade and focus on those of us who spend hours and hours
> training on the road. How many of us, because of all of our hours of
> exposure to traffic and all the miles we log, end up having a serious
> incident at one time or another?

From the same paper: "A more useful measure of the risks for active
cyclists is to look at CTC members. There are 3 to 5 deaths per year,
out of 60,000 members, so that gives: 12,000 to 20,000 years of cycling
per fatality."

Understand, the Cyclists' Touring Club (CTC) is full of people who ride
very enthusiastically and frequently. These are folks who tour Britain
& Europe (and beyond) by bike, and do club rides each weekend.

>
> If I merely consider our cycling club, I can think of dozens of incidents in
> the past couple of years where people were hit by cars, dogs ran into the
> road and took them out, they went down in a paceline touch of wheels, etc.
> I can also recall dozens of statements like, "were it not for my helmet, I'd
> have been way more seriously hurt."

First, an interesting fact that has emerged in these Usenet discussions
over the years: Everyone who falls and conks their helmet on the ground
seems to feel it either saved their life, or saved them from being very
seriously hurt.

But is this true? Very, very doubtful. If you go back to the dim, dim
past and recall (or read) about cycling in the pre-helmet days, you get
NO stories about brain injured cyclists. I rode for many years before
helmets were marketed, and heard never a word about the supposed
"problem" of head injuries. I've read quite a lot on cycling history,
including reams of personal accounts. (Those who are interested might
check out Vintage Bicycle Quarterly magazine - 400 mile rides, day and
night, for weekend fun!) Head injuries were never a "problem" until
Bell decided to look for a new market!

Why would there be "saved my life" stories now? One obvious one is that
a helmet is bigger than a head; a near miss or light touch of a bare
head will be a resounding "clunk" on a helmet. Another is that
styrofoam is fragile. A broken helmet is evidence of... a broken
helmet, period! Yet many think it represents a nearly broken head. Still
another factor is the sound and surprise of physical impact. Whether
you're aware or not, it's common for faith healers to startle their
"patients" with a sudden shout and/or blow. For whatever psychological
reason, this triggers a "magic" response in the victim. Helmet
companies benefit from this, apparently.

But back to your club: A second point is this: Exactly how many
_deaths_ have their been in your club? (Because after all, that's what
"organ donor" is tied to.) How many before the helmet era? How many
since helmets became part of the club uniform?

In our club, the totals are: Zero, and zero.

IOW, despite all the hundreds of thousands of miles we do, cycling is
NOT a likely cause of death. Our club has seen people die of heart
disease, stroke, cancer, even accidents involving farm equipment; but
bike crashes? Zero.

>
> Can I cite statistics to back this up? No.

Of course not.

Has anyone produced any
> relevant statistics that apply to this population of serious cyclists who
> log many hours on the roads? NO!

False. See above.

> Am I pro helmet law? NO! Am I pro helmet? YES! Above all, I'm anti
> statistics.

Hmm. That's a worrying sign of innumeracy.

I know statistics quite well and I know they can be quite
> limited, quite biased and quite inaccurate.

If you are truly anti-statistics, you'd better stop taking any
medication you're ever prescribed. The _only_ way the FDA approves
medicine is by statistical studies resulting from double blind tests.

And BTW, there have been no such tests done for helmets, for obvious
reasons. The limited studies that promote helmets (especially, the tiny
one which produced the "Helmets prevent 85% of head injuries") would
NEVER pass FDA muster.

--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]

Frank Krygowski

November 9th 04, 04:35 PM

psycholist wrote:

> "Frank Krygowski" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>>eq2 sux wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Frank Krygowski > wrote in
:
>>
>>> Tell us about the last 100 serious
>>>
>>>>(say, hospitalizable) brain injuries you've hauled in.
>>>>
>>>>If your area is representative of national stats, no more than one of
>>>>them would be a cyclist.
>>>>
>>>>So: What's the count?
>>>>
>>>>(Hint: The last 3 EMTs I've asked never responded. They all slunk
>>>>away.)
>>>
>>>
>>>I'll see 100 cars before I see a bicycle. So, we talking percentages or
>>>are you just giving lip service for the sake of argueing.
>>
>>I've been talking absolute numbers, I've been talking percentages, and
>>I've been talking risk per hour of exposure. Take your pick. By any of
>>these measures, cycling is NOT very dangerous.
>>
>>I'm sorry if this is hard for you to understand. I'm sorry if it
>>challenges your preconceived notions. But it's fact.
>>
>> If you don't
>>
>>>want to wear a helmet, then don't.
>>
>>Why, thank you for your gracious permission!
>>
>>
>>but if one person does wear it becuz
>>
>>>of my horror story then maybe that's one less i'll see laying in the
>>>road.
>>
>>Numbers, please! These vague hints of horrors just don't make it. How
>>many seriously head injured cyclists have you seen lying in the road in
>>the past ten years? How many seriously head injured motorists have you
>>pulled out of cars, or off the road?
>>
>>Nationally, the numbers favor the cyclists. Nationally, the per-hour
>>figures also favor the cyclists. And if you don't understand "per hour"
>>let me know, and I'll explain it to you!
>>
>>No, I'm not really an EMT, I just love saying EMT,jerk.
>>
>>I have no idea if you are or aren't. I know what's happened with the last
>>few folks who claimed to be EMTs. When asked for real numbers, they left
>>in a huff.
>>
>>Since you're not giving numbers either (and are even changing your screen
>>name) I assume you're in the same situation: Caught with your data down!
>>
>>
>>--
>>--------------------+
>>Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com, replace
>>with cc.ysu dot edu]
>>
>
>
> No it's not. It's more misleading statistics. See my earlier reply.
> Without indexing these figures to the population of cyclists ... and mores
> specifically, the population of dedicated roadies (for the sake of relevance
> to these cycling newsgroups), your figures are MEANINGLESS!
>

You probably need to trim posts before you respond to them. I've left
the entire post up there, because I have no idea what sentence your "No
it's not" is supposed to respond to.

But anyway: I've also posted figures indexed to the population of
cyclists. I've posted per-hour-riding figures. And of course, I've
posted raw totals.

If you're going to say my figures are all wrong, you really should have
some of your own to post.

But by the way: Exactly why is it your mission to "prove" that cycling
is very dangerous?? What do you have against cycling??

--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]

Frank Krygowski

November 9th 04, 04:48 PM

psycholist wrote:

>
>
> As usual Frank, your statistics are entirely without merit or validity.

:-) And as usual, those arguing against the data I post have no numbers
at all!

>
> You say that cyclists account for less than 1% of fatal HI injuries and
> that's your argument why we shouldn't worry about wearing helmets. Well,
> Frank, what percent of the entire population do you suppose we represent.
> Index that figure ... if you know what that means.

I've already posted per-hour figures from at least two sources. Where
are yours?

THEN you'll have a
> relevant analysis. Also, index that figure using only those cyclists who
> are dedicated roadies who spend hours a week on the road.

See my other post regarding CTC members.

>
> I've heard so many lame arguments from people who say they've never had an
> incident, but when you grill them a bit, you find out they ride maybe on
> average a couple of hours a month or less.

I've been riding since 1972 as a dedicated adult cyclist. I've commuted
by bike since 1977. I've done only a tiny amount of racing, but I've
done time trialing, mountain biking, utility riding, club riding,
countless centuries, one double century, overnight tours, weekend tours,
three-week tours of foreign countries, and one coast-to-coast
self-contained tour.

Since 1972, I've had _one_ moving fall on the road, and that was at
walking speed. I scraped my knee. I've lost my balance while standing
over the bike, true; and when mountain biking, I've fallen. But my
worst injury of all time was a minor scrape. And incidentally, my
family's safety record is essentially identical to mine. (They were
along for most of the touring I described.)

You may ride more than I do, but it's false to pretend that only
inexperienced riders go uninjured.

I ride a couple of hours a DAY.
> The more you're out there, the more potential for something to happen. I
> haven't seen any statistics yet that take that into account.

You have by now, if you're reading the other posts. And BTW, I beieve
riding habits play an important part. For example, a person who rides
lots _should_ develop skills which _lower_ the "crash per mile" rate.

If you road race extensively, I imagine falls are more likely. But
truly serious injuries? Doubtful.

As an interesting exercise, you might compute the total number of miles
ridden in the Tour de France since its inception. Divide that by the
number of non-drug-induced deaths (= one) to find out the "death per
mile ridden" figure.

It's an interesting statistic.

--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]

Steven M. Scharf

November 9th 04, 05:20 PM

"psycholist" > wrote in message
...

> You're free to believe whatever foolish thing you want to believe. I'm
not arguing for mandatory helmet laws. I just know that I'm very glad I had
my helmet on when I was hit. And it's my opinion that any serious cyclist
who logs serious mileage is playing a foolish game of roulette if they
believe they'll never get hit. And let me ask you something. If you knew
you were going to get hit, would you rather be wearing a helmet or not?

The more valuable statistics are those that look at bicycle accidents that
involved head injury, and then break them down into the percentage of
victims that were wearing helmets versus the percentage of victims that were
not wearing helmets. The studies that attempt measure total number of head
injuries before and after the implementation of mandatory helmet laws are
hopelessly flawed, since there are so many other variables that come into
play.

In the major U.S. study of severity of head injuries in crashes where head
injuries were sustained:

Helmeted
----------
92% minor
0% none
8% severe

Non Helmeted
---------------
65%
7%
28%

So the bottom line is that if you are involved in a crash where there are
head injuries, you are four times as likely to have a severe injury if you
aren't wearing a helmet.

I am certainly not in favor of mandatory helmet laws, each person is a free
agent and can do what they want, as long as they are prepared for the
consequences. But a lot of cyclists seem to be deluding themselves with
regard to helmets, by bringing up all sorts of side issues, such as the fact
(which no one argues with), that there are other measures that can be taken
to reduce accidents and injuries by larger amounts that helmets reduce them
(neglecting to state the reductions are not exclusive, they are additive).
Why don't they just say that they don't like wearing helmets, and that they
are perfectly willing to accept the extra risk? They seem to be determined
to somehow prove that their decision to not wear a helmet does not expose
them to any greater risk at all, which of course is nonsense.

The real world figures show that there is a significant benefit from helmet
use in the reduction of head injuries when crashes occur. To a logical
person, this would dictate the use of a helmet.

But since there are so few crashes with head injuries to begin with,
statistically there is not data that shows that cycling while wearing a
helmet is any safer overall. Unfortunately, this statistic won't protect you
if you are one of the unfortunate few that is involved in an accident
involving head injuries, and you can be involved in one of these through no
fault of your own.

At this point someone will pipe in that maybe we should require helmet use
in cars, that helmet laws will reduce the number of cyclists, that better
law enforcement against errant drives is needed, that some cyclists don't
wear the helmet properly, etc., etc. Great side-issues, but ultimately
irrelevant.

Steve
http://bicyclelighting.com
"Believe what you're told. There'd be chaos if everyone thought for oneself"
World Famous Top Dog Hot Dog Stand, Berkeley, Oakland, San Jose

Dan

November 9th 04, 06:14 PM

Frank Krygowski > wrote in
:

> psycholist wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> As usual Frank, your statistics are entirely without merit or
>> validity.
>
>:-) And as usual, those arguing against the data I post have no
>:numbers
> at all!
>
>>
>>
>
>

I've been driving for 40 years, never had an accident, can I stop
wearing my seatbelt? No one is asking you to do anything, but we're
suggesting it would be safer to wear one than not to.

Dan

November 9th 04, 06:22 PM

"Steven M. Scharf" > wrote in
hlink.net:

> "psycholist" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>> You're free to believe whatever foolish thing you want to believe.
>>
There is nothing wrong with advocating safety, those that want to argue
this point are scared for different reasons. Very good points! Very good
post. If I don't want to wear a helmet, it's my choice, I choose to wear
one but I don't want laws to change my choice. When the injuries increase,
tax-payers will want satisfaction in the form of stricter laws. In this
state, you don't have to wear a helmet for a motorcycle but you do have to
have a special insurance posted on your license tag that covers your
stupidity.

Frank Krygowski

November 9th 04, 06:25 PM

Steven M. Scharf wrote:

> The more valuable statistics are those that look at bicycle accidents that
> involved head injury, and then break them down into the percentage of
> victims that were wearing helmets versus the percentage of victims that were
> not wearing helmets. The studies that attempt measure total number of head
> injuries before and after the implementation of mandatory helmet laws are
> hopelessly flawed, since there are so many other variables that come into
> play.

Not so. The Scuffham study from New Zealand was able to examine a time
period of just three years, when helmet use went from about 20% to as
high as 90%. No helmet benefit was detected. It's not realistic to
think there could have been some similarly rapid counterbalancing change
that went undetected! ( Scuffham, P.A., Langley, J. D., Trend in
Cycling Injuries in New Zealand Under Voluntary Helmet Use, 1997,
Accident Analysis and Prevention, Vol 29, No 1) See
http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/scuffham.html.

>
> In the major U.S. study of severity of head injuries in crashes where head
> injuries were sustained:
>
> Helmeted
> ----------
> 92% minor
> 0% none
> 8% severe
>
> Non Helmeted
> ---------------
> 65%
> 7%
> 28%

What's the source of this data?

In my years of study of this issue, I've found that you must examine the
methodology of the various studies, because serious weaknesses easily
creep in. For example, "case-control" studies of emergency room
presentations usually show benefit for helmet use; but those studies are
by definition of self-selected subjects, something that's absolutely
forbidden in any other medical study. It's pretty obvious that the
"cases" and the "controls" are usually different in many ways besides
helmet use!

The other weakness that sometimes creeps in is simply bad helmet wearing
data. Riley Geary is a statistics expert who's studied this issue
extensively (see Institute for Traffic Safety Analysis) and concluded
that the great majority of police data on helmet wearing of bike victims
is simply mistaken, because of a quirk in the forms used to report the data.

> So the bottom line is that if you are involved in a crash where there are
> head injuries, you are four times as likely to have a severe injury if you
> aren't wearing a helmet.

This isn't "the bottom line." For the best data, look at places where
helmet laws are enforced for the entire population. Be sure to crunch
the numbers _per remaining rider_ (since helmet proponents typically
look at raw numbers of head injuries, ignoring the fact that MHLs cause
large riding reductions). When you do that, you get a helmet benefit
against serious injuries which is low to negative.

>
> I am certainly not in favor of mandatory helmet laws, each person is a free
> agent and can do what they want, as long as they are prepared for the
> consequences. But a lot of cyclists seem to be deluding themselves with
> regard to helmets, by bringing up all sorts of side issues, such as the fact
> (which no one argues with), that there are other measures that can be taken
> to reduce accidents and injuries by larger amounts that helmets reduce them
> (neglecting to state the reductions are not exclusive, they are additive).
> Why don't they just say that they don't like wearing helmets, and that they
> are perfectly willing to accept the extra risk? They seem to be determined
> to somehow prove that their decision to not wear a helmet does not expose
> them to any greater risk at all, which of course is nonsense.
>
> The real world figures show that there is a significant benefit from helmet
> use in the reduction of head injuries when crashes occur. To a logical
> person, this would dictate the use of a helmet.
>
> But since there are so few crashes with head injuries to begin with,
> statistically there is not data that shows that cycling while wearing a
> helmet is any safer overall.

That last point is a good one - and it colors everything above.

What helmet promoters have done is ruin the image of cycling. They make
it seem that riding a bike without a helmet is VERY likely to result in
incapacitation due to serious head injury.

In actual fact, that risk is miniscule. Even _if_ helmets prevented 85%
of serious head injuries (an absolutely ludicrous claim, based on a
ridiculously poor and tiny study) the effect would be negligible in any
realistic sense. That is, your lifetime risk of serious head injury
might go from 0.00000000001% down to 0.0000000000015%, loosely speaking.

Meanwhile, the discouragement of cycling inherent with this
fearmongering is certain to overpower any societal benefit from the
helmets. One famous researcher (Mayer Hillman) computed the benefit to
risk ratio for helmetless cycling as 20:1 in favor of bicycling, based
on years of life gained versus lost. It doesn't take much
discouragement of cycling to eat up any supposed benefits!

Unfortunately, this statistic won't protect you
> if you are one of the unfortunate few that is involved in an accident
> involving head injuries, and you can be involved in one of these through no
> fault of your own.

I've always felt the same way about meteorite strikes! ;-)

>
> At this point someone will pipe in that maybe we should require helmet use
> in cars, that helmet laws will reduce the number of cyclists, that better
> law enforcement against errant drives is needed, that some cyclists don't
> wear the helmet properly, etc., etc. Great side-issues, but ultimately
> irrelevant.

Helmet use in cars? Irrelevant only if you don't worry about the
per-hour risk of the victim (which is almost exactly the same) or the
total cost to society (which is much worse for car head injuries).

Motor vehicle head injury fatalities in the US are way up in the tens of
thousands. Figures are rough, but a good estimate is about 30,000 per
year.

Bike head injury fatalities are about 500.

So much worry about the latter; so little about the former! Personally,
I _do_ think this is odd! It's like weatherstripping your front door,
but ignoring the 8 foot square hole in your roof!

--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]

Frank Krygowski

November 9th 04, 06:29 PM

Dan wrote:

> Frank Krygowski > wrote in
> :
>
>
>>psycholist wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>>As usual Frank, your statistics are entirely without merit or
>>>validity.
>>
>>:-) And as usual, those arguing against the data I post have no
>>:numbers
>>at all!
>>
>>
>>>
>>
>
> I've been driving for 40 years, never had an accident, can I stop
> wearing my seatbelt?

It's OK by me.

--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]

Dan

November 9th 04, 06:36 PM

Frank Krygowski > wrote in
:

> psycholist wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>
> It's an interesting statistic.
>
>

Something else your stats don't cover, the fact that cycling is on the
increase. Due to the rise in gas costs, more people are turning to more
economical means of transportation. This means more inexperienced bikers
will be on the road, which will blow your stats out the window. If you
want to enjoy your choice of wearing a helmet or not, you should
advocate it here and to your friends because safety will become an issue
and you know what that means. I live in the 5th largest city in America,
riding a bike here can definitely be hazardous. If there is an increase
in bicycle related accidents with deaths, I see a helmet law
forthcoming.

Frank Krygowski

November 9th 04, 07:45 PM

Dan wrote:

> Something else your stats don't cover, the fact that cycling is on the
> increase.

Really? Do you have a source for that?

My understanding is that club ridership is down nationwide. Events like
TOSRV that used to completely fill have much lower attendance. Our own
club's century ride peaked at about 650 riders, IIRC; it's now less than
200.

I know that fashion changes and events go in and out of style. But I'm
not sure that cycling miles are up overall. So, as always, data is welcome.

I live in the 5th largest city in America,
> riding a bike here can definitely be hazardous. If there is an increase
> in bicycle related accidents with deaths, I see a helmet law
> forthcoming.

Well, that's a good way to reduce riding, all right!

--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]

psycholist

November 9th 04, 08:29 PM

"Frank Krygowski" > wrote in message
...
> psycholist wrote:
>

<big snip>

OK Frank ... you win. I'm not going to argue statistics with you anymore
and you reject all experiential evidence that's been presented by those who
have had serious accidents and by EMTs. Fine. That's your choice. You've
been fortunate not to have had a serious accident in your long cycling
career. Fine. As I've been having this dialog with you, I've also been
monitoring e-mails flying between a number of our club members who are
trying to get the details about a rider that was hit on Sunday morning on
one of our favorite cycling roads. Our area is VERY rapidly growing. Roads
are narrow and windy. New developments are going in rapidly. Vehicular
traffic has increased dramatically. And we all know that the housewives on
Darvon are driving larger and larger SUVs. You asked me what I have against
cycling. I don't have anything against cycling. It's my very favorite
thing to do. Do I think it's dangerous? Not necessarily. Do I think it's
potentially dangerous? Absolutely. So is driving. So is flying.

In the last decade, I've had three experiences where my head hit the
pavement hard. In one case a car passed me, then made a right turn directly
in front of me. I slammed into the side of the car then fell hard on my
right side. My head hit the pavement hard enough for me to be dizzy. But I
had a helmet on. Reasonable people would conclude that I would have been
more seriously injured had I not been wearing the helmet. On another
occassion, I was on a group ride and the rider ahead of me fell at a RR
crossing. In trying to avoid him, I hit the tracks at a bad angle and went
down hard. Again, I hit my head hard enough to make myself dizzy. But I
had a helmet on. Finally, I had the accident I've already described that
resulted in me being hospitalized with many serious injuries including a
compression fracture of the spine. Here I have witnesses who have described
how I was launched into the air off of a car windshield and landed on my
head. But my head wasn't hurt. Again, reasonable people would conclude
that the helmet was a factor in saving me from at least some sort of head
injury. Based on the broken outer plastic shell and deep gouges in the
helmet, a reasonable person would conlude that I was spared from quite a
serious head injury.

I'm glad you've been spared the experience. Good for you.

Based on my direct experience, a good bicycle helmet is a very reasonable
measure of added safety against circumstances which, though they haven't
happened to you, CAN and DO happen to others.

End of discussion for me.

Bob C.

Super Slinky

November 9th 04, 08:32 PM

psycholist says...

> Geez. I hope you learned to fit your bike better than you learned to fit
> whatever helmet you may have tried. This is just simply ridiculous.
>
> Bob C.

My helmet fits fine, as far as it goes. Doesn't stop it from being hot
and sweaty. Doesn't stop the straps from being mildly annoying and
uncomfortable. You might want to save your advice for the lop-sided
helmet wearers I see almost daily.

Frank Krygowski

November 10th 04, 04:26 AM

psycholist wrote:
>
>
> OK Frank ... you win. I'm not going to argue statistics with you anymore...

I think the available statistics are pretty clear. It's hard to argue
with them!

> ... and you reject all experiential evidence that's been presented by those who
> have had serious accidents and by EMTs.

Bob, you need to understand that I've talked and corresponded with EMTs.
I've talked and corresponded with head injury specialists. All the
ones I've discussed this with have confirmed the national numbers.

Example: Our club used to have a person who was a full time,
professional head injury rehabilitation specialist. Her job was helping
people learn to manage their lives after serious head injury.

In seven years of full time work, she'd had only one cyclist client, and
he was a racer - meaning he probably had the helmet on when he was
injured. She said almost all her clients were motor vehicle occupants,
plus a few motorcyclists. Again, same thing the national statistics say.

Stories of people in bike crashes? Certainly, I've read those here.
But given the failure to match national statistics, I really wonder if
their judgement about the incident is correct. How reliably does
someone tell the difference between "Wow, I would have gotten a brain
injury without my helmet" and "Darn, if not for the extra thickness of
the helmet, my head wouldn't have even touched the ground"?

Fine. That's your choice. You've
> been fortunate not to have had a serious accident in your long cycling
> career.

Please understand: my "fortune" is completely normal!

One landmark study of League of American Bicyclist members found one
"serious" crash per 11 years of riding, with those crashes averaging
about $100 damage, IIRC. IOW, not very "serious" at all, in an era of
$100 brake/shifter levers!

> Our area is VERY rapidly growing. Roads
> are narrow and windy. New developments are going in rapidly. Vehicular
> traffic has increased dramatically. And we all know that the housewives on
> Darvon are driving larger and larger SUVs. You asked me what I have against
> cycling. I don't have anything against cycling. It's my very favorite
> thing to do. Do I think it's dangerous? Not necessarily. Do I think it's
> potentially dangerous? Absolutely. So is driving. So is flying.

Yes, almost anything has a level of risk. And I like to keep that in
people's minds. When you rank activities by danger level, it's a
continuum - infinite shades of grey. But many people seem to personally
put cycling into the black & white "Dangerous" category. They do this
despite numbers that tell otherwise.

Doing this doesn't help cylcists. It tends to make new developments
like yours even more hostile to cycling - as in "Nobody's going to want
to ride here anyway. Everyone knows it's too dangerous. So that left
turn vehicle detector needn't be tuned for bicycles."

>
> In the last decade, I've had three experiences where my head hit the
> pavement hard. In one case a car passed me, then made a right turn directly
> in front of me. I slammed into the side of the car then fell hard on my
> right side. My head hit the pavement hard enough for me to be dizzy. But I
> had a helmet on. Reasonable people would conclude that I would have been
> more seriously injured had I not been wearing the helmet. On another
> occassion, I was on a group ride and the rider ahead of me fell at a RR
> crossing. In trying to avoid him, I hit the tracks at a bad angle and went
> down hard. Again, I hit my head hard enough to make myself dizzy. But I
> had a helmet on. Finally, I had the accident I've already described that
> resulted in me being hospitalized with many serious injuries including a
> compression fracture of the spine. Here I have witnesses who have described
> how I was launched into the air off of a car windshield and landed on my
> head. But my head wasn't hurt. Again, reasonable people would conclude
> that the helmet was a factor in saving me from at least some sort of head
> injury. Based on the broken outer plastic shell and deep gouges in the
> helmet, a reasonable person would conlude that I was spared from quite a
> serious head injury.

And I've described before the accident I witnessed where a kid was
tossed high into the air by a car impact, shattered the windshield with
his head, landed on his head on the road, but was unhurt. No helmet. I
can give more details, if anyone wants. It's an interesting story.

I'm aware that there are some people who have crashed much more than I
have. When you think about it, every normal curve has two tails.
Perhaps I ride quite carefully and conservatively. But again, almost
every cyclist I know has a record similar to mine - just like national
data shows!

Again, cycling is NOT very dangerous. It does us no good to pretend it is.

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

RogerDodger

November 10th 04, 05:51 AM

psycholist Wrote:
> ...If I merely consider our cycling club, I can think of dozens of
> incidents in the past couple of years where people were hit by cars,
> dogs ran into the road and took them out, they went down in a paceline
> touch of wheels, etc.
> I can also recall dozens of statements like, "were it not for my
> helmet, I'd
> have been way more seriously hurt."
>
> Can I cite statistics to back this up? No. Has anyone produced any
> relevant statistics that apply to this population of serious cyclists
> who
> log many hours on the roads? NO!
>
> Am I pro helmet law? NO! Am I pro helmet? YES! Above all, I'm anti
> statistics. I know statistics quite well and I know they can be quite
> limited, quite biased and quite inaccurate.
>
> Bob C.

Dear Bob - statements like "were it not for my helmet, I'd
have been way more seriously hurt." don't cut it as objective and
reliable evidence - don't you understand that expressions of what
people believe might have otherwise happened are notoriously
unreliable? Self reports are taken with a grain of salt by researchers
for good reason - subjective assessments tend to merely echo personal
beliefs - they're pretty much worthless. You seem to fail to appreciate
this. Perhaps you're confusing self-reports with statistics?
Statistics are a necessary antidote to the limited and narrow viewpoint
of our own personal experience. I suspect that people who say they are
anti-statistics are innumerate - or simply don't like the reality that
the stats show to be - another variation of shoot the messenger - cause
you don't like the message.

Bob - I'm sure you'd love what John Allen Paulos has to say - try
reading some of his books - they're about people like you - innumerate
people and the errors they succumb to as a result of their innumeracy.

Roger

--
RogerDodger

RogerDodger

November 10th 04, 06:08 AM

psycholist Wrote:
> ...As usual Frank, your statistics are entirely without merit or
> validity.
>
> You say that cyclists account for less than 1% of fatal HI injuries
> and
> that's your argument why we shouldn't worry about wearing helmets.
> Well,
> Frank, what percent of the entire population do you suppose we
> represent.
> Index that figure ... if you know what that means. THEN you'll have a
> relevant analysis. Also, index that figure using only those cyclists
> who
> are dedicated roadies who spend hours a week on the road.
>
> I've heard so many lame arguments from people who say they've never had
> an
> incident, but when you grill them a bit, you find out they ride maybe
> on
> average a couple of hours a month or less. I ride a couple of hours a
> DAY.
> The more you're out there, the more potential for something to happen.
> I
> haven't seen any statistics yet that take that into account.
>
> Bob C.

Well Bob, your claim that Frank's statistics are entirely without merit
or validity is entirely without any merit or validity. God your
assertion was pathetic!

Obviously Bob you're not familiar with the base rate fallacy, because
that's what you fail to appreciate here. The base rate fallacy is yet
another fallacy that statistically innumerate people have a propensity
to fall for.

So QED Bob - you're statistically innumerate? That would explain your
disdain for statistics - sour grapes for a knowledge which is out of
your reach? Are you familiar with Aesop's fable?

Roger

--
RogerDodger

RogerDodger

November 10th 04, 06:22 AM

psycholist Wrote:
>
> OK Frank ... you win. I'm not going to argue statistics with you
> anymore
> and you reject all experiential evidence that's been presented by those
> who
> have had serious accidents and by EMTs.
> ...End of discussion for me.
>
> Bob C.

Oh Bob you're pathetic - so you're not going to argue statistics with
Frank anymore - yeah that's because you don't have any statistical
understanding to be able to argue about the statistics.

Experimental evidence - ******** you don't know what you're talking
about - you're dressing up you ignorance with flash words you obviously
don't properly understand. Personal reports are subjective opinions,
they are worthless speculative conjecture - they most certainly are not
experimental evidence.

Bob - you're talking through a hole in your head - trying to bluster
your way through with bs.

Roger

--
RogerDodger

RogerDodger

November 10th 04, 06:52 AM

psycholist Wrote:
>
> ...No it's not. It's more misleading statistics. See my earlier
> reply.
> Without indexing these figures to the population of cyclists ... and
> mores
> specifically, the population of dedicated roadies (for the sake of
> relevance
> to these cycling newsgroups), your figures are MEANINGLESS!
>
> Bob C.
Rubbish Bob - the figures that Frank suppiles are MEANINGFUL - what you
are suggesting by trying to evaluate relative risk is what fits better
as MEANINGLESS.

Obviously you fail to see the obvious reason. A paternalistic law
requiring mandatory wearing of helmets must have some a strong
justification for that intervention to be warranted. If the claim is
made that such-and-such a type of injury is preventable by wearing
so-and-so then what is of most interest is the base rate of that
particular type of injury across the population. Their might well be a
group contributing 1% of the injury stats, and they might well have a
marginally higher relative risk of injury - but the reasonable
assessment is to focus on the groups that contribute nearer 50% of the
injury stats - irregardless of whether the relative risk of this group
might be marginally less than the relative risk of the group
contributing only 1% of the injuries.

That's the argument here - Frank is right to say that the base rate is
what's important here - focus on the activities that contribute the
most to the injury statistics- not on the diluting down into arguing
about relative risk or odds ratio based on dubious determinations of
exposure levels.

Roger

--
RogerDodger

RogerDodger

November 10th 04, 07:02 AM

AustinMN Wrote:
> mrbubl wrote:
> > RogerDodger wrote:
> >> mrbubl Wrote:
> >>>...If not wearing a helmet on your head is safer for you and yours,
> more
> >>>power to yah and hope you are an organ donor so your choices may
> help
> >>>others.
> >>>
> >>>mrbubl
> >>
> >>
> >> Well there you go then... finish it off with a question begging
> howler.
> >> What moronic drivel - obviously you don't even have enough
> intelligence
> >> to realise that your petitio principii argument is fatally flawed.
> >
> > Fatally flawed........you crack me up! Must be from the brain
> injury
> > suffered from lack of head protection.
>
> Another helmet troll more interested in winning the argument than in
> learning the truth.
>
> <plonk>
>
> Austin
> --
> I'm pedaling as fast as I durn well please!
> There are no X characters in my address

The poor critter isn't capable of a rebuttal - but rather a pathetic
attempt to dismiss my claims (and with no cognitive content I might
add).

--
RogerDodger

RogerDodger

November 10th 04, 07:18 AM

Dan Wrote:
>
>
> I've been driving for 40 years, never had an accident, can I stop
> wearing my seatbelt? No one is asking you to do anything, but we're
> suggesting it would be safer to wear one than not to.

Maybe Dan you should take a dose of your own advice and wear a helmet
in your car too - because despite selt belts and airbags there's heaps
more horrible mulched brains and drooling TBI (traumatic brain injury)
cases of vehicle occupants and pedestrians. Place your overweening
focus where the greatest incidence of the injury actually occurs.

Roger

--
RogerDodger

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 10th 04, 04:00 PM

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 00:43:18 GMT, "Scott Ehardt"
> wrote:

>I am not taking sides on this issue, but I will point out that in this form
>your statistics are useless. Comparing number of showering injuries to
>number of bicycling injuries is completely irrelevant.

And making statements, asd the Liddites do, that "X thousand cyclist
suffer head injury each year" is equally irrelevant.

So here's a completely relevant, exposure-adjusted stat for you: for
children in England, the proportion of serious head injuries in
pedestrians hospitalised was higher than in cyclists. In other words,
as a pedestrian, if you are hit you are more likely to receive a
serious head injury.

There are five or six times as many pedestrians injured annually,
which is a non-adjusted figure but clearly meaningful in context,
since it indicates that if the numbers of injured cyclists are big
enough to cause concern, the numbers of injured pedestrians must be
even more so.

Oh, here's another one: 25% of all cyclists killed in London are the
result of one single type of accident, left-turning goods vehicles.

I haven't yet heard a possible good outcome from exaggerating the
benefits of helmets.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 10th 04, 04:01 PM

On Tue, 9 Nov 2004 09:17:35 -0500, "psycholist" >
wrote:

>And equally as usual, another case of COMPLETELY misleading statistics. Of
>course cyclists aren't a significant source of organ donations. There
>aren't that many of us.

Pity you missed the fact that most of the dead have other mortal
injuries as well.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 10th 04, 04:10 PM

On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 23:42:58 GMT, Dan > wrote:

> I've seen these arguments so many times and always wanted to say
>something but never have. It's so simple, if you don't care about your
>safety, then don't wear a helmet.

I have yet to see an objective study of the relative merits of
different cycle safety interventions that put helmets anywhere other
than last.

Why are the handwringers not campaigning for the first, best thing
that can be done to improve cyclist safety, controlling dangerous
driving?

>If you hit your noggin', you're gonna
>be a vegetable or die more than likely. You're body can take alot of
>abuse but your head cannot.

At this point I produce exhibit A: my "knitted acrylic balaclava saved
my life" anecdote.

At what point id all cycling crashes suddenly become inevitably fatal
unless you are wearing a helmet? Looks to me that it was shortly
after messrs. Bell introduced their famous plastic hats!

Cycling is neither unusually dangerous nor unusually productive of
head injuries. If you crahs your bike you are no more liekly to
suffer a head injury than if youa re involved in an accident as a
pedestrian. As a proporiton of head injuries reaching hospital,
cycling is not even on the radar.

>As an EMT, I was shown a picture of a guy that was riding a bike
>and was hit by a car. The guy was laying on the ground, his eyes open,
>looking at his brain laying in front of him that had popped out of the
>front of his skull. Maybe, if he had a helmet on, this could have been
>prevented, maybe not.

Almost certainly not: the test standards for helmets are the
equivalent of a fall from a stationary riding position, and a lot of
helmets these days fail the tests.

No amount of pro-helmet propaganda and scare stories can nullify the
fact that cycling is, fundamentally, a very safe activity. A greater
proportion of pedestrians than cyclists end up with serious head
injuries - do you wear your helmet when walking?

And the idea that helmets can protect you from motor traffic is
probably the most outright dangerous myth the helmet lobby has
invented.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 10th 04, 04:13 PM

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 03:36:57 GMT, eq2 sux > wrote:

>If you're stupid enough not to wear one, then you won't have to worry if I
>respond. Use the protection, it can't hurt and may save your life. BTW, do
>you use a seatbelt?

Are you aware that there is no country in the world which can show a
reduction in road accident fatalities due to compulsory seat belt use?

Are you aware that the compulsory seat belt laws in the UK led to the
largest ever recorded rise in pedestrian, rear passenger and cyclist
fatalities?

It sounds to me as if you have never read Wilde or Adams on risk
compensation, in which case no wonder you only see half the picture.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Beaker

November 10th 04, 04:32 PM

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 15:10:47 +0000, Just zis Guy, you know? quoth:
>
> Why are the handwringers not campaigning for the first, best thing
> that can be done to improve cyclist safety, controlling dangerous
> driving?

Because they know it can't be done - too politically unpopular.
However, wearing a helmet is something that always can be done. HTH

> Cycling is neither unusually dangerous nor unusually productive of
> head injuries. If you crahs your bike you are no more liekly to
> suffer a head injury than if youa re involved in an accident as a
> pedestrian.

Apples & oranges.

bkr

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 10th 04, 04:56 PM

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 16:20:10 GMT, "Steven M. Scharf"
> wrote:

>the bottom line is that if you are involved in a crash where there are
>head injuries, you are four times as likely to have a severe injury if you
>aren't wearing a helmet.

Although to be fair the populations are different. And the
probnabiolity of the crash happening in the first place (i.e. risk
compensation is ignored). After all, if you look at the CPSC's
figures, as helmet use rose from 18% to 50% and cycling declined by
21%, the head injury rate increased by 10%. So your figures obviously
don't tell the whole story.

They also don't address the simple and obvious fact that, overall,
cycling is actually quite safe.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 10th 04, 05:04 PM

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 00:47:00 GMT, mrbubl > wrote:

>How does a race care
>driver survive a 100g force crash to walk away?? DId their helmet help?

Interesting example, since it has been calculated that the force on a
cyclist's head in a crash involving a motor vehicle routinely exceeds
the levels to which those motor racing helmets are certified.

Unfortunately many people have bought the hype: they ride as if their
PFDB renders them invulnerable. They assume that just by wearing a
foam hat they have done everything they need to ensure their safety.
They beieve that wearing a PFDB is the first, best thing they vcan do
to ensure their safety.

No wonder the real world figures show no benefit!

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 10th 04, 06:40 PM

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 09:32:30 -0600, Beaker > wrote:

>> Why are the handwringers not campaigning for the first, best thing
>> that can be done to improve cyclist safety, controlling dangerous
>> driving?

> Because they know it can't be done - too politically unpopular.
>However, wearing a helmet is something that always can be done. HTH

And it puts all the costs on the victim, and gives the impression of
"doing something" about a "problem" which is entirely in the
imagination of the helmet zealots anyway without actually having to do
anythign at all, other than store up some future obesity (and what
politician is worried about the future beyond the next election?)

>> Cycling is neither unusually dangerous nor unusually productive of
>> head injuries. If you crahs your bike you are no more liekly to
>> suffer a head injury than if youa re involved in an accident as a
>> pedestrian.

Cox's Orang Pippins and Worcester Pearmains, actually. The major
source of serious head injury in both cases is crashes involving motor
vehicles. Neither the numbers nor the proportions appear to change
with helmet use (which is not a surprise since helmets are not
designed for this). Quite why the hendwriongers haven't latched onto
pedestrian helmets is a mystery - maybe it's because they walk, so it
might affect them.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Mike Jacoubowsky

November 10th 04, 06:42 PM

> Not so. The Scuffham study from New Zealand was able to examine a time
> period of just three years, when helmet use went from about 20% to as high
> as 90%. No helmet benefit was detected. It's not realistic to think
> there could have been some similarly rapid counterbalancing change that
> went undetected! ( Scuffham, P.A., Langley, J. D., Trend in Cycling
> Injuries in New Zealand Under Voluntary Helmet Use, 1997, Accident
> Analysis and Prevention, Vol 29, No 1) See
> http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/scuffham.html.

Please don't link to something where it's a one-paragraph dead-end link with
the most-interesting statement being...

"Discussion of the results includes possible explanation for the absence of
a decline in the percentage of serious head injury among cyclists as cycle
helmet wearing has increased."

....without any way to find out more. That one sentence teases us with the
only thing we really want to know about, but no way to get to it. Regardless
of which side of the helmet debate you're on, you want to know more about
what that sentence refers to.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

AustinMN

November 10th 04, 07:47 PM

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

> Unfortunately many people have bought the hype: they ride as if their
> PFDB renders them invulnerable. They assume that just by wearing a
> foam hat they have done everything they need to ensure their safety.
> They beieve that wearing a PFDB is the first, best thing they vcan do
> to ensure their safety.

In a number of areas, safety has moved away from "not crashing" to "crashing
safely". I suppose it's only natural that the uneducated should also think
that about bicycles.

Taking measures to avoid the crash in the first place will always be safer
than anything we do to prevent injury after the crash. I've never heard
anyone claim "My helmet saved me from head injury in the crash I didn't get
into."

Austin
--
I'm pedaling as fast as I durn well please!
There are no X characters in my address

Dan

November 10th 04, 08:15 PM

Frank Krygowski > wrote in
:

> psycholist wrote:
>>
>>
>> It's obvious that several of you monitor any subject that deals with
helmets. Your arguments are well thought out and rehearsed to perfection
but it doesn't change the facts or the common perception. Helmets can and
do SAVE LIFES. While cycling is on the rise, there will be an increase in
bicycle accidents which will cause an increase in mandated bicycle safety.
All your statistics will not make a difference, no matter where you get
them. I understand your lobbying, it's an avenue to protect your freedom of
choice but regulation of helmet laws are easier than driver education
towards bicycle awareness. If you'd use your energy towards stricter
regulations of cell phone use while driving and keeping drunk drivers off
the roads it would certainly promote cyclist safety and may keep the Helmet
laws at bay.

Dan

Frank Krygowski

November 10th 04, 08:28 PM

Mike Jacoubowsky wrote:

>>Not so. The Scuffham study from New Zealand was able to examine a time
>>period of just three years, when helmet use went from about 20% to as high
>>as 90%. No helmet benefit was detected. It's not realistic to think
>>there could have been some similarly rapid counterbalancing change that
>>went undetected! ( Scuffham, P.A., Langley, J. D., Trend in Cycling
>>Injuries in New Zealand Under Voluntary Helmet Use, 1997, Accident
>>Analysis and Prevention, Vol 29, No 1) See
>>http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/scuffham.html.
>
>
> Please don't link to something where it's a one-paragraph dead-end link with
> the most-interesting statement being...
>
> "Discussion of the results includes possible explanation for the absence of
> a decline in the percentage of serious head injury among cyclists as cycle
> helmet wearing has increased."
>
> ...without any way to find out more. That one sentence teases us with the
> only thing we really want to know about, but no way to get to it. Regardless
> of which side of the helmet debate you're on, you want to know more about
> what that sentence refers to.
>

The entire study isn't available online unless you're connected to an
institution that pays the journal's expensive online subscription fee.
My institution does, but copyright laws prohibit posting the entire
study. Hence my link to the abstract.

Later, I can post some further quotes from the study. Going by memory,
they briefly examined several reasons helmets weren't working as
promised, and rejected them all. Their final words on that point were
something like "What is clear is that bicycle helmets aren't producing
the benefits expected."

And that was understatement. The benefits they found from this very
large study were actually zero.

--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 10th 04, 09:39 PM

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 19:15:46 GMT, Dan > wrote in
message >:

>It's obvious that several of you monitor any subject that deals with
>helmets.

This is true. The reason is simple: clueless people keep trying to
introduce laws which will deter cycling, thus impacting one of the few
tried and tested mechanisms for improving cyclist safety - getting
more people on bikes.

There are two sorts of clueless people: those who have never been
exposed to clue, and those who have been exposed to clue but found it
to conflict with their pre-existing prejudices, so reject it.

A fair number of newbies in cycling groups fall into the first group,
and often they are the ones who start helmet threads. Exposure to
clue then either causes them to migrate into the second state (rare)
or to become clueful. In the clueful state they may or may not wear,
or even advocate, helmets. Whether they do matters only in the
context of clueless governments who believe that every cyclist who
wears a helmet is in favour of compulsion (an extreme form of type-II
cluelessness).

>Your arguments are well thought out and rehearsed to perfection
>but it doesn't change the facts or the common perception.

We get a lot of practice :-)

The fundamental problem helmet advocates all have is that they are
assuming that the helmet is the only thing that changes, that putting
a PFDB on someone's head will not change their behaviour or that of
others around them.

There are four indicators which predict whether a person's behaviour
will change in response to an intervention: visibility, effect,
motivation and control. Helmets score high on all these indicators.
They are "visible" (i.e. we are conscious of wearing them), they
affect us (in the sense that we perceive that we are safer), we are
strongly motivated towards safety, and we have a great deal of control
over our actions.

http://ip.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/6/2/82

So the disparity between small-scale studies of self-selecting groups,
and whole-population time-series data, can be explained at least in
part by the (now well-established) mechanism of risk compensation.

Stating the facts, of course, rarely changes them. OK, sometimes it
does: the UK's leading helmet promoters stated the fact that 50
children a year die of cycling head injuries, and this did indeed
change the "facts" - the real figure is ten :-)

Stating the facts is good. All of them, not just the ones we agree
with. It's just that the sceptics rarely have to state the pro-helmet
side because there is always someone else out there doing that.
Funny, though, how it's usually Thompson, Rivara and Thompson's 1989
study tat gets quoted.

>Helmets can and do SAVE LIFES.

Really? That's most surprising. They aren't designed to. Or didn't
they tell you that in your indoctrination? They are designed to
absorb small-scale impacts, the equivalent of falling off a stationary
or slow-moving bike.

On balance they neither save nor cost lives. When you take whole
populations of cyclists over long periods of time, the effect of
helmet use on head injury rates is statistically insignificant - the
trends are no different to those of pedestrians.

This does not square with figures like "helmets prevent 85% of head
injuries" of course. But then, even the original authors admit that
figure is wrong. I wonder why helmet promoters keep quoting it?
There are plenty of other studies to choose from, including others
from the same authors which are still at the upper end of the range of
estimates of efficacy. Why choose the largest figure ever recorded,
never duplicated since, from a study whose flaws are a matter of
record and acknowledged at least in part by the authors? It's almost
as if the problem isn't big enough to justify the proposed solution
unless it is sexed up a bit!

>While cycling is on the rise, there will be an increase in
>bicycle accidents which will cause an increase in mandated bicycle safety.

Wrong. In London recently they introduced a congestion charge; this
cut motor traffic by 20% and increased bike use correspondingly. The
injury figures are steady year-on-year, so the risk per cyclist has
dropped substantially. The C-charge was the /only/ change. You'd
expect the influx of inexperienced cyclists onto city roads to end in
carnage, wouldn't you? But it didn't. And most of those cyclists are
starting outside the charge zone, where traffic levels are as high as
ever.

Worldwide there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that more
people cycling will lead to /reductions/ in injury rates. Certainly
the countries where cycling is safest, are those where most people
cycle. And the converse also applies.

>All your statistics will not make a difference, no matter where you get
>them. I understand your lobbying, it's an avenue to protect your freedom of
>choice but regulation of helmet laws are easier than driver education
>towards bicycle awareness.

You have completely misunderstood. It has absolutely nothing to do
with my freedom of choice, and everything to do with the fact that
helmet laws cause massive drops in the numbers cycling, and make no
measurable difference to head injury rates. The reason I am opposed
to them (and I know I speak for several others here) is that *they do
not work*. Not only do they not work, they work against one of the
things which *does* work, which is getting more people cycling.

>If you'd use your energy towards stricter
>regulations of cell phone use while driving and keeping drunk drivers off
>the roads it would certainly promote cyclist safety and may keep the Helmet
>laws at bay.

LOL! We are not the ones lobbying for change. Go and talk to the
people who are trying to push through a law which has failed wherever
it has been tried, to solve a "problem" which exists primarily in the
minds of those trying to sell a solution to it!

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Dan

November 10th 04, 11:18 PM

"Just zis Guy, you know?" > wrote in
:

> On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 19:15:46 GMT, Dan > wrote in
> message >:
>
>>
> LOL! We are not the ones lobbying for change. Go and talk to the
> people who are trying to push through a law which has failed wherever
> it has been tried, to solve a "problem" which exists primarily in the
> minds of those trying to sell a solution to it!
>
> Guy

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see a helmet law, anywhere or
anyhow. I want to promote, locally, helmet use to ward off any
regulation. It's kind of backwards and may not be the best way. Your
response atleast has merit and makes sense but others seem to attack
with vigar anyone's character that mentions the use of helmets for
safety. That only ****es people off and turns them against your point of
view. BTW, most clubs require you to wear helmets on their rides as do
most major races.

Dan

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 11th 04, 12:46 AM

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 22:18:00 GMT, Dan > wrote in
message >:

>> LOL! We are not the ones lobbying for change. Go and talk to the
>> people who are trying to push through a law which has failed wherever
>> it has been tried, to solve a "problem" which exists primarily in the
>> minds of those trying to sell a solution to it!

>Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see a helmet law, anywhere or
>anyhow. I want to promote, locally, helmet use to ward off any
>regulation.

It won't work. The leading deterrent to helmet laws is low wearing
rates, with consequent unenforceability.

We are caught on Morton's Fork: if we have high wearing rates then "a
law will be easy to enforce, so let's make few remaining wear them".
If wearing rates are low "we need compulsion to get wearing rates up".

Success of helmet laws is measured solely in terms of percentage
wearing rates. I only know of one cycle helmet law which has been
(partly) repealed, NT, Australia. Result? They now have the highest
level of cycling in the country and the lowest head injury rates. And
the lowest wearing rates at under 25%.

>BTW, most clubs require you to wear helmets on their rides as do
>most major races.

Clubs? Not over here. Our biggest club, CTC (80,000 plus members) is
a leader in the anti-compulsion camp.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Frank Krygowski

November 11th 04, 04:18 AM

Frank Krygowski wrote:

>
> Later, I can post some further quotes from the study. Going by memory,
> they briefly examined several reasons helmets weren't working as
> promised, and rejected them all. Their final words on that point were
> something like "What is clear is that bicycle helmets aren't producing
> the benefits expected."
>
> And that was understatement. The benefits they found from this very
> large study were actually zero.

OK, here are more quotes from that study - manually typed, so forgive
the typos:

"There was no difference in the incidence of head injuries to cyclists
in the periods [of time during which there were] 'no helmets' or 'some
helmets' compared to ... when helmet wearing was high."

....

"Our results revealed that increasing helmet wearing has had little
association with serious head injures to cyclists as a percentage of all
serious injuries to cyclists for all three age groups studied. This
result was consistent even when we disaggregated all cycle crashes into
cycle only crashes, short-stay admissions, long-stay admissions, or used
the observed level of helmet wearing for these disaggregated groups.

....

"What is clear from our findings, and to a lesser extent from teh
Melbourne findings, is that cycle helmets are not achieving the gains
which were expected of them. Why this is so is a matter for spectulation
but clearly those involved in promoting this strategy need to consider
how to improve their effectiveness."

---------------------------------------------------------------

Really, those quotes from these pro-helmet researchers don't tell the
story very well. They give the conclusions, but they don't help you
understand the research or the paper.

The paper is very thick with mathematics and statistics. It's a
scientific study not intended for casual reading. But if you get it
from a library, the graphs in it are easy to understand. Briefly,
helmet use shot up tremendously from March 1989 to March 1992. This is
clearly shown in one graph.

The researchers tracked down essentially all hospital records for their
country's hospitalized cyclists. They wanted to show that the surge in
helmet use caused a significant drop in the percentage of cyclists
hospitalized because of head injury. (They worked it as percentages,
because by this time it was known that promoting helmets caused drops in
cycling.)

They plotted 3 graphs: for kids, teens and adults, showing the
percentage in hospitals because of head injuries. There's a little up &
down variation in the graphs (just like stock market graphs - there's
always random variation) and the graphs all gradually slope down, ever
since 1980 (way before helmets were popular - and you see the same in
pedestrian graphs). But there is no detectable change when helmet use
jumped way up.

There's no detectable change by looking at the graphs, and there was no
change that was detectable by the sophisticated statistics software
package they used, although the paper makes clear that they checked
their data every way possible. The results are inescapable: helmet use
tripled, or (for kids) quadrupled; but the helmets did nothing against
serious injuries.

The paper is "Trends in Cycle Injury in New Zealand under Voluntary
Helmet Use." Paul A. Scuffham, et. al. Accident Analysis & Prevention,
Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 1-9, 1997. Your librarian can get you a copy, for
(at most) a small fee.

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

RogerDodger

November 11th 04, 05:01 AM

Dan Wrote:
> ... Your arguments are well thought out and rehearsed to perfection but
> it doesn't change the facts or the common perception. Helmets can an do
> SAVE LIFES. While cycling is on the rise, there will be an increase
> ibicycle accidents which will cause an increase in mandated bicycle
> safety.
> All your statistics will not make a difference, no matter where you
> get
> them. I understand your lobbying, it's an avenue to protect your
> freedom of
> choice but regulation of helmet laws are easier than driver education
> towards bicycle awareness. If you'd use your energy towards stricter
> regulations of cell phone use while driving and keeping drunk drivers
> off
> the roads it would certainly promote cyclist safety and may keep the
> Helmet
> laws at bay.
>
> Dan

Geez - we've got a doozy here. So "Helmets can an do SAVE LIFES" huh -
who let you out of school Danny boy?
Don't take your head out of the sand now Dan - just keep repeating your
affirmation...maybe it will come true, huh?

You'd have to be pretty stupid to fall for that line "what you should
be doing isn't what you are doing but [what a brainless bumpkin like
Dan here says you should be doing]".

Bicycle helmets = invasion of the dimwits.

--
RogerDodger

Mike Jacoubowsky

November 11th 04, 08:21 AM

> There's no detectable change by looking at the graphs, and there was no
> change that was detectable by the sophisticated statistics software
> package they used, although the paper makes clear that they checked their
> data every way possible. The results are inescapable: helmet use tripled,
> or (for kids) quadrupled; but the helmets did nothing against serious
> injuries.
>
> The paper is "Trends in Cycle Injury in New Zealand under Voluntary Helmet
> Use." Paul A. Scuffham, et. al. Accident Analysis & Prevention, Vol. 29,
> No. 1, pp. 1-9, 1997. Your librarian can get you a copy, for (at most) a
> small fee.

Frank: Thanks for summarizing the article. I'm still not seing the
"discussion of the results" with "possible explanations" but that's probably
in the meat of the report somewhere.

It's a tough one at least partly because the nature of cycling changes when
helmets are required (helmet requirements inevitably result in a drop in
cycling). So one of the questions I'd have would be this- does the nature of
cycling (type of trip) change when helmets are required? Does helmet use,
for example, skew towards (or against) recreational cycling? Commuting?
Errands?

For what it's worth, I wouldn't consider riding around the block without a
helmet on, but I'm completely against mandatory helmet laws, for a number of
reasons including-

#1: They reduce the likelihood of people riding a bike which, aside from
entirely selfish concerns (I do own a bike shop, after all!), concerns me
because I see obesity and generally being out of shape as far more dangerous
to the average person than not wearing a helmet.

#2: The laws, at least locally, are selectively enforced, if at all. This is
a major issue when the laws require only that those under 18 wear helmets;
we're telling our kids that it's OK to disobey laws at an early age (because
they're unlikely to suffer any consequences). If a law is on the books, it
should be enforced. If it's a law that shouldn't be enforced, it shouldn't
be on the books.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

Peter Keller

November 11th 04, 08:34 AM

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 07:21:10 +0000, Mike Jacoubowsky wrote:

>> There's no detectable change by looking at the graphs, and there was no
>> change that was detectable by the sophisticated statistics software
>> package they used, although the paper makes clear that they checked their
>> data every way possible. The results are inescapable: helmet use tripled,
>> or (for kids) quadrupled; but the helmets did nothing against serious
>> injuries.
>>
>> The paper is "Trends in Cycle Injury in New Zealand under Voluntary Helmet
>> Use." Paul A. Scuffham, et. al. Accident Analysis & Prevention, Vol. 29,
>> No. 1, pp. 1-9, 1997. Your librarian can get you a copy, for (at most) a
>> small fee.
>
> Frank: Thanks for summarizing the article. I'm still not seing the
> "discussion of the results" with "possible explanations" but that's probably
> in the meat of the report somewhere.
>
> It's a tough one at least partly because the nature of cycling changes when
> helmets are required (helmet requirements inevitably result in a drop in
> cycling). So one of the questions I'd have would be this- does the nature of
> cycling (type of trip) change when helmets are required? Does helmet use,
> for example, skew towards (or against) recreational cycling? Commuting?
> Errands?
>
> For what it's worth, I wouldn't consider riding around the block without a
> helmet on, but I'm completely against mandatory helmet laws, for a number of
> reasons including-
>
> #1: They reduce the likelihood of people riding a bike which, aside from
> entirely selfish concerns (I do own a bike shop, after all!), concerns me
> because I see obesity and generally being out of shape as far more dangerous
> to the average person than not wearing a helmet.
>
> #2: The laws, at least locally, are selectively enforced, if at all. This is
> a major issue when the laws require only that those under 18 wear helmets;
> we're telling our kids that it's OK to disobey laws at an early age (because
> they're unlikely to suffer any consequences). If a law is on the books, it
> should be enforced. If it's a law that shouldn't be enforced, it shouldn't
> be on the books.
>
> --Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
> www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

Mike,
Greetings from New Zealand where the MHL is savagely enforced for all ages.
We have noticed a decline in bicycling overall by about 34% since the law
was enacted 10 years ago, divided as
Not much for adult males
About 90% (Horrible, isn't it?) for adult women, and
about 80% for children.
The head injury numbers have declined about 19%, so the head injury rate
has gone up. Reasons for ythis are unclear, and could be due to changing
demographics of bicyclists and increasing numbers of SUVs on the roads as
much as any harmful effects that helmets might have.
I definitely think the Mandatory Helmet Law is evil, harmful and
counterproductive.
However, I also believe that anyone who thinks s/he wants to wear a
helmet, should (properly) wear one, but also realise that wearing one does
not absolve the wearer from the obligation to bicycle safely because of
the very limited protection it affords.

Peter

--
If you are careful enough in life, nothing bad -- or
good -- will ever happen to you.

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 11th 04, 11:55 AM

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 07:21:10 GMT, "Mike Jacoubowsky"
> wrote:

>It's a tough one at least partly because the nature of cycling changes when
>helmets are required (helmet requirements inevitably result in a drop in
>cycling). So one of the questions I'd have would be this- does the nature of
>cycling (type of trip) change when helmets are required? Does helmet use,
>for example, skew towards (or against) recreational cycling? Commuting?
>Errands?

The Australians have some data for that; a decade after compulsion
their numerical levels of cycling are up to around pre-law levels
(albeit against a background of increased population) but the recovery
has been mainly middle-aged people and leisure cycling. Utility
cycling, especially by teens, remains well below pre-law levels.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Steven M. Scharf

November 11th 04, 04:42 PM

Dan wrote:

> Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see a helmet law, anywhere or
> anyhow. I want to promote, locally, helmet use to ward off any
> regulation. It's kind of backwards and may not be the best way. Your
> response atleast has merit and makes sense but others seem to attack
> with vigar anyone's character that mentions the use of helmets for
> safety. That only ****es people off and turns them against your point of
> view. BTW, most clubs require you to wear helmets on their rides as do
> most major races.

Of course the reason for the clubs and the races requiring helmets is
that they are forced to do so by their insurance companies. Without a
helmet rule they cannot get liability insurance (or it would be
outrageously expensive).

Like it or not, the insurance companies look at the actuarial data
comparing injuries of persons involved in crashes with and without
helmets, and make their decisions based on this data; they don’t look at
every injury incurred by every possible activity in the world, and
conclude that the relative number of injuries incurred as a result of
bicycle accidents is small.

With automobile safety equipment, I’ve seen insurance companies back
down when further studies showed that a supposed safety benefit didn’t
really exist. I.e. some companies give discounts for anti-lock brakes
and daytime running lights, but after further studies showed no
reduction in accident rates, many of the companies eliminated these
discounts, ending the incentive to spend the extra money for cars
equipped with these features.

The ABS argument closely parallels the helmet argument. People who have
ABS often swear up and down that they KNOW that it's prevented them from
being involved in numerous accidents. But overall, ABS equipped cars
were no less likely to be involved in accidents, than non-ABS equipped
cars. OTOH, there were measurable decreases in accident rates for
certain types of accidents, where ABS provided the ability to maintain
control of the car. Also, insurance companies stated that many motorists
didn't use ABS properly, still pumping the brakes manually in a skid.

Frank Krygowski

November 11th 04, 04:52 PM

Mike Jacoubowsky wrote:

>... So one of the questions I'd have would be this- does the nature of
> cycling (type of trip) change when helmets are required? Does helmet use,
> for example, skew towards (or against) recreational cycling? Commuting?
> Errands?

I've never seen that directly addressed. What I've read (and Guy has
mentioned) is that the effect of the law varies on different population
groups. Guy mentioned that women stop cycling in very large numbers. I
recall that teenage girls stop cycling almost entirely, and teenage boys
nearly as much.

ISTM that the group that would be least affected are (probably) those
reading this. My bet is that a majority of folks reading rec.bicycles.*
are avid hobby cyclists. My bet is most belong to bike clubs.

Well, bike clubs led the way in making helmets part of the official or
unofficial "uniform." Even for a recreational/touring club, it's rare
to see someone show up for a ride without the Full Mating Plumage:
Lycra, trademark jersey, special shoes, special gloves, special glasses
and of course, special hat.

I think those people won't be impacted by a MHL; so my guess is bike
riding will skew toward long recreational or training rides on country
roads. My guess is there would be a big drop in riding to school,
riding to a buddy's house to play basketball, riding to the mall to hang
out, riding to the library, or just buzzing around the neighborhoods to
see what's up.

> #2: The laws, at least locally, are selectively enforced, if at all. This is
> a major issue when the laws require only that those under 18 wear helmets;
> we're telling our kids that it's OK to disobey laws at an early age (because
> they're unlikely to suffer any consequences). If a law is on the books, it
> should be enforced. If it's a law that shouldn't be enforced, it shouldn't
> be on the books.

I absolutely agree with the latter point. I'll add, I live less than
ten miles from a state with a kid's MHL. When I ride there, I see most
kids still don't wear helmets. But when I pass through low-income
neighborhoods, I see _no_ black kids wearing helmets.

If a cop wanted to stop any 15-year-old black kid for any reason, he can
do it, as long as that kid's on a bike. I think this is bad.

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

Frank Krygowski

November 11th 04, 05:19 PM

Steven M. Scharf wrote:

> Of course the reason for the clubs and the races requiring helmets is
> that they are forced to do so by their insurance companies. Without a
> helmet rule they cannot get liability insurance (or it would be
> outrageously expensive).

This may be true with certain insurance companies. But as a past
president and long-time officer in our club, I know that club insurance
is available without a mandatory helmet provision, and it costs no more.
Our club has no mandatory helmet provision, and we do have insurance.
(Not that we've ever needed insurance for anything!)

>
> Like it or not, the insurance companies look at the actuarial data
> comparing injuries of persons involved in crashes with and without
> helmets, and make their decisions based on this data;

And the company that insures our club probably did this.

In fact, Failure Analysis Associates, the research company that produced
the following table, is the largest risk consultation company in
America. Evaluating risk for the insurance industry is what they do!
Here's their table, published in _Design News_, 10/4/93

fatalities
Activity per million hrs
-------- ---------------
Skydiving 128.71
General Aviation 15.58
On-road Motorcycling 8.80
Scuba Diving 1.98
Living (all causes of death) 1.53
Swimming 1.07
Snowmobiling .88
Passenger cars .47
Water skiing .28
Bicycling .26
Flying (scheduled domestic airlines) .15
Hunting .08
Cosmic Radiation from transcontinental flights .035
Home Living (active) .027
Traveling in a School Bus .022
Passenger Car Post-collision fire .017
Home Living, active & passive (sleeping) .014
Residential Fire .003

Compare bicycling with riding in passenger cars, and with swimming.

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 11th 04, 05:49 PM

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 15:42:59 GMT, "Steven M. Scharf"
> wrote:

>Like it or not, the insurance companies look at the actuarial data
>comparing injuries of persons involved in crashes with and without
>helmets, and make their decisions based on this data

Actually in this case that is simply not true. There is nothing like
enough data to support an actuarial judgment on this, it was actually
started by a single high-profile case (which is the exact opposite of
how actuarial judgments are made).

>With automobile safety equipment, I’ve seen insurance companies back
>down when further studies showed that a supposed safety benefit didn’t
>really exist. I.e. some companies give discounts for anti-lock brakes
>and daytime running lights, but after further studies showed no
>reduction in accident rates, many of the companies eliminated these
>discounts, ending the incentive to spend the extra money for cars
>equipped with these features.

Well well. Insurance company acknowledges risk compensation shock.
Here's the science:

Grant and Smiley, "Driver response to antilock brakes: a demonstration
on behavioural adaptation" from Proceedings, Canadian
Multidisciplinary Road Safety Conference VIII, June 14-16,
Saskatchewan 1993

Sagberg, Fosser, and Saetermo, "An investigation of behavioural
adaptation to airbags and antilock brakes among taxi drivers" Accident
Analysis and Prevention #29 pp 293-302 1997

Aschenbrenner and Biehl, "Improved safety through improved technical
measures? empirical studies regarding risk compensation processes in
relation to anti-lock braking systems." In Trimpop and Wilde,
Challenges to Accident Prevention: The issue of risk compensation
behaviour (Groningen, NL, Styx Publications, 1994)

And only a moment ago I was replying to a post from you in which you
apparently denied that risk compensation exists!

>The ABS argument closely parallels the helmet argument. People who have
>ABS often swear up and down that they KNOW that it's prevented them from
>being involved in numerous accidents. But overall, ABS equipped cars
>were no less likely to be involved in accidents, than non-ABS equipped
>cars. OTOH, there were measurable decreases in accident rates for
>certain types of accidents, where ABS provided the ability to maintain
>control of the car. Also, insurance companies stated that many motorists
>didn't use ABS properly, still pumping the brakes manually in a skid.

And still the penny doesn't drop! I am astonished that you haven't
realised what you have just written.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 11th 04, 06:57 PM

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 11:19:30 -0500, Frank Krygowski
> wrote:

>This may be true with certain insurance companies. But as a past
>president and long-time officer in our club, I know that club insurance
>is available without a mandatory helmet provision, and it costs no more.

True enough: as a part of the membership fee of my cycle club, I get
insurance. Helmets are not even mentioned. The club has 80,000
members, and on a Sunday ride I guess somewhere under half the road
riders are wearing PFDBs.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Dan

November 11th 04, 07:20 PM

RogerDodger > wrote in
:

>
> Dan Wrote:
>>
>
> Geez - we've got a doozy here. So "Helmets can an do SAVE LIFES" huh -
> who let you out of school Danny boy?
> Don't take your head out of the sand now Dan - just keep repeating
> your affirmation...maybe it will come true, huh?
>
> You'd have to be pretty stupid to fall for that line "what you should
> be doing isn't what you are doing but [what a brainless bumpkin like
> Dan here says you should be doing]".
>
>
>
> Bicycle helmets = invasion of the dimwits.
>
>

Here's a perfect example of why your arguments fall on deaf ears. You
have an advocate that's a moron. Atleast my heads not up my ass,
Rogerboy! Obviously, you've been doing alot of riding without a helmet,
it shows.
Guy, your points are good and valid. I have no doubt you've
had to repeat this over and over to everyone that comes into this forum
with their own opinions. I just feel getting people to wear helmets is a
better solution to stave off regulations. Your responses, as well as
some of the others, has been educational and I'm sure statistically
sound. One last question, how do you get a statistic on how many people
may have been saved by using a helmet? You can't possibly know, because
they weren't a fatality. If I'm riding and T-bone a car, hit my helmeted
noggin' and there is no injury except my poor busted helmet (pocketbook
injury) and mangled wheel, where's the report that says, 'here is an
accident that could have been fatal but he was wearing a helmet'. Won't
be one!

Dan the DOOZY

Frank Krygowski

November 11th 04, 09:03 PM

Dan wrote:

> One last question, how do you get a statistic on how many people
> may have been saved by using a helmet? You can't possibly know, because
> they weren't a fatality. If I'm riding and T-bone a car, hit my helmeted
> noggin' and there is no injury except my poor busted helmet (pocketbook
> injury) and mangled wheel, where's the report that says, 'here is an
> accident that could have been fatal but he was wearing a helmet'. Won't
> be one!

You keep track of the bike fatalities in a country for roughly 30 years.
Then (if you're New Zealand or Australia) you institute laws that
suddenly force everyone to wear bike helmets. You really enforce those
laws. And you look at the effects - that is, you look for the fatality
count to drop afterwards.

One caveat: You've got to keep track of the number of people who ride,
because the law _will_ cause big drops in cycling. (It did in those
countries.)

If you get a 30% drop in cycling, and you get a 30% drop in bike
fatalities, then you've done nothing for the remaining cyclists. The
fatality per cyclist ratio has not changed. So what you'd need to see
is a fatality drop _greater_ than the drop in cycling.

Another caveat: Bike fatalities are so incredibly rare (despite the
helmet promoter's horror stories) that it's still hard to get good data,
even counting nationwide data. That's why the Scuffham study I quoted
in another post looked at injuries that put cyclists in the hospital,
instead.

But again: they detected no improvement due to massively increased
helmet use. None at all.

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]

Dan

November 11th 04, 10:34 PM

Frank Krygowski > wrote in news:4193c520
@news.ysu.edu:

> Dan wrote:
>
>> One last question, how do you get a statistic on how many people
>> may have been saved by using a helmet? You can't possibly know,
because
>> they weren't a fatality. If I'm riding and T-bone a car, hit my
helmeted
>> noggin' and there is no injury except my poor busted helmet
(pocketbook
>> injury) and mangled wheel, where's the report that says, 'here is an
>> accident that could have been fatal but he was wearing a helmet'.
Won't
>> be one!
>
> You keep track of the bike fatalities in a country for roughly 30
years.
> Then (if you're New Zealand or Australia) you institute laws that
> suddenly force everyone to wear bike helmets. You really enforce
those
> laws. And you look at the effects - that is, you look for the
fatality
> count to drop afterwards.
>
> One caveat: You've got to keep track of the number of people who ride,
> because the law _will_ cause big drops in cycling. (It did in those
> countries.)
>
> If you get a 30% drop in cycling, and you get a 30% drop in bike
> fatalities, then you've done nothing for the remaining cyclists. The
> fatality per cyclist ratio has not changed. So what you'd need to see
> is a fatality drop _greater_ than the drop in cycling.
>
> Another caveat: Bike fatalities are so incredibly rare (despite the
> helmet promoter's horror stories) that it's still hard to get good
data,
> even counting nationwide data. That's why the Scuffham study I quoted
> in another post looked at injuries that put cyclists in the hospital,
> instead.
>
> But again: they detected no improvement due to massively increased
> helmet use. None at all.
>

I can see where that would be more of a represented figure. That
answered my question to some degree. While winding down this tit for tat
conversation, of which I seem to be losing badly, Did you know that the
city that Lance calls home (Austin), has a helmet law and is enforced
vigorously. Other than Austin and Dallas, there is no Texas state law
other than 18 and under regulating helmet use. Is it possible this is a
test bed as well?

Dan and out!

Just zis Guy, you know?

November 11th 04, 10:39 PM

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 18:20:37 GMT, Dan > wrote in
message >:

>Guy, your points are good and valid. I have no doubt you've
>had to repeat this over and over to everyone that comes into this forum
>with their own opinions.

There may be a degree of truth in this :-) The issue is vastly more
complex than the single-issue campaigners would have you believe.
That, of course is why they get so much coverage, because they use
soundbytes and pop science, whereas those of us who are sceptical have
a much more detailed tale to tell.

>I just feel getting people to wear helmets is a
>better solution to stave off regulations.

Be very careful about this. Like I said, in the UK we have a Morton's
fork: the gubmint says no compulsion because wearing rates are low,
but the Liddites say wearing rates are low so we need compulsion to
boost them. So low wearing and high wearing are both used as arguments
for compulsion.

>Your responses, as well as
>some of the others, has been educational and I'm sure statistically
>sound.

I hope so. At least with robust debate you find out if an argument is
sound or not. Once you've weeded out the idiots who dispute data on
religious grounds it is perfectly fair to challenge sources and
interpretations of data.

>One last question, how do you get a statistic on how many people
>may have been saved by using a helmet? You can't possibly know, because
>they weren't a fatality.

A good way to work this out is to track the way the proportion of
injuries which are head injuries (%HI) and the wearing rate over time,
and see if they vary together. New Zealand is often cited because
over a three year period wearing rates went from under 45% to about
95%, but %HI followed exactly the same trend as for (unhelmeted)
pedestrians. You can then draw a number of possible conclusions:

- helmets prevented no injuries at all
- helmets were effective in some cases but risk compensation and other
effects eroded the benefit so there was no net benefit overall
- helmets were very effective but something else changed so radically
as to outweigh the benefit

There may be others, but I think broadly speaking these are the main
possibilities.

The third is simply implausible, but it is the only one which squares
with the idea of 85% head injury savings. So we go back to the source
of the 85% figure and find that it was derived by comparing two
completely different populations. Which suggests the 85% figure is
likely wrong. Much the same criticism can be leveled at other
observational studies.

How can that be? We have a clue in recent debate regarding the
relationship between hormone replacement therapy and coronary heart
disease. I have only recently found out about this particular
controversy and found it so interesting I put up a page on it:

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/web/public.nsf/Documents/Observational_Studies

So then we have to trawl through all the studies and look for robust
methodologies. One study for which the reference escapes me
momentarily has an estimated efficacy of about 10%. It is entirely
plausible that efficacy of that order could be blown away by risk
compensation and by the well-documented link between numbers cycling
and risk (more people cycling = lower risk, fewer people cycling =
more risk).

So we arrive at the position that helmets may or may not be a good
thing for individuals, but that as a matter of public policy, forcing
people to wear them has no measurable effect other than to deter
cycling. The same has been found wherever helmet laws have been
enforced, so it seems to be a robust conclusion.

>If I'm riding and T-bone a car, hit my helmeted
>noggin' and there is no injury except my poor busted helmet (pocketbook
>injury) and mangled wheel, where's the report that says, 'here is an
>accident that could have been fatal but he was wearing a helmet'. Won't
>be one!

If the crash has enough energy to kill you, a helmet won't make any
significant difference. And how do you know you would not have been
riding slower and more vigilantly if you had not been wearing a PDFB?
The question is whether, all other things being equal, you would be
better off helmeted in this case, but my answer is that the evidence
shows that all other things would not be equal.

Any attempt to simplify the helmet debate into soundbyte examples
will, by its very nature, ignore at least one crucial fact or effect,
to the point that the simplified example will necessarily be more
misleading than informative.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University