Butch wrote:

For Mr. Peter Clinch, I wish you the best in your riding, but using a
Helmet is a lot like smoking you don't need an expert or statistics to
show you what to do only common sense.

Then why doesn't the "common sense" factor into any improvement
whatsoever in serious injury rates anywhere helmet wearing rates
increase? It's common sense that that would surely happen if they
improved matters, but they have a track record of doing *nothing*.

To put
it in simple terms "**** Happens", its your life, you know what it is
worth.

It certainly does. And it continues to happen wearing helmets, and
there is no national population anywhere who have shown an improvement
in their serious head injury rate from wearing cycle helmets.

All of your anecdotes, and all of everyone else's anecdotes, go into
full population data. And that data has serious head injury rates
unaffected by helmet wearing. So either your anecdotes of being /sure/
helmets must make things much better are balanced by incidents where
they make things worse, or you're assuming a much worse incident would
have transpired without a helmet than would have actually been the case.

The population figures don't tell us what we think /might/ happen, but
what *has* happened. And what has happened from increased helmet
wearing is no real change to serious head injury rates. That's what
*has* happened, common sense or not.

Here's a quote from Brian Walker, who runs Head Protection Evaluation,
the company that test helmets meet standards in the UK. He's an
accredited expert witness too, I believe:

"the very eminent QC under whose instruction I was privileged to work,
tried repeatedly to persuade the equally eminent neurosurgeons acting
for either side, and the technical expert, to state that one must be
safer wearing a helmet than without. All three refused to so do, stating
that they had seen severe brain damage and fatal injury both with and
without cycle helmets being worn. In their view, the performance of
cycle helmets is much too complex a subject for such a sweeping claim to
be made"

There is very much more to it than "common sense". I used to always
wear a helmet for reasons of "common sense", but the more you
investigate the reality the more you find you're unlikely to save
yourself a serious injury, and /exactly/ the same logic of "****
happens" applies to being a pedestrian. Hundreds of people in the UK
are killed in simple trips and falls every year, so since "**** happens"
and it's common sense to guard against it and you feel a cycle helmet
can save significant injury, do you wear one as a pedestrian, or around
the house, especially using stairs? Your logical argument for helmet
use on a cycle suggests you should, so if not, *why* not?

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/