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  #11  
Old October 29th 05, 05:37 AM
Sunset Lowracer [TM] Fanatic
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Mark Leuck wrote:
"DD" wrote in message
...
So what set up do you use or suggest for helmets and visors with
recumbents. At the wrong time of day it can be a bit glaring riding the
couch trike towards the sunny side of town. Most bike helmets are made
for road and MTB, a different posture from that of the laid back crowd.
The problem is more acute on my lowracer and it is impractical to ride
in the early hours of the morning mostly one-handed, the other shielding
the eyes from the sun. What fixes or good helmets do you recommend?

(and if Mr Sunset Lowracer pipes up to explain that he only got his name
because at sunset he only rides his lowracer away from the sun that
ain't what I mean). Thanks for any advice on visors and whatnot.


Mr Sunset Lowracer got his name from a low racer made by a now dead company,
you don't want to egg him on about it or he'll post that one picture over
and over again

Which reminds me, hey Tom don't you have any OTHER pictures of that bike?


I have a few pictures of my LIGHT PURPLE Earth Cycles Sunset Lowracer
[TM] that I could post, but no convenient place to post them.

--
Tom Sherman - Fox River Valley
"Twisting may help if yawl can chew gum and walk." - G. Daniels

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  #12  
Old October 29th 05, 05:47 AM
Sunset Lowracer [TM] Fanatic
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Default advisor wanted


Peter Clinch, Medical Physics IT Officer, wrote:
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.


Speaking of **** and h*lm*ts, a h*lm*t with no vents could be a life
saver:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.rec.bicycles.recumbent/msg/ae7f8b09b374d758?dmode=source&hl=en.


--
Tom Sherman - Fox River Valley
"Twisting may help if yawl can chew gum and walk." - G. Daniels

  #13  
Old October 29th 05, 12:24 PM
Peter Clinch
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wrote:

You know, stats are very interesting, sorta like facts, one man's is
another's lies.


They can be like that when misused, but the thing about helmets is
that if you turn a bunch of professional scientists with no vested
interests in proving things one way or the other on the helmet data
they tend to find a lot of holes in the "these really help!" case
and nothing like so many problems in the "they don't actually do
much" case.

Can you say for certain that if no one were to wear helmets, the
situation would not be worse than it is?


No. But nor can I say for certain the opposite. And nor can you.

What I know for a fact is that a helmet kept me from making a trip to
an ER for stitches at a minimum.


Not really, you can't.

Why can I say that? A pointed rock
PENETRATED the helmet deep enough to scratch my scalp. That helmet is
certainly tougher than my skin.


But the helmet makes your head effectively bigger, so more likely
to hit something like that rock to start with, and it affects the
way you ride so you may not have had the accident at all if you
hadn't been wearing it (sounds far fetched? Everyone knows seat
belts improve your chances in a car, yet in the wake of compulsory
seatbelt legislation in the UK the car occupant injury rates didn't
move much but pedestrian and cyclist injuries increased noticably,
thanks to all of theose "safer" car occupants driving worse thanks
to being "safer").

The jury is out on the denisty of my
skull, however. So, figure a $70 helmet versus an ER bill for wound
cleaning and stitching.


Well, you have a factor there that doesn't bother me because the
National Health Service didn't charge me a penny for the overnight
stay with concussion I had after an accident (in which I was
wearing a helmet, by the way: it fractured, and in brittle failure
it only absorbs a fraction of what it should).

Did he allow for the increased population that are riding bikes today,
the advent of downhilling at breakneck speeds, increased (and more
hostile) traffic on the roads?


Looking at whole population figures over time, everything is taken
into account because /all/ of the reported incidents are in there
(and most serious incidents are reported).

If not, he only taken a snap shot in time looking at the past - not
into what is coming.


Because the population figures deal with things over the period of
the recorded data you can see clear trends. Since before helmets
existed cyclist serious injuries have generally followed the
pedestrian trrends very closely. They have continued to do that as
helmets are increasingly used by cyclists with the peds being a
useful unhelmeted control group. In countries with mandatory
helmet laws the wearing rate has shot up from ~20% to nearly full
compiance and done it in a very short space of time, yet there
isn't so much as a noticable blip in the serious injury rate over
the same period. How can that be, if they're effcetive in
preventing serious injuries?

Any research can be skewed in any direction the researcher wants.


But if it's published and open to criticism then it's clear to see.
And what takes a lot of very bruising flak is the researcgh that
says helmets are very effective, and questions from the more
sceptical point of view have remained unsanswered.

merely forgetting to look at one variable can have the same effect -
skewing.


And this can be pointed out by anyone reading the research
critically. I have. I know quite a few people who have who are
better objective critics than me, and several of them have, like
me, gone from the "it's daft not to wear one" stance to not
bothering. It would not be in our interests to stop waering
something we already own and were used to wearing if we didn't
think the numbers stood up.

In terms of lesser cuts and bruises? Doesn't look like anyone is
addressing that specifically.


It's very difficult to because small injuries are very likely to be
unreported. The data simply isn't good enough to stand up to analysis.

Sure, my accident might not have killed
me or brooken my skull (serious) were I without a helmet, but I do
know that I did not have to go to the ER and based on the helmet
damage and its relative strength compared to my scalp, I probably
would have had to without a helmet.


For small injuries I believe they can help. That's why I'll
usually wear my helmet for mountain biking where the sort of low
speed crash with no other vehicle involved that cycle helmets are
*designed* for is quite likely.
But on the road I'm not likely to have that sort of accident and
bang my head, against which if I waer a helmet I can guarantee I
will have reduced comfort every time I climb on the bike. I ride a
'bent for comfort, so why put a foam box on my head to ruin things?

And there is the rub of a shortsightedness in the research - it cannot
allow for lesser accidents that do not require hospital reports
(serious). It cannot track or effectively report the impacts of
accidents (with or without helmets) where the injury did not require a
hospital visit. How many of them would have gone from a banged head
with a helmet to an ER visit without a helmet? That data is totally
missing. And that is some very pertinent data.


The number of visits that have fallen from seriious to not be worth
bothering about /will/ appear in the form of a drop of total
serious injuries, unless the rate at which that happens is
/exactly/ compensated for by more serious injuries from another
cause that doesn't affect the control data group of pedestrains,
who are just as at risk from worsening driving as cyclists (and we
have decades of numbers to show that to be true).

BTW, don't ever denigrate anecdotal evidence. It means little in
isolation, but in aggregate, points to areas where deeper research is
needed.


In aggregate is *exactly* what the whole population data is. That
is what I'm looking at, hundreds of thousands of data points,
rather than one or two.

It is like that fleeting warning that lets you know there are
more serious matters coming.


But the aggregate data tells us we're actually remarkably safe.
Per unit distance safer than being a pedestrian in the UK. So if I
cycle to work rather than walk I'm less likely to be involved in a
RTA, so why wouldn't you think I should wear a helmet if I walk?

Irrelevant. Walking, or taking a shower for that matter, is not
considered as being a hazardous activity; riding in traffic or
downhilling are. You are mixing apples and oranges to make your case.


But walking *is* a comparably hazardous activity. We know this
because of the aggregate population data. It may not be
/considered/ as hazardous but this is why you need to look at hard
numbers rather than make "common sense" assumptions.

Downhilling is certainly a different matter. I wouldn't try it
anyway, if you did persuade me there's no way I'd do it without a
lid. But downhilling has no more to do with cycling in traffic
than international rally driving has to do with commuting to work
by car. Rally drivers wear 5 point harnesses, flameproof suits and
helmets. Commuter drivers don't.

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/
  #14  
Old October 29th 05, 12:43 PM
Peter Clinch
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Butch wrote:
Ah yes statistics! I worked as an engineer for more than 30 years
and I can tell you what we used to say about statistics. Figures lie
and liars figure. Meaning of course that statistics are great if the
data is great but that almost never happens.


The data is there for all to see, so look at it yourself.

The data that really sucks is the data that tells us how effective
helmets are with figures like 85% effective... gathered from
comparaing affluent kids riding in parks to poor kids on busy city
streets and assuming all the difference comes from helmets!

No one ever took data
when my friend flipped his Gold Rush, no one ever got data when I fell
in front of the VREX and no one took data when I watched an older man
riding a diamond frame pull his handle bars off the bike and split his
skull(no helmet).


So the guy that split his skull just went home and didn't report it
to anyone? Or he was jsut left at the roadside? Unlikely in the
extreme, so I think people /did/ take some data.

as well), that is why I wear a helmet, I don't care what you do but I
do care when you try to give a novice cyclist misguided advice.


But it isn't "misguided advice", it is reporting the simple truth
that population data does not show any noticable improvement in
head injury rates with increased helmet wearing. That that *fact*
runs counter to "common sense" doesn't make it wrong.

I know where you're coming from, because it's exactly where I was
coming from until about 3 or 4 years ago. I always wore a helmet
on pretty much every cycle journey I made for over a decade,
thinking it daft not to and irresponsible not to recommend them to
others based on the assumption that they *must* make you safer.
But responding to the same sort of points I'm making now, I figured
if they really /do/ help it should be easy to demonstrate that, but
the harder I've looked the more the case that they help has shown
to be the sort of badly skewed research and statistical shenanigans
I'm being accused of myself here, and the more the case that they
really don't make any significant difference has stayed as a simple
fact.

I know
helmets are not perfect, but in my opinion they are a lot better than
nothing.


So where is the data to show that? Beyond a couple of personal
anecdotes with no control data.

There is a lot of data about accident rates and helmet wearing
rates, so it should be easy to find a demonstration of
effectiveness if they are effective. I looked but I couldn't find
it, I stopped wearing a helmet. If you can find something
convincing I'll gladly go back to wearing it as I don't want to
risk my life, but AFAICT I'm not at the moment, so I'll vote for
comfort on every ride.

Oh yes now I remember another time when I think my helmet
saved me from injury, I fell when I was crossing a slippery section of
black top (in humid weather here it sometimes collects some sort of
slimy allgae or what ever) I slid for a long time fortunately my
fairing took much of the skid my head first went up and I remember
trying to stop it from coming down so I wouldn't hit the pavement, I
could not do it, I did tuck my chin just a bit and hit the side of the
helmet cracking it slightly.


Of course, your head is both bigger and heavier when wearing a
helmet, so you're much more likely to hit it in such an accident,
and if you do hit it there'll be more leverage applied to your
neck. None of those are Good Things.

I lost a lot of skin and rode the rest of
the way home with my bloody butt hanging out but I didn't hurt my head.
Funny I couldn't find a single statistical data taker on the entire 46
mile trail that day.


But your lack of appearance in ER will have gone towards an overall
fall in injuries. So either everyone having these accidents is
being balanced by ones where helmets make things worse, or you
wouldn't have gone to ER anyway.

I can tell you one thing its to late to put it on
when you are sliding down that black top at 18 mph.


And it's also too late to take it off if the extra size and weight
make a difference to hitting your head at all...

The simple fact reamins, increasing helmet wearing rates have not
affected the serious head injury rates. I have asked myself how
that can be so if helmets are as effective as is often made out,
but cannot reconcile the two. The raw data is there for anyone to
play with, and the analyses that tend to stand up are the ones that
show nothing improves for serious injuries with helmets.

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/
  #15  
Old October 29th 05, 03:17 PM
Mark Leuck
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Posts: n/a
Default advisor wanted


"Sunset Lowracer [TM] Fanatic" wrote in message
oups.com...

Mark Leuck wrote:
"DD" wrote in message
...
So what set up do you use or suggest for helmets and visors with
recumbents. At the wrong time of day it can be a bit glaring riding

the
couch trike towards the sunny side of town. Most bike helmets are made
for road and MTB, a different posture from that of the laid back

crowd.
The problem is more acute on my lowracer and it is impractical to

ride
in the early hours of the morning mostly one-handed, the other

shielding
the eyes from the sun. What fixes or good helmets do you recommend?

(and if Mr Sunset Lowracer pipes up to explain that he only got his

name
because at sunset he only rides his lowracer away from the sun that
ain't what I mean). Thanks for any advice on visors and whatnot.


Mr Sunset Lowracer got his name from a low racer made by a now dead

company,
you don't want to egg him on about it or he'll post that one picture

over
and over again

Which reminds me, hey Tom don't you have any OTHER pictures of that

bike?

I have a few pictures of my LIGHT PURPLE Earth Cycles Sunset Lowracer
[TM] that I could post, but no convenient place to post them.

--
Tom Sherman - Fox River Valley
"Twisting may help if yawl can chew gum and walk." - G. Daniels


You could create a blog on Blogger and use a program called Hello to upload
images, it's all free [1]

[1] With some advertising somewhere I'm sure


  #16  
Old October 29th 05, 07:50 PM
Rich
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Posts: n/a
Default advisor wanted

Sunset Lowracer [TM] Fanatic wrote:

I have a few pictures of my LIGHT PURPLE Earth Cycles Sunset Lowracer
[TM] that I could post, but no convenient place to post them.


www.flickr.com is free site on which you can post photos. Also very
easy to use.
  #17  
Old October 30th 05, 04:41 AM
external usenet poster
 
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Default advisor wanted

On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 12:43:01 +0100, Peter Clinch
wrote:



snip

But it isn't "misguided advice", it is reporting the simple truth
that population data does not show any noticable improvement in
head injury rates with increased helmet wearing. That that *fact*
runs counter to "common sense" doesn't make it wrong.


It is misguided because it concerns only "serious" accidents and I'm
betting you agree that far more less than "serious" accidents happen
than serious. Where are the stats for those, the ones that without a
helmet might have called for an ER visit and stitching?

Put -'em up if you gottem, but I'm lookin' forward to your sounds of
silence.



I know where you're coming from, because it's exactly where I was
coming from until about 3 or 4 years ago. I always wore a helmet
on pretty much every cycle journey I made for over a decade,
thinking it daft not to and irresponsible not to recommend them to
others based on the assumption that they *must* make you safer.
But responding to the same sort of points I'm making now, I figured
if they really /do/ help it should be easy to demonstrate that, but
the harder I've looked the more the case that they help has shown
to be the sort of badly skewed research and statistical shenanigans
I'm being accused of myself here, and the more the case that they
really don't make any significant difference has stayed as a simple
fact.

I know
helmets are not perfect, but in my opinion they are a lot better than
nothing.


So where is the data to show that? Beyond a couple of personal
anecdotes with no control data.


Where is your data on non-serious injuries? Without any on your part,
anecdotal evidence is better than your lack of information.


There is a lot of data about accident rates and helmet wearing
rates, so it should be easy to find a demonstration of
effectiveness if they are effective. I looked but I couldn't find
it, I stopped wearing a helmet. If you can find something
convincing I'll gladly go back to wearing it as I don't want to
risk my life, but AFAICT I'm not at the moment, so I'll vote for
comfort on every ride.


Well, if it is that easy, why haven't you done it?



But your lack of appearance in ER will have gone towards an overall
fall in injuries. So either everyone having these accidents is
being balanced by ones where helmets make things worse, or you
wouldn't have gone to ER anyway.


Really, how do you propose that be measured? They only measure srious
injuries and have no data at all on those that walk away without a
report being filed.



The simple fact reamins, increasing helmet wearing rates have not
affected the serious head injury rates. I have asked myself how
that can be so if helmets are as effective as is often made out,
but cannot reconcile the two. The raw data is there for anyone to
play with, and the analyses that tend to stand up are the ones that
show nothing improves for serious injuries with helmets.


Again, you are using apples to make statements about oranges and are
clueless that you are doing it.


jim

  #18  
Old October 30th 05, 05:02 AM
external usenet poster
 
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Default advisor wanted

On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 12:24:06 +0100, Peter Clinch
wrote:

wrote:

You know, stats are very interesting, sorta like facts, one man's is
another's lies.


They can be like that when misused, but the thing about helmets is
that if you turn a bunch of professional scientists with no vested
interests in proving things one way or the other on the helmet data
they tend to find a lot of holes in the "these really help!" case
and nothing like so many problems in the "they don't actually do
much" case.




Can you say for certain that if no one were to wear helmets, the
situation would not be worse than it is?


No. But nor can I say for certain the opposite. And nor can you.


Well, you seem to want to be able to take all kinds of poetic license.
Are you opposed to my doing the same?


What I know for a fact is that a helmet kept me from making a trip to
an ER for stitches at a minimum.


Not really, you can't.


Yes I can. The only thing that prevented my head from hitting the rock
was the helmet because that was the initial point of impact.


Why can I say that? A pointed rock
PENETRATED the helmet deep enough to scratch my scalp. That helmet is
certainly tougher than my skin.


But the helmet makes your head effectively bigger, so more likely
to hit something like that rock to start with, and it affects the
way you ride so you may not have had the accident at all if you
hadn't been wearing it (sounds far fetched? Everyone knows seat
belts improve your chances in a car, yet in the wake of compulsory
seatbelt legislation in the UK the car occupant injury rates didn't
move much but pedestrian and cyclist injuries increased noticably,
thanks to all of theose "safer" car occupants driving worse thanks
to being "safer").


BS, and you know it. Otherwise, use some aviation accident data to
prove that the cost of lettuce didn't rise.


The jury is out on the denisty of my
skull, however. So, figure a $70 helmet versus an ER bill for wound
cleaning and stitching.


Well, you have a factor there that doesn't bother me because the
National Health Service didn't charge me a penny for the overnight
stay with concussion I had after an accident (in which I was
wearing a helmet, by the way: it fractured, and in brittle failure
it only absorbs a fraction of what it should).


Nice that you have socialized medicine. We don't. But were you to go
to the ER what do you figure it costs you in terms of paying yourself?
If you are not aware of this factor, it means figuring out what the
time in the hospital cost you in terms of how much an hour you get
paid. The same principle can be applied to driving across town to save
a dime a galloin on gas, FWIW.


Did he allow for the increased population that are riding bikes today,
the advent of downhilling at breakneck speeds, increased (and more
hostile) traffic on the roads?


Looking at whole population figures over time, everything is taken
into account because /all/ of the reported incidents are in there
(and most serious incidents are reported).


Again, where is your ddata on the non-reported accidnets?


If not, he only taken a snap shot in time looking at the past - not
into what is coming.


Because the population figures deal with things over the period of
the recorded data you can see clear trends. Since before helmets
existed cyclist serious injuries have generally followed the
pedestrian trrends very closely. They have continued to do that as
helmets are increasingly used by cyclists with the peds being a
useful unhelmeted control group. In countries with mandatory
helmet laws the wearing rate has shot up from ~20% to nearly full
compiance and done it in a very short space of time, yet there
isn't so much as a noticable blip in the serious injury rate over
the same period. How can that be, if they're effcetive in
preventing serious injuries?


The only trend visible here is that you are using apples to make a
case about oranges and are remarkably without any data concerning less
than serious accidents. That is what is patently visible.


Any research can be skewed in any direction the researcher wants.


But if it's published and open to criticism then it's clear to see.
And what takes a lot of very bruising flak is the researcgh that
says helmets are very effective, and questions from the more
sceptical point of view have remained unsanswered.


Tell it to the MIT researcher who was just fired for manupulating data
and using false data. He got caught, but now everyone ois wondering
about all the previous stuff that went through this process without
detection. Tell it to the cold fusion gang, too.

merely forgetting to look at one variable can have the same effect -
skewing.


And this can be pointed out by anyone reading the research
critically. I have. I know quite a few people who have who are
better objective critics than me, and several of them have, like
me, gone from the "it's daft not to wear one" stance to not
bothering. It would not be in our interests to stop waering
something we already own and were used to wearing if we didn't
think the numbers stood up.


See above. Even those folks you are waxing poetic about can be fooled.
Happens all the time.


In terms of lesser cuts and bruises? Doesn't look like anyone is
addressing that specifically.


It's very difficult to because small injuries are very likely to be
unreported. The data simply isn't good enough to stand up to analysis.


Precisely, and what about that helmet in those situations? Did they
prevent a serious injury to the point it bacame non-reportable? What
would the cost have been had the lack of a helmet elevated that injury
to a reportable one? ThatIS the problem with using one category of
data to make a categorical statement about bike injuries.


Sure, my accident might not have killed
me or brooken my skull (serious) were I without a helmet, but I do
know that I did not have to go to the ER and based on the helmet
damage and its relative strength compared to my scalp, I probably
would have had to without a helmet.


For small injuries I believe they can help. That's why I'll
usually wear my helmet for mountain biking where the sort of low
speed crash with no other vehicle involved that cycle helmets are
*designed* for is quite likely.
But on the road I'm not likely to have that sort of accident and
bang my head, against which if I waer a helmet I can guarantee I
will have reduced comfort every time I climb on the bike. I ride a
'bent for comfort, so why put a foam box on my head to ruin things?


Hold it, now you seem to be on the other side. Either they work or
they don't. Which is it? You've been denigrtating jelmets throughout
all your posts to this point???


And there is the rub of a shortsightedness in the research - it cannot
allow for lesser accidents that do not require hospital reports
(serious). It cannot track or effectively report the impacts of
accidents (with or without helmets) where the injury did not require a
hospital visit. How many of them would have gone from a banged head
with a helmet to an ER visit without a helmet? That data is totally
missing. And that is some very pertinent data.


The number of visits that have fallen from seriious to not be worth
bothering about /will/ appear in the form of a drop of total
serious injuries, unless the rate at which that happens is
/exactly/ compensated for by more serious injuries from another
cause that doesn't affect the control data group of pedestrains,
who are just as at risk from worsening driving as cyclists (and we
have decades of numbers to show that to be true).


Not true. That is an ASSumption.



BTW, don't ever denigrate anecdotal evidence. It means little in
isolation, but in aggregate, points to areas where deeper research is
needed.


In aggregate is *exactly* what the whole population data is. That
is what I'm looking at, hundreds of thousands of data points,
rather than one or two.


But, one or two or three at some point become those hundreds or
thousands do they not?



It is like that fleeting warning that lets you know there are
more serious matters coming.


But the aggregate data tells us we're actually remarkably safe.
Per unit distance safer than being a pedestrian in the UK. So if I
cycle to work rather than walk I'm less likely to be involved in a
RTA, so why wouldn't you think I should wear a helmet if I walk?


Aggregate data is like a generalization. There are always exceptions.
Anecdotal evidence is that one and two and three. . .


Irrelevant. Walking, or taking a shower for that matter, is not
considered as being a hazardous activity; riding in traffic or
downhilling are. You are mixing apples and oranges to make your case.


But walking *is* a comparably hazardous activity. We know this
because of the aggregate population data. It may not be
/considered/ as hazardous but this is why you need to look at hard
numbers rather than make "common sense" assumptions.


Getting up out of bed is far more hazardous. So what? Neither compare
to cycling in any form. I've walked for most of my 60 years and have
walked far more miles than I have cycled over the last 14-15. Walking
has only resulted in a tweaked ankle or two. Cycling has caused torn
calf muscle, broken collar bone and torn rotator cuff from three
separate incidents. Only the collar bone accidnet caused a hospital
visit and fortunately, I was wearing my helmet (had no choice really,
required for the ride) and it sucked up that rock.


Downhilling is certainly a different matter. I wouldn't try it
anyway, if you did persuade me there's no way I'd do it without a
lid. But downhilling has no more to do with cycling in traffic
than international rally driving has to do with commuting to work
by car. Rally drivers wear 5 point harnesses, flameproof suits and
helmets. Commuter drivers don't.


Guess you should come on over here and drive out freeways. Might give
you an entirely new perspective on this. ;-


jim

  #19  
Old October 30th 05, 01:33 PM
rBOB
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default advisor wanted

I have a few pictures of my LIGHT PURPLE Earth Cycles Sunset Lowracer [TM] that I could post, but no convenient place to post them.

Good advice from others on the photos. If you don't want to open new
accounts, the easiest way to post the odd photo or two on the web (IMO)
is http://tinypic.com/

You don't need to register or do anything special--just upload it from
your desktop.

  #20  
Old October 30th 05, 01:49 PM
Peter Clinch
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default advisor wanted

wrote:

It is misguided because it concerns only "serious" accidents and I'm
betting you agree that far more less than "serious" accidents happen
than serious.


Certainly "less than serious" accidents happen, but by their very
nature they aren't serious. I've banged my head a few times and
drawn blood doing housework, I'm not alone in that. I don't feel
the need for a hlemt doing it though, and I doubt you do either.

Where are the stats for those, the ones that without a
helmet might have called for an ER visit and stitching?


If there were a significant number of those then there would be a
drop in the overall figures of serious injuries, but there aren't.

Put -'em up if you gottem, but I'm lookin' forward to your sounds of
silence.


They don't exist because they don't get to ER rooms. But they
don't get into the serious figures which they would have done
otherwise, and the serious head injury rates would have gone down
accordingly. But they haven't.

Where is your data on non-serious injuries? Without any on your part,
anecdotal evidence is better than your lack of information.


See above. For non-serious injuries they amount to basically
discomfort, /if/ I have one. A helmet means discomfort on 100% of
trips.

Well, if it is that easy, why haven't you done it?


Why haven't I done what?

Really, how do you propose that be measured? They only measure srious
injuries and have no data at all on those that walk away without a
report being filed.


But if they meant a serious injury was /avoided/ then the annual
rate of serious injuries would be coming down, and would show a
better trend than that for pedestrians who have historically
matched cyclist trends for years since before helmets were
introduced. This hasn't happened.

Again, you are using apples to make statements about oranges and are
clueless that you are doing it.


No I'm not. You read through the work at
www.cyclehelmets.org and
pick the real holes in it. It's fully referenced so you can get
back to the sources.

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/
 




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