Raged motorist strikes two cyclists

Woody Brison wrote:

snip

Note that while they test the helmets with a 14 mph
collision, and it's supposed to exhibit a certain shock
protection, it will reduce shock in a 28 mph collision. The
range doesn't cut off sharp, it decreases gradually.

This is true. Also, what many AHZ's apparently don't understand
(actually they do understand it but they pretend not to) is that a 30
mph collision does not usually result in a 30 mph head impact. By the
time the cyclist's head impacts something, the rate of impact is greatly
reduced by decelleration (sliding against the road, etc.).

In article , SMS wrote:
Woody Brison wrote:

snip

Note that while they test the helmets with a 14 mph
collision, and it's supposed to exhibit a certain shock
protection, it will reduce shock in a 28 mph collision. The
range doesn't cut off sharp, it decreases gradually.

This is true. Also, what many AHZ's

Who is trying to ban bicycle helmets? Nobody that I've noticed.

apparently don't understand
(actually they do understand it but they pretend not to) is that a 30
mph collision does not usually result in a 30 mph head impact. By the
time the cyclist's head impacts something, the rate of impact is greatly
reduced by decelleration (sliding against the road, etc.).

Which is part of why bicycling mishaps rarely result in more than minor
injuries foam hat worn or not.

On Mon, 27 Aug 2007 01:32:04 -0700, "Bjorn Berg f/Fergie Berg and
All the Ships at S" said in
om:

Now go the **** away.

Have you not discovered how to ignore threads in which you are not
interested?


Oh, wait, I see you are using Gurgle Gropes. There is no hope for
you, then.

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

85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound

On Mon, 27 Aug 2007 08:23:47 -0700, SMS
said in :

This is true. Also, what many AHZ's apparently don't understand
(actually they do understand it but they pretend not to) is that a 30
mph collision does not usually result in a 30 mph head impact. By the
time the cyclist's head impacts something, the rate of impact is greatly
reduced by decelleration (sliding against the road, etc.).

LOL! So you start sliding before you hit the road, do you?

Here's an extract from the Transport Research Laboratory's report
PPR213:

"in both low speed linear impacts and the most severe oblique cases,
linear and rotational accelerations may increase to levels
corresponding to injury severities as high as AIS 2 or 3, at which a
marginal increase (up to 1 AIS interval) in injury outcome may be
expected for a helmeted head. The true response of the bare human
head to oblique, glancing blows is not known and these observations
could not be concluded with certainty, but may be indicative of
possible trends. A greater understanding is therefore needed to
allow an accurate assessment of injury tolerance in oblique impacts.
Linear impact performance, head inertia and helmet fit were
identified as important contributory factors to the level of induced
rotational motion and injury potential. The design of helmets to
include a broad range of sizes was also concluded to be detrimental
to helmet safety, in terms of both reduced linear and rotational
impact performance. The introduction into EN1078 of an oblique
impact test could ensure that helmets do not provide an excessive
risk of rotational head injury."

Redux: cycle crashes are complex, helmet tests are overly
simplistic, helmets might make the worst kind of injuries worse.

All of which may contribute to explaining why large-scale increases
in helmet wearing have *never* produced a measurable change in head
injury rates in *any* real cyclist population. Obviously it's not
as simple as you make out.

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

85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound

Woody Brison wrote:
On Aug 21, 5:07 pm, Festivus wrote:

But I don't have any problem with allowing personal choice in any of
this. Motorcycle helmets, seat belts, whatever - once you hit 18, you
ought to be able to make your own call.

If all individuals paid for their own hospitalization,
that'd be fine, but we pay as a group. Insurance premiums
and taxes. It makes sense to try to protect the group
from excessive levies.

For life insurance, all of this is considered. Obesity, cholesterol,
dangerous activities, etc. With employer provided health insurance I
guess they could base the employee contribution based on this, but I
don't know of any employer that does that.

I know that in some states that have lifted the motorcycle helmet law,
they require proof of health insurance.

The number of bicycle accidents where a helmet would make a significant
difference is so small that it makes no sense to classify bicycling as
an activity that has an impact on insurance rates.

Woody Brison wrote in
ps.com:

On Aug 21, 5:07 pm, Festivus wrote:

But I don't have any problem with allowing personal choice in any of
this. Motorcycle helmets, seat belts, whatever - once you hit 18, you
ought to be able to make your own call.

If all individuals paid for their own hospitalization,
that'd be fine, but we pay as a group. Insurance premiums
and taxes. It makes sense to try to protect the group
from excessive levies.

Wood


just pass a law allowing insurance companies an exemption that people who
fail to take reasonable precautions(seatbelt or helmet for cycles) cannot
make a claim against their insurance.Then they can make their choice as
they see fit,and live by the consequences of their choice.

Of course,by law,hosptal emergency rooms STILL have to treat them,and that
cost just gets added to everyone's medical expenses.
(like all the illegal aliens who use emergency rooms as their primary care
provider)

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net

On Aug 27, 9:05 am, wrote:
On Aug 27, 1:57 am, Woody Brison wrote:

On Aug 21, 5:07 pm, Festivus wrote:

But I don't have any problem with allowing personal choice in any of
this. Motorcycle helmets, seat belts, whatever - once you hit 18, you
ought to be able to make your own call.

If all individuals paid for their own hospitalization,
that'd be fine, but we pay as a group. Insurance premiums
and taxes. It makes sense to try to protect the group
from excessive levies.

Let's see: In the US, there are only about 750 fatalities from
bicycling in a year -

So I'd guess there must be a commensurate number of
serious injuries. Let's define 'serious' for the moment
as "expensive". How many? 3X? 4X? That would be 3000
serious injuries. How serious? Let's guess $10,000
average seriousness. That's $30M a year. But the vast
majority of cyclists must have insurance. So the levy
on the public might be somewhere in the range of 3 to 6
M$ a year. Each person's share of that is about 1 or 2
cents per year. I'd not call that a heavy levy. I'd
say, if we can decide that bike helmets really help,
then I personally would wear one - usually, but I'd
hate to get a ticket if I skipped the helmet one day
to ride 6 blocks over to my friend's. I think maybe
this mandatory helmet law isn't all that good an idea.

...a figure roughly equal to the deaths from poison
gases. But there are hundreds of thousands of fatalities each year
from heart disease; from stroke; from lung disease.

So let's have a universal no smoking law. It costs me
400 to 800 dollars a year in defraying medical expenses
for smokers.

Major causes of medical expenses in this country are lack of exercise
and obesity.

Chewing is exercise!

About 40,000 motorists die each year, most from head injuries.

It may eventually be possible to get robots to drive the
vehicles. I don't think that area's getting enough focus.
The technical problem itself is almost trivial, it's the
social acceptance, funding, legals, etc. People want the
robot to drive them from A to B while they sleep, but it
would be a tremendous advance if we could just tell the
computer to drive along this road here and don't hit
anything. Tell it turn here, park there.

... Tens
of thousands of people are killed due to falls while just walking
around their own homes.

Well, that makes me scratch my head. Whoa! I scratched
my head! Flesh eating bacteria!!!

At some point we have to find a way to rely on good old
unvarnished American natural sunshiny innocent Common
Sense. I just don't see any other way around it.

So quit hiding your private information!

Yumpin' Yiminy, yes sir! I mean no sir! What
information do I need to furnish about my privates.

... We demand to know your age,

You know my age. It's in every data base.

your weight,

That depends on the situation. In orbit, it's zero.
During launch it could be several tons. What you
really want to know is my mass. Believe it or not,
I've known ROCKET SCIENTISTS to get that confused.

... your percent body fat,

Depends on which part of my body. Some parts are pretty
lean and other parts get quite fat at times.

... your diet in detail for the past
six months (including whether you eat meat),

I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday,
how in Sam Hill am I going to be able to detail out
six months? Couldn't you want something else?

... the amount of alcohol you
consume,

That's easy. Zero. I'm a Mormon.

... and how much time you spend in contact with cigarette smoke.

Well, about six minutes a year. If I have to go into
a bar to ask directions. But since smokers smoke into
the atmosphere, and since that's the source of breath
for most of us, you might be able to guess this answer.

We want to know how many hours you drive in a year,

Hours? minutes would probably be a better unit.

... and how many hours
you swim.

I used to swim a lot, like an hour a day. But I was
getting so many infections that I decided the rec center
pool is having just too many bodies in it. So I went to
my second-best exercise, cycling. I'm thinking of
getting one of those job things so I can buy my own pool.

... We want to know whether you live in a place that has those
ridiculously hazardous things called "stairs,"

Yeah but I only touch them going up.

... and whether you wear a
helmet when walking down them.

I don't walk down. I launch from the top step and land on
the landing below. Fun! Until the lumbar disks fail.

... We want to know what caused the death
of each of your relatives.

Relatives? I don't have any. They all dead.

... We want to know whether you ever play
basketball (the number one recreational reason for visiting an ER).

Well, I did take my daughter out and showed her the
basics. Haven't been able to move my right arm since.

And before you decide to do something really risky - like ride a
motorcycle, or go up in a light plane - we want you to clear it with
all of us here. Get our permission first, dammit!

From my observation on this thread alone - I don't even
remember how I wandered onto it - there isn't likely to
be agreement on much of anything, not even on the laws
of logic, let alone whether heavier-than-air flight is
possible for me. I think heavy thoughts!

Because all those things are probably worse than bicycling. And it
makes sense to try to protect the group from excessive levies. Right?

Right. Address the bigger problems first. I think we
could schedule this bike helmet thing for discussion
again in about 2525.

Wood

On Aug 27, 2:06 am, Woody Brison wrote:
On Aug 25, 9:49 am, (Brent P)
wrote:

In article , SMS wrote:
1. They use the phrase "foam hat" in an effort to make the reader
believe that any protection device which uses foam to absorb shock is
somehow worthless.

Because that is what it is. When I think of helmet, I think of something
like a motorcycle helmet or combat helmet or batting helmet, not a
flimsy foam cap. Calling it a 'helmet' is quite misleading IMO because it
gives people the impression that it is a protective device of much more
capability than it has.

I'm reminded of Don Quixote, who got out his grandfathers'
old armor, and the helm didn't have a visor so he made one
of cardboard. He tested it and it was ineffective. So he
made a new one, but he didn't test that, because he was
getting tired of making them. These tests have to be real
or they're just a scam.

Note that a combat helmet is useless against a direct hit
with a 10-inch shell. All armor has a range of energy for
which it is effective. With the armor you're safer, within
that range. Below that range there's no point and above it
there's no point. The question is, what's the range and is
it worth it.

Note that while they test the helmets with a 14 mph
collision, and it's supposed to exhibit a certain shock
protection, it will reduce shock in a 28 mph collision. The
range doesn't cut off sharp, it decreases gradually.

I am not sure that "decreases gradually" is totally correct. Mills
{1} in his study of bicycle helmets says "A good helmet should protect
the wearer for impacts up to 15 mph into a rigid flat surface." and
"Once the foam is more than 90 percent compressed it bottoms out and
the force on the head rises rapidly."

It looks to me like there the shock protection works to a point and
then catastrophically fails. I don't remember if Mills gives a point
when the helmet foam is expected to compact to 90%

1. Mills, N. J. (1990). Protective capability of bicycle helmets.
British Journal of Sports Medicine, 24(1), 55-60.

On Aug 27, 10:36 am, "Just zis Guy, you know?" wrote:
On Mon, 27 Aug 2007 01:32:04 -0700, "Bjorn Berg f/Fergie Berg and
All the Ships at S" said in
om:

Now go the **** away.

Have you not discovered how to ignore threads in which you are not
interested?

Oh, wait, I see you are using Gurgle Gropes. There is no hope for
you, then.

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

85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound

Not as long as Terrornews is my only real hope for a provider and they
want a credit card for some damn fee. Visa/MC is the real great Satan.

PS Am I to understand you're Biritish, or is that where you hide?

Maybe you are DeSeRt BoB.

On Mon, 27 Aug 2007 11:51:01 -0700, "Bill Sornson"
said in :

So of course why wear one at all! People who argue that would also tell
cops not to bother with bullet-proof vests because A) they won't stop AK47s
and B) they won't prevent fatal head shots.

Misleading analogy. Bullet-proof vests are actually designed to be
bullet proof, helmets are not designed or certified to resist the
kinds of force involved in a serious or fatal bike accident.

Actually there is some evidence that they may exacerbate the worst
kinds of injuries, but, as these studies acknowledge, this has yet
to be investigated to any great extent. The people with research
budgets are too busy on policy-based evidence making to spend time
looking into what really happens, I guess.

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

85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound