Hitting your head

On Thu, 16 Jan 2020 06:34:34 -0800, sms wrote:

On 1/15/2020 7:31 PM, news18 wrote:

snip

That is an arse pluck from a well know, log temr mouth frothing
supporter of mandatory helmet law.

I have never favored MHLs.


snip folksy diversion of the point.

However there is no dispute about the benefits of helmets in terms of
injury prevention and reduction. The scientific evidence is irrefutable.
The statistical evidence is irrefutable.

If you narrow the field of comparison, a lot of ideas look just great.
examined in the wide field of real life they don't.

snip folksy.

Also, there has never been any evidence that variations in bicycle usage
varies based on the presence or absence of the encouragement or
requirement of helmet usage.

Lol, the evidence is there to see. It was very much evident in Australia
when mandatory helmet laws were first introduced. This point was
mentioned in that article.

On Thursday, January 16, 2020 at 8:32:56 PM UTC, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 1/16/2020 3:01 AM, wrote:
On Thursday, January 16, 2020 at 1:10:32 AM UTC+1, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 1/15/2020 6:32 PM, Uncle Wiggly wrote:

I do believe that helmets do have one very positive effect - they change relatively light injuries from the most common accidents - single bike falls from rider error - from light injuries to little or much lighter injuries. Or instead of having painful scraping of an ear or scalp, these are eliminated. I see this as a reason to wear a helmet.

I see this as a reason not to crash. So far that tactic has worked very
well. I've literally never needed the protection of a helmet.

Admittedly, I've only been riding for 50-something years as an adult.
(Plus maybe 15 years as a kid.) We'll see how things go in my future.


--
- Frank Krygowski

Frank I consider myself as a competent and cautious bike rider and I thought I could prevent a crash if I was riding alone and could control my own risk. That believe came to an end with my crash last year into a woman that suddenly appeared out of the bushes from the dark onto a well lit bike path I was riding on. I was wearing conspicious clothes and running top af the bill lights. I took a hit on my head, broke two ribs and my collarbone, so it was a serious crash which I have no remembrance of. Result is that now I not only wear a helmet on group rides, off road rides or hilly/mounain rides but also on my evening rides in the dark. It took a while before my confidence was such that I leave my helmet off now and then on flat rides, alone in daylight. I'm not claiming anything and don't trust any statistic studies about helmets use and I don't care. I just do my own risk assesment and I discovered that there are people that do stupid things you can't anticipate on. I have no opinion about other peoples reasons to wear a helmet or not, maybe you should do the same.

Lou, I'm not directing any individual to wear or not wear a helmet. I'm
talking in general about the promotion or mandating of foam helmets as
normal equipment for all bike rides. That promotion (or in some cases
mandate) is now probably the most common safety recommendation for
bicyclists in the U.S., if not in the entire westernized world.

Is it justified? No, it's not, based on readily available data on
sources of traumatic brain injury, or on risk to the individual. The
propaganda commonly talks about cost to society of bike TBI, but bikes
cause less than 2% of TBI in America. Propaganda talks about death from
a simple fall, but well over ten million miles are ridden between bike
deaths, and helmets have had no detectable effect on bike deaths. The
propaganda talks about what _might_ happen, totally ignoring available
information on what actually _does_ happen.

Yes, Lou, you may have had a bad crash. But bicyclists are not the only
ones hurt by weird accidents. I have a friend who was walking in the
woods with my wife and me, who tripped on a hidden root and broke bones
and suffered a concussion. Another friend was walking for exercise with
friends during a lunch break, tripped on a sidewalk crack and fell on
her face so hard the ER people accused her husband of beating her. I
witnessed a pedestrian hit by a car hard enough that his body was tossed
in the air higher than the roof of the car, and who landed on his head
on the pavement. I have several friends who suffered TBI from riding in
cars. I have friends who have been injured while hiking, while working
around the home...

But in NONE of those incidents was anyone told "You should have worn a
helmet." There are no pedestrian helmet recommendations, ladder climbing
helmet recommendations, driving helmet recommendations. If you had been
jogging on that path and the woman had knocked you down, you would have
heard nothing about jogging or running helmets.

The bike helmet mania has been sold based on a myth of great risk, and
its been fostered by bicyclists treating every minor crash as almost
sure death. It totally ignores real world data. If the same sales pitch
were used for any medical intervention, governments would prosecute the
perpetrators for fraud - and most people would chide the individual
testimonies as naivete and delusion.

Perhaps the bigger question is: Why do so many people ignore data when
evaluating risk? Why are so many people susceptible to propaganda and
their own imagination? Is it just general innumeracy, or is it some
other failure of the education system?

--
- Frank Krygowski

Methinks the old hag doth protetheth too much -- Whallam Shacksper

On Thu, 16 Jan 2020 16:07:05 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 1/16/2020 2:04 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:
I like the idea of the Bontrager Q-Cell helmet which is designed specifically to prevent concussions rather than skull fracture...

"Designed to" is one of the most optimistic phrases used in advertising.


No Frank, that is a perfectly valid claim.... especially when you add
the phrase "to be marketed" :-)
--
cheers,

John B.

On Thu, 16 Jan 2020 11:04:11 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

Helmets do offer protection because that's what they are designed to do.

Helmets are designed to protect against road rash and dropped
wrenches.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net

On 1/16/2020 7:15 AM, jbeattie wrote:

snip

Every crash is preventable, just don't ride your bike, and if you must ride, don't (1) ride in a group, (2) ride near cars or pedestrians, (3) ride in low traction environment like wet, snowy or icy roads. Riding at night is probably a bad idea, and never, ever ride a mountain bike on an actual trail. My last crash was dopey, but I wasn't doing anything wrong. My friend bobbled and ran into me -- which would be no big deal except that our bars got tangled. I bumped people a million times on the track, but hitting elbows or shoulders is different from getting equipment tangled up.

I would dispute the part about riding at night. I find that cyclists
riding at night, with good lighting systems, are actually more visible
than daytime riders with no lights, and just as visible as daytime
riders that use DRLs.

Frank also lives in this idyllic village where drivers waive and congratulate him on his fine dyno lighting. In downtown PDX, I'm dodging students and/or lunatic homeless people launching off the curb into the road willy-nilly. I was JRA in the middle of the lane on 9/11/01 and a bus hit me from behind. WTF? I wasn't hurt, but sh** happens even when you're riding in the middle of the lane and "controlling traffic."

Oh man, no one has ever congratulated me on my fine dyno lighting which
I suspect is even finer than Frank's. I guess there's now a good reason
to visit Ohio. Perhaps in his village there are so few night-time riders
that Frank is worshiped as some kind of dyno god.

In 2003 I was riding home from work with my homebrew lighting system
that used two 14 watt 12V sealed beam halogen lamps and a kid called out
"nice lights." Does that count as "congratulations?" It was unsolicited
praise. These days good lights are so common that no one would think to
praise a cyclists using them.

On 1/16/2020 7:58 AM, Rolf Mantel wrote:
Am 16.01.2020 um 15:34 schrieb sms:

I have never favored MHLs.

However there is no dispute about the benefits of helmets in terms of
injury prevention and reduction. The scientific evidence is
irrefutable. The statistical evidence is irrefutable.

Yes, there is dispute about the benefits of helmets.Â* Hospital studies
all clearly show that helmets are useful while population studies show
that helmets are useless.Â* This discrepancy has not been resolved, hence
it is not known whether ans to which extent helmets are useful.

Sadly, a population study is not going to offer you much protection in a
head-impact crash.

On 1/16/2020 11:17 AM, Duane wrote:

snip

Do you have hipsters in PDX?Â* They're all over the mountain here.Â* Doing
wheelies down the mountain on fixies while texting their buddies and
grooving to their ear buds.Â* I started handing out cards telling them
the cheap wine is free in Ohio.

Not going to work. Trader Joe's lowered the price of "Two Buck Chuck"
back to $2.

On Thursday, January 16, 2020 at 8:48:53 PM UTC-8, Joy Beeson wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jan 2020 11:04:11 -0800 (PST), Tom Kunich
wrote:

Helmets do offer protection because that's what they are designed to do.

Helmets are designed to protect against road rash and dropped
wrenches.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net

I agree with you. I was pointing out that the Bontrager helmet is designed to also prevent concussion which other helmet are not.

Here's a photograph of the helmet which saved me from stitches, concussion, blood poisoning, or worse, in the incident reported below.
http://www.coolmainpress.com/miscima...ash_883pxh.jpg
The dent is visible as is the cow dung the helmet picked up from the farm road.

On Wednesday, January 15, 2020 at 12:10:13 PM UTC, Andre Jute wrote:

I wear the helmet routinely. I've had plastic surgery done to my face and don't fancy it again. Mine was minor but I've seen major surgery and am even less keen on that.

There was a recent incident in which the helmet at least saved me stitches. I wasn't riding the bike at the time. I had stopped in the middle of a small country road to paint a scene and as I got off the bike, the back of my sandal got hooked on the bike and I fell over backwards with the bike on top of me. My head hit the tarmac hard enough for a spectacular display of stars and to knock me out momentarily. Without the helmet there would have been at least a trip to the surgery for stitches in my scalp and possibly a concussion, maybe not as serious as Tom's but still dangerous enough. As it was, the truckie who stopped and put me on my feet asked me three times if I wouldn't rather have him drop me at my doctor's. But I know quite a bit about concussions, and was okay enough to paint the scene and then turn for home without completing the rest of the ride, just in case I passed out on one of the faster sections and did myself some damage. The next day it was all a memory, instead of hurting from a cut scalp for a couple of weeks. That makes wearing the helmet worthwhile.

Andre Jute
Deja vu

On Friday, January 17, 2020 at 7:38:45 AM UTC-8, sms wrote:
On 1/16/2020 11:17 AM, Duane wrote:

snip

Do you have hipsters in PDX?Â* They're all over the mountain here.Â* Doing
wheelies down the mountain on fixies while texting their buddies and
grooving to their ear buds.Â* I started handing out cards telling them
the cheap wine is free in Ohio.

Not going to work. Trader Joe's lowered the price of "Two Buck Chuck"
back to $2.

Free is better than $2, and Ohio has other inducements. They're basically giving houses away. Go to Redfin and look at Youngstown. https://www.redfin..com/OH/Youngstow.../home/71983689 Ay chihuahua! A hipster could buy a house there and fill it with wine.

-- Jay Beattie.