Trikki Beltran's bad concussion and his helmet

I submit that on or about Tue, 26 Jul 2005 04:34:42 GMT, the person
known to the court as SMS made a statement
in Your Honour's bundle) to
the following effect:

Where did you come up with that? You'd be very hard-pressed to ever find
an instance where the extra inch or two of thickness of the helmet was
responsible for the blow, but there are probably tens of thousandss to
hundreds of thousands instances of a helmet reducing the severity of a blow.

Do cite your source for those figures. Or would that involve giving
us the name of your proctologist?

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

I submit that on or about Tue, 26 Jul 2005 14:48:08 GMT, the person
known to the court as SMS made a statement
in Your Honour's bundle) to
the following effect:

Yes it will. And because there can be no double-blind study, the answer
will never be as clear and concise as you would like it to be. This does
not mean that all the ER studies, and all the statistical studies of
relative severity of injuries should be ignored. You have to look at the
big picture, listen to experts, and use some common sense.

Ah, "common sense", that reliable guide in all things. "Common sense"
tells us that seat belt laws save lives, helmet laws save lives, ABS
will reduce crash frequency and so on. Sadly, real life shows a
disappointing unwillingness to back up "common sense" in practice.

So yes, read the studies. Fully. All of them. Don't believe what
helmet zealots like Scharf tell you about them (or sceptics like me
for that matter), get the data, look at it and make up your own mind.
If you find troubling discrepancies like massive differences in motor
vehicle involvement between case and control groups (Thompson, Rivara
and Thompson), or supposedly expert statisticians confusing percentage
change with percentage points change (Cook & Sheikh), then you may
conclude it is reasonable to ignore that evidence.

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

I submit that on or about Tue, 26 Jul 2005 14:44:36 GMT, the person
known to the court as SMS made a statement
in Your Honour's bundle) to
the following effect:

In both health care and food processing, the movement was hijacked by
corporate interests, whose only interest was in dismantling it.
[snip]
However this all has nothing to do with bicycle helmets.

True: in the case of helmets, the helmet manufacturers are actively
promoting the do-gooders, to the point of funding lobbying for
legislative programs. If only they expended as much effort and cash
promoting training!

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

I submit that on or about Tue, 26 Jul 2005 16:01:02 GMT, the person
known to the court as SMS made a statement
in Your Honour's bundle) to
the following effect:

The actual cause of any increase/decrease is
arguable, but in fact any changes probably were subject to multiple
factors.

This is a key point that many people don't understand. You cannot
attribute a change to a single factor. I.e. there are several factors
why children bike and walk to school less than they did in the past, yet
some people will point to the exaggeration of the risks as the sole
factor. Bicycle use has also gone down in areas without any helmet laws,
but this is conveniently ignored.

Sometimes you can attribute a change to a single factor. The fall in
recorded cycling levels in Australia and New Zealand is hard to
attribute to any other cause. But it is true that un-enforced laws do
not have the same deterrent affect; nor do they actually result in
much change in helmet wearing rates. A bit pointless, really!

I just wish people would look at the big picture before making
statements like the three you are referring to, but unfortunately not
everyone has learned to think critically.

Yup, we noticed. For example, some of these people base most of their
arguments on ascribing to sceptics the worst excesses of the zealots,
while quietly ignoring the zealots' own faults!

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

I submit that on or about Tue, 26 Jul 2005 18:49:55 GMT, the person
known to the court as SMS made a statement
in Your Honour's bundle) to
the following effect:

Some us can see both sides of the issue despite our personal beliefs on
the issue.

Yup. Quite why you think you are one of those "us" is a bit of a
mystery, though :-)

For instance,
I've seen a lot of time spent arguing over whether cycling injuries are
rare or not. This is a relevant question in formulating public policy,
but as a clinician I don't have the luxury of looking at it that way.
This may seem unfair, but it's my job and this doubtless colors my
perception of the problem.

That is the crux of the helmet argument, at least among people that can
accept the results of the reputable studies.

And which studies, precisely, do you consider reputable? Citations
only, not the usual vague assertions.

It is remarkable how consistent you are in making the absurd claim
that it is the sceptics who are not reading the evidence! Why do you
think we are sceptics in the first place? Many of us - probably most
- used to be helmet advocates, until we actually went out and read
those "reputable studies" to which you blithely allude. As ever your
argument rests on falsely accusing others of your own worst fault!

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

The Wogster wrote:

SMS wrote:
The Wogster wrote:

The question has always been, and always will be, by how much...

Ridiculous. The information isn't worth the cost of obtaining it. And
has been pointed out, statistics are more prone to abuse than a
cyclist's skull anyway. Black will become white.

What I would like to see, is two new pieces of information added to
police reports, helmet yes or not, then on ER reports, indicate the
police report number. The police report would indicate what happened,
if it can not be determined - for example if one or more participants is
unable to provide information, a reconstruction crew would reconstruct
the incident.

Who is the sucker paying for the "reconstruction crew?" JFC. What I
would like to see is a lay off of the police and all other people
wasting time/money with this nonsense. You could give helmets away with
the money saved.

Now you wait for enough data, on a national basis, 4 - 5 years worth of
data would be sufficient. However we are still missing the 50% of
incidents where there are no injuries, and everybody just calls each
other dumbass, and heads off in their own direction. We are also still
missing the 99.9999% of bicycle rides, where there are no mishaps.

I don't know what you're driving at. I've destroyed at least 4 helmets
in crashes. None of these "incidents" was reported.

The Sheeple luv the guvmint running their lives in every possible way.
Why take care of yourself when the guvmint can do it for free (meaning
TAX THE RICH GREEDY *******S!)? We have FEMA, ag subsidies, The Fed
(monetary policy), Fiscal policy, The Dept. of Ed., NASA, the FDA,
SoshalInSecurity, Medicare, Medicaid, and on and on to all manner of
parasitic behavior on the taxpayer. Why should helmet special interests
be any different? I think it is in the General Welfare clause or
something. LOL

I submit that on or about Tue, 26 Jul 2005 19:10:34 GMT, the person
known to the court as SMS made a statement
in Your Honour's bundle) to
the following effect:

since the injury rate per capita went up, it must have been
the cyclists that rode more carefully to begin with, that gave up
cycling completely!

The risk of a motorist colliding with a cyclist or walker increases at
roughly 0.4 power of the number of people walking or cycling, so
doubling the number of cyclists reduces risk by 32%.

"Safety in numbers: more walkers and bicyclists, safer walking and
bicycling", P L Jacobsen, Injury Prevention 2003;9:205–209

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

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

I submit that on or about Tue, 26 Jul 2005 19:10:34 GMT, the person
known to the court as SMS made a statement
in Your Honour's bundle) to
the following effect:


since the injury rate per capita went up, it must have been
the cyclists that rode more carefully to begin with, that gave up
cycling completely!


The risk of a motorist colliding with a cyclist or walker increases at
roughly 0.4 power of the number of people walking or cycling, so
doubling the number of cyclists reduces risk by 32%.

You've never done the 5-borough bike tour.

Steve

"Safety in numbers: more walkers and bicyclists, safer walking and
bicycling", P L Jacobsen, Injury Prevention 2003;9:205–209

Guy


--
Mark & Steven Bornfeld DDS
http://www.dentaltwins.com
Brooklyn, NY
718-258-5001

I submit that on or about Tue, 26 Jul 2005 20:31:37 GMT, the person
known to the court as Mark & Steven Bornfeld
made a statement
(J4xFe.9769$ab2.8618@trndny07 in Your Honour's bundle) to the
following effect:

The risk of a motorist colliding with a cyclist or walker increases at
roughly 0.4 power of the number of people walking or cycling, so
doubling the number of cyclists reduces risk by 32%.

You've never done the 5-borough bike tour.

Heh! You got mail...

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

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
The risk of a motorist colliding with a cyclist or walker increases at
roughly 0.4 power of the number of people walking or cycling, so
doubling the number of cyclists reduces risk by 32%.

"Safety in numbers: more walkers and bicyclists, safer walking and
bicycling", P L Jacobsen, Injury Prevention 2003;9:205–209

The number is 31.48%, is Jacobsen using bad science and rounding up?

-e