Trikki Beltran's bad concussion and his helmet

On 18 Jul 2005 07:45:40 -0700, wrote:

And when a major corporation uses deception and politicking to get its
product _mandated_, there are serious problems with government.

You wouldn't be alluding to the "Bell Legislative Assistance Program"
there would you, Frank?


Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

"Let’s have a moment of silence for all those Americans who are stuck
in traffic on their way to the gym to ride the stationary bicycle."
- Earl Blumenauer

Werehatrack wrote:
On 17 Jul 2005 20:17:41 -0700, wrote:

I invite you to extend your
logic beyond cycling! After all, when _do_ you "know what's going to
happen"? Surely you realize that cycling is not even on the map for
causing serious head injuries, right? Why not wear a helmet for all
activities that cause head injuries?

Perhaps my habits have nothing to do with statistics or publicity.
Perhaps they were formed long ago because the only four people I've
known who had head injuries got them either on bikes or motorcycles.

And your anecdotes (trimmed) might be used to argue for motorcycle
helmets. I'll add that the per-hour fatality and head injury data I've
seen show motorcycles at least ten times as dangerous as motoring,
cycling or walking - all three of which are about equal, BTW.


The fourth was the only bicyclist. He was one of a pair struck by a
drunk driving a small pickup. Did the helmet save his life? That's
arguable. He went over the cab and landed in the bed of the truck;
the helmet was bashed, but it's hard to say if it was an impact that
would have been potentially fatal.

And if you haven't seen it, I'd be happy to post my counterexample.
But I've done that before. I'll repeat only on request.

Still, what you've given is four examples of people in crashes on two
wheels. Personally, I know far more people who were head injured,
several fatally, while riding in motor vehicles. Those head-injured
include two siblings, one grandmother, and one colleague at work. I
can quickly recall three friends who died in car crashes. One I know
died solely due to head injury; I suspect the others did as well,
because although it's never mentioned (there are no car helmets to
promote, after all) most car fatalities are due to head injury. And I
suspect there are more car head injuries among my acquaintances. In
America, these things are the most common source of head injury, but
are given very little attention and almost no publicity.

When was the last time you saw a motorist described this way?
"Officers said the motorist died of a head injury, like most fatally
injured motorists. He was not wearing a helmet."


Incorrect. My *personal* experience has been that *automobiles* pose
a significant risk to me when I'm on a bike out there in their path.

Ah well. I'm sure I've encountered many millions of automobiles in my
cycling life. My impression is much different than yours. If they
posed a significant risk, I'd have been significantly injured
_sometime_ in the past 50 years!

- Frank Krygowski

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 09:30:34 -0500, catzz66
wrote:


[re risk compensation]

To use it as a generalization is the leap. People are so complex that
anything "may" be true for some people, as your quote suggests. I don't
have any problem with that.

Actually I cannot think of a single area of life where risk
compensation does not happen. Seriously. The truly bizarre position
to my mind is to deny it applies to specific activities.

The only question, for me, is the extent to which we compensate. And
that is going to be a function of perceived risk and perceived levels
of protection. The extent of balancing behaviour may be very small,
or it may be very large. The tests for the likelihood of measurable
balancing behaviour include how noticeable the intervention is, how
conscious a person is of it, and so on. Helmets score high on these
scales. Adverts for mountain biking helmets play on this: "courage
for your head"; MTB mags discuss protective equipment as allowing you
to push the envelope.

Against that we have a small number of those who are strongly
pro-helmet who assert that risk compensation (uniquely) doesn't happen
in the case of cycle helmets. But as I said, when they set out to
prove it at least one of these types found the opposite...


Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

"Let’s have a moment of silence for all those Americans who are stuck
in traffic on their way to the gym to ride the stationary bicycle."
- Earl Blumenauer

The Wogster wrote:
I can be funny, in cars, I
believe in seat-belt laws but only for the driver, because a seat-belt,
can keep the driver in his/her seat and able to possibly regain control
after a crash.

I tend to go the other way. I think we'd be better off by forbidding
driver seat belts, and attaching a 6" steel spike to the center of each
steering wheel, pointed at the driver's chest.

The last thing we need, IMO, is to make drivers feel even more
invulnerable.

- Frank Krygowski

wrote:

I tend to go the other way. I think we'd be better off by forbidding
driver seat belts, and attaching a 6" steel spike to the center of each
steering wheel, pointed at the driver's chest.

The last thing we need, IMO, is to make drivers feel even more
invulnerable.

- Frank Krygowski

And it is insightful comments like this that add so much to the helmet
debate. And some wonder why your "investigations" are not universally
accepted as the gospel.

On 18 Jul 2005 08:28:02 -0700, "gds" wrote:

I tend to go the other way. I think we'd be better off by forbidding
driver seat belts, and attaching a 6" steel spike to the center of each
steering wheel, pointed at the driver's chest.
The last thing we need, IMO, is to make drivers feel even more
invulnerable.

And it is insightful comments like this that add so much to the helmet
debate. And some wonder why your "investigations" are not universally
accepted as the gospel.

Interestingly, the rabidly pro-car motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson
is on record as saying exactly the same as Frank.


Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

"Let’s have a moment of silence for all those Americans who are stuck
in traffic on their way to the gym to ride the stationary bicycle."
- Earl Blumenauer

Per Bill Sornson:
Depending on what "vanishingly rare" means...

A guy I windsurf with even wears a helmet when he windsurfs.

He's a orthopaedic surgeon with a significant amount of ER experience on people
that have been involved in accidents.

His take: "Remember, when you wear a helmet, it's against an event that may
occur only once in your entire lifetime."

I don't wear a helmet windsurfing unless I'm out in conditions beyond what I'm
used to - like winds beyond the low thirties - but this guy is no dummy and he
is so vastly-experienced that I've got to take notice of his rationale.

--
PeteCresswell

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

But there is no known case where cyclist safety has improved with
increasing helmet use, so obviously what goes on after the crash is
only part of the story.

This looks like a pretty serious overstatement of the case here. The
most thorough meta-analysis of studies relating to helmet use and
injury that I've seen is this one from 1998:

Thompson DC, Patterson MQ. Cycle helmets and the prevention of
injuries. Recommendations for competitive sport. Sports Med. 1998
Apr;25(4):213-9.

http://tinyurl.com/c7ek7

There are basically two types of studies on the topic, both of which
are examined in the above meta-analysis: one kind is the case-control
study. In this sort of study you look at people who go to the hospital
from bike crashes and divide them into head injury and non-head injury
groups. Then you look at variables that discriminate between the two
groups (like whether the person was wearing a helmet). Several large,
well designed case-control studies pretty clearly demonstrate that IF
you have a wreck, wearing a helmet is associated with a lower
probability of head injury. So that pretty clearly renders the
"torsional stress" argument moot.

Still, that doesn't demonstrate that wearing a helmet makes you less
likely to get a head injury; you might ride crazy because of the Magic
Foam Hat effect mentioned elsewhere in this thread. For that question,
the other kind of study is more appropriate -- a "time-series" study.
This kind looks at overall numbers of bicycle-related head injuries
over time, and correlates them with other events, such as introduction
of helmet laws or increased rates of helmet use. The data are mixed
from these. The paper above cites three studies from Queensland and
Victoria, Australia, and Seattle, WA. In all three head injuries went
down with increased helmet use. There's also a recent study showing
similar effects from a mandatory youth helmet law in California:

Lee, Brian Ho-Yin1 Schofer, Joseph L.2Koppelman, Frank S. Bicycle
safety helmet legislation and bicycle-related non-fatal injuries in
California. Accident Analysis & Prevention; Jan2005, Vol. 37 Issue 1,
p93. http://tinyurl.com/a2z3r

On the other hand, some studies fail to find decreased head injuries
with increased helmet use, like this one from New Zealand:

Robinson DL. Reasons for trends in cyclist injury data. Inj Prev
2004;10:126-127. http://tinyurl.com/coa95

So you can hardly say that there's "no known case" of improved safety
with helmet use, although it's certainly true that lots of other
factors besides wearing a helmet are important. Is there any study
showing decreased safety with helmet use? If not, I'd say it would be
wiser to err on the safe side.

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
Interestingly, the rabidly pro-car motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson
is on record as saying exactly the same as Frank.


And so you are now arguing that two (or more) ridiculous comments add
up to something worth while?

The discount factor on your judgement has just gone up a lot.

gds wrote:
Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:
Interestingly, the rabidly pro-car motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson
is on record as saying exactly the same as Frank.


And so you are now arguing that two (or more) ridiculous comments add
up to something worth while?

The discount factor on your judgement has just gone up a lot.

Perhaps Guy is hinting that Clarkson's audience was able to appreciate
irony? ;-)

I don't know how the typical motorhead comares with the typical
bike-helmeted handwringer, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were
more astute!

- Frank Krygowski