Helmets

ookook wrote:
But if you have an accident, hitting your helmeted head on the ground
and not getting injured, then it isn't a serious accident, even though
if you had the same accident without a helmet you might have a skull
fracture or worse.

Oh, sure. And that happens a _lot_ to cyclists, does it? More often
than to anyone else, I suppose?

What hitting your head on the ground? I suspect it happens to
cyclists more than walkers, runners, tennis players, basketball
players, etc.

:-) You suspect? Hmm. Several of us are far beyond the "I suspect"
level in this debate.

As I posted on another thread: Here are the head injury fatality rates
for the three modes:
Cycling: 0.19 HI deaths per million hours;
Pedestrians: 0.34 HI deaths per million hours;
Motorists: 0.17 HI deaths per million hours.

Those are from "Head Injuries and Bicycle Helmet Laws," Robinson, D.L.,
Accident Analysis & Prevention, Vol 28, No. 4, pp. 463-475, 1996.

From the same source, the head injury hospitalizations per million
hours are 2.2 for cyclists, 2.0 for peds and 1.6 for motorists. Yes,
cyclists are a bit higher than peds, but certainly not much. And by
the way, in my view, all three of those are low enough to require no
special protection.

Now granted, the motorists are not hitting the ground (although I've
seen where that happened twice, and I knew a third guy who died that
way). They're hitting the inside of their supposedly protective cars.
Still, be careful of what you suspect. Keep in mind that it's colored
by a few decades of intense fear mongering, all designed to sell
helmets.

Seriously: I was biking enthusiastically long before there were
non-racing helmets. Nobody worried about head injury. That worry is a
product of the advertising - including the free advertising done by the
"safety" organizations, who are allowed to say things the manufacturers
could never get away with!

- Frank Krygowski

wrote:
wrote:

Can you please post the methodology used to gather
information on total hours biked in those foreign
surveys? Are you going to now claim that cycling is
twice as deadly as driving like it supposedly is in
England.

No, I can't, sorry. All I can say is that different agencies in many
different countries have come up with roughly the same value for
cycling fatalities per million hours.

NO, they didn't. They came up with wildly diverging
figures from country to country. If cycling is half
as deadly as driving or three times as deadly as driving,
those are not "roughly the same value."

In any case, we can't really consider the numbers
seriously because we don't know the methodology used
to obtain them. Perhaps this is something you forgot
from the first freaking day of engineers' school.

AFAIK, you've come up with NO
values for cycling fatalities per million hours.

If any good data were available, I would 'come up'
with it.

Which ones figured out how many hours are biked
each year, and how many total hours people swim, and
motorcycle, et cetera! What method did they use to
gather the data! What year was that for anyway!

Until you can begin to answer these questions, you
can not begin to use the 'data'.

In the last post I asked a question which you ignored
then snipped in your reply. Here it is again:

If Thompson & Rivara had just stated their 85% figure
(in, say, Architecture Digest) without providing any
methodology or any further information whatsoever about
their study, would you just accept it? I suppose you
would have to, because after all T & R are notable
PhDs. PHDs, Frank!!!

Give us all a f*ing break.


Here's what I guess happened: The staff at Design News
snip
... "You've got fatality per million hours data? Sounds perfect! Hey, I
don't care what other activities you use, just e-mail me a good
selection. Oh, be sure to include cycling, OK? I know this guy who's
a bike messenger. He's always yowling about how dangerous cycling is.
I'd like to see if he's correct. Hey, thanks, Sarah. Say hi to Fred."

Let's assume for argument's sake that the chart actually
came from FAA, even though it can't be verified. I think
you erased the part of the tape with the most important
part of the conversation:

FAA guy: "Uh, there's just one thing though..."

Design News intern: "What?"

"These numbers, they aren't exactly what anyone here
would refer to as 'data.' Being chock full o' PhDs,
we understand that these types of surveys are not
terribly useful for any serious purpose. We don't even
print the methodology, because people would just laugh.
And then they would stop paying us to produce these numbers. Don't tell
anybody I told you this."

"Hey, I don't care. I just need something to fill the
page, and fast. IT'S NOT LIKE ANYBODY IS ACTUALLY GOING
TO TRY TO USE THESE NUMBERS TO PROVE THE RELATIVE
DANGER OF DIFFERENT ACTIVITIES."

"You're right. People are retarded, but not that
retarded! Tell Earl I said hey."

Here's a serious suggestion: Why not give us a few posts explaining
why you think driving is terribly dangerous?

If driving is not 'terribly dangerous' then it must be
'safe,' is that it?
Are those our choices in Frank-World?

Can't help but noticing the numerical dog and pony show
has come to a crashing halt. What--not a single number
to support the notion that 'Driving is Safe?'

I'm serious. Put up or go pedal more packages.

OK, I've got the day off, luckily, as the city
is flooded and a tornado is on the ground a few miles
south of here.

Let's see, 'driving is safe.' Driving is so safe that
it is the leading cause of death for Americans under
50. Driving has only killed about 2.5 million
Americans since the invention of the automobile.
If it weren't so safe, it would have killed a lot more. Driving, which
I have simply started calling
'Safeness' because it's so safe, only sends 3-4 million
Americans to the ER each year. Driving kills more than
1500 fetuses in the second or third trimester in America
each year. Now THAT'S safe.
www.research.vt.edu/resmag/2004resmag/Duma.html

The statement 'Driving is safe' really is worthy of
much more ridicule than I can give it here.
Driving is not safe. Being in traffic is not safe,
because traffic is composed of human beings (not machines), many of
whom are asleep, drunk (15 thousand
or so of every year's usual 40,000 total traffic
fatalities have alcohol as a major contributing
factor), talking on the phone or fiddling with babies or
equalizing the thump of their woofers, or they're barely
old enough to tie their own shoes, or simply under the
impression that they are 'safe' while driving, or all
of the above. Driving while Young is the reality in the
US. I personally survived a few teenage
car totalings and feel lucky to have made it past 18.
But don't worry, folks. Traffic is really really safe
despite the fact that we give licenses to 16 year olds
and let them drive 120 mph in Volkswagen fastbacks
while blind ass drunk.

Can you imagine Frank teaching a Driver's Ed course?

"OK kids, here's the thing. DRIVING IS SAFE. Anybody
who says otherwise is a handwringer who is trying to
trick you into buying a bicycle helmet. Defensive
Driving is for patsies! Driving is safe! Now get out
there and DRIVE, YOU PUSSIES!"

R

Wow! Lots of data. I stand corrected. Thank you all for setting me
straight.

I grew up not wearing a helmet when I rode my bike. Bicycle helmets
didn't exist back then. Neither did elbow and knee pads for other
activities like skating, etc. It taught kids including me to respect
gravity at an early age. I remember buying my first bike helmet when
I was in my 20s. It was weird.

I had one bike crash when I hit my head on the concrete and cracked my
helmet. I'm pretty sure that I would have been in pretty bad shape
had I not worn the helmet. As it was, I had some road rash and a few
cuts. My right arm and leg were nonfunctional for a few minutes, but
it didn't scare me much until much later because I was completely
dazed at the time of the wreck.

When I reread everythng I wrote above, it sounds sarcastic. I am not
trying to be sarcastic. I am a firm believer in statistics. One
accident, whether it happened to me or someone else is not
statistically significant. I concede the argument. My previous
stance was not based on fact, but on opinion. I consider myself a
victim of media scare tactics.

You'll not hear another peep out of me on the subject of helmets.
I may even stop wearing one for casual riding. I think I'll keep
wearing it for off-road riding though. I go down a lot when I am
riding trails...

Just zis Guy, you know? Wrote:
[/email] wrote in message


What's up with the constant jibes about being an "anonymous bike
messenger"?

He does it because he's wrong, he has no data, and this
is his last resort.

ROFLMAO! You can accuse Frank of all kinds of things, some of them
legitimately, but having no data? Come on! Frank has one of the
largest collections of data I know of - and he cites authorities for
pretty much everything!

You are of course free to assert that your experience as an
unrepresentative kind of cyclist trumps the calculations of actuaries,
that is your right, but "no data"? That's plain old-fashioned
head-in-the-sand denial!

Guy


Yeah, that pretty well sums up Robert (r15xx) - he now has to resort to
grossly misrepresenting Frank with this completely perverse claim about
lack of data.

That's the typical resort of those so committed to a wrong position
that they have to misrepresent their opponent - rather than accede to
the fact that their position is wrong.

Robert may try to pass himself off as a acute thinker but
misrepresenting others isn't needed in the repertoire of truly
critically intelligent and honest thinkers.

Roger


--
RogerDodger

wrote:
wrote:
wrote:

Can you please post the methodology used to gather
information on total hours biked in those foreign
surveys? Are you going to now claim that cycling is
twice as deadly as driving like it supposedly is in
England.

No, I can't, sorry. All I can say is that different agencies in many
different countries have come up with roughly the same value for
cycling fatalities per million hours.

NO, they didn't. They came up with wildly diverging
figures from country to country. If cycling is half
as deadly as driving or three times as deadly as driving,
those are not "roughly the same value."

What you're apparently not understanding is that fatality rates for
_driving_ vary country by country! And that's not because of any wild
guesses; it's quite normal to have very good data on miles driven,
average speed, etc, and therefore on fatalities per hour. Isn't that
obvious?

Given that fact, of _course_ the ratio of cycling fatalities/hr to
driving fatalities/hr will vary. The important thing is this: The
fatalities per hour for cycling is consistently very low. British data
says 0.46 fatalities per million hours. That's from their Office of
National Statistics. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau says 0.42
fatalities per million hours. For France, it's 0.35 fatalities per
million hours. For Denmark, 0.21 fatalities per million hours.
Netherlands, 0.28 fatalities per million hours.

Several things to note. First, despite your claims that it's
impossible to know the data, there are officials in all these countries
that claim to have determined the data.

Second, as I said, their data is in broad agreement, especially when
you realize there are differences between the cycling environment in
different countries.

Third, and most important, officials in all those countries claim, on
average, it takes thousands of years of riding to reach a 50% chance of
dying on the bike. Cycling is NOT very dangerous!

In any case, we can't really consider the numbers
seriously because we don't know the methodology used
to obtain them. Perhaps this is something you forgot
from the first freaking day of engineers' school.

Please - don't pretend you know much about what happens on the first
day of engineering school.

Or if you _did_ happen to be there for the first day, don't pretend you
know what happened on the _second_ day.



AFAIK, you've come up with NO
values for cycling fatalities per million hours.

If any good data were available, I would 'come up'
with it.

To claim there is no good data, yet claim (as you do) that you somehow
know that cycling is very dangerous, is quite contradictory!

If Thompson & Rivara had just stated their 85% figure
(in, say, Architecture Digest) without providing any
methodology or any further information whatsoever about
their study, would you just accept it? I suppose you
would have to, because after all T & R are notable
PhDs. PHDs, Frank!!!

You're forgetting a _very_ important difference: Thompson & Rivara's
absurd "85% protection" figure has not been corroborated by anyone
else. That's one of the indications it's wrong. The fatality per hour
figure for cycling has been broadly corroborated by many different
agencies in many different countries.

I'd love to see, say, Exponent Corporation's data set and methodology.
But again, their business is determining these risks, just as
Microsoft's business is software. Microsoft doesn't give out its
techniques or source code. Why do you think Exponent (nee Failure
Analysis Associates) would do that?

Give us all a f*ing break.

Bike messenger language?


Here's a serious suggestion: Why not give us a few posts explaining
why you think driving is terribly dangerous?

OK, I've got the day off, luckily, as the city
is flooded and a tornado is on the ground a few miles
south of here.

Let's see, 'driving is safe.' Driving is so safe that
it is the leading cause of death for Americans under
50.

That's true.

Driving has only killed about 2.5 million
Americans since the invention of the automobile.

IOW, you're integrating all the driving done in the last 100 years to
get a larger, scarier number. Neat trick. OK...

only sends 3-4 million
Americans to the ER each year.

Of course, that's our health care system again: Nothing available for
minor injuries but the ER. But fine.

Driving kills more than 1500 fetuses in the second or third trimester in America each year. Now THAT'S safe.
www.research.vt.edu/resmag/2004resmag/Duma.html

No, by your standards, we can't use that. It was just an estimate, and
they didn't give their methodology, right? But I guess you want me to
accept that anyway. So, never mind that pesky detail.

every year's usual 40,000 total traffic
fatalities ...

Yes, it's a big number. Of course, America's a big country. But OK.



But thanks for the numbers. Now that you've given some, I have two
things to say.

First, how does driving compare with other "dangerous" things?

For the average American, there's a roughly 1 in 8000 chance of dying
in a car this year.

Compared to that, there's a roughly 1 in 400 chance you'll die of heart
disease. A roughly 1 in 550 chance you'll die of cancer. A roughly 1
in 2000 chance you'll die of lung disease. There's a roughly 1 in 2000
chance you'll die working on the farm, if you're a farmer. And so on.


The average American doesn't know the numbers, of course, but he is
rightfully much more worried about cancer than driving. Cancer, he'd
say, is dangerous. Driving? That's relatively safe.

And "relatively" is the ONLY way to think about such things!
_Everything_ has risk. "Safe" or "dangerous" mean nothing except in
comparison to other activities!


And this, R15757, brings us back to where I really want to be, now that
you've kindly given us some actual numbers for driving:

GIVE US THE COMPARABLE NUMBERS FOR CYCLING.

Give us the rank of cycling deaths in all causes of death for those
under 50.

Tell us the total number of cyclists killed since, say, 1900.

Tell us again how many cyclists go to the ER each year. I won't even
ask why they go - I've covered that.

Give us the number of fetuses killed each year due to bike crashes.
(Yes, my wife cycled while _very_ pregnant.)

And tell us again the number of Americans killed per year while
cycling.

GIVE US THE COMPARABLE NUMBERS FOR CYCLING.

Then explain to the crowd, once again, why you're so hell-bent on
claiming riding a bicycle is so dangerous.

- Frank Krygowski

I submit that on or about Fri, 03 Jun 2005 22:39:21 -0500, the person
known to the court as ookook kookoo made a statement
in Your Honour's bundle)
to the following effect:

Wow! Lots of data. I stand corrected. Thank you all for setting me
straight.

De nada. We are all victims of a "conspiracy of ignorance
masquerading as common sense" - if it helps you to know this, I, too,
started out as a helmet advocate until I was corrected on Usenet :-)

From a helmet advocate I have become a sceptic, I am a member of the
Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation (http://www.cyclehelmets.org). I
was duped by the "BIKE DANGER!" idiots, and I'm mad as hell about it!

I grew up not wearing a helmet when I rode my bike. Bicycle helmets
didn't exist back then. Neither did elbow and knee pads for other
activities like skating, etc. It taught kids including me to respect
gravity at an early age. I remember buying my first bike helmet when
I was in my 20s. It was weird.

Same for me. When did cycling suddenly become this massively
dangerous and scary activity? Maybe I was out on the bike at the time
and didn't notice the change...

I had one bike crash when I hit my head on the concrete and cracked my
helmet. I'm pretty sure that I would have been in pretty bad shape
had I not worn the helmet. As it was, I had some road rash and a few
cuts. My right arm and leg were nonfunctional for a few minutes, but
it didn't scare me much until much later because I was completely
dazed at the time of the wreck.

I had a similar crash. My protective headgear certainly Saved My
Life[tm] - it was a knitted acrylic balaclava. I recommend that all
cyclists wear a knitted acrylic balaclava at all times... :-D

When I reread everythng I wrote above, it sounds sarcastic. I am not
trying to be sarcastic. I am a firm believer in statistics. One
accident, whether it happened to me or someone else is not
statistically significant. I concede the argument. My previous
stance was not based on fact, but on opinion. I consider myself a
victim of media scare tactics.

Absolutely, and well done for recognising it. We are doing something
safe and healthy - those saying otherwise mainly don't ride bikes.
Part of the problem is that lots of folks know deep down that they
should take more exercise, and that active travel is beneficial in
multiple ways, but they are too lazy; lazy is bad, so they look around
for some rationalisation and find "scary bike danger" crap from the
helmet lobby, that's enough to give them the excuse they are looking
for. I think the Liddites should STFU and get on with promoting
things that genuinely make cycling safer, like training schemes and
promoting cycling.

You'll not hear another peep out of me on the subject of helmets.
I may even stop wearing one for casual riding. I think I'll keep
wearing it for off-road riding though. I go down a lot when I am
riding trails...

And those are exactly the kinds of crash for which helmets were
designed: low speed, no other vehicle involved. So what if the
consequences are rarely more than an ouchie?

I salute your open-mindedness. It took me a lot longer...

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