#301
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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 |
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#303
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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... |
#304
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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 |
#305
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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 |
#306
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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 |
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