Trikki Beltran's bad concussion and his helmet

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 05:36:18 -0400, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:

Uhhh, dude, you know there are people who travel w/o cars sometimes --
like walking or even (gasp) on a bike. Are we supposed to carry a GPS
at all times too?

JT

Good point. Yes. Need to ask my son to get me a good buy before they
tear down the signs.

I can be a guide for the out-of-towners when I retire, if they have a
GPS with a really big read-out.

Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 06:02:08 -0400, Curtis L. Russell
wrote:


Good point. Yes. Need to ask my son to get me a good buy before they
tear down the signs.

I can be a guide for the out-of-towners when I retire, if they have a
GPS with a really big read-out.

I'm going to be a crotchety old guy and just tell them "Can't get
there from here" when I get old.

JT

****************************
Remove "remove" to reply
Visit http://www.jt10000.com
****************************

Quoting Mark & Steven Bornfeld :
David Damerell wrote:
Which is all well and good, but doesn't really get us any closer to the
point; I think brakes have a net positive effect on safety, and hence your
original assertion is unjustified.
I'm finished with this thread. I just want to clear up that I never
claimed brakes had no positive effect on safety.

Who said you did? No-one.
--
David Damerell Kill the tomato!
Today is First Tuesday, August.

So the important question is - is this the longest running thread on usenet?
Sure seems like it!

Lee

I submit that on or about Tue, 23 Aug 2005 20:55:56 GMT, the person
known to the court as SMS made a statement
in Your Honour's bundle) to
the following effect:

Yesterday I took my kids, and two nieces bicycling in Monterey. I
realized that I had packed everything, except my own helmet. I didn't
know what to do. I thought about those people who are just positive that
risk compensation would rear its ugly head and I was terrified that I
would suddenly begin riding at 2 mph and would have to pull over every
time a car or bicycle approached from the front or rear.
Amazingly, I found that I did not ride any differently with or without a
helmet.

Excellent straw man. As anybody who is even vaguely interested in
risk compensation theory will know, the balancing behaviour exhibited
tends to be subtle. Since crashes tend to be the result not of the
taking of large risks, but of the taking of small risks very large
numbers of times, that is all that's needed.

Barry Pless, editor of Injury Prevention, used to dismiss risk
compensation, as well. He set out to prove it didn't happen.

He was rather surprised when the results of his study showed that risk
compensation theory is exactly correct.

"Risk compensation in children's activities: A pilot study", Mok D,
Gore G, Hagel B, Mok E, Magdalinos H, Pless B. 2004. Paediatr Child
Health: Vol 9 No 5 May/June 2004

Once again you confuse "no evidence with which Scharf agrees" for "no
evidence". A natural consequence of your titanic hubris, I'm afraid.

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

Per Tom Kunich:
That is to say that accidents in which a motorcyclist is killed from a head
injury alone and in which the head injury therefore sustained could be
mediated by a motorcycle helmet to less than lethal are so rare as to be a
statistical freak. If you read the accident reports and the statistics you
can arrive at no other answer.

Still sounds fishy to me. Perhaps not on a purely technical/legalistic basis -
but I'd guess there are plenty of non-lethal head injuries that cause lasting
damage.

Long time ago, some drunk nailed me on my Yamaha YDS-6 when I was going about 50
mph. I was wearing one of those Bell helmets that come down low on the sides
and the back of the neck, but don't cover the face.

I flew through the air head-first in a sort of swan dive posture, hit the
blacktop face-first, and things deteriorated rapidly from then on.

Cracked the helmet, suspect I wound up putting my dentist's kid through at least
two semesters of college, and saw flashes of light for several days afterwards.

My feeling is that even if that helmet didn't save my life, it probably kept me
from becoming even more of a raving idiot than I am.
--
PeteCresswell

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 13:17:47 -0400, "Lee" lee_AT_SHOES_wheelman_DOT_com
wrote:

So the important question is - is this the longest running thread on usenet?
Sure seems like it!

Are you kidding? In a mere two or three weeks and a niggling 1000 posts?
Legendary usenet Threads That Would Not Die tend to be in the more than a
year, over 5000 messages ballpark. Under that, don't even bother.


Jasper

Jasper Janssen wrote:
On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 13:17:47 -0400, "Lee" lee_AT_SHOES_wheelman_DOT_com
wrote:


So the important question is - is this the longest running thread on usenet?
Sure seems like it!


Are you kidding? In a mere two or three weeks and a niggling 1000 posts?
Legendary usenet Threads That Would Not Die tend to be in the more than a
year, over 5000 messages ballpark. Under that, don't even bother.

A good chain lubrication thread can easily beat a helmet thread!

In article ,
Bill Sornson wrote:
Dave Vandervies wrote:
In article ,
Bill Sornson wrote:
Dave Vandervies wrote:

If you[1] catch me posting again before the end of the weekend, beat
me over the head with a crushed helmet or some other suitable
implement.

Just wear your helmet. {smiley thing went here}

When am I supposed to be wearing the helmet? For the beating that was
supposed to discourage me from posting until I'd taken a weekend off?
That'd've kind of defeated the purpose. (See? Risk compensation!)
For the computer work I ended up doing instead? It didn't go as well
as I'd've liked, but since I Don't Do Windows I was in no danger of
wanting to beat my head on the wall or anything, so a helmet
wouldn't've helped any there (and no, I'm not going to wear a helmet
just so I
can use Windows without hurting my head banging it against the wall).
For the ride that'd've been rather more helpful than just a weekend
off? Can't do that until I get my bike back (hopefully today).

Sheesh. In the time it took you to write THAT you could have geared up for
/another/ ride!

[Smiley retained this time]
:-P
(Hmm, I think I like it better quoted. Evil unibrow tongue-sticking-out
smiley, almost like me in real life.)

Yep, and probably would've done so instead of writing it if I'd had a
bike available at the time. Finally got it back from the shop later
that afternoon.

40km in the last three days, and I'm already feeling (and hopefully
acting) much less grumpy.


dave

--
Dave Vandervies

It's the humans I'm seeking to educate, not the computers.
--Ben Pfaff in comp.lang.c

"(PeteCresswell)" wrote in message
...
Per Tom Kunich:
That is to say that accidents in which a motorcyclist is killed from a
head
injury alone and in which the head injury therefore sustained could be
mediated by a motorcycle helmet to less than lethal are so rare as to be a
statistical freak. If you read the accident reports and the statistics you
can arrive at no other answer.

Still sounds fishy to me. Perhaps not on a purely technical/legalistic
basis -
but I'd guess there are plenty of non-lethal head injuries that cause
lasting
damage.

It depends on what you call "lasting damage". In fact the human body is
pretty resilient and seldom has permanent damage that isn't lethal. This
isn't to say that there aren't people out there with permanent brain
injuries but they are remarkably rare and the greatest number I ever ran
into was two brain damaged people in on large metropolitan location. And
they were ambulatory types meaning that they lived their lives by
theirselves but at diminished capacity.

Long time ago, some drunk nailed me on my Yamaha YDS-6 when I was going
about 50
mph. I was wearing one of those Bell helmets that come down low on the
sides
and the back of the neck, but don't cover the face.

I flew through the air head-first in a sort of swan dive posture, hit the
blacktop face-first, and things deteriorated rapidly from then on.

Cracked the helmet, suspect I wound up putting my dentist's kid through at
least
two semesters of college, and saw flashes of light for several days
afterwards.

My feeling is that even if that helmet didn't save my life, it probably
kept me
from becoming even more of a raving idiot than I am.

We had a parts girl in the motorcycle shop where I sold bikes when I wasn't
working a real job who had a similar accident on her Honda 750 4-banger. She
was afraid that it would damage her rather mediocre looks but in fact after
a year you couldn't tell it ever happened and her personality made up for
any lack she might have had in the beauty department to begin with.

I was the Safety Director for the American Federation of Motorcyclists (AFM)
at the time and I analyzed the helmet. It didn't do anything but the thin,
clear, plastic face shield seemed to have limited the facial damage to road
rash.

Every accident I investigated was so obviously a fatal accident with or
without helmet that it was simply a waste of time to even bother with it.

Wear a helmet if you like. I don't think that they will cause an accident.
But remember that neigther will they save you in one.