Recumbent Accident Rates?

On Wed, 4 May 2011 18:28:46 -0700 (PDT), in rec.bicycles.tech kolldata
wrote:

i am lost on the anti helmet logic.

I agree. It defies logic.

If you want to cycle barefoot, go ahead... I guess. If you value your
anatomy as much as I value your anatomy, you may cycle naked.

But I fail to understand why anyone would suggest that proper shoes do
not reduce foot injuries... it's counter intuitive.

The argument seems to be analogous to: "Prohibition does not reduce
alcoholism; therefore, we should not attempt to reduce alcoholism; in
fact, alcoholism is a perfectly positive lifestyle choice." Helmet
laws haven't exactly worked; however, protective equipment certainly
does.

The first time I heard that anti-helmet argument, I laughed at it; I
thought the person was joking... then, he actually invited me outside
to fight physically. In fact, doing a quick search, I see this topic
is one of your perennial threads... good grief! I see a single poster
in *this* very thread with over 2,000 helmet postings! It gets
venomous. All I'm saying is that protective equipment generally
works.

Tom Lake wrote:

And, again... sorry 'bout the ER bills. *The problem is that hospitals
are required to treat anyone who staggers in the door, but that's a
whole different discussion.

That's not a problem; that's what hospitals are for. The problem is
that they perform so poorly and cost so much compared to pretty much
any other commercial service. A Czech or Cuban hospital is required
to do the same, but I understand they do it efficiently and
economically. The difference, I suppose, is the American insurance
company standing in the middle of the transaction and picking
everybody's pockets.

We Americans pay at least twice as much for our health care as anyone
else in the developed world, and yet have the worst health care among
them and a falling life expectancy.

A side effect of that situation is that people generally don't seek
medical attention when they have an injury they are confident will
heal without professional intervention. And that in turn means
doctors and nurses and EMTs don't see a cross-section of cyclists or
even a cross-section of cyclists who crash and get injured-- they see
mostly cyclists with deep lacerations, broken bones, or frightening
head injuries. So they have an inflated opinion of the importance of
protective gear for cycling.

They see a similar distribution of injuries among people who were
walking at the time of their injuries, yet I've never heard a doctor
or nurse lecture a ped for not wearing a helmet. I'm guessing it's
because most medical pros walk sometimes, but don't ride bike much.
They know walking bareheaded (or barefooted, to extend your analogy)
is sensible, but they don't ride enough to observe the same thing
about cycling.

Chalo

T⊕m Sherm∴n wrote:

Tom Lake wrote:

Yet, the evidence is overwhelming: quitting smoking is a healthful
lifestyle choice and helmets reduce head injuries. Â*I agree that
they'll nothing for your hands, though.[...]

The only studies that show bicycle foam hats to be effective in reducing
head injuries are case-(not so much)control. Â*Whole population studies
show no statistically significant reduction in serious head injury or
fatality rates when bicycle foam hat usage increases.

Yep, he's snookered too. If he were as scrupulous about the data in
prescribing helmets as he seems to think doctors are when prescribing
drugs, he'd see that large-scale data demonstrate that cycle helmets
do not pass the FDA's "safe and effective" standard.

Like sugar pills, bicycle helmets are safe but ineffective. But where
sugar pills have a placebo effect, bicycle helmets induce risk
compensation. Not a good deal!

Chalo

Chalo wrote:
T⊕m Sherm∴n wrote:
Tom Lake wrote:
Yet, the evidence is overwhelming: quitting smoking is a healthful
lifestyle choice and helmets reduce head injuries. I agree that
they'll nothing for your hands, though.[...]
The only studies that show bicycle foam hats to be effective in reducing
head injuries are case-(not so much)control. Whole population studies
show no statistically significant reduction in serious head injury or
fatality rates when bicycle foam hat usage increases.

Yep, he's snookered too. If he were as scrupulous about the data in
prescribing helmets as he seems to think doctors are when prescribing
drugs, he'd see that large-scale data demonstrate that cycle helmets
do not pass the FDA's "safe and effective" standard.

Like sugar pills, bicycle helmets are safe but ineffective. But where
sugar pills have a placebo effect, bicycle helmets induce risk
compensation. Not a good deal!

It didn't take me long to realise that a helmet doesn't do anything for
the rest of me.

YMMV.

JS.

On 5/4/2011 10:45 PM, Tom Lake wrote:
On Wed, 4 May 2011 18:28:46 -0700 (PDT), in rec.bicycles.tech kolldata
wrote:

i am lost on the anti helmet logic.

I agree. It defies logic.

If you want to cycle barefoot, go ahead... I guess. If you value your
anatomy as much as I value your anatomy, you may cycle naked.

Yes, Magic Foam Bicycle Hatsâ„¢ can protect against *minor* bumps and
scrapes, so the foam hat has some use.

But I fail to understand why anyone would suggest that proper shoes do
not reduce foot injuries... it's counter intuitive.

The argument seems to be analogous to: "Prohibition does not reduce
alcoholism; therefore, we should not attempt to reduce alcoholism; in
fact, alcoholism is a perfectly positive lifestyle choice." Helmet
laws haven't exactly worked; however, protective equipment certainly
does.

There is no proof that bicycle foam hats *significantly* reduce serious
brain injuries and/or deaths. In fact, all the whole population studies
indicate that the foam hats indicate the opposite. When we add in the
effect of mandatory foam bicycle hat usage laws reducing cycling
activity, the mandatory use laws actually *increase* the rates of
serious brain injuries and deaths, as more cyclists on the road increase
cycling safety.

The first time I heard that anti-helmet argument, I laughed at it; I
thought the person was joking... then, he actually invited me outside
to fight physically. In fact, doing a quick search, I see this topic
is one of your perennial threads... good grief! I see a single poster
in *this* very thread with over 2,000 helmet postings! It gets
venomous. All I'm saying is that protective equipment generally
works.

But Magic Foam Bicycle Hatsâ„¢ *DO NOT* provide significant safety
benefits, beyond minor bump and scrape protection.

--
Tºm Shermªn - 42.435731,-83.985007
I am a vehicular cyclist.

On 5/4/2011 11:40 PM, Çhâlõ Çólîñã wrote:
T⊕m Sherm∴n wrote:

Tom Lake wrote:

Yet, the evidence is overwhelming: quitting smoking is a healthful
lifestyle choice and helmets reduce head injuries. I agree that
they'll nothing for your hands, though.[...]

The only studies that show bicycle foam hats to be effective in reducing
head injuries are case-(not so much)control. Whole population studies
show no statistically significant reduction in serious head injury or
fatality rates when bicycle foam hat usage increases.

Yep, he's snookered too. If he were as scrupulous about the data in
prescribing helmets as he seems to think doctors are when prescribing
drugs, he'd see that large-scale data demonstrate that cycle helmets
do not pass the FDA's "safe and effective" standard.

Like sugar pills, bicycle helmets are safe but ineffective. But where
sugar pills have a placebo effect, bicycle helmets induce risk
compensation. Not a good deal!

Especially when the bicycle foam hats induce risk compensation among
motorists.

--
Tºm Shermªn - 42.435731,-83.985007
I am a vehicular cyclist.

On May 4, 6:19*pm, Tom Lake wrote:
On Tue, 3 May 2011 15:06:29 -0700 (PDT), in rec.bicycles.tech Chalo

wrote:
In my observation, hand and wrist injures are relatively common in
headers off of normal bikes. *Concussions really aren't.

Injuries are quite common in all forms of collisions. *I've seen
injuries when an ice skater collided with a Zamboni. *I did my
residency at Ben Taub in Houston and I saw lots of closed head trauma
from traffic mishaps involving all kinds of vehicles and concussions
really are common... half a dozen in a shift wouldn't be out of the
ordinary evening.

If you choose not to wear a helmet, that's your business; however,
please don't suggest that closed head injury from blunt force trauma
is rare because ERs see them like clockwork.

Based on the national data I've seen, bicyclists comprise less than 2%
of the serious head injuries in the U.S., and less than 1% of the
fatalities. The brain injury specialists with whom I've discussed
this have agreed that their experience in their individual practices
match those numbers. Sounds like your experience in Houston is
similar.

It also seems that ordinary bicycling (i.e. not racing, not gonzo off-
road riding) is no more productive of serious head injuries than
things like walking for transportation, jogging, etc.

And it seems that there never was much association of bicycling and
head injuries until manufacturers had a product to sell.

That product has been sold widely, and endlessly endorsed. Yet it
doesn't seem to have caused any improvement in the already rare
incidence of serious bike head injury.

Why do people keep promoting an ineffective solution to a largely
nonexistent problem?

- Frank Krygowski

On May 4, 11:45*pm, Tom Lake wrote:
On Wed, 4 May 2011 18:28:46 -0700 (PDT), in rec.bicycles.tech kolldata wrote:
i am lost on the anti helmet logic.

I agree. *It defies logic.

Sorry, but no - unless you're using Aristotlean logic, the kind based
only on thought experiments, as used by ancient Greeks before people
thought to collect data. Once you throw real data into the mix, the
logic changes.

We've got plenty of data showing cycling is a very low risk activity,
with benefits far outweighing risks. We've got data showing that
serious head injury while cycling is no more likely than while doing
many other always-unhelmeted activities. We've got data showing
widespread adoption of helmets hasn't reduced the incidence of serious
head injuries per rider.

Yet we have people ignoring all that data, pretending bicycling _must_
cause lots of serious head injury, pretending helmets _must_ reduce
those injuries, and calling it logic!

*All I'm saying is that protective equipment generally
works.

:-) That's a rather low bar for a logical test!

I'll agree that protective equipment does generally work when it's
properly designed, tested and certified for realistic characteristics
of expected hazards. IOW, safety glasses do protect eyes from flying
bits of metal in a machine shop. Seat belts do keep motorists from
flying through windshields in 30 mph crashes. Body armor does stop
rounds from handguns. The tests for those devices are realistic
representations of the hazards the user faces.

But foam bike hats are tested and certified to protect only rigid,
inflexible magnesium headforms, with no bodies attached, only in
impacts free from rotational components, at speeds less than 14 mph.
They do not appear to work in real bike crashes. Again, that's shown
by real-world data.

Here's some data: http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1041.html

- Frank Krygowski

On May 5, 2:08*am, James wrote:


It didn't take me long to realise that a helmet doesn't do anything for
the rest of me.

But you're forgetting about bike helmets' protection against leg
injuries!

D.L. Robinson, when analyzing the data from the 1989 Thompson & Rivara
paper (the source of the "85%" claim) found that by using T&R's
computation techniques, it could be similarly "proven" that helmets
reduced leg injuries by about 75%. Isn't that good news?

Remember, minor leg injuries are the most common cyclist injury being
treated in emergency rooms. This magic protection of legs isn't to be
sneezed at! ;-)

- Frank Krygowski

On Wed, 04 May 2011 22:41:37 -0500, in rec.bicycles.tech Tºm Shermªn™
°_° " wrote:

The only studies that show bicycle foam hats to be effective in reducing
head injuries are case-(not so much)control. Whole population studies
show no statistically significant reduction in serious head injury or
fatality rates when bicycle foam hat usage increases.

Please define your terms. You will find that not all statistics
textbooks use consistent terminology.

A "case-control study" usually refers to a study of existing
conditions or data; you will frequently hear them called "post facto
studies" and "causal/comparative studies", also. The reason that
these are the only studies we have is because you cannot take human
subjects and study their ballistic characteristics by bouncing them on
the pavement; I expect it to remain thus. I mentioned tobacco: *all*
tobacco studies are post facto; it's nonsensical to propose taking a
population of non-smokers and making half of them smoke two packs a
day. The tobacco companies are equally derisive of this type of
study, BTW.

I see you throwing about the term "whole population study" as if it's,
somehow, superior to a post facto study. Basically, you get a "whole
population study" (whole-pop) when you follow a group of participants
over a period of time and the independent variable (helmet use, in
this case) is *not* under operational control; i.e. the participants
decide to which group they belong, not the researcher. A whole-pop is
just that: the group it studies is the only population to which the
findings apply. One other point: the term "statistical significance"
has no meaning in the context of a whole-pop. Essentially, you're
saying that the mean of the sample group is different from (or the
same as, in your case) the mean of larger population; however, in this
type of study, there *is* no sample of the larger population; although
incompetent researchers will sometimes try to generalize such studies.
This is why we have peer review to catch such nonsense.

We could set the matter to rest once and for all by taking a random
sample of, say, 10,000 people; we will keep 5,000 of them bare-headed
(the control group) and place 5,000 in helmets (the treatment group) …
then we'll slam their heads into a solid object under controlled
conditions, say 3 meters/second or so. If your sample is random, then
the findings will generalize; moreover, since the independent variable
is controlled, we can say the treatment *caused* any observed
difference in the two means or, perhaps, has no effect. Now, all we
have to do is figure out how to get it past the IRB!