OK, gotta ask this one.

  • Thread starter Trudi Marrapodi
  • Start date



Mitch Haley <[email protected]> writes:

> "Bill Z." wrote:
> > Yeah. Any indication, whether anecdotal or a result of a
> > carefully run research project, that shows a non-zero
> > benefit for helmet use *must* be ignored, with the
> > authors discredited and anyone mentioning the results
> > attacked. Standard modus operandi.
>
> Name calling will get you nowhere, Bill.

What name calling? I described the behavior of various
individuals whom I did not even name. If you think that is
name calling, you have a guilty conscience.

> Besides, I'm not the one who got in a childish tiff with a
> professional researcher on this board a few years ago,
> that was you.

That "professional researcher" has an axe to grind on this
subject, and any "tiff" was started by her name calling,
which began each post by inserting her insult of the day
between my first and last name, with said behavior continued
for at least a month straight. As I said, "standard modus
operandi" for the anti-helmet kooks.

BTW, one of the more flagrant anti-helmet dudes hasn't been
heard from very much over the last few years. He pretty much
went away after posting a comment on another newsgroup about
the police, using the time he was arrested for "back
handing" his girlfriend as an example. It took a while for
him to understand why readers might find such behavior to be
just a tad offensive.

Bill

--
My real name backwards: nemuaZ lliB
 
Originally posted by Trudi Marrapodi
Two idiots whose pickup was stopped at the light yelled
"Nice helmet" at
me. When I ignored them, they yelled "HEY!" as if to make
sure that I understood that they were ridiculing ME and
got the message. "We *said*: THAT'S A NICE HELMET! HA HA
HA HA HA!"
[/B]
Click to expand...

My response to Couple of Drunk Idiots Riding Around In a Pickup On a Friday Evening?

"Hey. HEY! THAT'S A NICE HALLOWEEN MASK YOU HAVE ON. HA HA HA HA!"

Suckas.
 
Dave wrote:

> Only thing I can say is from personal experience, I've
> witnessed nasty crashes at speed (30+) as well as touring
> paces where the helmet has come into play in preventing
> severe injury. A member of my team recently was doing TT
> training, and a SUV pulled into the bike lane and stopped
> abruptly in front of him. He was going about 32mph, and
> went right into the back, and had he not been wearing a
> helmet, we'd have gone to his funeral.

And I've posted before the crash I witnessed, in Pittsburgh.
A car was passing a parked bus when a college-aged kid
darted out directly into the path of the car. We were
walking on a sidewalk behind the car. We heard the sickening
impact, we saw the kid's body get tossed higher than the
roof of the car. We later found out that the kid had landed
on the road on his head, and we later saw that the kid's
head had destoyed the windshield. His body had smashed the
car's grill and badly dented the hood.

I missed some of the action, because I immediately turned
around and ran back to a phone to report a traffic fatality.
But it turns out there was no fatality. The kid got up,
walked to the sidewalk, and (at the insistence of an EMT who
happened by) sat with his neck immobilized until they took
him to the ER.

Turns out he was perfectly fine, except for a scratch above
his ear. He was back in school the next day. And oddly, not
a soul scolded him for not wearing a helmet! Not the EMT,
not the cops, not the ER staff!

Why? Because he was a pedestrian. He'd jogged across that
street. (You'd think, with pedestrian fatalities
outnumbering bike fatalities so badly, that people would
lobby for ped helmets, woudn't you?)

But I _know_ that if that pedestrian _had_ been wearing
a helmet, everyone would have taken it as proof that
the helmet saved his life. It would have been
absolutely obvious.

And absolutely false.

--
--------------------+ Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove
rodent and vegetable dot com, replace with cc.ysu dot edu]
 
Rick wrote:

>
> Some will not look at the issue with any degree of logic,
> and this is ludicrous. Helmets are, IMO, a waste of money,
> for the most part. They do protect from some injuries and
> potentially cause others, which may well be more severe.
> The statistics suggest that they do reduce head injuries,
> so in that they are somewhat successful.

Well, some statistics suggest they reduce head injuries.
Others do not.

In general, case-control studies predict benefits from
wearing helmets. But case-control studies are by their very
nature filled with self-selected subjects, something which
is absolutely forbidden in most research of this type. You
can't filter out, for example, the super-cautious people
with excellent insurance coverage who go to the ER "just to
be sure," are uninjured, and thus give points to the
supposed protection by their super-cautious helmet.

When helmet use is mandated, or (in the following paper by
Scuffham) very heavily promoted just before it's mandated,
you get the entire cycling population suddenly wearing
helmets. (Or at least, the portion that doesn't stop cycling
because of the mandate.) The time-series studies of these
populations are the ones that tend to show no benefit,
especially when adjusted for the inevitable drop in cycling.

> And I am certain that if I spent more time on this, I
> could expand the list. In truth, it doesn't matter. None
> of the reports I've read even come close to knowing the
> actual statistics on anything except total deaths.

"Trends in Cycle Injury in New Zealand under Voluntary
Helmet Use" by Scuffham et. al., Accident Analysis &
Prevention, vol 29, no.1, pp. 1-9, 1997 deals with
hospitalizations due to head injury (not fatalities) when
helmet use jumped from almost zero to near 90%. If found no
benefit. It's worth a read.

A much less rigorous article in the New York Times also
mentioned the lack of benefit for injuries.
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1028.html

--
--------------------+ Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove
rodent and vegetable dot com, replace with cc.ysu dot edu]
 
Ken [NY) wrote:

>
> Dave, some advice: I have a good friend who wiped
> out on his bike, (wheel shimmy) slid across six
> lanes of traffic, and hit his head on the far curb.
> He told me about it, showing me his helmet which had
> split in half. He complained about the scrapes he
> received on his legs and arms as well as the loss of
> paint off his racing bike, but there he was, talking
> to me, no apparent damage to his head. Not even a
> scrape. Years ago, I mentioned this in one of these
> bike groups, and was attacked for weeks. They first
> said the accident could not have happened. (Wrong,
> as I proved.) Then they told me the helmet could not
> have possibly saved him. Lastly, they threw all
> sorts of statistics at me, intended to show that
> bike helmets cannot possibly save someone from
> injury.... but the fact remains, he is uninjured.
> Hard to explain, but there it is.

There is some chance you're not remembering the discussion
correctly. There's also some chance that you didn't
understand parts of it.

One thing to keep in mind: When a poster such as yourself
characterizes those who disagree as "They," that poster is
making a fundamental mistake. Those of us that are helmet
skeptics are not a unified organization. We are all
individuals here. What I believe, and what I say, may have
little in common with someone else, even though he and I
both disagree with you.

Personally, I don't doubt that bike helmets can, in some
cases, help prevent injury, even though their certification
standard is set terribly low. Simultaneously, I know there
are many cases where people without helmets avoided
identical injuries, ones that helmets would have gotten
credit for. So I can't take one tale as "proof." (If you
still expect me to, please read the post I made a little
while ago, about the Pittsburgh pedestrian.)

A single incident is a chaotic thing. Anything can happen -
just like a cigarette lighter can occasionally stop a bullet
to the heart. Unless you want to prescribe shirt-pocket
cigarette lighters for everyone, or helmets for all waking
moments, you NEED to look at "all sorts of statistics." I'm
sorry, but that's the way science works. That's the way they
decide if smoking causes cancer, that's the way they
determine the effects of obesity, that's the way they
determine which drugs cure diseases, that's how they
determine which police tactics work... and that's how the
skepticism about helmets has arisen. The best statistics
simply don't justify their heavy promotion.

Frankly, most people aren't good at understanding numbers.
It's not that the numbers are complicated, it's just that
people don't like the hard thinking. They tend to go by
their own little anecdotes.

I feel that, if a person isn't willing to study a
complicated issue, they'll contribute little to its
understanding. Yet the folks who promote helmets seem to be
unwilling to study. They're related to the folks who say "My
Aunt Matilda drank honey and vinegar every day, and she
never got cancer!!!"

If the Mayo Clinic isn't impressed with your Aunt Matilda's
story, you shouldn't be surprised. And if professional
statisticians - or other math-competent people - aren't
impressed with riding buddy's story, you shouldn't be
surprised either.

Now go back and read my post about the Pittsburgh
pedestrian. Did his helmet save his life? Or _would_ his
helmet have saved his life? Would they have _thought_ his
helmet saved his life?

What should we make of that anecdote? What should we
make of yours?

--
--------------------+ Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove
rodent and vegetable dot com, replace with cc.ysu dot edu]
 
Frank Krygowski <[email protected]> writes:

> "Trends in Cycle Injury in New Zealand under Voluntary
> Helmet Use" by Scuffham et. al., Accident Analysis &
> Prevention, vol 29, no.1, pp. 1-9, 1997 deals with
> hospitalizations due to head injury (not fatalities) when
> helmet use jumped from almost zero to near 90%. If found
> no benefit. It's worth a read.
>

It is also worth remembering the limitations: (a) New
Zealand's small population (a bit over 3 million), so you
get relatively few accidents, (b) counting hospitalizations
doesn't give you a good measurement of injury reduction (a
less severe head injury is still a head injury) and (c)
studies have indicated that helmet fit is important. I don't
know about New Zealand, but around my area, you'll see see
kids with helmets on their heads but the straps not fastened
or the straps loose enough that you can see air between the
strap and the kid's chin. Another problem is that a jump in
usage does not scale to a jump in cyclist miles - "serious"
cyclists are more likely to use a helmet to start with so
any jump in the percentage of cyclists using helmets is
weighted towards cyclists who don't ride very much to begin
with, or who only go short distances.

Go ahead and read it, but keep in mind that it is not the
last word on the subject.

Bill

--
My real name backwards: nemuaZ lliB
 
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