Re: Anyone know what's happening re: Helmet laws?

["Followup-To:" header set to rec.bicycles.misc.]

Paul R said:

You think a foam hat is stronger than your skull?

The point of the "foam hat" is not that it is stronger than your skull,
but that it can absorb and disipate some of the impact energy, thereby
passing less of that energy on to your skull, where it could cause serious
damage. If your "foam hat" is destroyed in the process, so what? That's
what it's for. It takes a non-trivial amount of energy to destroy a
well-designed "foam hat," and that energy would be passed directly to your
skull in the absence of a "foam hat."

"You don't need a helmet if you don't have anything up there worth
protecting."

--

-John ([email hidden])

"John Thompson" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

["Followup-To:" header set to rec.bicycles.misc.]

Paul R said:

You think a foam hat is stronger than your skull?

The point of the "foam hat" is not that it is stronger than your skull,
but that it can absorb and disipate some of the impact energy, thereby
passing less of that energy on to your skull, where it could cause serious
damage. If your "foam hat" is destroyed in the process, so what? That's
what it's for. It takes a non-trivial amount of energy to destroy a
well-designed "foam hat," and that energy would be passed directly to your
skull in the absence of a "foam hat."

"You don't need a helmet if you don't have anything up there worth
protecting."

Sigh. Have I ever said you shouldn't wear a helmet? I was illustrating how
helmet myths get propagated. The newspaper article implied that a helmet
would have saved that poor guy's life as a car ran over his head. Clearly
that's absurd.

You think I'm some kind of moron? You think I haven't broken my own helmet
(twice!)? I'm a very experienced urban cyclist (year 'round commuter
downtown Toronto for years) who is passionate enough about my safety and the
safey of my fellow cyclists to have done a little research into helmet laws.
What I found surprised me.

Please, I implore you, inform yourself of the issues. Do a google search on
"mandatory helmet laws". Helmet wearing is helpful. Mandatory helmet laws
are the opposite. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

Paul, feeling like banging my head against a wall.....

"John Thompson" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

["Followup-To:" header set to rec.bicycles.misc.]

Paul R said:

You think a foam hat is stronger than your skull?

The point of the "foam hat" is not that it is stronger than your skull,
but that it can absorb and disipate some of the impact energy, thereby
passing less of that energy on to your skull, where it could cause serious
damage. If your "foam hat" is destroyed in the process, so what? That's
what it's for. It takes a non-trivial amount of energy to destroy a
well-designed "foam hat," and that energy would be passed directly to your
skull in the absence of a "foam hat."

"You don't need a helmet if you don't have anything up there worth
protecting."

I didn't realize someone had moved my post to rec.bicycles.misc as well. i
apologize for any double posts.

Sigh. Have I ever said you shouldn't wear a helmet? I was illustrating how
helmet myths get propagated. The newspaper article implied that a helmet
would have saved that poor guy's life as a car ran over his head. Clearly
that's absurd.

You think I'm some kind of moron? You think I haven't broken my own helmet
(twice!)? I'm a very experienced urban cyclist (year 'round commuter
downtown Toronto for years) who is passionate enough about my safety and the
safey of my fellow cyclists to have done a little research into helmet laws.
What I found surprised me.

Please, I implore you, inform yourself of the issues. Do a google search on
"mandatory helmet laws". Helmet wearing is helpful. Mandatory helmet laws
are the opposite. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

Paul, feeling like banging my head against a wall.....

Paul R wrote:

<snip>

Quoted message said:

Please, I implore you, inform yourself of the issues. Do a google

search on

Quoted message said:

"mandatory helmet laws". Helmet wearing is helpful. Mandatory helmet

laws

Quoted message said:

are the opposite. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

It shouldn't be hard, but you have uninformed people writing stuff like
"You think a foam hat is stronger than your skull?" Others go off on
wild tangents and claim that more people get hurt gardening or sitting
on their couch than cycling, or making equally bizarre sound-bite
statements (or should it be "usenet-bite"😉.

Some people don't understand that the weakness of these sound-bite
arguments plays into the hands of the politicians that are intent on
passing laws to make everything safe for everyone, and that they are
creating an unfair crackpot image of the people that oppose mandatory
helmet laws. This image helps mis-guided politicians justify the
passage of these laws.

As you stated, helmet wearing is helpful. Every study of injuries and
fatalities of bicycle crashes has shown this to be true. But we all
accept some level of risk in our lives, and the increased risk of
injury from not wearing a bicycle helmet, while real, is pretty small,
and doesn't warrant a coercive helmet law.

I wrote a letter to the Toronto Star last month, but I guess that they
don't want to publish stuff from people south of the border. They have
come out in favor of the MHL, so maybe they only want letters to the
editor that are from the crackpot perspective.

I would urge everyone not to descend to the sound-bite statements like
the "foam hat," or to the bizarre and incomprehensible comparisons of
the risk levels of unrelated activities. You may convince one or two
uneducated people with this kind of [censored], but it creates the crackpot
image that needs to be avoided if the MHLs are to be stopped.

John Thompson said:

["Followup-To:" header set to rec.bicycles.misc.]

Paul R said:

You think a foam hat is stronger than your skull?

The point of the "foam hat" is not that it is stronger than your skull,
but that it can absorb and disipate some of the impact energy, thereby
passing less of that energy on to your skull, where it could cause serious
damage. If your "foam hat" is destroyed in the process, so what? That's
what it's for. It takes a non-trivial amount of energy to destroy a
well-designed "foam hat," and that energy would be passed directly to your
skull in the absence of a "foam hat."

"You don't need a helmet if you don't have anything up there worth
protecting."

QED.

--
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its
victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under
robber-barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber-
baron's cruelty may at some point be satiated; but those who
torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they
do so with the approval of their own conscience."

- C.S. Lewis

2 Feb 2005 18:13:55 -0800,
<[email hidden]>,

Quoted message said:

What Scharf _may_ mean is, every study he's bothered to read says
helmets are helpful. However, that merely points out that he's behind
in his reading.

He used his reading lamp on the bike.
--
zk

Zoot Katz said:

2 Feb 2005 18:13:55 -0800,
<[email hidden]>,

Quoted message said:

What Scharf _may_ mean is, every study he's bothered to read says
helmets are helpful. However, that merely points out that he's

behind

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

in his reading.

He used his reading lamp on the bike.
--
zk

Health care dictates that ye ought be nimble of foot, and value tax
dollars spent on fixing broken heads and necks...

Zoot Katz said:

2 Feb 2005 18:13:55 -0800,
<[email hidden]>,

Quoted message said:

What Scharf _may_ mean is, every study he's bothered to read says
helmets are helpful. However, that merely points out that he's

behind

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

in his reading.

He used his reading lamp on the bike.
--
zk

Health care dictates that ye ought be nimble of foot, and value tax
dollars spent on fixing broken heads and necks...

Zoot Katz said:

2 Feb 2005 18:13:55 -0800,
<[email hidden]>,

Quoted message said:

What Scharf _may_ mean is, every study he's bothered to read says
helmets are helpful. However, that merely points out that he's

behind

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

in his reading.

He used his reading lamp on the bike.
--
zk

Health care dictates that ye ought be nimble of foot, and value tax
dollars spent on fixing broken heads and necks...

Chris B. said:

For facile specimens such as Micheal Artindale, clearly it has little or nothing to do with the merits of helmets, helmets laws or issues
surrounding cycling in general and everything to do with
self-righteous control freakery.

The sneering contempt and derision that they so readily display
towards those who don't share their authoritarian streak reveals how
remarkably hollow their supposed concern for others really is.

I reckon this self righteous tendency is like a sort of "revenge of the nerds".

Here's one explanation of the loathsome behavior - years ago when helmets available looked really really nerdy, some schoolkids had to wear them because they were under the control of overbearing authoritarian parents. These kids ended up getting mocked and ridiculed by fellow schoolmates about the stupid helmets they wore. As these nerds grew older (note they didn't "grow-up"😉 they found the opportunity to get back on the people that bullied them about the stupid looking bonnets that they were required to wear...

Quoted message said:

Health care dictates that ye ought be nimble of foot, and value tax
dollars spent on fixing broken heads and necks...

It wouldn't be so bad if they could all be fixed, but head and neck
injuries tend to produce a higher proportion of unfixable damage, and
long-term custodial care as a result.

--

-John ([email hidden])

John Thompson said:

Quoted message said:

Health care dictates that ye ought be nimble of foot, and value tax
dollars spent on fixing broken heads and necks...

It wouldn't be so bad if they could all be fixed, but head and neck
injuries tend to produce a higher proportion of unfixable damage, and

Quoted message said:

long-term custodial care as a result.

And if you think that cyclists are at unusual risk for that sort of
thing, you simply don't know enough about this issue.

In the past, on rec.bicycles.misc, we've had caregivers for the
seriously head injured post about bike helmets. But when pressed, they
admitted that in their practices, head injured cyclists were either
extremely rare or nonexistent. In other words, their experiences
matched national data.

I say, before putting helmets on cyclists (<1% of head injury
fatalities) we should force them on motorists (roughly 50% of such
fatalities). Put the effort where it will do the most good.

Quoted message said:

John Thompson said:

Quoted message said:

Health care dictates that ye ought be nimble of foot, and value tax
dollars spent on fixing broken heads and necks...

It wouldn't be so bad if they could all be fixed, but head and neck
injuries tend to produce a higher proportion of unfixable damage, and

Quoted message said:

long-term custodial care as a result.

And if you think that cyclists are at unusual risk for that sort of
thing, you simply don't know enough about this issue.

In the past, on rec.bicycles.misc, we've had caregivers for the
seriously head injured post about bike helmets. But when pressed, they
admitted that in their practices, head injured cyclists were either
extremely rare or nonexistent. In other words, their experiences
matched national data.

I say, before putting helmets on cyclists (<1% of head injury
fatalities) we should force them on motorists (roughly 50% of such
fatalities). Put the effort where it will do the most good.

Anybody remember Christopher Reeve? He had a helmet on. Good guy, too.
Bill Baka

[email hidden said:

"]
...And if you think that cyclists are at unusual risk for that sort of
thing, you simply don't know enough about this issue.

In the past, on rec.bicycles.misc, we've had caregivers for the
seriously head injured post about bike helmets. But when pressed, they
admitted that in their practices, head injured cyclists were either
extremely rare or nonexistent. In other words, their experiences
matched national data.

I say, before putting helmets on cyclists (<1% of head injury
fatalities) we should force them on motorists (roughly 50% of such
fatalities). Put the effort where it will do the most good.

Seems that cyclists are seconded into being the poster child for the the brain injury bogey. Cyclists are chosen as the whipping boy - but by whom? By other cyclists - damn softheaded geeks trying to exercise their puny power over us?

Mind you, it has to be said that associating head injury as being typical of cycling is an easy mistake to make - but it seems bloody hard to disabuse people of this faulty misperception.

Roger
Roger

b_baka said:

Anybody remember Christopher Reeve? He had a helmet on. Good guy, too.
Bill Baka

True, but ultimately irrelevant. If you want to go by statistics, then
there are more injuries per mile or per hour of cyclists than
equestrians or motorists. So the line or reasoning of comparative risk
doesn't work in these cases. I'm not saying that this means that helmets
should be mandatory, I don't think they should, only that people need to
be careful about making irrelevant comparisons of the risks of various
activities, especially when it doesn't prove what they want it to prove!

Steven M. Scharf said:

b_baka said:

Anybody remember Christopher Reeve? He had a helmet on. Good guy,

too.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Bill Baka

True, but ultimately irrelevant. If you want to go by statistics,

then

Quoted message said:

there are more injuries per mile or per hour of cyclists than
equestrians...

Oh? And the source of that data is...? ISTR the only comparative data
on horse riding going exactly opposite!

Quoted message said:

or motorists. So the line or reasoning of comparative risk
doesn't work in these cases.

But there are fewer head injuries per mile or per hour for cyclists
than for pedestrians!

Funny how certain people will accept comparative risk figures when they
think it makes cycling look bad. Yet they will condemn such data when
it makes cycling look good.

I'm not a psychologist, so I can't comment on this urge for
self-flagellation - except to say it certainly seems weird to me! But
when these cyclists work so hard to make cycling look dangerous, they
should realize they hurt all cyclists, not only themselves.

Quoted message said:

I'm not saying that this means that helmets
should be mandatory, I don't think they should, only that people need

to

Quoted message said:

be careful about making irrelevant comparisons of the risks of

various

Quoted message said:

activities, especially when it doesn't prove what they want it to

prove!

Personally, I'm quite content with the information we get from
comparative risks. Again, the last data I found was that cyclists are
injured less often than gardeners. I know the handwringers among us
don't like such information, but I think it's time _somebody_ stood up
for cycling, rather than accepting the fearmongers' propaganda.

Quoted message said:

Steven M. Scharf said:

b_baka said:

Anybody remember Christopher Reeve? He had a helmet on. Good guy,

too.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Bill Baka

True, but ultimately irrelevant. If you want to go by statistics,

then

Quoted message said:

there are more injuries per mile or per hour of cyclists than
equestrians...

Oh? And the source of that data is...? ISTR the only comparative data
on horse riding going exactly opposite!

Horses are not under the riders control, since they do think for
themselves, and that is one reason I don't ride horses anymore.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

or motorists. So the line or reasoning of comparative risk
doesn't work in these cases.

But there are fewer head injuries per mile or per hour for cyclists
than for pedestrians!

True. Too many pedestrians are talking on cell phones these days and
have been known to walk in front of a train without even looking.
Darwinism at work.

Quoted message said:

Funny how certain people will accept comparative risk figures when they
think it makes cycling look bad. Yet they will condemn such data when
it makes cycling look good.

I'm not a psychologist, so I can't comment on this urge for
self-flagellation - except to say it certainly seems weird to me! But
when these cyclists work so hard to make cycling look dangerous, they
should realize they hurt all cyclists, not only themselves.

Quoted message said:

I'm not saying that this means that helmets
should be mandatory, I don't think they should, only that people need

to

Quoted message said:

be careful about making irrelevant comparisons of the risks of

various

Quoted message said:

activities, especially when it doesn't prove what they want it to

prove!

Personally, I'm quite content with the information we get from
comparative risks. Again, the last data I found was that cyclists are
injured less often than gardeners. I know the handwringers among us
don't like such information, but I think it's time _somebody_ stood up
for cycling, rather than accepting the fearmongers' propaganda.

As for myself and not wearing a helmet, I can only say that by cycling,
I am not likely to drop dead of a heart attack, so I am ahead of the
game. If I had to wear a helmet, it would diminish my desire to ride and
increase my chances of getting lazy and having a heart attack. Let the
fearmongers worry about something else and leave us alone to do our thing.
Bill Baka

b_baka said:

As for myself and not wearing a helmet, I can only say that by cycling,
I am not likely to drop dead of a heart attack, so I am ahead of the
game. If I had to wear a helmet, it would diminish my desire to ride and
increase my chances of getting lazy and having a heart attack. Let the
fearmongers worry about something else and leave us alone to do our thing.

I agree that we should be left alone. But I am a realist. The
politicians pushing these laws are not going to fall for the
simple-minded anecdotes and incorrect statistics that people like Frank
promulgate.

I hate what's happened in the U.S., where politics has become one
sound-bite after another, intended to mislead naive voters. We are
seeing it yet again with Bush's Social Security proposals. Yet it only
works in one direction, because the Karl Rove types are smart enough to
recognize when someone tries to throw the same kind of [censored] back at them.

Stories about the dangers of gardening and sofa-sitting may make a few
lame-brained people laugh, but they have no effect on the decision
makers. If anything they will be used to try and show that the people
against the MHLs are lunatics. Politicians are skilled at choosing their
opponent. They are not going to choose people that put forth logical
arguments as to why MHLs are a bad idea. They will choose people that
put forward the lamest form of opposition.

"If I have to wear a helmet so I won't ride and I will let my health
deteriorate, and I'll have a heart attack," may be true, but it isn't an
impressive argument.

Steven M. Scharf said:

I agree that we should be left alone. But I am a realist. The
politicians pushing these laws are not going to fall for the
simple-minded anecdotes and incorrect statistics that people like

Frank

Quoted message said:

promulgate.

I realize that you don't like the statistics I've posted. But your
dislike hardly proves _they_ are incorrect. In fact, given the
documentation I've given, I'd say your dislike simply proves _you_ are
incorrect!

Quoted message said:

Stories about the dangers of gardening and sofa-sitting may make a

few

Quoted message said:

lame-brained people laugh...

Once again, the paper regarding gardening was "Injury Rates from
Walking, Gardening, Weightlifting, Ourdoor Bicycling, and Aerobics" by
Powell, K.E. et. al, in _Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise_, Vol
30, pp. 1246-9, 1998. A decent university library should have it, or
be able to get it.

Once again, they found a higher percentage of people injured themselves
gardening than cycling. Actually, cycling had the lowest
per-participant injury rate than _any_ of the activities listed in the
title. And, FWIW, the authors were not cycling apologists. They were
simply wondering if fear of injuries is part of what keeps people
sedentary, so they decided to see how common injuries really are.

Regarding "sofa sitting," all I did was give the number of ER visits
that the main American injury reporting system - the National
Electronic Injury Surveillance System - attributes to various products.
For those just entering the discussion, NEISS claims bikes cause about
586,000 ER visits per year. (It varies year to year, of course.)
That's less than basketball (692,400). It's more than beds, but not by
much (beds caused 466,500 in 2003, apparently by people falling out of
them).

IOW, I admit that bikes are more dangerous by this measure than beds.
But if you compare bikes to the soft furniture in your house, the total
ER visits are less for cycling. With "sofas, couches, davenports, etc."
coming in at 130,000 ER visits per year, it takes only beds plus sofas
to beat bikes - and we don't even need to add chairs (299,000), tables
(311,000), bathtubs, etc, etc.

Again, Steven, you mock the information you don't like. But you
apparently don't trouble yourself to read the sources of the
information. You certainly offer no substantive rebuttal for the
numbers I've given.

, but they have no effect on the decision

Quoted message said:

makers.

Once again, I've related some of my experiences in dealing with "the
decision makers." I know that what I've done has worked.

It really is time for you, Steven, to tell us about your experiences.
So far, you've been perfectly silent about the successes of your
self-praised methods!

Is it possible you're actually completely without experience in
testifying before legislators, and are too embarrassed to admit it?