A new and different H*lm*t article

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

Quoted message said:

I've been here a while now, and figured I would be remiss if I didn't
start
up at least one h*lm*t thread.

However this one is new and different. In it, and Australian educator has
published a paper with statistics claiming to show that the introduction
of
helmet laws actually can -increase- the numbers of injuries:

"... Dr Dorothy Robinson's concern, instead, is bicycle safety. She has
just published a study in the Health Promotion Journal of Australia that
is likely to send shock waves through Australian cycling communities
with its claim that mandatory bicycle helmet laws increase rather than
decrease the likelihood of injuries to cyclists.

http://melbourne.citysearch.com.au/profile?id=53571 "

I'm not offering this as a point, counter-point or even as provocative.

Just wanted to share it, snagged from aus.bicycles.

I hope the nice folks here will read it and really not even feel it needs
commenting... It contains a few of the ideas that we've bandied about over
the years, so the content won't be surprising.

jj

I beleive it is a classic case or example of how someone can take the
numbers and twist them to work for their own purposes.
You can usually get something to work statistically using the same numbers
pro and con without too much effort for most everything.
Some people also typically ignore or slant or even "fudge the numbers" in
order to get it to work for their theory.
As I see it there was a reduction in people riding bikes about the time the
helmit laws went into effect. But did this take into account any increases
in traffic and such at the time. Maybe other factors interplayed to make for
a reduction in bike usage. Such as building roads that make it harder if not
more dangerous to ride bikes. Or large increases in traffic make it
difficult to ride bikes. Or maybe everyone lost interest in favor of cars as
it makes you look more affluent (sort of a culture change). In the USA as
teenagers reach 16yoa, and got their driver's licenses they almost all
stopped riding bicycles. In the USA back about 1974 there was a oil embargo
that supposedly cause gasoline shortages in the USA. At the same time there
was a big increase in people wanting to ride bicycles. That big bike boom
when bust almost immediately after oil embargo ended.A lot of local
municipalities started passing bike laws and ordinances around that same
time too. One could construe that the same thing happend way back then too
in the USA.
Currently Lance Armstrong caused a mini-boom in bicycle riding, now that
he's retired so to speak, I wonder if the boom will drop off again.

Any reason you wanted your article to get around people's filters? Just
write "helmet", please, if it's going to be a posting about the merits or
lack thereof, of helmets.

--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
Personal page: http://www.geocities.com/cpetersky/
See the books I've set free at:
http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky

"Claire Petersky" wrote ...

Quoted message said:

Any reason you wanted your article to get around people's filters? Just
write "helmet", please, if it's going to be a posting about the merits or
lack thereof, of helmets.

--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky

Spelling helmet that way seems to be the norm over on uk.rec.cycling, seems
to be their way of acknowledging that the subject has been beaten to death
and everybody's sick of seeing/hearing the word.
--
mark

Claire Petersky said:

Any reason you wanted your article to get around people's filters? Just
write "helmet", please, if it's going to be a posting about the merits or
lack thereof, of helmets.

I didn't think of that. Of course not. That's the way it was spelled in
aus.bicycle. I thought they did it to be funny...

Won't happen again, abject apologies, Claire. ;-(

jj

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

Quoted message said:

Spelling helmet that way seems to be the norm over on uk.rec.cycling,
seems to be their way of acknowledging that the subject has been beaten to
death and everybody's sick of seeing/hearing the word.
--
mark

Indeed that is the case.

Cheers, helen s

"jj" wrote ...

Quoted message said:

I've been here a while now, and figured I would be remiss if I didn't
start
up at least one h*lm*t thread.

However this one is new and different. In it, and Australian educator has
published a paper with statistics claiming to show that the introduction
of
helmet laws actually can -increase- the numbers of injuries:

"... Dr Dorothy Robinson's concern, instead, is bicycle safety. She has
just published a study in the Health Promotion Journal of Australia that
is likely to send shock waves through Australian cycling communities
with its claim that mandatory bicycle helmet laws increase rather than
decrease the likelihood of injuries to cyclists.

http://melbourne.citysearch.com.au/profile?id=53571 "

I'm not offering this as a point, counter-point or even as provocative.

Just wanted to share it, snagged from aus.bicycles.

I hope the nice folks here will read it and really not even feel it needs
commenting... It contains a few of the ideas that we've bandied about over
the years, so the content won't be surprising.

jj

Nothing "new and different", really, www.cyclehelmets.org has had data on
their website for quite some time now showing the same thing. The pattern
seems to be that countries with a large number of cyclists on the road
(Netherlands, Denmark) have a lower rate of bicycle related injuries and
fatalities than countries with a relatively low number of cyclists on the
road (US,UK). This is in spite of the fact that countries with a large
number of cyclists on the road tend to have much lower rates of helmet usage
than countries with a low number of cyclists on the road. The theory is
that as the number of bicycle journeys increases, motorists become more
accustomed to sharing the road with cyclists, the cyclists themselves become
more proficient at cycling in traffic (some of them even learn to obey stop
signs and traffic lights 🙂 ), and the number of accidents drops.
--
mark

I submit that on or about Sun, 21 Aug 2005 07:24:26 -0500, the person
known to the court as "Earl Bollinger" <[email hidden]>
made a statement (<[email hidden]> in Your
Honour's bundle) to the following effect:

Quoted message said:

I beleive it is a classic case or example of how someone can take the
numbers and twist them to work for their own purposes.

LOL! You do know that the most cited pro-helmet study was written by
two people who were already avowedly in favour of mandatory bike
helmets, but lacked "proof", don't you?

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

Just zis Guy said:

I submit that on or about Sun, 21 Aug 2005 07:24:26 -0500, the person
known to the court as "Earl Bollinger" <[email hidden]>
made a statement (<[email hidden]> in Your
Honour's bundle) to the following effect:

Quoted message said:

I beleive it is a classic case or example of how someone can take the
numbers and twist them to work for their own purposes.

LOL! You do know that the most cited pro-helmet study was written by
two people who were already avowedly in favour of mandatory bike
helmets, but lacked "proof", don't you?

So that proves that /this/ study is sound?

I submit that on or about Sun, 21 Aug 2005 14:59:33 GMT, the person
known to the court as "Bill Sornson"
<[email hidden]> made a statement
(<[email hidden]> in Your Honour's bundle)
to the following effect:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I beleive it is a classic case or example of how someone can take the
numbers and twist them to work for their own purposes.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

LOL! You do know that the most cited pro-helmet study was written by
two people who were already avowedly in favour of mandatory bike
helmets, but lacked "proof", don't you?

Quoted message said:

So that proves that /this/ study is sound?

No (although I believe it is, but then I know Dorre so I would say
that).

It is, on the other hand, an example of Scharfism - accusing others of
your own worst fault :-)

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

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

Quoted message said:

Claire Petersky said:

Any reason you wanted your article to get around people's filters? Just
write "helmet", please, if it's going to be a posting about the merits or
lack thereof, of helmets.

I didn't think of that. Of course not. That's the way it was spelled in
aus.bicycle. I thought they did it to be funny...

Won't happen again, abject apologies, Claire. ;-(

No need for tears, here's a hankie. I'll just kill the thread, thanks. I
think I'll kill the latest political thread while I'm at it, no reason for
me to get all angry again.

PS, why would I killfile you, now? I don't have anyone in the KF right now
from rbm. You have to spew hateful posts, or be extremely tedious (Mr. Baka
eventually ended up in that category) before you land in there.

--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
Personal page: http://www.geocities.com/cpetersky/
See the books I've set free at:
http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky

Earl Bollinger said:

"jj" <[email hidden]> wrote in message ...

Quoted message said:

"... Dr Dorothy Robinson's concern, instead, is bicycle safety. She has
just published a study in the Health Promotion Journal of Australia that
is likely to send shock waves through Australian cycling communities
with its claim that mandatory bicycle helmet laws increase rather than
decrease the likelihood of injuries to cyclists.

http://melbourne.citysearch.com.au/profile?id=53571 "

I beleive it is a classic case or example of how someone can take the
numbers and twist them to work for their own purposes.

"Belief" is premature, unless you've examined the paper and the data.
Until you have, "prejudice" is the proper word.

Quoted message said:

As I see it there was a reduction in people riding bikes about the time the
helmit laws went into effect. But did this take into account any increases
in traffic and such at the time. Maybe other factors interplayed to make for
a reduction in bike usage. Such as building roads that make it harder if not
more dangerous to ride bikes. Or large increases in traffic make it
difficult to ride bikes. Or maybe everyone lost interest in favor of cars ...

This issue has been examined before, in articles by Robinson and by
others.

The drop in cycling was not gradual, as it would be from the causes you
hypothesize. Instead, it was a sudden and definite drop, exactly
coinciding with the institution of the law.

Drops in cycling were determined by trained observers, comparing
identical sites at similar times and weather conditions. They were
also confirmed by automatic counting devices on bridges that cyclists
had to cross to get to different parts of the city.

Furthermore, the reason for the drop was confirmed by telephone
surveys, in which the majority of people said they were cycling less,
or giving it up entirely, because of the helmet law.

Incidentally, the helmet promotion people (for example, Bell Sports)
apparently learned from this. Afterwards, helmet laws were written in
such a way that there were no before-after cyclist counts.

IIRC, there's documentation of all this at www.cyclehelmets.org

If not, I can give citations.

- Frank Krygowski

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

Quoted message said:

Earl Bollinger said:

"jj" <[email hidden]> wrote in message ...

Quoted message said:

"... Dr Dorothy Robinson's concern, instead, is bicycle safety. She has
just published a study in the Health Promotion Journal of Australia
that
is likely to send shock waves through Australian cycling communities
with its claim that mandatory bicycle helmet laws increase rather than
decrease the likelihood of injuries to cyclists.

http://melbourne.citysearch.com.au/profile?id=53571 "

I beleive it is a classic case or example of how someone can take the
numbers and twist them to work for their own purposes.

"Belief" is premature, unless you've examined the paper and the data.
Until you have, "prejudice" is the proper word.

Good one.