Helmet saves life of bike store owner hit by car......



psycholist wrote:
>
> Frank Krygowski wrote:


<snip>

>> I've been talking absolute numbers, I've been talking percentages, and
>> I've been talking risk per hour of exposure. Take your pick. By any of
>> these measures, cycling is NOT very dangerous.


<snip>

> No it's not. It's more misleading statistics. See my earlier reply.
> Without indexing these figures to the population of cyclists ... and mores
> specifically, the population of dedicated roadies (for the sake of
> relevance to these cycling newsgroups), your figures are MEANINGLESS!


I've always thought percentages and risk per hour of exposure had to be
indexed to something...hm, the population of cyclists! That's it!

Austin
--
I'm pedaling as fast as I durn well please!
There are no X characters in my address
 
psycholist wrote:

> "Frank Krygowski" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>
>>The "organ donor" line is common, tiresome, and flat out wrong.
>>
>>One of my best friends is an organ recipient. After his transplant, he
>>became an educator for a transplant organization.
>>
>>He assures me that cyclists never have, and never will, be significant
>>sources of organ donations. First, there are FAR too few cyclist deaths.
>>In the US, only about 750 cyclists get killed each year.
>>
>>Compare with about 40,000 motorists;
>>roughly 15,000 people who die from falls;
>>about 6000 pedestrians hit by cars;
>>perhaps 5000 drowning victims;
>>not to mention about over 700,000 heart attack victims and 150,000 stroke
>>victims (the main sources of organ donors, he claims).
>>
>>Furthermore, he pointed out that (contrary to the hype) most cyclist
>>fatalities are _not_ nice clean corpses that regrettably died from a light
>>tap on the head. Instead, almost all have been hit by cars and suffered
>>the sorts of multiple internal injuries that ruin organs.
>>
>>So, as usual, another trite piece of pro-helmet propaganda is worthless
>>when examined seriously.
>>
>>

>
>
> And equally as usual, another case of COMPLETELY misleading statistics. Of
> course cyclists aren't a significant source of organ donations. There
> aren't that many of us. What's relevant is to look at the number of organ
> donations relative to the number of cyclists.


Fine. Where are your figures for donations per cyclist? Feel free to
dig them up an post them.

Not that it matters much. The sarcastic comment was that cyclists
without helmets are likely organ donors. No matter how you slice it,
it's false.

BTW, another indication of the falsity is to examine the number of
cyclist fatalities per hour or riding, or per year of riding.

From http://www.bicyclinglife.com/Library/SteppingStones.htm

(data is for Great Britain):

"How dangerous is cycling? A quick-cut measure to put the risk in
day-to-day terms is to calculate how many years of cycling there are for
each death. To put it another way, this is the number of years you could
expect to cycle before being killed in an accident. We know that
currently about 170 cyclists get killed per year and from surveys we
know there are about 3 million regular cyclists in Britain. There are in
addition at least another 3 million occasional cyclists, but we will
ignore them here. We divide 3 million by 170 to get 18,000 years.
Now that looks like quite a lot of cycling."

If the typical British cyclist can expect to die only after 18,000 years
of cyclng (on average), how can you pretend this is a signficant danger
- or a significant source of organ donations?


What would also be more
> relevant to this newsgroup is to toss out all the incidents involving people
> who ride once a decade and focus on those of us who spend hours and hours
> training on the road. How many of us, because of all of our hours of
> exposure to traffic and all the miles we log, end up having a serious
> incident at one time or another?


From the same paper: "A more useful measure of the risks for active
cyclists is to look at CTC members. There are 3 to 5 deaths per year,
out of 60,000 members, so that gives: 12,000 to 20,000 years of cycling
per fatality."

Understand, the Cyclists' Touring Club (CTC) is full of people who ride
very enthusiastically and frequently. These are folks who tour Britain
& Europe (and beyond) by bike, and do club rides each weekend.

>
> If I merely consider our cycling club, I can think of dozens of incidents in
> the past couple of years where people were hit by cars, dogs ran into the
> road and took them out, they went down in a paceline touch of wheels, etc.
> I can also recall dozens of statements like, "were it not for my helmet, I'd
> have been way more seriously hurt."


First, an interesting fact that has emerged in these Usenet discussions
over the years: Everyone who falls and conks their helmet on the ground
seems to feel it either saved their life, or saved them from being very
seriously hurt.

But is this true? Very, very doubtful. If you go back to the dim, dim
past and recall (or read) about cycling in the pre-helmet days, you get
NO stories about brain injured cyclists. I rode for many years before
helmets were marketed, and heard never a word about the supposed
"problem" of head injuries. I've read quite a lot on cycling history,
including reams of personal accounts. (Those who are interested might
check out Vintage Bicycle Quarterly magazine - 400 mile rides, day and
night, for weekend fun!) Head injuries were never a "problem" until
Bell decided to look for a new market!

Why would there be "saved my life" stories now? One obvious one is that
a helmet is bigger than a head; a near miss or light touch of a bare
head will be a resounding "clunk" on a helmet. Another is that
styrofoam is fragile. A broken helmet is evidence of... a broken
helmet, period! Yet many think it represents a nearly broken head. Still
another factor is the sound and surprise of physical impact. Whether
you're aware or not, it's common for faith healers to startle their
"patients" with a sudden shout and/or blow. For whatever psychological
reason, this triggers a "magic" response in the victim. Helmet
companies benefit from this, apparently.

But back to your club: A second point is this: Exactly how many
_deaths_ have their been in your club? (Because after all, that's what
"organ donor" is tied to.) How many before the helmet era? How many
since helmets became part of the club uniform?

In our club, the totals are: Zero, and zero.

IOW, despite all the hundreds of thousands of miles we do, cycling is
NOT a likely cause of death. Our club has seen people die of heart
disease, stroke, cancer, even accidents involving farm equipment; but
bike crashes? Zero.



>
> Can I cite statistics to back this up? No.


Of course not.

Has anyone produced any
> relevant statistics that apply to this population of serious cyclists who
> log many hours on the roads? NO!


False. See above.

> Am I pro helmet law? NO! Am I pro helmet? YES! Above all, I'm anti
> statistics.


Hmm. That's a worrying sign of innumeracy.

I know statistics quite well and I know they can be quite
> limited, quite biased and quite inaccurate.


If you are truly anti-statistics, you'd better stop taking any
medication you're ever prescribed. The _only_ way the FDA approves
medicine is by statistical studies resulting from double blind tests.

And BTW, there have been no such tests done for helmets, for obvious
reasons. The limited studies that promote helmets (especially, the tiny
one which produced the "Helmets prevent 85% of head injuries") would
NEVER pass FDA muster.



--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]
 
psycholist wrote:

> "Frank Krygowski" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>
>>eq2 sux wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Frank Krygowski <[email protected]> wrote in
>>>news:[email protected]:

>>
>>> Tell us about the last 100 serious
>>>
>>>>(say, hospitalizable) brain injuries you've hauled in.
>>>>
>>>>If your area is representative of national stats, no more than one of
>>>>them would be a cyclist.
>>>>
>>>>So: What's the count?
>>>>
>>>>(Hint: The last 3 EMTs I've asked never responded. They all slunk
>>>>away.)
>>>
>>>
>>>I'll see 100 cars before I see a bicycle. So, we talking percentages or
>>>are you just giving lip service for the sake of argueing.

>>
>>I've been talking absolute numbers, I've been talking percentages, and
>>I've been talking risk per hour of exposure. Take your pick. By any of
>>these measures, cycling is NOT very dangerous.
>>
>>I'm sorry if this is hard for you to understand. I'm sorry if it
>>challenges your preconceived notions. But it's fact.
>>
>> If you don't
>>
>>>want to wear a helmet, then don't.

>>
>>Why, thank you for your gracious permission!
>>
>>
>>but if one person does wear it becuz
>>
>>>of my horror story then maybe that's one less i'll see laying in the
>>>road.

>>
>>Numbers, please! These vague hints of horrors just don't make it. How
>>many seriously head injured cyclists have you seen lying in the road in
>>the past ten years? How many seriously head injured motorists have you
>>pulled out of cars, or off the road?
>>
>>Nationally, the numbers favor the cyclists. Nationally, the per-hour
>>figures also favor the cyclists. And if you don't understand "per hour"
>>let me know, and I'll explain it to you!
>>
>>No, I'm not really an EMT, I just love saying EMT,jerk.
>>
>>I have no idea if you are or aren't. I know what's happened with the last
>>few folks who claimed to be EMTs. When asked for real numbers, they left
>>in a huff.
>>
>>Since you're not giving numbers either (and are even changing your screen
>>name) I assume you're in the same situation: Caught with your data down!
>>
>>
>>--
>>--------------------+
>>Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com, replace
>>with cc.ysu dot edu]
>>

>
>
> No it's not. It's more misleading statistics. See my earlier reply.
> Without indexing these figures to the population of cyclists ... and mores
> specifically, the population of dedicated roadies (for the sake of relevance
> to these cycling newsgroups), your figures are MEANINGLESS!
>


You probably need to trim posts before you respond to them. I've left
the entire post up there, because I have no idea what sentence your "No
it's not" is supposed to respond to.

But anyway: I've also posted figures indexed to the population of
cyclists. I've posted per-hour-riding figures. And of course, I've
posted raw totals.

If you're going to say my figures are all wrong, you really should have
some of your own to post.

But by the way: Exactly why is it your mission to "prove" that cycling
is very dangerous?? What do you have against cycling??

--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]
 
psycholist wrote:

>
>
> As usual Frank, your statistics are entirely without merit or validity.


:) And as usual, those arguing against the data I post have no numbers
at all!

>
> You say that cyclists account for less than 1% of fatal HI injuries and
> that's your argument why we shouldn't worry about wearing helmets. Well,
> Frank, what percent of the entire population do you suppose we represent.
> Index that figure ... if you know what that means.


I've already posted per-hour figures from at least two sources. Where
are yours?

THEN you'll have a
> relevant analysis. Also, index that figure using only those cyclists who
> are dedicated roadies who spend hours a week on the road.


See my other post regarding CTC members.

>
> I've heard so many lame arguments from people who say they've never had an
> incident, but when you grill them a bit, you find out they ride maybe on
> average a couple of hours a month or less.


I've been riding since 1972 as a dedicated adult cyclist. I've commuted
by bike since 1977. I've done only a tiny amount of racing, but I've
done time trialing, mountain biking, utility riding, club riding,
countless centuries, one double century, overnight tours, weekend tours,
three-week tours of foreign countries, and one coast-to-coast
self-contained tour.

Since 1972, I've had _one_ moving fall on the road, and that was at
walking speed. I scraped my knee. I've lost my balance while standing
over the bike, true; and when mountain biking, I've fallen. But my
worst injury of all time was a minor scrape. And incidentally, my
family's safety record is essentially identical to mine. (They were
along for most of the touring I described.)

You may ride more than I do, but it's false to pretend that only
inexperienced riders go uninjured.

I ride a couple of hours a DAY.
> The more you're out there, the more potential for something to happen. I
> haven't seen any statistics yet that take that into account.


You have by now, if you're reading the other posts. And BTW, I beieve
riding habits play an important part. For example, a person who rides
lots _should_ develop skills which _lower_ the "crash per mile" rate.

If you road race extensively, I imagine falls are more likely. But
truly serious injuries? Doubtful.

As an interesting exercise, you might compute the total number of miles
ridden in the Tour de France since its inception. Divide that by the
number of non-drug-induced deaths (= one) to find out the "death per
mile ridden" figure.

It's an interesting statistic.


--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]
 
Frank Krygowski <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> psycholist wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> As usual Frank, your statistics are entirely without merit or
>> validity.

>
>:) And as usual, those arguing against the data I post have no
>:numbers
> at all!
>
>>
>>

>
>


I've been driving for 40 years, never had an accident, can I stop
wearing my seatbelt? No one is asking you to do anything, but we're
suggesting it would be safer to wear one than not to.
 
Dan wrote:

> Frank Krygowski <[email protected]> wrote in
> news:[email protected]:
>
>
>>psycholist wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>>As usual Frank, your statistics are entirely without merit or
>>>validity.

>>
>>:) And as usual, those arguing against the data I post have no
>>:numbers
>>at all!
>>
>>
>>>

>>

>
> I've been driving for 40 years, never had an accident, can I stop
> wearing my seatbelt?


It's OK by me.


--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]
 
Frank Krygowski <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:

> psycholist wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>

>
> It's an interesting statistic.
>
>


Something else your stats don't cover, the fact that cycling is on the
increase. Due to the rise in gas costs, more people are turning to more
economical means of transportation. This means more inexperienced bikers
will be on the road, which will blow your stats out the window. If you
want to enjoy your choice of wearing a helmet or not, you should
advocate it here and to your friends because safety will become an issue
and you know what that means. I live in the 5th largest city in America,
riding a bike here can definitely be hazardous. If there is an increase
in bicycle related accidents with deaths, I see a helmet law
forthcoming.
 
Dan wrote:

> Something else your stats don't cover, the fact that cycling is on the
> increase.


Really? Do you have a source for that?

My understanding is that club ridership is down nationwide. Events like
TOSRV that used to completely fill have much lower attendance. Our own
club's century ride peaked at about 650 riders, IIRC; it's now less than
200.

I know that fashion changes and events go in and out of style. But I'm
not sure that cycling miles are up overall. So, as always, data is welcome.

I live in the 5th largest city in America,
> riding a bike here can definitely be hazardous. If there is an increase
> in bicycle related accidents with deaths, I see a helmet law
> forthcoming.


Well, that's a good way to reduce riding, all right!

--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]
 
"Frank Krygowski" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> psycholist wrote:
>


<big snip>

OK Frank ... you win. I'm not going to argue statistics with you anymore
and you reject all experiential evidence that's been presented by those who
have had serious accidents and by EMTs. Fine. That's your choice. You've
been fortunate not to have had a serious accident in your long cycling
career. Fine. As I've been having this dialog with you, I've also been
monitoring e-mails flying between a number of our club members who are
trying to get the details about a rider that was hit on Sunday morning on
one of our favorite cycling roads. Our area is VERY rapidly growing. Roads
are narrow and windy. New developments are going in rapidly. Vehicular
traffic has increased dramatically. And we all know that the housewives on
Darvon are driving larger and larger SUVs. You asked me what I have against
cycling. I don't have anything against cycling. It's my very favorite
thing to do. Do I think it's dangerous? Not necessarily. Do I think it's
potentially dangerous? Absolutely. So is driving. So is flying.

In the last decade, I've had three experiences where my head hit the
pavement hard. In one case a car passed me, then made a right turn directly
in front of me. I slammed into the side of the car then fell hard on my
right side. My head hit the pavement hard enough for me to be dizzy. But I
had a helmet on. Reasonable people would conclude that I would have been
more seriously injured had I not been wearing the helmet. On another
occassion, I was on a group ride and the rider ahead of me fell at a RR
crossing. In trying to avoid him, I hit the tracks at a bad angle and went
down hard. Again, I hit my head hard enough to make myself dizzy. But I
had a helmet on. Finally, I had the accident I've already described that
resulted in me being hospitalized with many serious injuries including a
compression fracture of the spine. Here I have witnesses who have described
how I was launched into the air off of a car windshield and landed on my
head. But my head wasn't hurt. Again, reasonable people would conclude
that the helmet was a factor in saving me from at least some sort of head
injury. Based on the broken outer plastic shell and deep gouges in the
helmet, a reasonable person would conlude that I was spared from quite a
serious head injury.

I'm glad you've been spared the experience. Good for you.

Based on my direct experience, a good bicycle helmet is a very reasonable
measure of added safety against circumstances which, though they haven't
happened to you, CAN and DO happen to others.

End of discussion for me.

Bob C.
 
psycholist says...

> Geez. I hope you learned to fit your bike better than you learned to fit
> whatever helmet you may have tried. This is just simply ridiculous.
>
> Bob C.


My helmet fits fine, as far as it goes. Doesn't stop it from being hot
and sweaty. Doesn't stop the straps from being mildly annoying and
uncomfortable. You might want to save your advice for the lop-sided
helmet wearers I see almost daily.
 
psycholist wrote:
>
>
> OK Frank ... you win. I'm not going to argue statistics with you anymore...


I think the available statistics are pretty clear. It's hard to argue
with them!

> ... and you reject all experiential evidence that's been presented by those who
> have had serious accidents and by EMTs.


Bob, you need to understand that I've talked and corresponded with EMTs.
I've talked and corresponded with head injury specialists. All the
ones I've discussed this with have confirmed the national numbers.

Example: Our club used to have a person who was a full time,
professional head injury rehabilitation specialist. Her job was helping
people learn to manage their lives after serious head injury.

In seven years of full time work, she'd had only one cyclist client, and
he was a racer - meaning he probably had the helmet on when he was
injured. She said almost all her clients were motor vehicle occupants,
plus a few motorcyclists. Again, same thing the national statistics say.

Stories of people in bike crashes? Certainly, I've read those here.
But given the failure to match national statistics, I really wonder if
their judgement about the incident is correct. How reliably does
someone tell the difference between "Wow, I would have gotten a brain
injury without my helmet" and "Darn, if not for the extra thickness of
the helmet, my head wouldn't have even touched the ground"?


Fine. That's your choice. You've
> been fortunate not to have had a serious accident in your long cycling
> career.


Please understand: my "fortune" is completely normal!

One landmark study of League of American Bicyclist members found one
"serious" crash per 11 years of riding, with those crashes averaging
about $100 damage, IIRC. IOW, not very "serious" at all, in an era of
$100 brake/shifter levers!

> Our area is VERY rapidly growing. Roads
> are narrow and windy. New developments are going in rapidly. Vehicular
> traffic has increased dramatically. And we all know that the housewives on
> Darvon are driving larger and larger SUVs. You asked me what I have against
> cycling. I don't have anything against cycling. It's my very favorite
> thing to do. Do I think it's dangerous? Not necessarily. Do I think it's
> potentially dangerous? Absolutely. So is driving. So is flying.


Yes, almost anything has a level of risk. And I like to keep that in
people's minds. When you rank activities by danger level, it's a
continuum - infinite shades of grey. But many people seem to personally
put cycling into the black & white "Dangerous" category. They do this
despite numbers that tell otherwise.

Doing this doesn't help cylcists. It tends to make new developments
like yours even more hostile to cycling - as in "Nobody's going to want
to ride here anyway. Everyone knows it's too dangerous. So that left
turn vehicle detector needn't be tuned for bicycles."

>
> In the last decade, I've had three experiences where my head hit the
> pavement hard. In one case a car passed me, then made a right turn directly
> in front of me. I slammed into the side of the car then fell hard on my
> right side. My head hit the pavement hard enough for me to be dizzy. But I
> had a helmet on. Reasonable people would conclude that I would have been
> more seriously injured had I not been wearing the helmet. On another
> occassion, I was on a group ride and the rider ahead of me fell at a RR
> crossing. In trying to avoid him, I hit the tracks at a bad angle and went
> down hard. Again, I hit my head hard enough to make myself dizzy. But I
> had a helmet on. Finally, I had the accident I've already described that
> resulted in me being hospitalized with many serious injuries including a
> compression fracture of the spine. Here I have witnesses who have described
> how I was launched into the air off of a car windshield and landed on my
> head. But my head wasn't hurt. Again, reasonable people would conclude
> that the helmet was a factor in saving me from at least some sort of head
> injury. Based on the broken outer plastic shell and deep gouges in the
> helmet, a reasonable person would conlude that I was spared from quite a
> serious head injury.


And I've described before the accident I witnessed where a kid was
tossed high into the air by a car impact, shattered the windshield with
his head, landed on his head on the road, but was unhurt. No helmet. I
can give more details, if anyone wants. It's an interesting story.

I'm aware that there are some people who have crashed much more than I
have. When you think about it, every normal curve has two tails.
Perhaps I ride quite carefully and conservatively. But again, almost
every cyclist I know has a record similar to mine - just like national
data shows!

Again, cycling is NOT very dangerous. It does us no good to pretend it is.

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]
 
psycholist said:
...If I merely consider our cycling club, I can think of dozens of incidents in the past couple of years where people were hit by cars, dogs ran into the road and took them out, they went down in a paceline touch of wheels, etc.
I can also recall dozens of statements like, "were it not for my helmet, I'd
have been way more seriously hurt."

Can I cite statistics to back this up? No. Has anyone produced any
relevant statistics that apply to this population of serious cyclists who
log many hours on the roads? NO!

Am I pro helmet law? NO! Am I pro helmet? YES! Above all, I'm anti
statistics. I know statistics quite well and I know they can be quite
limited, quite biased and quite inaccurate.

Bob C.

Dear Bob - statements like "were it not for my helmet, I'd
have been way more seriously hurt." don't cut it as objective and reliable evidence - don't you understand that expressions of what people believe might have otherwise happened are notoriously unreliable? Self reports are taken with a grain of salt by researchers for good reason - subjective assessments tend to merely echo personal beliefs - they're pretty much worthless. You seem to fail to appreciate this. Perhaps you're confusing self-reports with statistics?
Statistics are a necessary antidote to the limited and narrow viewpoint of our own personal experience. I suspect that people who say they are anti-statistics are innumerate - or simply don't like the reality that the stats show to be - another variation of shoot the messenger - cause you don't like the message.

Bob - I'm sure you'd love what John Allen Paulos has to say - try reading some of his books - they're about people like you - innumerate people and the errors they succumb to as a result of their innumeracy.

Roger
 
psycholist said:
...As usual Frank, your statistics are entirely without merit or validity.

You say that cyclists account for less than 1% of fatal HI injuries and
that's your argument why we shouldn't worry about wearing helmets. Well,
Frank, what percent of the entire population do you suppose we represent.
Index that figure ... if you know what that means. THEN you'll have a
relevant analysis. Also, index that figure using only those cyclists who
are dedicated roadies who spend hours a week on the road.

I've heard so many lame arguments from people who say they've never had an
incident, but when you grill them a bit, you find out they ride maybe on
average a couple of hours a month or less. I ride a couple of hours a DAY.
The more you're out there, the more potential for something to happen. I
haven't seen any statistics yet that take that into account.

Bob C.

Well Bob, your claim that Frank's statistics are entirely without merit or validity is entirely without any merit or validity. God your assertion was pathetic!

Obviously Bob you're not familiar with the base rate fallacy, because that's what you fail to appreciate here. The base rate fallacy is yet another fallacy that statistically innumerate people have a propensity to fall for.

So QED Bob - you're statistically innumerate? That would explain your disdain for statistics - sour grapes for a knowledge which is out of your reach? Are you familiar with Aesop's fable?

Roger
 
psycholist said:
OK Frank ... you win. I'm not going to argue statistics with you anymore
and you reject all experiential evidence that's been presented by those who
have had serious accidents and by EMTs.
...End of discussion for me.

Bob C.

Oh Bob you're pathetic - so you're not going to argue statistics with Frank anymore - yeah that's because you don't have any statistical understanding to be able to argue about the statistics.

Experimental evidence - bollocks you don't know what you're talking about - you're dressing up you ignorance with flash words you obviously don't properly understand. Personal reports are subjective opinions, they are worthless speculative conjecture - they most certainly are not experimental evidence.

Bob - you're talking through a hole in your head - trying to bluster your way through with bs.

Roger
 
psycholist said:
...No it's not. It's more misleading statistics. See my earlier reply.
Without indexing these figures to the population of cyclists ... and mores
specifically, the population of dedicated roadies (for the sake of relevance
to these cycling newsgroups), your figures are MEANINGLESS!

Bob C.
Rubbish Bob - the figures that Frank suppiles are MEANINGFUL - what you are suggesting by trying to evaluate relative risk is what fits better as MEANINGLESS.

Obviously you fail to see the obvious reason. A paternalistic law requiring mandatory wearing of helmets must have some a strong justification for that intervention to be warranted. If the claim is made that such-and-such a type of injury is preventable by wearing so-and-so then what is of most interest is the base rate of that particular type of injury across the population. Their might well be a group contributing 1% of the injury stats, and they might well have a marginally higher relative risk of injury - but the reasonable assessment is to focus on the groups that contribute nearer 50% of the injury stats - irregardless of whether the relative risk of this group might be marginally less than the relative risk of the group contributing only 1% of the injuries.

That's the argument here - Frank is right to say that the base rate is what's important here - focus on the activities that contribute the most to the injury statistics- not on the diluting down into arguing about relative risk or odds ratio based on dubious determinations of exposure levels.

Roger
 
AustinMN said:
mrbubl wrote:
> RogerDodger wrote:
>> mrbubl Wrote:
>>>...If not wearing a helmet on your head is safer for you and yours, more
>>>power to yah and hope you are an organ donor so your choices may help
>>>others.
>>>
>>>mrbubl

>>
>>
>> Well there you go then... finish it off with a question begging howler.
>> What moronic drivel - obviously you don't even have enough intelligence
>> to realise that your petitio principii argument is fatally flawed.

>
> Fatally flawed........you crack me up! Must be from the brain injury
> suffered from lack of head protection.


Another helmet troll more interested in winning the argument than in
learning the truth.

<plonk>

Austin
--
I'm pedaling as fast as I durn well please!
There are no X characters in my address

The poor critter isn't capable of a rebuttal - but rather a pathetic attempt to dismiss my claims (and with no cognitive content I might add).
 
Dan said:
I've been driving for 40 years, never had an accident, can I stop
wearing my seatbelt? No one is asking you to do anything, but we're
suggesting it would be safer to wear one than not to.

Maybe Dan you should take a dose of your own advice and wear a helmet in your car too - because despite selt belts and airbags there's heaps more horrible mulched brains and drooling TBI (traumatic brain injury) cases of vehicle occupants and pedestrians. Place your overweening focus where the greatest incidence of the injury actually occurs.

Roger
 
On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 00:43:18 GMT, "Scott Ehardt"
<SCEhardt---|||===REM@VE===|||---SCEhardt.com> wrote:

>I am not taking sides on this issue, but I will point out that in this form
>your statistics are useless. Comparing number of showering injuries to
>number of bicycling injuries is completely irrelevant.


And making statements, asd the Liddites do, that "X thousand cyclist
suffer head injury each year" is equally irrelevant.

So here's a completely relevant, exposure-adjusted stat for you: for
children in England, the proportion of serious head injuries in
pedestrians hospitalised was higher than in cyclists. In other words,
as a pedestrian, if you are hit you are more likely to receive a
serious head injury.

There are five or six times as many pedestrians injured annually,
which is a non-adjusted figure but clearly meaningful in context,
since it indicates that if the numbers of injured cyclists are big
enough to cause concern, the numbers of injured pedestrians must be
even more so.

Oh, here's another one: 25% of all cyclists killed in London are the
result of one single type of accident, left-turning goods vehicles.

I haven't yet heard a possible good outcome from exaggerating the
benefits of helmets.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University
 
On Tue, 9 Nov 2004 09:17:35 -0500, "psycholist" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>And equally as usual, another case of COMPLETELY misleading statistics. Of
>course cyclists aren't a significant source of organ donations. There
>aren't that many of us.


Pity you missed the fact that most of the dead have other mortal
injuries as well.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University
 
On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 23:42:58 GMT, Dan <[email protected]> wrote:

> I've seen these arguments so many times and always wanted to say
>something but never have. It's so simple, if you don't care about your
>safety, then don't wear a helmet.


I have yet to see an objective study of the relative merits of
different cycle safety interventions that put helmets anywhere other
than last.

Why are the handwringers not campaigning for the first, best thing
that can be done to improve cyclist safety, controlling dangerous
driving?

>If you hit your noggin', you're gonna
>be a vegetable or die more than likely. You're body can take alot of
>abuse but your head cannot.


At this point I produce exhibit A: my "knitted acrylic balaclava saved
my life" anecdote.

At what point id all cycling crashes suddenly become inevitably fatal
unless you are wearing a helmet? Looks to me that it was shortly
after messrs. Bell introduced their famous plastic hats!

Cycling is neither unusually dangerous nor unusually productive of
head injuries. If you crahs your bike you are no more liekly to
suffer a head injury than if youa re involved in an accident as a
pedestrian. As a proporiton of head injuries reaching hospital,
cycling is not even on the radar.

>As an EMT, I was shown a picture of a guy that was riding a bike
>and was hit by a car. The guy was laying on the ground, his eyes open,
>looking at his brain laying in front of him that had popped out of the
>front of his skull. Maybe, if he had a helmet on, this could have been
>prevented, maybe not.


Almost certainly not: the test standards for helmets are the
equivalent of a fall from a stationary riding position, and a lot of
helmets these days fail the tests.

No amount of pro-helmet propaganda and scare stories can nullify the
fact that cycling is, fundamentally, a very safe activity. A greater
proportion of pedestrians than cyclists end up with serious head
injuries - do you wear your helmet when walking?

And the idea that helmets can protect you from motor traffic is
probably the most outright dangerous myth the helmet lobby has
invented.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University