On Mon, 8 Nov 2004 15:23:40 -0500, "psycholist" <
[email protected]>
wrote in message <
[email protected]>:
>Interesting argument. You presented a bunch of data and findings and any
>that you didn't agree with you called "lies."
No, there are genuine research papers on both sides, and reasons for
the discrepancy between them, but these claims are lies: the group in
question have made them in advertisements, and the body which
regulates advertisements has ruled that they are lies.
In particular the figure of 50 cycling child head fatalities per year,
also made by their leader on national TV, is a bald-faced lie. It is
over twice the total for all causes, and to say (as they do) that 80%
of fatal child cycling head injuries go unrecorded is simply absurd.
All fatal child head injuries in the last year for which we have
figures, were the result of road traffic crashes; the under-reporting
rate for fatal cyclist road traffic crashes is officially 0%,
according to our Transport Research Laboratory. It is a lie, plain
and simple
>And none of it addressed what I said. If a cyclist has a bad fall and hits
>his head and the helmet does its job and he/she gets up and rides happily on
>his/her merry way, they don't end up in any statistics. But they were quite
>possibly saved from serious injury by a helmet.
And if the cyclist falls off and never hits their head and they
weren't wearing a plastic hat, that doesn't get reported either. And
if the cyclist never crashes in the first place (i.e. to a first
approximation all rides), that doesn't either.
So you have to go to proper, population-level statistics. The CPSC
says that over ten years the cyclist head injury rate rose by 10%,
cycling reduced by 21% and helmet use increased threefold from 18% to
50% - so risk increased by around 40%. That says to me that helmets
are irrelevant in that context, the context of injuries serious enough
to get recorded. Do helmets prevent 90% of trivial injuries? It
wouldn't surprise me, and I wouldn't consider that a compelling case
for wearing a helmet.
>As for me, I was hit head-on by a teenage driver talking on a cell phone who
>made an unsignaled left hand turn right into my path. It was at an
>intersection and there were several witnesses. It was reported that, after
>I slammed into the front fender, I then went into the windshield which
>launched me straight up into the air. I landed squarely on my head. I
>sustained a broken hip, pelvis ankle and a compression fracture of the
>spine. I had a major laceration of the lower leg. My helmet was destroyed.
>I had NO head injuries. Zero. None.
And in a similar crash I too suffered no cuts and only minor
concussion, despite being thrown 15ft through the air. My life was
saved by my Millets knitted acrylic balaclava. And because balaclavas
don't degrade in UV, I still have it to save my life today!
So much for that.
What is scary here is that people prey on the fear of traffic to push
helmets *which are not specified for traffic crashes*. And the more
helmet-saved-my-life anecdotes we hear, the more people are going to
think "shall I blow that stop sign? It's OK, I'm wearing a helmet!"
There is a lot of research which shows that people who perceive
themselves to be protected, take more risks - there can be no possible
good outcome from exaggerating the benefits of helmet use.
>You can argue statistics and findings and such all day long. They don't
>capture the incidents like the one I cited at the outset of this post.
And guess what? They don't need to. Because every single cycle crash
is a unique event. So all we can ever do is collect together enough
of them to draw inferences - the concept of "statistical
significance". The bigger the sample, the more accurate the result.
There are two really big sample sets out there, Australia and New
Zealand - and in neither case was there any ,measurable benefit from
massive increases in helmet use. So either they are essentially
worthless against serious injuries, or whatever benefit they have is
outweighed by risk compensatory behaviour. Bolstered, no doubt, by
the routine overstating of the benefits of helmets. Ask anyone how
good helmets are, they will likely say "they prevent 85% of head
injuries" even though that figure is flat wrong, being derived from
comparing entirely different groups of cyclists. The original
authors' subsequent estimates are much lower, and even then at the
upper end of the range of estimates.
>I don't believe any of the statistics on helmets that I read and hear. I
>don't believe anyone is accurately recording these incidents.
Fine. So you believe that - what - large numbers of cyclists who were
injured when unhelmeted simply went home, but after the helmet laws
they decided to present at hospital to make the figures look bad?
How do you account for the 40% increase in head injury risk for US
cyclists as lid use rose from 18% to 50%? Do tell.
>You're free to believe whatever foolish thing you want to believe.
Me? I don't believe anything. I'm utterly sceptical. I certainly
don't believe people who quote figures which are not just wrong, but
easily checked.
>I'm not
>arguing for mandatory helmet laws. I just know that I'm very glad I had my
>helmet on when I was hit. And it's my opinion that any serious cyclist who
>logs serious mileage is playing a foolish game of roulette if they believe
>they'll never get hit. And let me ask you something. If you knew you were
>going to get hit, would you rather be wearing a helmet or not?
I'd rather be riding my recumbent, where the chance of head injury is
very much less. Oh, wait, I usually am!
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