On 07/02/2005 22:48:56 "Just zis Guy, you know?" <
[email protected]> wrote:
> At Sat, 02 Jul 2005 21:01:32 GMT, message
> <[email protected]> was posted by Buck
> <[email protected]>, including some, all or none of the
> following:
>>>> I think it is perfectly acceptable for me, as a parent, to advocate
>>>> safety apparatus for an activity my kids are involved in, while
>>>> ignoring activities that they are not involved in.
>>> Your kids don't walk? *boggle*!
>> You really are inane at times,
> So you say, but walking was the specific activity with which I contrasted
> the risks of cycling.
But this was all part of the circumstancial disagreement on perceived
correlation that we had earlier and therefore contectually not relevant.
>>>> I believe the opposite of your argument, in as much as I consider that
>>>> your aim is to place the argument entirely out of context.
>>> And you are this: wrong.
>> In your opinion, but IMHO you are wrong.
> Your opinion is not humble, and I venture to suggest that I know my aims
> better than you do.
Tetchy.
>>> Let's just replay that: "No one here is arguing that cycling is any more
>>> or less dangerous than anything else." And yet, uniquely, it is singled
>>> out for special protective equipment!
>> I'm not sure what your point is here other than to indulge yourself.
> Then we are both wasting our time.
Even more tetchy, perhaps you should get some sleep.
>>>> The Iranian figures stand within their own context, but do not
>>>> adequately support your aims, that is why you dismiss them, while using
>>>> Japan and the U.S.A. as examples for your cause, despite the fact that
>>>> I doubt you have visited all three cultures and so have no first hand
>>>> experience of the environment and social structures which may affect
>>>> the examples.
>>> Oh FFS! Listen: We are told that 50% of child cyclist injuries in Iran
>>> are head injuries or some such. That is *meaningless* without context.
>>> A bit under 40% of British child cyclist injuries are head injuries. Is
>>> that significant? Does our view of its significance change when we hear
>>> that this is, in fact, about average for all types of injury? That the
>>> percentage in pedestrian injuries is rather higher? Without context we
>>> can tell *nothing* from that Iranian figure! For all we know this may
>>> be much lower than for any other activity! But Graitcer and his merry
>>> band trot the statistic out in typical "BIKE DANGER! SCARY HEAD
>>> INJURIES!" style.
>>> This is only tangentially related to the Japan comment, which was simply
>>> to say that while you ridicule the comparison with pedestrians, the
>>> Japanese took it sufficiently seriously to mount a study (with - to us-
>>> predictable results).
>> I am not ridiculing the comparison, you are making un founded
>> accusations. Nothing new for a zealot of course and what I expect from
>> you.
> A zealot acts on convictions and is not amenable to evidence. I have
> changed my views on many things in response to evidence. I have taken the
> trouble to read literally hundreds of papers on this subject, and I think
> that makes me tolerably well-informed. Maybe I'm a scepticism zealot -
> mad keen for everybody to read the source data 
> What, precisely, would you infer from the Iranian data, taken in
> isolation?
Just what it says, that x number of head injuries occurred in children
during cycling, it does not say what type of head injury and in no way
constitutes a reason for the compulsion of helmet use, but equally neither
does a study in Japan on walking negate the use of cycle helmets for
school children in the U.K.
>> So in my experience and infinitely higher number people have died within
>> my group of friends while cycling, are'nt statistics great?
> That's not statistics, it's anecdote. Overall the statistics form many
> populations numbering many tens of millions of cyclists is that helmets do
> not improve cyclist safety, and if anything make it worse.
It is not anecdote, it is based entirely on fact and is as valid as any other
factual based but limited example.
>>> *given* that a crash occurs. But the 1989 Seattle study also shows that
>>> helmeted riders were seven times more likely to crash...
>> With no given reason therefore anecdotal.
> Eh? The Seattle study shows that helmeted riders are seven times more
> likely to hit their heads. It's not anecdote, it's in the published data.
> The authors don't point it out, of course, but it's there nonetheless.
Yet my experience above is anecdotal? Double standards methinks.
> Of course, you could reject that on the grounds that the 1989 Seattle
> study is bollocks - I'd have no problem agreeing with that. But then you
> have to start out down the thorny path of identifying a pro-helmet study
> which *isn't* bollocks, and that could take a while. You then have to
> account for the fact that the predictions of these studies have *never*
> been supported by trends in *any* real population.
> So it's a mass of contradictory data, and the only sane response is to
> allow everybody to make their own informed choice. Which was my point,
> really.
>>>>> Other strands include the false claim that cycling is unusually likely
>>>>> to result in head injury, the use of road casualty statistics to
>>>>> promote a device not designed to mitigate such collisions, the effect
>>>>> on behaviour of feeling better protected, and so on.
>>>> Mostly I would agree with that, but I think it is a little bit broad a
>>>> statement.
>>> Which one?
>> The effect on behaviour for one.
> "Risk compensation in children’s activities: A pilot study", Mok D, Gore
> G, Hagel B, Mok E, Magdalinos H, Pless B. 2004. Paediatr Child
> Health: Vol 9 No 5 May/June 2004
> "The results indicate that risk compensation may modify the effectiveness
> of PE for children engaged in sports and leisure activities. Conversely,
> the findings also suggest that those wearing PE may be a cautious
> subgroup."
Where did the word "may" in the first line of the above change to "will"
in order to support your argument?
A meteor may hit the planet next week and kill us all, ok, we may as well
give up now then, come on Guy.
> Which, I guess makes them zealots as well. Except that Barry Pless has
> been calling for helmet compulsion for years and previously denied the
> possibility that risk compensation might happen...
>>> It is an insanely complex issue. Unfortunately there is a large and
>>> influential group of people who want to force their extremely simplistic
>>> view of it on others.
>> Or indeed their complex but not altogethor mitigated view on others.
> Absolutely. I am determined to force informed choice on everybody,
> whether they like it or not.
There is no "informed" choice in this as the two sides have intensly
formed ideas based on numerous "jaded" reports, the best idea is to base
choice on personal experience and gut instinct but that is invalid and
anecdotal.
The problem I see is that if you dress something up as "official" it
becomes fact regardless of actual fact based on real experience, my
friend who died on a bicycle, really died, but the fact is disregarded
and indeed demeaned because it is not dressed up in some super document
supported by an expert in worm wrestling.
I do not consider his death a good reason for helmet compulsion but do
consider it a valid reason to state that cycling can result in death,
there were no other vehicles involved, so in that factual context, cycling
can be dangerous, period!
--
Buck
I would rather be out on my Catrike
http://www.catrike.co.uk
