OK, gotta ask this one.

  • Thread starter Trudi Marrapodi
  • Start date



Mitch Haley <[email protected]> writes:

> "Bill Z." wrote:
> > Yeah. Any indication, whether anecdotal or a result of a carefully
> > run research project, that shows a non-zero benefit for helmet use
> > *must* be ignored, with the authors discredited and anyone mentioning
> > the results attacked. Standard modus operandi.
>
> Name calling will get you nowhere, Bill.

What name calling? I described the behavior of various individuals
whom I did not even name. If you think that is name calling, you have
a guilty conscience.

> Besides, I'm not the one who got in a childish tiff
> with a professional researcher on this board a few
> years ago, that was you.

That "professional researcher" has an axe to grind on this subject,
and any "tiff" was started by her name calling, which began each post
by inserting her insult of the day between my first and last name,
with said behavior continued for at least a month straight. As I
said, "standard modus operandi" for the anti-helmet kooks.

BTW, one of the more flagrant anti-helmet dudes hasn't been heard from
very much over the last few years. He pretty much went away after
posting a comment on another newsgroup about the police, using the
time he was arrested for "back handing" his girlfriend as an example.
It took a while for him to understand why readers might find such
behavior to be just a tad offensive.

Bill

--
My real name backwards: nemuaZ lliB
 
Trudi Marrapodi wrote:
> Two idiots whose pickup was stopped at the light yelled "Nice helmet" at
> me. When I ignored them, they yelled "HEY!" as if to make sure that I
> understood that they were ridiculing ME and got the message. "We
> *said*: THAT'S A NICE HELMET! HA HA HA HA HA!"



My response to Couple of Drunk Idiots Riding Around In a Pickup On a
Friday Evening?

"Hey. HEY! THAT'S A NICE HALLOWEEN MASK YOU HAVE ON. HA HA HA HA!"

Suckas.



--
 
Dave wrote:

> Only thing I can say is from personal experience, I've witnessed nasty
> crashes at speed (30+) as well as touring paces where the helmet has come
> into play in preventing severe injury. A member of my team recently was
> doing TT training, and a SUV pulled into the bike lane and stopped abruptly
> in front of him. He was going about 32mph, and went right into the back,
> and had he not been wearing a helmet, we'd have gone to his funeral.


And I've posted before the crash I witnessed, in Pittsburgh. A car was
passing a parked bus when a college-aged kid darted out directly into
the path of the car. We were walking on a sidewalk behind the car. We
heard the sickening impact, we saw the kid's body get tossed higher than
the roof of the car. We later found out that the kid had landed on the
road on his head, and we later saw that the kid's head had destoyed the
windshield. His body had smashed the car's grill and badly dented the hood.

I missed some of the action, because I immediately turned around and ran
back to a phone to report a traffic fatality. But it turns out there
was no fatality. The kid got up, walked to the sidewalk, and (at the
insistence of an EMT who happened by) sat with his neck immobilized
until they took him to the ER.

Turns out he was perfectly fine, except for a scratch above his ear. He
was back in school the next day. And oddly, not a soul scolded him for
not wearing a helmet! Not the EMT, not the cops, not the ER staff!

Why? Because he was a pedestrian. He'd jogged across that street.
(You'd think, with pedestrian fatalities outnumbering bike fatalities so
badly, that people would lobby for ped helmets, woudn't you?)

But I _know_ that if that pedestrian _had_ been wearing a helmet,
everyone would have taken it as proof that the helmet saved his life.
It would have been absolutely obvious.

And absolutely false.


--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]
 
Rick wrote:

>
> Some will not look at the issue with any degree of logic, and this is
> ludicrous. Helmets are, IMO, a waste of money, for the most part. They do
> protect from some injuries and potentially cause others, which may well be
> more severe. The statistics suggest that they do reduce head injuries, so in
> that they are somewhat successful.

Well, some statistics suggest they reduce head injuries. Others do not.

In general, case-control studies predict benefits from wearing helmets.
But case-control studies are by their very nature filled with
self-selected subjects, something which is absolutely forbidden in most
research of this type. You can't filter out, for example, the
super-cautious people with excellent insurance coverage who go to the ER
"just to be sure," are uninjured, and thus give points to the supposed
protection by their super-cautious helmet.

When helmet use is mandated, or (in the following paper by Scuffham)
very heavily promoted just before it's mandated, you get the entire
cycling population suddenly wearing helmets. (Or at least, the portion
that doesn't stop cycling because of the mandate.) The time-series studies
of these populations are the ones that tend to show no benefit,
especially when adjusted for the inevitable drop in cycling.

> And I am certain that if I spent more time on this, I could expand the list.
> In truth, it doesn't matter. None of the reports I've read even come close
> to knowing the actual statistics on anything except total deaths.

"Trends in Cycle Injury in New Zealand under Voluntary Helmet Use" by
Scuffham et. al., Accident Analysis & Prevention, vol 29, no.1, pp. 1-9,
1997 deals with hospitalizations due to head injury (not fatalities)
when helmet use jumped from almost zero to near 90%. If found no
benefit. It's worth a read.

A much less rigorous article in the New York Times also mentioned the
lack of benefit for injuries. http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1028.html


--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]
 
Ken [NY) wrote:

>
> Dave, some advice: I have a good friend who wiped out on his
> bike, (wheel shimmy) slid across six lanes of traffic, and hit his
> head on the far curb. He told me about it, showing me his helmet which
> had split in half. He complained about the scrapes he received on his
> legs and arms as well as the loss of paint off his racing bike, but
> there he was, talking to me, no apparent damage to his head. Not even
> a scrape.
> Years ago, I mentioned this in one of these bike groups, and
> was attacked for weeks. They first said the accident could not have
> happened. (Wrong, as I proved.) Then they told me the helmet could not
> have possibly saved him. Lastly, they threw all sorts of statistics at
> me, intended to show that bike helmets cannot possibly save someone
> from injury.... but the fact remains, he is uninjured. Hard to
> explain, but there it is.

There is some chance you're not remembering the discussion correctly.
There's also some chance that you didn't understand parts of it.

One thing to keep in mind: When a poster such as yourself characterizes
those who disagree as "They," that poster is making a fundamental
mistake. Those of us that are helmet skeptics are not a unified
organization. We are all individuals here. What I believe, and what I
say, may have little in common with someone else, even though he and I
both disagree with you.

Personally, I don't doubt that bike helmets can, in some cases, help
prevent injury, even though their certification standard is set terribly
low. Simultaneously, I know there are many cases where people without
helmets avoided identical injuries, ones that helmets would have gotten
credit for. So I can't take one tale as "proof." (If you still expect
me to, please read the post I made a little while ago, about the
Pittsburgh pedestrian.)

A single incident is a chaotic thing. Anything can happen - just like a
cigarette lighter can occasionally stop a bullet to the heart. Unless
you want to prescribe shirt-pocket cigarette lighters for everyone, or
helmets for all waking moments, you NEED to look at "all sorts of
statistics." I'm sorry, but that's the way science works. That's the
way they decide if smoking causes cancer, that's the way they determine
the effects of obesity, that's the way they determine which drugs cure
diseases, that's how they determine which police tactics work... and
that's how the skepticism about helmets has arisen. The best statistics
simply don't justify their heavy promotion.

Frankly, most people aren't good at understanding numbers. It's not
that the numbers are complicated, it's just that people don't like the
hard thinking. They tend to go by their own little anecdotes.

I feel that, if a person isn't willing to study a complicated issue,
they'll contribute little to its understanding. Yet the folks who
promote helmets seem to be unwilling to study. They're related to the
folks who say "My Aunt Matilda drank honey and vinegar every day, and
she never got cancer!!!"

If the Mayo Clinic isn't impressed with your Aunt Matilda's story, you
shouldn't be surprised. And if professional statisticians - or other
math-competent people - aren't impressed with riding buddy's story, you
shouldn't be surprised either.

Now go back and read my post about the Pittsburgh pedestrian. Did his
helmet save his life? Or _would_ his helmet have saved his life? Would
they have _thought_ his helmet saved his life?

What should we make of that anecdote? What should we make of yours?

--
--------------------+
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com,
replace with cc.ysu dot edu]
 
Frank Krygowski <[email protected]> writes:


> "Trends in Cycle Injury in New Zealand under Voluntary Helmet Use" by
> Scuffham et. al., Accident Analysis & Prevention, vol 29, no.1,
> pp. 1-9, 1997 deals with hospitalizations due to head injury (not
> fatalities) when helmet use jumped from almost zero to near 90%. If
> found no benefit. It's worth a read.
>

It is also worth remembering the limitations: (a) New Zealand's small
population (a bit over 3 million), so you get relatively few
accidents, (b) counting hospitalizations doesn't give you a good
measurement of injury reduction (a less severe head injury is still
a head injury) and (c) studies have indicated that helmet fit is
important. I don't know about New Zealand, but around my area, you'll
see see kids with helmets on their heads but the straps not fastened
or the straps loose enough that you can see air between the strap
and the kid's chin. Another problem is that a jump in usage does
not scale to a jump in cyclist miles - "serious" cyclists are more
likely to use a helmet to start with so any jump in the percentage
of cyclists using helmets is weighted towards cyclists who don't
ride very much to begin with, or who only go short distances.

Go ahead and read it, but keep in mind that it is not the last word
on the subject.

Bill

--
My real name backwards: nemuaZ lliB
 
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