In article <
[email protected]>, SMS wrote:
> Brent P wrote:
>> In article <6K7Ai.2118$7p6.901@trnddc01>, Lobby Dosser wrote:
>>
>>> You are another one who needs to understand that whether or not helmet
>>> wearing becomes law has everything to do with politics and emotions and
>>> nothing to do with engineering. Perception Is Reality.
>>
>> Oh I understand that this nation is full of control freak morons like
>> yourself. Too bad. It would have been nice to have the educated and
>> liberty minded population the founders seem to have wanted.
>
> The problem is that attitudes such as yours will allow the _real_
> control freaks to be able to impose helmet laws on the rest of us.
Oh this has got to be creative....
> You've got a group of health care professionals that have tunnel vision
> because they work in emergency rooms where they see the difference in
> injury levels and fatalities between helmets and unhelmeted cyclists,
> skateboarders, etc. You can't dispute what the ER statistics show for
> those injured seriously enough to seek ER care, as cited in this and
> many other helmet threads. Furthermore, the ER statistics vastly
> understate the helmet benefit because so many accidents end up not
> requiring an ER visit because of helmet use, but it's impossible to
> quantify the benefit.
How does this have anything to do with my desire to have liberty be the
goal instead of control freakism? Nothing.
> If you want to fight helmet laws, fight them based on personal freedom
> issues. Don't let the do-gooders that want to pass more laws to make
> everything safe for everybody hijack the debate by letting them focus
> solely on the tiny subset of the tiny number of accidents where there is
> a head impact where a helmet would make a difference. This is the tiny
> subset that the ER physicians see, and these people are listened to by
> the public when they hear no coherent argument against helmets.
I think I've made it clear that I oppose bicycle helmets on all grounds.
> Whatever you do, don't show up at a public hearing with ludicrous
> comparisons of driving helmets or walking helmets, or try to equate head
> injury accidents with cancer, heart disease, ED, PMS, etc. You'll be
> written off as a fool, and the do-gooders will win. The politicians are
> not impressed or amused by these anecdotes or silly comparisons, however
> clever the creators of that sort of **** think that they are.
Bicycling helmet laws decrease bicycling and to pretend there isn't a
health cost in that is just silly. What you apparently want is to narrow
the argument to such an extent that the sob stories will win out. After
all they tug at the emotions while everything else is statistics and
basic engineering.
> The big difference in this debate is that some of us want to fight
> helmet laws without attacking the results of the ER studies.
Good for you. I think you have me confused with someone else. But when
studies outright lie and you don't point that out, then they'll just lie
more. Good luck winning when the other side lies, you don't and don't
call them out on it.
> Others are
> not content to fight the helmet laws, but are somehow trying to prove
> that their choice to not wear a helmet adds absolutely no risk to their
> life. They take it as a personal affront whenever the safety advantage
> of helmets in head-impact accidents is raised, rather than simply
> stating that they are willing to accept that tiny amount of extra risk.
Maybe you can't read what I've written. I've stated several times that
the risk-benefit-ratio for a bicycle 'helmet' doesn't justify wearing
one. If I were to choose to wear one when biking I would have to choose
to wear one for so many activities it would be silly. Bicycling simply
isn't that dangerous and the benefit from helmets very slim. As I stated
before, I am over 6' tall, just falling over I am beyond the helmet's
capabilities.