On Aug 23, 3:30 pm, "John S." <
[email protected]> wrote:
> On Aug 23, 2:07 pm, [email protected] (Brent P)
> wrote:
>
> > In article <[email protected]
> > History deleted the thread is getting too long.
>
> Since we are throwing statistics about here's my own.
Rather, here is some propaganda you copied from a site that advocates
mandatory helmets for everyone, of all ages, everywhere. But let's
look at them in context. It will tell you a lot about how the helmet
promotion game is played.
> There are 85 million bicycle riders in the US.
OK. Different people get different numbers, depending on their
definition of "bicycle rider." (Once a week? Once every ten years?)
But OK.
> 784 bicyclists died on US roads in 2005. 92% of them died in crashes
> with motor vehicles (720).
Yep. That compares with roughly 720,000 from heart disease, 540,000
from cancer, 150,000 from strokes, 114,000 from lung diseases - all
of which bicycling can help prevent.
Oh, you want just accidental deaths? Roughly 40,000 motorist deaths.
16,000 from falls. 8,400 from solid or liquid poison. 4,000
drownings. 3,700 from fires or burns. 3,200 from choking. 900
_accidental_ firearm deaths. What's closest to cycling's number? The
fatalities from poison gases, around 600 or so. (Source: World
Almanac)
How much fearmongering do you hear about poison gas deaths? Do you go
around saying "Always wear your gas mask"?
>
> About 540,000 bicyclists visit emergency rooms with injuries every
> year. Of those, about 67,000 have head injuries, and 27,000 have
> injuries serious enough to be hospitalized.
Yep. And nearly 700,000 basketball players visit ER rooms every
year. Do you warn everyone about the fact that basketball is many
times more dangerous than bicycling, per hour?
And as I pointed out in an earlier thread, "head injuries" is usually
inflated by including any scrape or cut above the neck, literally
including scratched ears.
Also, note that the 27,000 hospitalized are for _all_ injuries, not
just head injuries, as they're hoping you'll not notice.
> Bicycle crashes and injuries are under-reported, since the majority
> are not serious enough for emergency room visits.
??? And we are supposed to worry because most bike crashes involve
nothing but a skinned knee? The only people who worry about missing
the skinned knees are those who wish to inflate the numbers even
more!
> 1 in 8 of the cyclists with reported injuries has a brain injury.
Unlikely, unless you extend the definition of "brain injury" down to
"briefly dazed." And I'd like to see a source for that number.
Because Stutts, et. al, "Bicycle Accidents: An Examination of Hospital
Emergency Room Reports and Comparison with Police Accident Data,"
Transportation Research Record #1168, found that only 6% of ER-
visiting cyclists had "moderate or worse" injuries to the head. And
those injuries must include some moderate or worse injuries that did
not involve the brain - for example, broken facial bones. Your source
website must have ignored Stutts' data.
> Two-thirds of the deaths here are from traumatic brain injury.
This is often portrayed as being unique to bicycling. In fact, it's
not at all unique. For example, a 1990s German study found that
roughly 75% of motorist fatalities were from traumatic brain injury.
(Sorry, no citation now; I'll dig for it if you want.)
> A very high percentage of cyclists' brain injuries can be prevented by
> a helmet, estimated at anywhere from 45 to 88 per cent.
And, of course, those "estimates" have never materialized in the real
world. (BTW, one notorious paper used Thompson & Rivara's "85%
reduction in [mostly minor] head injuries" to claim that therefore
helmets would prevent 85% of _fatalities_. A specious claim indeed!
But you can be sure your site will cheerfully use that claim!
> Many years of potential life are lost because about half of the deaths
> are children under 15 years old.
Mayer Hillman, of the Policy Studies Institute of London, has
calculated that 20 years of life are _gained_ for every year of life
lost through bicycling. The gains occur because of less obesity, less
heart disease, less diabetes, less pollution, fewer deaths of people
hit by cars (since cyclists almost never kill pedestrians or
motorists), etc.
> Direct costs of cyclists' injuries due to not using helmets are
> estimated at $81 million each year.
Such "costs" are universally based on Thompson & Rivara's "85%" claim,
and are therefore trash. But that "cost" is absolutely dwarfed by
costs associated with ailments and injuries that cycling helps
prevent! Look at those death numbers I listed earlier - they give you
an idea of where society's medical money is really going! Again,
bicycling is off the bottom of the list.
FWIW, An economic evaluation of the mandatory bicycle helmet
legislation in Western Australia by Delia Hendrie et. al., in a paper
presented at the Conference on Road Safety, by the Insurance
Commission of Western Australia, 2000 (IIRC), found that the mandatory
helmet law that caused helmet use to rise to roughly 90% was almost
certainly a money-loser for society. That is, the cost of helmets,
promotion and enforcement probably exceeded the value of the minor
reduction in head injuries. And as the authors noted, that didn't
even account for the costs due to less cycling - those costs being
worse public health, more pollution, etc.
> Indirect costs of cyclists' injuries due to not using helmets are
> estimated at $2.3 billion each year.
Same comment. And beware the "are estimated" phrase. Who, exactly,
has done the estimating? How was it done? What was there agenda?
And most importantly, how does that number rank compared with other,
much more significant problems?
> Helmet use in the US varies by orders of magnitude in different areas
> and different sectors of our society. White collar commuters probably
> reach 80 per cent,
.... because, of course, white collar commuters read Buycycling
magazine and all the rest of the propaganda. IOW, so what?
> while inner city kids and rural kids would be 10
> per cent or less.
Because they _don't_ read the propaganda, and have to develop sharp
judgment about what is really a necessary expense and what is not.
> Overall, our best wild guess is probably no more than 25 per cent.
"Wild guess" does characterize much of the data on that site!
> Sommers Point, NJ, where a state helmet law is in
> effect, found that only 24 of the 359 students who rode to school in
> one week of the Winter of 2002 wore helmets (6 per cent) until the
> School District adopted a helmet rule. North Carolina observed 17 per
> cent statewide before their law went into effect in 2001.
This is terrible news, IF your objective is to sell helmets - and that
is the objective of that site. But really, if 335 out of 359 families
judge that a helmet isn't necessary, why are you trying to convince
them otherwise? Are you _really_ smarter than all of them?
If you really want to give terrible news, list the number of
permanently or fatally brain injured cyclists per year in those
areas. But of course, they won't do that. Such tiny numbers would
send the wrong message!
> Helmets are cheap. The typical discount store price has risen from
> under $10 to about $15, but there are still models available for under
> $10 at major retailers.
And our bicycle club has given away police-recovered bikes to many low
income families who couldn't afford even a thrift store bike. There
really, really are people out there who can't waste $10 on a helmet -
and trust me, they know it would be a waste!
Overall, helmet promoters thrive on giving scary numbers taken out of
context. America is a huge country; it's easy to find large-sounding
numbers. They mean very little unless you make comparisons.
Want more numbers? Try this: Visit
http://www.bicyclinglife.com/SafetySkills/SafetyQuiz.htm
and take the quiz. It's all about numbers in context.
- Frank Krygowski