On Mar 21, 12:33*am, "
wrote:
On Mar 20, 10:45*pm, Bret wrote:





On Mar 20, 2:57*pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Mar 20, 3:27*pm, Dan O wrote:
On Mar 20, 9:06*am, Frank Krygowski wrote:

In another article,http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29772691/*:

"The National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) of the United States
estimated 43 percent of skiers and snowboarders wore helmets in the
2007-08 season, against 25 percent five years earlier.
...

"The increase in the use of helmets has not reduced the overall number
of skiing fatalities," the NSAA said in a statement. "More than half
of the people involved in fatal accidents last season were wearing
helmets."

So more than half the fatalities were in helmets. *But fewer than half
wear them. *IOW, helmet use is _positively_ correlated with
fatality.

Risk compensation, anyone?

People who intend to ski as fast as they possibly can are the ones
more likely to wear a helmet.

Would they ski quite as fast, or in quite as risky a manner, if they
did not wear a helmet?

Judging by those figures above, probably not.

It's a chicken and egg question. Are people *wearing helmets because
they're doing something dangerous or doing something dangerous because
they're wearing helmets? You think it's the latter. The former makes
much more sense to me but I don't know. You seem pretty sure of
something that is unknowable without more information. Maybe you're
the type *that just doesn't know how to day "I don't know".

This argument about ski helmets and behavior also
suffers from a lack of information. *We don't have any
idea whether the ski fatalities discussed refer to
only in-bounds or also out-of-bounds skiing, and
whether they are strictly impact related accidents.

Good point. The recent deaths on Mt. Hood resulted from helmetless
boarders hitting skiers and from boarders going head first in to tree
wells. Morbidity/mortality for skiers tends to be related to binding
release problems (much of the time at low speeds), collisions with
trees, collisions with each other and ordinary crashes. Injuries tend
to be to legs, knees and shoulders. I know one guy who broke his
neck. Head injury seems to be pretty rare based on my lift ride
conversations. I think tree wells kill more people than collisions.

On a bike, the main cause of getting hurt is crashing,
but this is not always so in skiing. *Even if you
only consider crashing and rule out avalanches,
most ways of riding bike are pretty safe (excluding
at night without lights, and some extreme downhill
MTBing). *This is not so true of downhill skiing, where
style can have a big effect on how likely you are
to get hurt.

I hesitate to get involved in a helmet thread, but IMO
looking at fatalities is not a great way to measure
whether helmets do anything. *Many fatalities (ski or bike)
occur in impacts where only a helmet the size of a Green
Bay Cheesehead could have helped. *IMO the effect of
helmets is more likely to occasionally mitigate what
would have been a bad concussion into a mild
concussion, or a mild concussion into just a sore spot.
Whether this is worth anything is up to the wearer.

Helmets also help prevent scalp injury and focal injuries -- blunt
object causing skull fracture. They do not reduce diffuse axonal
injury or rotational injury where the brain sloshes around in the
cranium. In fact, I had one doctor tell me that boxing helmets were a
bad idea because they increase the target area and mass of the head
and increase rotational injury. I also think that some of the early
ski helmets that were big and bulky probably created a greater risk of
neck injury -- which is more likely than head injury in the usual ski
fall, IMO (because snow is usually pretty soft). The newer, lighter
helmets are better, and I think they are a good idea for a crowded
resort or for skiers who like the trees. -- Jay Beattie.