On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 14:00:12 GMT, John Doe
wrote:

Just what urc needs most - another helmet troll.

If you want to read about the benefit of wearing a helmet while
riding a bicycle, all you have to do is research the matter.

We have. In vast and tedious detail. I have a database of 160 papers
and 130 abstracts of papers, and have spent many, many hours reading
them and understanding their strengths and weaknesses. So have a lot
of other people. People like John Franklin, Roger Geffen of CTC, Dr.
Meyer Hillman and of course the members of the National Cycling
Strategy Board.

Here is a summary of what we found: http://www.cyclehelmets.org


Why is John Franklin against compulsion? Because as an expert witness
he has been asked by the courts to assess the likely effectiveness of
helmets in preventing injury. Like many of us he intuitively believed
that they must be of value. Like many of us he found that the
headline-grabbing figures turned out to be arm-waving and outright
distortion. Like many of us he found that there was a balancing case
which was subject to a conspiracy of silence. Like many of us he came
to realise that the people selling helmets are not particularly fussy
about accuracy or balance. Or the relative merit of different
possible safety interventions (where helmets rate consistently last).

Question: do you think you know more about this subject than John
Franklin does?

Here is the NCSB's extremely well balanced view on the subject:

"Arguments that appear to disavow the efficacy or utility of
cycle helmet wearing, or on the other hand claim it as the
major influence in reducing injury to cyclists, are both wide
of the mark. In particular, campaigns seeking to present
cycling as an inevitably dangerous or hazardous activity, or
which suggest that helmet wearing should be made compulsory,
risk prejudicing the delivery of those very benefits to
health and environment which cycling can deliver: they also
serve to confuse the general public about the wider social
and economic advantages of cycling. As a result, the NCS
Board is anxious that the question of wearing helmets is
placed in its proper context."

Now, with reference to the highly selective sample of helmet papers
you cite (excluding, for example, Rodgers' study of eight MILLION
cyclist crashes over a 15 year period which found no measurable
benefit), account for this:

Over a ten year period helmet use in New Zealand went from under 10%
to over 90%. Much of that change was in a single year, when use more
than doubled. Over this period cyclists head injury rate correlates
very closely with the rate for the general population, but not at all
with helmet use.

http://www.cyclehelmets.org/papers/c2007.pdf

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University