On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 16:12:51 GMT, "Steven M. Scharf"
wrote:

And the sceptics acknowledge both, look at the injury trends for whole
populations (which are necessarily more robust than for the tiny
groups in pro-0helmet observational studies) and conclude that,
overall, if you want to reduce cyclist injuries, helmets are a long
way down the prority list.

That is the typical flawed logic we've seen in this thread. The fact that
there are other ways to also reduce injuries, are irrelevant. These other
measures should be taken, but they are not exclusive. The anti-helmet
zealots want to prove that helmets don't prevent injuries, but the facts
speak for themselves. You have to look at how helmeted versus non-helmeted
cyclists fare in crashes, the fact that traffic calming might have prevented
some of the accidents doesn't figure into the equation.

Steven, please introduce me to an anti-helmet zealot some time. I
have never met one. I have met one person who is anti-helmet (in two
years of active campaigning at a national level), but he is an
academic and absolutely not a zealot of any description.

The logic is not flawed. Mention cyclist safety in almost any public
context and helmets will be the first ting mentioned. The reason for
that is that helmet zealots are obsessed with them. They put up
posters, they have websites, they lobby parliaments, they write bills
which sometimes become law, they fill the medical press, they are in
the newspapers and on TV. When was the last time you saw any
large-scale campaign on cycle safety which was not primarily focused
on helmets?

There is simply no justification for this monomania. We know that in
New Zealand %HI for peds and cyclists trended identically through a
period where helmet use went from the mid 40s percent to the high 90s.
We know that head injury risk per cyclist in the USA increased by 40%
as helmet use rose from 18% to 50%. We know that the two safest
cycling countries - Netherlands and Denmark - have negligible helmet
wearing rates. We know that the countries with the worst cyclist
safety records have high helmet wearing rates.

Any remotely sane approach to cyclist safety cannot help but view
helmets as a controversial irrelevance, a sideshow. The known bad
effects - portraying cycling as dangerous and thus deterring
participation; and giving an exaggerated view of the benefit of
helmets - make even promotion a risky business, let alone compulsion.

I can't immediately think of any other area of public policy where the
glare of legislative attention is focused so brightly and so
relentlessly on so obviously the wrong target.

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