On Aug 24, 9:22*pm, Andre Jute wrote:
snip
Here's the irreducible soundbite version:

• Most fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.
• Nearly all bicyclists who died (97%) were not wearing a helmet.
• Helmet use was only 3% in fatal crashes, but 13% in non-fatal
crashes

Source:http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/download...ike-report.pdf

This concatenation of facts suggests very strongly that not wearing a
helmet may be particularly dangerous.

HTH.

Andre Jute
Thank God I'm not handicapped by a short attention span and an
inadequate education

Point 1: "Head injury" can encompass anything from a minor scrape to
decapitation.

Point 2: "Involved" does not mean "was the cause of death".

Point 3: Given the small numbers being used in this study (only an
average of ~700 people die riding a bicycle on the roads each year)
small changes in the raw data make for huge changes in percentages.

Point 4: As a survivor of a assault with a motor vehicle I suffered
numerous "head injuries" in the wreck in spite of wearing a high-
quality helmet from a bike shop (not WalMart). The most serious of
those injuries was the diffuse axional damage that has made my speech
difficult and halting with several of the symptoms of early-onset
Alzheimer's (I have lost about 2/3 of my previously formidable
vocabulary, but I still have about 50K words left in the arsenal). The
most visible at the time was the flap of skin that had been attached
to my eyebrow and the bridge of my nose that was hanging loose over my
right eye and cheek. Because of the amount of discomfort I suffered
during the recovery process for this injury I now ride with a full-
face Downhill MTB helmet. Last week I rode to a church function in 105
degree temperatures wearing that helmet. It wasn't fun, but I
survived.

In spite of my experiences while I suggest that wearing a helmet is a
good idea in the US, I am in no way shape or form in favor of a
mandatory helmet law. The problem isn't plastic foam hats but motor
vehicle drivers. As I posted earlier my wreck was an assault, not an
"accident", and I have encountered several drivers in the intervening
years. Make hitting a cyclist or pedestrian a very expensive thing
with stiff fines and prison terms, plus long term loss of licenses for
injury or permanent loss in the case of rider/pedestrian death, and
you will see a much greater improvement in cyclist (and pedestrian)
fatality and injury than making wearing a styrofoam hat law will ever
do.