On 18/05/2017 11:50 AM, AMuzi wrote:
On 5/18/2017 10:37 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/17/2017 11:30 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 17 May 2017 22:40:05 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 5/17/2017 9:50 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Emanuel Berg writes:

Radey Shouman wrote:

By requiring a head injury, you exclude the
cases where helmets actually prevented head
injury (or where helmets caused a head injury
that would otherwise not have happened).

By requiring an accident, you exclude the
cases where a helmeted rider took more risk
than she otherwise would have, and had
a crash she would have avoided without
a helmet.

By comparing bikers with and without helmets,
you risk comparing two populations that are
quite different, in ability, in age, in their
tendency to follow traffic rules or to seek
medical attention, in economic status, and
many other factors.

Still, it is bikes, helmets, accidents, and
head injuries, as opposed to pedestrians,
MCs, etc.

All of us are pedestrians at some point, so head
injuries to pedestrians
should have some personal interest. Similarly most of
us are drivers,
and almost all are passengers in motor vehicles at least
some of the time.

And who never uses a ladder?

It's reasonable to ask whether wearing a bike helmet
reduces ones
chances of suffering a brain injury, today, this year,
or over a
lifetime. But it's also reasonable to ask, if you're a
health
researcher, what the best way of minimizing brain
injuries over a whole
population, many of whom may not ever ride a bicycle.

Frank seems to think it was purely mercenary, but I
suspect that the
original question in the minds of those who started the
bike helmet
thing was: In what activity with a non-trivial risk of
brain injury can
we actually change human behavior, to use the protective
equipment that
surely will fix the problem?

That might be a possible explanation if the promotions
weren't kick
started almost entirely by Bell Inc.

The very first article I read touting bike helmets was
talking about
Bell Biker helmets, when they first arrived on the
market. (There was
one tiny manufacturer, Skid-Lid, before Bell. I don't
recall anything
but its own ads promoting it.)

Bell soon became a sponsor of Safe Kids Inc. Safe Kids
began lobbying
for mandatory helmets, and we were off to the races, as
they say.

Also, note that the entire industry started in the U.S.,
a country where
bicycling has always been comparatively rare, thus easy
to portray as
dangerous. If public health people were really at the
root of the
promotion, why would it not have happened in those
European countries
where there is lots of cycling, so lots more (purported)
benefit?
Cycling has always been camparatively rare in the USA????

When I was growing up, just about every kid had a bicycle
in Canada -
and it seemed there were a lot more in the USA. Every
school had a
bank of bike racks, and large numbers of kids biked to
school instead
of being ferried in by parents in mini-vans / suvs, cuvs
etc. Every
small town had at least one bicycle shop,
In the summer, there were kids on bikes all over town,
and we biked
out to our favorite fishing holes and swimming holes. The
common bike
was a single speed coaster bike - with 3 speed Sturmey
Archer equipped
bikes a close second, and "french gear" bikes - usually 5
or 10 speed,
but not uncommonly even 3 and 6 speed (3 on the back and 2
on the
crank)

I think you missed the word "comparatively." Bike use in
the U.S. has always been much smaller than in Europe and Asia.

And it's interesting that American kids once rode bikes very
much more than they do now. My friends and I certainly rode
a lot when I was a kid; but the only common warning then was
from a mom saying "Watch out for cars."

Today, warnings come from well-funded institutions pushing
publications saying "You can fall off your bike and die even
in your own driveway! You MUST wear a helmet every time you
ride a bike!"

Do you think there may be a connection between the "Danger!
Danger!" warnings and the drop in kids' bicycling? Just maybe?



True but cultural changes are even larger than that. Military theorists
have been writing about policy effects of an only-child population for
years and then there's modern media which sensationalize crimes against
children (horrible, every one) despite USA children being safer in every
measurable respect than any population ever before in history. How safe?
Mothers can obsess over supposed vaccine side effects and trace
materials in food because they don't have enough real dangers to worry
over.


My kid used to ride all the time. He stopped when his friends thought
it wasn't cool. Cool is sitting around with a cell phone texting each
other. Actually, if he thought cycling was dangerous, he would have
been more likely to do it as it would have been way more cool.

Around here the drop in kids on bikes comes with adolescence. The
younger ones all have bikes. But cycling is pretty common in Quebec.
Maybe it's different in places where cycling is less popular.