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Old September 21st 15, 01:19 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
John B.[_6_]
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Posts: 2,202
Default Thunked my helmet a fourth time

On Sun, 20 Sep 2015 16:34:38 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 6:41:45 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/12/2015 5:00 PM, Phil W Lee wrote:
John B. considered Sat, 12 Sep 2015 08:54:40
+0700 the perfect time to write:


About 75% of all bicyclists who die each year die of head injuries.

I think you'll find (unless it's very different from the UK, which
seems unlikely given the common mechanism of injury) that it's 75%
that have a brain injury at the time of their death, which may well
have occurred anyway due to other injuries.
Not much point in keeping your head in one piece if you've bled out
anyway. And even a motorcycle helmet won't save your head if a heavy
truck drives over it, or even some much lighter vehicles. So the most
you can do is cite that 75% as an upper bound.


I suspect the origin of the overestimate was a propaganda statement that
"75% of bicyclist fatalities involve a head injury." At least, that's
the way I first saw it expressed years ago. (Sorry, no citation.)

That version may be literally true - as in, the dead cyclist may have
had his abdomen run over by a truck's wheels, and he also got a little
scratch on his head. But the phrasing was obviously intended to trick
the reader into believing that helmets might prevent something like 75%
of fatalities. And other helmet proselytizers missed the subtlety and
went for the straight-out lie.

Similarly, after the infamous Thompson & Rivara paper of 1989 claimed
that helmets prevent 85% of head injuries, another paper used that
number to claim universal helmet use would prevent 85% of American bike
fatalities. And astonishingly, that made it through peer review.
--
- Frank Krygowski


Helmets are designed to do one thing and one thing only. It was designed around the old coaster bike where you were trying to make an emergency stop you would stand up. That put your head about 2 meters above the ground. The helmet was designed not for a collision but for a sideways fall from that standing position.


Wherever did you get that idea?

I grew up in an era when there wasn't anything except coaster brakes
and I never, and I've never seen anyone, stand up to brake with a
coaster brake. And, I might add, I grew up in a rather mountainous
part of New Hampshire where one used the brake a great deal of the
time.

As an aside, the first mention I see to "bicycle helmets" dates back
to the 1880's, while the "coaster brake" seems to have been first made
in 1898.
--
cheers,

John B.

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