Shimano Headset

On Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 8:30:34 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/18/2017 4:24 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 11:58:54 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/18/2017 12:15 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 8:46:49 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/18/2017 12:32 AM, sms wrote:
On 5/16/2017 12:24 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:

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.

And you have all the crashes that are not reported at all because the
helmet prevented a trip to the emergency room. Helmet effectiveness is
vastly under-estimated because there's no way to determine how many
people don't seek treatment because they have no injury because of the
helmet.

Bull****.

If there were vast numbers of concussions prevented by helmet use, the
number of bike-related concussions in the U.S. would not have risen at
the same time helmets surged in popularity.

From the article "Senseless" in the June 2013 issue of _Bicycling_
magazine: "Here’s the trouble. Stat #3: As more people
buckled on helmets, brain injuries also increased.
Between 1997 and 2011 the number of bike-related
concussions suffered annually by American riders
increased by 67 percent, from 9,327 to 15,546, according to the National
Electronic Injury Surveillance
System, a yearly sampling of hospital emergency
rooms conducted by the U.S. Consumer Product
Safety Commission (CPSC)"

Again, the needle is not even moving in the right direction.

Likewise, if there were lots of lives saved by helmets, bike fatalities
since (say) the mid-1980s should have dropped by a greater percentage
than pedestrian fatalities. But they did not, as shown by
http://vehicularcyclist.com/fatals.html
and http://vehicularcyclist.com/kunich.html

Ordinary helmets don't prevent minor TBIs, although they can prevent skull fracture and serious scalp injury. I've seen some scalp injuries that would make your skin crawl.

Citing to Kunich? Gawd. Go to MedLine: Clinical Surgery; Bicycle helmets work when it matters the most; (2017) 213 AMJLSU 2 413-417:

Results

A total of 6,267 patients were included. About 25.1% (n = 1,573) of bicycle riders were helmeted. Overall, 52.4% (n = 3,284) of the patients had severe TBI, and the mortality rate was 2.8% (n = 176). Helmeted bicycle riders had 51% reduced odds of severe TBI (odds ratio [OR] .49, 95% confidence interval [CI] .43 to .55, P .001) and 44% reduced odds of mortality (OR .56, 95% CI .34 to .78, P = .010). Helmet use also reduced the odds of facial fractures by 31% (OR .69, 95% CI .58 to .81, P .001).

Conclusion

Bicycle helmet use provides protection against severe TBI, reduces facial fractures, and saves lives even after sustaining an intracranial hemorrhage.

• The aim of this study was to assess the association of helmets with severity of traumatic brain injury and facial fractures after bicycle-related accidents.
• Results of our study strongly support our hypothesis that helmet use in bicycle riders with intracranial bleed is independently associated with reduction in overall facial fractures and severity of TBI.
• Injury prevention programs should advocate the use of helmets in bicycle riders especially in the teenage group where least compliance with bicycle helmet use was observed.


Who knows if it's accurate, but I would tend to trust a group of University of Arizona researchers and trauma doctors more than some dopey bloggers.

The "dopey bloggers" were simply posting government statistics, Jay.
Despite lots of studies replicating the 1989 helmet promotion paper by
Thompson & Rivara and getting vaguely similar results, the TBI cases
have _risen_ with massive helmet use; and the fatalities have not fallen
as fast as pedestrian fatalities. You may not like the guy who posted
the numbers, but those ARE the numbers!


The study you linked is very typical, and very similar to the Thompson &
Rivara study that served as its prototype. The T&R "85%"study has
gotten the most discussion in efforts to explain why its predictions
simply don't come true in the real world (and why its results are
officially disowned by the federal government); but the criticisms of
T&R apply to almost all studies on the same model. Here are some of them.

First, if you're studying helmeted vs. non-helmeted cyclists presenting
to ER, are you really studying similar groups? Fatalities are mentioned
above; but as John has noted several times, roughly a quarter of bike
fatalities involve blood alcohol above the legal limit. AFAIK only one
helmet study of this type included alcohol as a confounding factor, and
it found that alcohol use correlated with brain injury; helmet use did
not significantly correlate. More briefly, drunks don't usually wear
helmets, but they affect studies such as the one above.

In the T&R study, other reviewers showed that helmeted kids were seven
times as likely to be presented to ER compared to non-helmeted kids.
Why? In that case, it appeared that kids (and today, adults) in helmets
had significantly better medical insurance, and would appear at ER "just
in case." Non-helmeted kids that presented were in much more serious
crashes overall, since the uninsured probably saved money by treating
minor injuries at home. More briefly, insurance coverage is a
confounding factor that's normally ignored. Did the study above account
for it?

Other confounding factors are likely, such as crash details (wrong way
into an oncoming car, or slip on gravel?), economic status (which goes
beyond insurance), availability of transportation (poor people are less
likely to wear helmets and less likely to have an easy way to get to ER)
and more.

If these confounding factors could all be accounted for - something I
doubt is possible - I suspect these "case control" studies would much
more closely match the observed results on a national scale, which is
that helmets make no great difference overall.

Former pro rider Chris Boardman said "Helmets not even in top 10 of
things that keep cycling safe." They've been heavily promoted for over
25 years and the needle is still moving in the wrong direction, even for
the minuscule portion of serious TBI that happens to bicyclists. Why
are we still giving them any attention?

Because they prevent certain injuries. Skip the case studies and go to FEA:

Bicycle helmets are highly effective at preventing head injury during head impact: Head-form accelerations and injury criteria for helmeted and unhelmeted impacts; (2014) 70 ESACAP C 1-7

The protective effect of a helmet in three bicycle accidents—A finite element study; (2016) 91 ESACAP 135-143

There are all sorts of these studies. Not surprisingly, they prove that if you hit your head on a hard object, you're better off if you're wearing a helmet. That's kind of why we have helmets, no?

Not in the case of bike helmets. Because if it were really that simple,
we would have helmets for walking, for jogging, for ladder climbing, for
stair descending, for riding in cars, and for all the other normal
activities that produce more TBI cases than riding bikes.

We have bike helmets for a different reason: Bell Sports, then other
companies, saw that it was possible to sell them by portraying bicycling
as a big source of serious brain injury.

And it worked because from their point of view, bicycling hit a sweet
spot: Unpopular enough to be considered "not a normal activity" and
thereby having few defenders; but popular enough to form a profitable
market.


--
- Frank Krygowski

Clever marketers, they promoted "price: high to low" as the proper way to make purchasing decisions: "If you have a ten dollar head, buy a ten dollar helmet".

On Friday, May 19, 2017 at 10:20:27 AM UTC-4, Radey Shouman wrote:
John B. writes:

On Thu, 18 May 2017 23:45:29 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 18 May 2017 11:49:16 -0400, Radey Shouman
wrote:

Frank Krygowski writes:

On 5/18/2017 9:43 AM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:

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?

Because such a promotion would have succeeded just like driving helmets
would in the US. Extra hassle for activities seen as ordinary and
obligatory is hard to sell.

Precisely. And the word "sell" is very appropriate.

Ideas are sold, not just products. Like, say, the idea that
refrigerator doors should be removed before putting them on the curb.
You got a problem with that???
A kid creawls into s frig to hide as part of a game, and the door ,
with a magnetic seal ispretty easy to open. No problem, right? Untill
the frig gets knocked over or the door gets blocked. Too many kids
died in refrigerators and fweezers beforwe the law was changed
requiring the doors to be removed. It's only a couple bolts - not a
problem at all for ANYONE who can move a fridge to remove.

Out of curiosity how common was this problem? Did hordes of kids get
trapped in fridges? Or is this another of these laws that are passed
primarily to demonstrate that "Your government really does care about
you?"

I don't know. There were at least a few fatalities. The laws
definitely followed the publicity campaign, they did not lead.

Given the low cost, I would call the idea a success even if it saved but
one or two lives.

That's fine, but it's very different from the history and motives of bike
helmet promotion.

- Frank Krygowski

On Friday, May 19, 2017 at 3:25:49 PM UTC-4, Doug Landau wrote:
On Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 8:30:34 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/18/2017 4:24 PM, jbeattie wrote:


There are all sorts of these studies. Not surprisingly, they prove that if you hit your head on a hard object, you're better off if you're wearing a helmet. That's kind of why we have helmets, no?

Not in the case of bike helmets. Because if it were really that simple,
we would have helmets for walking, for jogging, for ladder climbing, for
stair descending, for riding in cars, and for all the other normal
activities that produce more TBI cases than riding bikes.

We have bike helmets for a different reason: Bell Sports, then other
companies, saw that it was possible to sell them by portraying bicycling
as a big source of serious brain injury.

And it worked because from their point of view, bicycling hit a sweet
spot: Unpopular enough to be considered "not a normal activity" and
thereby having few defenders; but popular enough to form a profitable
market.


--
- Frank Krygowski

Clever marketers, they promoted "price: high to low" as the proper way to make purchasing decisions: "If you have a ten dollar head, buy a ten dollar helmet".

Which is particularly dishonest, because not only do all helmets sold in the
USA pass the same (minimal) impact test; but the more expensive helmets tend
to barely pass it, or pass it by a smaller margin.

More money gets you a helmet deemed to be more "stylish" (at least, in the
opinion of those who manage to find beauty in this weird headgear). It gets
you lighter weight and it gets you more holes (read "less helmet") for
ventilation. Reducing mass and coverage while still barely passing the test
requires more sophisticated and expensive design and prototyping work. The
result is typically a helmet that's _less_ protective.

It's the people with ten dollar heads who don't realize this and blow $200
on an even less protective helmet.

- Frank Krygowski

On Friday, May 19, 2017 at 10:50:22 AM UTC-7, sms wrote:
On 5/19/2017 9:52 AM, wrote:
On Friday, May 19, 2017 at 9:26:01 AM UTC-7, sms wrote:
On 5/19/2017 7:20 AM, Radey Shouman wrote:

Given the low cost, I would call the idea a success even if it saved but
one or two lives.

But how many lives were lost because people refused to buy a
refrigerator due to this law and ate food that was unsafe due to lack of
refrigeration?

I really don't get how these people don't know that this is all a trade-off and why they are totally unwilling to look at it that way.

How could you look at a helmet use from 0 to 30% without a change in the numbers of head injuries and think that a helmet was accomplishing anything?

Because the real thing that you have to compare is the severity of
injury with and without a helmet.

You can't look at helmet usage in isolation from other factors, which is
what the "0-30%" schtick tries to do.

The listings showed only fatalities. It's pretty difficult to judge the severity of a fatality.

And the Dutch numbers showed no difference in injuries of any type with and without helmets. And THAT was a very large sample - the complete population nearly all ride.

Now as has been argued, perhaps there IS a window in which some level of injuries is reduced but this window has to be so narrow that no one has ever been able to detect it statistically.

sms writes:

On 5/19/2017 7:20 AM, Radey Shouman wrote:

Given the low cost, I would call the idea a success even if it saved but
one or two lives.

But how many lives were lost because people refused to buy a
refrigerator due to this law and ate food that was unsafe due to lack
of refrigeration?

Very few, I'd wager. The main cost was in publicity (initially I think
a lot was private, but later done at public expense), and, as you surely
know, passing laws isn't free.


--

Doug Landau writes:

On Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 8:30:34 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/18/2017 4:24 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 11:58:54 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/18/2017 12:15 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 8:46:49 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/18/2017 12:32 AM, sms wrote:
On 5/16/2017 12:24 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:

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.

And you have all the crashes that are not reported at all because the
helmet prevented a trip to the emergency room. Helmet effectiveness is
vastly under-estimated because there's no way to determine how many
people don't seek treatment because they have no injury because of the
helmet.

Bull****.

If there were vast numbers of concussions prevented by helmet use, the
number of bike-related concussions in the U.S. would not have risen at
the same time helmets surged in popularity.

From the article "Senseless" in the June 2013 issue of _Bicycling_
magazine: "Here’s the trouble. Stat #3: As more people
buckled on helmets, brain injuries also increased.
Between 1997 and 2011 the number of bike-related
concussions suffered annually by American riders
increased by 67 percent, from 9,327 to 15,546, according to the National
Electronic Injury Surveillance
System, a yearly sampling of hospital emergency
rooms conducted by the U.S. Consumer Product
Safety Commission (CPSC)"

Again, the needle is not even moving in the right direction.

Likewise, if there were lots of lives saved by helmets, bike fatalities
since (say) the mid-1980s should have dropped by a greater percentage
than pedestrian fatalities. But they did not, as shown by
http://vehicularcyclist.com/fatals.html
and http://vehicularcyclist.com/kunich.html

Ordinary helmets don't prevent minor TBIs, although they can
prevent skull fracture and serious scalp injury. I've seen some
scalp injuries that would make your skin crawl.

Citing to Kunich? Gawd. Go to MedLine: Clinical Surgery; Bicycle
helmets work when it matters the most; (2017) 213 AMJLSU 2
413-417:

Results

A total of 6,267 patients were included. About 25.1% (n = 1,573)
of bicycle riders were helmeted. Overall, 52.4% (n = 3,284) of
the patients had severe TBI, and the mortality rate was 2.8% (n
= 176). Helmeted bicycle riders had 51% reduced odds of severe
TBI (odds ratio [OR] .49, 95% confidence interval [CI] .43 to
.55, P .001) and 44% reduced odds of mortality (OR .56, 95% CI
.34 to .78, P = .010). Helmet use also reduced the odds of
facial fractures by 31% (OR .69, 95% CI .58 to .81, P .001).

Conclusion

Bicycle helmet use provides protection against severe TBI,
reduces facial fractures, and saves lives even after sustaining
an intracranial hemorrhage.

• The aim of this study was to assess the association of helmets
with severity of traumatic brain injury and facial fractures
after bicycle-related accidents.
• Results of our study strongly support our hypothesis that
helmet use in bicycle riders with intracranial bleed is
independently associated with reduction in overall facial
fractures and severity of TBI.
• Injury prevention programs should advocate the use of helmets
in bicycle riders especially in the teenage group where least
compliance with bicycle helmet use was observed.


Who knows if it's accurate, but I would tend to trust a group of
University of Arizona researchers and trauma doctors more than
some dopey bloggers.

The "dopey bloggers" were simply posting government statistics, Jay.
Despite lots of studies replicating the 1989 helmet promotion paper by
Thompson & Rivara and getting vaguely similar results, the TBI cases
have _risen_ with massive helmet use; and the fatalities have not fallen
as fast as pedestrian fatalities. You may not like the guy who posted
the numbers, but those ARE the numbers!


The study you linked is very typical, and very similar to the Thompson &
Rivara study that served as its prototype. The T&R "85%"study has
gotten the most discussion in efforts to explain why its predictions
simply don't come true in the real world (and why its results are
officially disowned by the federal government); but the criticisms of
T&R apply to almost all studies on the same model. Here are some of them.

First, if you're studying helmeted vs. non-helmeted cyclists presenting
to ER, are you really studying similar groups? Fatalities are mentioned
above; but as John has noted several times, roughly a quarter of bike
fatalities involve blood alcohol above the legal limit. AFAIK only one
helmet study of this type included alcohol as a confounding factor, and
it found that alcohol use correlated with brain injury; helmet use did
not significantly correlate. More briefly, drunks don't usually wear
helmets, but they affect studies such as the one above.

In the T&R study, other reviewers showed that helmeted kids were seven
times as likely to be presented to ER compared to non-helmeted kids.
Why? In that case, it appeared that kids (and today, adults) in helmets
had significantly better medical insurance, and would appear at ER "just
in case." Non-helmeted kids that presented were in much more serious
crashes overall, since the uninsured probably saved money by treating
minor injuries at home. More briefly, insurance coverage is a
confounding factor that's normally ignored. Did the study above account
for it?

Other confounding factors are likely, such as crash details (wrong way
into an oncoming car, or slip on gravel?), economic status (which goes
beyond insurance), availability of transportation (poor people are less
likely to wear helmets and less likely to have an easy way to get to ER)
and more.

If these confounding factors could all be accounted for - something I
doubt is possible - I suspect these "case control" studies would much
more closely match the observed results on a national scale, which is
that helmets make no great difference overall.

Former pro rider Chris Boardman said "Helmets not even in top 10 of
things that keep cycling safe." They've been heavily promoted for over
25 years and the needle is still moving in the wrong direction, even for
the minuscule portion of serious TBI that happens to bicyclists. Why
are we still giving them any attention?

Because they prevent certain injuries. Skip the case studies and go to FEA:

Bicycle helmets are highly effective at preventing head injury
during head impact: Head-form accelerations and injury criteria
for helmeted and unhelmeted impacts; (2014) 70 ESACAP C 1-7

The protective effect of a helmet in three bicycle accidents—A
finite element study; (2016) 91 ESACAP 135-143

There are all sorts of these studies. Not surprisingly, they
prove that if you hit your head on a hard object, you're better
off if you're wearing a helmet. That's kind of why we have
helmets, no?

Not in the case of bike helmets. Because if it were really that simple,
we would have helmets for walking, for jogging, for ladder climbing, for
stair descending, for riding in cars, and for all the other normal
activities that produce more TBI cases than riding bikes.

We have bike helmets for a different reason: Bell Sports, then other
companies, saw that it was possible to sell them by portraying bicycling
as a big source of serious brain injury.

And it worked because from their point of view, bicycling hit a sweet
spot: Unpopular enough to be considered "not a normal activity" and
thereby having few defenders; but popular enough to form a profitable
market.


--
- Frank Krygowski

Clever marketers, they promoted "price: high to low" as the proper way
to make purchasing decisions: "If you have a ten dollar head, buy a
ten dollar helmet".

Must have learned from that Francis Gerety example.

--

Frank Krygowski writes:

On Friday, May 19, 2017 at 3:25:49 PM UTC-4, Doug Landau wrote:
On Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 8:30:34 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/18/2017 4:24 PM, jbeattie wrote:


There are all sorts of these studies. Not surprisingly, they
prove that if you hit your head on a hard object, you're better
off if you're wearing a helmet. That's kind of why we have
helmets, no?

Not in the case of bike helmets. Because if it were really that simple,
we would have helmets for walking, for jogging, for ladder climbing, for
stair descending, for riding in cars, and for all the other normal
activities that produce more TBI cases than riding bikes.

We have bike helmets for a different reason: Bell Sports, then other
companies, saw that it was possible to sell them by portraying bicycling
as a big source of serious brain injury.

And it worked because from their point of view, bicycling hit a sweet
spot: Unpopular enough to be considered "not a normal activity" and
thereby having few defenders; but popular enough to form a profitable
market.


--
- Frank Krygowski

Clever marketers, they promoted "price: high to low" as the proper
way to make purchasing decisions: "If you have a ten dollar head,
buy a ten dollar helmet".

Which is particularly dishonest, because not only do all helmets sold in the
USA pass the same (minimal) impact test; but the more expensive helmets tend
to barely pass it, or pass it by a smaller margin.

More money gets you a helmet deemed to be more "stylish" (at least, in the
opinion of those who manage to find beauty in this weird headgear). It gets
you lighter weight and it gets you more holes (read "less helmet") for
ventilation. Reducing mass and coverage while still barely passing the test
requires more sophisticated and expensive design and prototyping work. The
result is typically a helmet that's _less_ protective.

It's the people with ten dollar heads who don't realize this and blow $200
on an even less protective helmet.

On the other hand, I read somewhere that those funny looking time-trial
helmets actually give an aero advantage over an uncovered head.
Particularly if not shaved.


--

Frank Krygowski writes:

On Friday, May 19, 2017 at 10:20:27 AM UTC-4, Radey Shouman wrote:
John B. writes:

On Thu, 18 May 2017 23:45:29 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 18 May 2017 11:49:16 -0400, Radey Shouman
wrote:

Frank Krygowski writes:

On 5/18/2017 9:43 AM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:

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?

Because such a promotion would have succeeded just like driving helmets
would in the US. Extra hassle for activities seen as ordinary and
obligatory is hard to sell.

Precisely. And the word "sell" is very appropriate.

Ideas are sold, not just products. Like, say, the idea that
refrigerator doors should be removed before putting them on the curb.
You got a problem with that???
A kid creawls into s frig to hide as part of a game, and the door ,
with a magnetic seal ispretty easy to open. No problem, right? Untill
the frig gets knocked over or the door gets blocked. Too many kids
died in refrigerators and fweezers beforwe the law was changed
requiring the doors to be removed. It's only a couple bolts - not a
problem at all for ANYONE who can move a fridge to remove.

Out of curiosity how common was this problem? Did hordes of kids get
trapped in fridges? Or is this another of these laws that are passed
primarily to demonstrate that "Your government really does care about
you?"

I don't know. There were at least a few fatalities. The laws
definitely followed the publicity campaign, they did not lead.

Given the low cost, I would call the idea a success even if it saved but
one or two lives.

That's fine, but it's very different from the history and motives of bike
helmet promotion.

That's true. The point is that there was an ad-style campaign to sell
the idea that the doors should be removed from junk refrigerators.
The idea sold, although it did not turn into a merchandizing opportunity
like bike helmets.

--

On Fri, 19 May 2017 09:25:54 -0700, sms
wrote:

On 5/19/2017 7:20 AM, Radey Shouman wrote:

Given the low cost, I would call the idea a success even if it saved but
one or two lives.

But how many lives were lost because people refused to buy a
refrigerator due to this law and ate food that was unsafe due to lack of
refrigeration?


Probably fewer then you would envisaged.

When I was a little kid my grandmother had an "ice box" sitting on the
side porch and the "iceman" came around every other day. Occasionally
things spoiled but Granny always gave things a sniff when she took
stuff out of the box.

When I first came to S.E.A. nobody had a fridge, well some people did
but that was to keep beer cold, and again cooks used to sniff things
before cooking.

I can hear you say "but rotten meat will kill you", but 'taint so.
Read up on the British practice of "hanging game birds" prior to
eating.

--
Cheers,

John B.

On Friday, May 19, 2017 at 1:07:14 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Friday, May 19, 2017 at 3:25:49 PM UTC-4, Doug Landau wrote:
On Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 8:30:34 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/18/2017 4:24 PM, jbeattie wrote:


There are all sorts of these studies. Not surprisingly, they prove that if you hit your head on a hard object, you're better off if you're wearing a helmet. That's kind of why we have helmets, no?

Not in the case of bike helmets. Because if it were really that simple,
we would have helmets for walking, for jogging, for ladder climbing, for
stair descending, for riding in cars, and for all the other normal
activities that produce more TBI cases than riding bikes.

We have bike helmets for a different reason: Bell Sports, then other
companies, saw that it was possible to sell them by portraying bicycling
as a big source of serious brain injury.

And it worked because from their point of view, bicycling hit a sweet
spot: Unpopular enough to be considered "not a normal activity" and
thereby having few defenders; but popular enough to form a profitable
market.


--
- Frank Krygowski

Clever marketers, they promoted "price: high to low" as the proper way to make purchasing decisions: "If you have a ten dollar head, buy a ten dollar helmet".

Which is particularly dishonest, because not only do all helmets sold in the
USA pass the same (minimal) impact test; but the more expensive helmets tend
to barely pass it, or pass it by a smaller margin.

More money gets you a helmet deemed to be more "stylish" (at least, in the
opinion of those who manage to find beauty in this weird headgear). It gets
you lighter weight and it gets you more holes (read "less helmet") for
ventilation. Reducing mass and coverage while still barely passing the test
requires more sophisticated and expensive design and prototyping work. The
result is typically a helmet that's _less_ protective.

On the motorcycle side it is a similar story - the more expensive helmets are made more with high speed impacts in mind (uh.. so to speak), egged-on by the pressure to have a "Such-and-such Approved" sticker on it, than with the 35-55 mph crash that most riders are infinitely more likely to experience, and the result is that the cheapest helmet on the market - the $55 Chinese noname - is not only the cheapest and the softest but also the one that works the best at legal speeds.