Trikki Beltran's bad concussion and his helmet

On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 18:05:15 -0700, "Jay Beattie"
wrote:


"bryanska" wrote in message
oups.com...
This post is solely intended to drive this thread to 1000
posts. Please
pitch in.

I'm in. So, how does this compare to "Sheldon is a Party Doll."
Attention Carl Fogel -- you have a research assignment. Which
thread is longer? -- Jay Beattie.

Dear Jay,

Having glanced at Google Groups, I can state with some
confidence that this thread is about to reach 1005 entries.

The gentlemanly debate concerning the 2000 election appears
to have reached 1071 entries:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...75 8118d8b4db

Both are dwarfed by the recent 1984-post "on bush and his
crashes" thread, which combined both politics AND bicycling:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...7228ab960ccbce

(Ah, numerology! Only 1964 posts appear in Google, twenty
having presumably been marked by their authors to vanish,
but Netscan shows 1984 posts:

http://netscan.research.microsoft.co...12%2F31%2F2004

Carl Fogel

"(PeteCresswell)" wrote in message
...
Per Tom Kunich:
I even
had Dr. Shively, the DEAN of helmets as past director of the Snell
Institute
admit at the transportation committee in Sacramento that no possible
helmet
can make a difference in any accident which would normally cause a
fatality
on a motorcycle.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what's above. Is that to say that somebody
claims
that a motorcycle helmet cannot save somebody's life?

That is to say that accidents in which a motorcyclist is killed from a head
injury alone and in which the head injury therefore sustained could be
mediated by a motorcycle helmet to less than lethal are so rare as to be a
statistical freak. If you read the accident reports and the statistics you
can arrive at no other answer.

Moreover, Dr. Shively, the past director of the Snell Memorial Foundation -
the originator of safety helmet science - said so at a meeting of the
Transportation Committee meeting in Sacramento, CA.

It was widely reported in the media as "Hell's Angels Defeat Helmet Bill".

Then when everyone else had cleared out the fine Senators quietly passed the
helmet bill and bankrupted 2/3rd's of the motorcycle shops in California.

On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 21:37:49 +0100, "Just zis Guy, you know?"
wrote:

The second point is that removing road signs, in line with Hans
Monderman's "naked streets" ideas, might make the roads safer.

And after a short time with GPS in the Prius, I have to say that it is
entirely doable in the near future. Don't need the entire map system
display, just a couple of text displays. No problem about reading road
signs at night or worry about missing signs.

Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 05:17:21 -0400, Curtis L. Russell
wrote:

On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 21:37:49 +0100, "Just zis Guy, you know?"
wrote:

The second point is that removing road signs, in line with Hans
Monderman's "naked streets" ideas, might make the roads safer.

And after a short time with GPS in the Prius, I have to say that it is
entirely doable in the near future. Don't need the entire map system
display, just a couple of text displays. No problem about reading road
signs at night or worry about missing signs.

Uhhh, dude, you know there are people who travel w/o cars sometimes --
like walking or even (gasp) on a bike. Are we supposed to carry a GPS
at all times too?

JT

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On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 05:36:18 -0400, John Forrest Tomlinson
wrote:

Uhhh, dude, you know there are people who travel w/o cars sometimes --
like walking or even (gasp) on a bike. Are we supposed to carry a GPS
at all times too?

JT

Good point. Yes. Need to ask my son to get me a good buy before they
tear down the signs.

I can be a guide for the out-of-towners when I retire, if they have a
GPS with a really big read-out.

Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...

On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 06:02:08 -0400, Curtis L. Russell
wrote:


Good point. Yes. Need to ask my son to get me a good buy before they
tear down the signs.

I can be a guide for the out-of-towners when I retire, if they have a
GPS with a really big read-out.

I'm going to be a crotchety old guy and just tell them "Can't get
there from here" when I get old.

JT

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Quoting Mark & Steven Bornfeld :
David Damerell wrote:
Which is all well and good, but doesn't really get us any closer to the
point; I think brakes have a net positive effect on safety, and hence your
original assertion is unjustified.
I'm finished with this thread. I just want to clear up that I never
claimed brakes had no positive effect on safety.

Who said you did? No-one.
--
David Damerell Kill the tomato!
Today is First Tuesday, August.

So the important question is - is this the longest running thread on usenet?
Sure seems like it!

Lee

I submit that on or about Tue, 23 Aug 2005 20:55:56 GMT, the person
known to the court as SMS made a statement
in Your Honour's bundle) to
the following effect:

Yesterday I took my kids, and two nieces bicycling in Monterey. I
realized that I had packed everything, except my own helmet. I didn't
know what to do. I thought about those people who are just positive that
risk compensation would rear its ugly head and I was terrified that I
would suddenly begin riding at 2 mph and would have to pull over every
time a car or bicycle approached from the front or rear.
Amazingly, I found that I did not ride any differently with or without a
helmet.

Excellent straw man. As anybody who is even vaguely interested in
risk compensation theory will know, the balancing behaviour exhibited
tends to be subtle. Since crashes tend to be the result not of the
taking of large risks, but of the taking of small risks very large
numbers of times, that is all that's needed.

Barry Pless, editor of Injury Prevention, used to dismiss risk
compensation, as well. He set out to prove it didn't happen.

He was rather surprised when the results of his study showed that risk
compensation theory is exactly correct.

"Risk compensation in children's activities: A pilot study", Mok D,
Gore G, Hagel B, Mok E, Magdalinos H, Pless B. 2004. Paediatr Child
Health: Vol 9 No 5 May/June 2004

Once again you confuse "no evidence with which Scharf agrees" for "no
evidence". A natural consequence of your titanic hubris, I'm afraid.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

85% of helmet statistics are made up, 69% of them at CHS, Puget Sound

Per Tom Kunich:
That is to say that accidents in which a motorcyclist is killed from a head
injury alone and in which the head injury therefore sustained could be
mediated by a motorcycle helmet to less than lethal are so rare as to be a
statistical freak. If you read the accident reports and the statistics you
can arrive at no other answer.

Still sounds fishy to me. Perhaps not on a purely technical/legalistic basis -
but I'd guess there are plenty of non-lethal head injuries that cause lasting
damage.

Long time ago, some drunk nailed me on my Yamaha YDS-6 when I was going about 50
mph. I was wearing one of those Bell helmets that come down low on the sides
and the back of the neck, but don't cover the face.

I flew through the air head-first in a sort of swan dive posture, hit the
blacktop face-first, and things deteriorated rapidly from then on.

Cracked the helmet, suspect I wound up putting my dentist's kid through at least
two semesters of college, and saw flashes of light for several days afterwards.

My feeling is that even if that helmet didn't save my life, it probably kept me
from becoming even more of a raving idiot than I am.
--
PeteCresswell