Hit-and-run Bicyclist Incident

http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/art...mc-hit-and-run

I find interesting that whether the rider was wearing a helmet was
mentioned. One might deduce that had he not been wearing a helmet,
the pickup truck driver would have had cause to run into the
bicyclist... or whatever other interpretation might fit.

Jobst Brandt

On Sep 11, 7:22*pm, wrote:
http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/art...1-08-smc-hit-a...

I find interesting that whether the rider was wearing a helmet was
mentioned. *One might deduce that had he not been wearing a helmet,
the pickup truck driver would have had cause to run into the
bicyclist... or whatever other interpretation might fit.

Jobst Brandt

reminds me of that court case I read about in Michigan ( I think )
where the driver hit a cyclist at night and on the stand testified he
( the driver ) didn't see the cyclist because he ( the cyclist ) was
wearing sunglasses

On Sep 11, 8:22*pm, wrote:
http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/art...1-08-smc-hit-a...

I find interesting that whether the rider was wearing a helmet was
mentioned. *One might deduce that had he not been wearing a helmet,
the pickup truck driver would have had cause to run into the
bicyclist... or whatever other interpretation might fit.

Jobst Brandt

The cop's statement that "Some of the bike riders are not the best
when it comes to dealing with vehicles..." was similarly inane, unless
he knows it applies to the person who was hit.

It's like saying "Some women are sluts" in response to a rape.

- Frank Krygowski

aka Jobst Brandt wrote:
http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/art...mc-hit-and-run

I find interesting that whether the rider was wearing a helmet was
mentioned. One might deduce that had he not been wearing a helmet,
the pickup truck driver would have had cause to run into the
bicyclist... or whatever other interpretation might fit.


butbutbut, cycling safety begins and ends with the wearing of a foam
bicycle hat!!! After all, these magical hats prevent 85% of ALL injuries!!!

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
“Mary had a little lamb / And when she saw it sicken /
She shipped it off to Packingtown / And now it’s labeled chicken.”

Tom Sherman writes:

aka Jobst Brandt wrote:
http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/art...mc-hit-and-run

I find interesting that whether the rider was wearing a helmet was
mentioned. One might deduce that had he not been wearing a helmet,
the pickup truck driver would have had cause to run into the
bicyclist... or whatever other interpretation might fit.


butbutbut, cycling safety begins and ends with the wearing of a foam
bicycle hat!!! After all, these magical hats prevent 85% of ALL
injuries!!!

Only an idiot would think a foam shell surrounding your skull does not
provide at least SOME protection in the event of your head striking a
concrete surface.

Its why mother nature gave certain animals exoskeletons.

aka Jobst Brandt wrote:
http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/art...mc-hit-and-run

I find interesting that whether the rider was wearing a helmet was
mentioned. One might deduce that had he not been wearing a helmet,
the pickup truck driver would have had cause to run into the
bicyclist... or whatever other interpretation might fit.

Tom Sherman writes:
butbutbut, cycling safety begins and ends with the wearing of a foam
bicycle hat!!! After all, these magical hats prevent 85% of ALL
injuries!!!

Penny wrote:
Only an idiot would think a foam shell surrounding your skull does not
provide at least SOME protection in the event of your head striking a
concrete surface.

Its why mother nature gave certain animals exoskeletons.

Tom implied nothing of the sort, yet you bring it up anyway. Interesting.

\\paul
--
Paul M. Hobson
..:change the f to ph to reply:.

In article ,
wrote:

Tom Sherman writes:

aka Jobst Brandt wrote:
http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/art...mc-hit-and-run

I find interesting that whether the rider was wearing a helmet was
mentioned. One might deduce that had he not been wearing a helmet,
the pickup truck driver would have had cause to run into the
bicyclist... or whatever other interpretation might fit.


butbutbut, cycling safety begins and ends with the wearing of a foam
bicycle hat!!! After all, these magical hats prevent 85% of ALL
injuries!!!

Only an idiot would think a foam shell surrounding your skull does not
provide at least SOME protection in the event of your head striking a
concrete surface.

Yes, but some of us idiots are very curious about why it's so hard to
demonstrate the real-world efficacy of helmets at reducing fatality
rates. Serious dumbasses start to theorize that maybe there's something
about how your head torques when your helmet just grazes the ground that
is converting some non-fatal incidents into fatal ones, at about the
same rate as helmets convert fatal incidents into non-fatal ones.

Its why mother nature gave certain animals exoskeletons.

Now seriously, please tell me about the vital organs outside of your
skull that your helmet is protecting for you.

The curious nature of whacking your head into the ground or other
objects is that there are three really interesting classes of head-smack
to consider.

1) the ones that won't kill you

2) the ones that might kill you if you don't wear a helmet

3) the ones that will kill you pretty much regardless of what you're
wearing on your head.

First, head injuries are not the only way to die on a bike, though a lot
of the fatal non-head injuries may involve so much trauma that picking
between fatal head injury, fatal chest injury, or fatal blood loss is
quibbling. So there's this whole class of fatalities that doesn't even
fall into my three categories above.

It turns out that of the three classes above, 1) is surprisingly big.
You may not remember the day you hit your head on the ground, but you
won't die or start eating your vegetables through a straw, either.

3) is actually fairly small. It has to be, because cycling fatalities
are not common. Most people, even cyclists, don't die on a bike. They
tend to have boring deaths in their sleep, or crash cars like everyone
else, or die in an old-age home because cycling kept them healthily
alive long enough for their brains to turn to mush, or die of a heart
attack anyways, because if you eat right and exercise, you still die.

2) is the rarest kind of head-whack of these three categories. It may be
vanishingly rare. We know from the lab what forces we can attenuate, but
we can't apparently demonstrate that we're saving lives by doing so.
It's a weird, confusing problem, because you have these helmets out in
the real world that aren't, as far as we can tell, doing anything
meaningful.

It's the kind of finding that leads brooding researchers to wonder if
there's some reason helmets may be a pure nullity in real-world
head-hits, or in which they subtly increase the risk of some other
fatality mechanism. We're not sure.

If we were pill-pushers facing up against evidence-based medicine
advocates, we'd probably start chatting up NNT (number needed to treat)
statistics.

We'd probably start he

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...6WPG-45BCPF3-4
H&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view =c&_version=1&_urlVersi
on=0&_userid=10&md5=628ba98a5132abe445e33c7a5fa74c ba

Abstract says that they figure it takes $10,000-25,000 to prevent an
upper head injury.

This is clearly going further than saying fatality. But there are
non-fatal head injuries that are still worth avoiding. Nonetheless,
assuming we're talking about $20 helmets (and really, any price over
that is style, comfort, weight, and marketing, not safety), they're
talking about no better than a 1-in-5000 chance that your helmet will
prevent a head injury for you.

Those are pretty long odds.

It is left as an exercise for the bored to figure out if the
(well-documented) health benefits of cycling, when crossed against the
(well-documented) reduction in cycling that mandatory helmet laws cause,
means that from a public-health perspective, mandatory helmet laws kill
more people than they save.

--
Ryan Cousineau http://www.wiredcola.com/
"In other newsgroups, they killfile trolls."
"In rec.bicycles.racing, we coach them."

Penny Farthing wrote:
Tom Sherman writes:

aka Jobst Brandt wrote:
http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/art...mc-hit-and-run

I find interesting that whether the rider was wearing a helmet was
mentioned. One might deduce that had he not been wearing a helmet,
the pickup truck driver would have had cause to run into the
bicyclist... or whatever other interpretation might fit.

butbutbut, cycling safety begins and ends with the wearing of a foam
bicycle hat!!! After all, these magical hats prevent 85% of ALL
injuries!!!

Only an idiot would think a foam shell surrounding your skull does not
provide at least SOME protection in the event of your head striking a
concrete surface.

The foam shell provides minor bump and scrape protection.

No sensible person claims cycling gloves save lives, yet they can
prevent or greatly reduce the severity of "road rash" to the cyclist's
hands in the event of a crash. Foam bicycle hats can be viewed to have a
similar utility.

Its why mother nature gave certain animals exoskeletons.

Ignoring the creationist aspect of the way this is phrased, the animals
with exoskeletons typically have a much greater ratio of surface area to
mass than the hominid head. The exoskeletons are also generally used as
a defense against predators, not as protection during impacts.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
“Mary had a little lamb / And when she saw it sicken /
She shipped it off to Packingtown / And now it’s labeled chicken.”

Tom Sherman writes:

Penny Farthing wrote:
Tom Sherman writes:

aka Jobst Brandt wrote:
http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/art...mc-hit-and-run

I find interesting that whether the rider was wearing a helmet was
mentioned. One might deduce that had he not been wearing a helmet,
the pickup truck driver would have had cause to run into the
bicyclist... or whatever other interpretation might fit.

butbutbut, cycling safety begins and ends with the wearing of a foam
bicycle hat!!! After all, these magical hats prevent 85% of ALL
injuries!!!

Only an idiot would think a foam shell surrounding your skull does not
provide at least SOME protection in the event of your head striking a
concrete surface.

The foam shell provides minor bump and scrape protection.

No sensible person claims cycling gloves save lives, yet they can
prevent or greatly reduce the severity of "road rash" to the cyclist's
hands in the event of a crash. Foam bicycle hats can be viewed to have
a similar utility.

Nonsense. if a small child, with a soft skull, falls 2 feet and their
head hits the kerb I know what I would prefer between "No shell" and
"shell" protection.


Its why mother nature gave certain animals exoskeletons.

Ignoring the creationist aspect of the way this is phrased, the
animals with exoskeletons typically have a much greater ratio of
surface area to mass than the hominid head. The exoskeletons are also
generally used as a defense against predators, not as protection
during impacts.

You're either incredibly dense or you suffer some sort of linear thought
decease.

What do you thank attack is if not a form of impact?

Ryan Cousineau writes:

In article ,
wrote:

Tom Sherman writes:

aka Jobst Brandt wrote:
http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/art...mc-hit-and-run

I find interesting that whether the rider was wearing a helmet was
mentioned. One might deduce that had he not been wearing a helmet,
the pickup truck driver would have had cause to run into the
bicyclist... or whatever other interpretation might fit.


butbutbut, cycling safety begins and ends with the wearing of a foam
bicycle hat!!! After all, these magical hats prevent 85% of ALL
injuries!!!

Only an idiot would think a foam shell surrounding your skull does not
provide at least SOME protection in the event of your head striking a
concrete surface.

Yes, but some of us idiots are very curious about why it's so hard to
demonstrate the real-world efficacy of helmets at reducing fatality
rates. Serious dumbasses start to theorize that maybe there's
something

Hard to prove without willing victims.

about how your head torques when your helmet just grazes the ground that
is converting some non-fatal incidents into fatal ones, at about the
same rate as helmets convert fatal incidents into non-fatal ones.

Sure. I can see that happening. **** happens. Same a seat belt cutting
someone in half. Nothing in life is free.


Its why mother nature gave certain animals exoskeletons.

Now seriously, please tell me about the vital organs outside of your
skull that your helmet is protecting for you.

So you dont believe in double layers of protection? So all the
battleship makers got it wrong. OK .......


The curious nature of whacking your head into the ground or other
objects is that there are three really interesting classes of head-smack
to consider.

1) the ones that won't kill you

2) the ones that might kill you if you don't wear a helmet

3) the ones that will kill you pretty much regardless of what you're
wearing on your head.

No one is trying to claim a helmet saves all lives. Stop introducing
straw men to bolster you blatant hatred for helmets which you clearly
feel impact on your freedom to choose.

Once more : only an idiot would think that an extra layer of protection
around the head will not provide a degree of insultation in the case of
your head striking the kerb. Could it introduce other risks? Sure it
could. No doubt. Its a trade off.

Picture little Angie. Angie is 3. She is learning to pedal a bike. She
falls 2 feet and the soft side of her head hits a concrete
kerb. Now. The question I want YOU to answer : do you or do you not
think little Angie is better off with that part of her head protected by
a hard helmet?

Take your time...


First, head injuries are not the only way to die on a bike, though a
lot

Yes. We know.