What doctors/researchers think about wearing a helmet.

Peter Clinch - Pete, referring to Steven Scharf, writes Wrote:

If you wish to come across as an unbiased, authoritative honest broker
on helmet information then portraying a man who changed his mind about
helmets, still uses one from time to time and who is happy to have his
children use them and be photographed in them as an "anti helmet
zealot"
doesn't really show you to be ahead of the curve in the observation
and
"critical thinking" department, while we're on the subject...

Pete.


Well put Pete, I would put it ever so slightly less eloquently that
master Chaff wants to try and appear as that which he obviously is not,
and to put it bluntly - that he is evacuating bovine excrement, bigtime.


Ah yes, we can penetrate Scharf's deception like a dose of epsom
salts...

Roger


--
RogerDodger

Steven M. Scharf wrote:

Look at Australia. Following the helmet law introduction, the number of
adult cyclists increased, and the number of child decreased. But the
number of head injuries went down by 70 percent by the second year, and
the decrease in total cyclists (if any at all), was not nearly 70 percent.


Reference?

Tony

On Sat, 04 Dec 2004 13:53:37 +0000, David Martin
wrote in message
:

Most counts are cordon counts, not street corner counts. There have also
been telephone polls (not as reliable).

e.g. counts of cyclist traffic over the Narrows Bridge, which showed a
15% reduction against a rising population.

People were stopped in the streets of Darwin, the capital of
the Northern Territory, and asked what effect mandatory helmets had on
their cycling behaviour. 22% claimed to have given up cycling because
of the helmet legislation and 20% to 30% said they cycled less. - from
Australian Bicycle Council's "Bicycle Ownership, Use and Demographics.

% of bed-days due to HI in bike crashes in Western Australia,
http://www.health.wa.gov.au/publicat...th/bikerpt.doc

1981 28.2%
1982 33.7%
1983 33.0%
1984 37.1%
1985 33.8%
1986 37.0%
1987 35.5%
1988 29.8%
1989 22.5%
1990 26.1%
1991 27.9%
1992 27.5%
1993 32.5%
1994 27.4%
1995 24.4%

The WA helmet law was was introduced on 1 Jan 1992, with enforcement
from 1 July 1992. Surveys showed helmet wearing doubled from about 39%
to more than 80% following the enforcement.

So, for the four years pre and post law, here are the averages

Site of Injury Pre law Post-law
(%) 1988-91 1992-95
-----------------------------------------
Skull fractures 7.2 7.9
Intracranial 12.4 13.2
Other head 0.8 0.9
Spinal 6.7 5.0
Lower limb fractures 27.8 25.2
Upper limb fractures 9.2 14.1
All other fractures 3.8 3.7
Dislocations/sprains 1.4 1.3
Superficial 14.5 12.0
Internal 3.8 4.3
Other_non-head 6.1 6.4
-----------------------------------------

Bike counts on the Swan River bridges we
Oct-Dec 1991 16326
Oct-Dec 1992 13067
Oct-Dec 1993 12470
Oct-Dec 1994 10701

Average length of hispital stay, WA

81-83 84-86 87-89 90-92 93-95
Skull fracture 13.1 7.9 7.6 8.4 11.0
Facial 3.6 2.6 2.8 2.4 1.8
Intracranial 2.3 3.0 2.5 2.1 2.2
Other head 2.3 2.0 2.1 2.5 2.6
Spinal 120.0 24.1 38.0 14.7 15.1
Lower limb frac 12.3 13.5 12.1 9.1 8.0
Upper limb frac 2.7 2.5 2.4 2.0 1.6
All other frac 13.9 10.8 12.4 11.8 6.7
disloc/sprain 2.8 2.5 4.1 3.7 2.5
Superficial 4.8 4.1 4.8 3.6 3.0
Internal 16.3 8.6 8.5 5.6 6.4
Other 4.7 6.3 5.1 4.6 2.5

Scharf would presumably hypothesise that this is due to all the
helmeted riders being completely uninjured, leaving only unhelmeted
riders, hence no visible effect on head injury stay lengths for the
helmet law in 1992. He is not a great fan of Occam's Razor :-)

In point of fact I don't know /anybody/ other than Scharf who disputes
that cycling reduced in Aus. following the law. The reduction in HI
I've heard is around 30%, and reduction in cycling of around the same.

Automatic counters on bicycle paths registered declines from 1991 to a
similar period in 1992 of about one third on weekdays and about half
at weekends

Although the numbers have now climbed back to pre-law levels (which
may be what he means), that is against a background of a substantial
increase in population.

Guy
--
"then came ye chavves, theyre cartes girded wyth candels
blue, and theyre beastes wyth straynge horn-lyke thyngs
onn theyre arses that theyre fartes be herde from myles
around." Chaucer, the Sheppey Tales

John Doe wrote:

Maybe socialized medicine dumbs down the healthcare profession.

Anti-social(ized) medicine is better then?

:-)
--
Chris

Monkey Hanger writes:

John Doe wrote:

Maybe socialized medicine dumbs down the healthcare profession.

Anti-social(ized) medicine is better then?

I think the point he was making was that doctors have to be much
smarter in the US in order to avoid career damaging litigation as a
consequence of maximising their profits, a clear case of competition
improving the species.

--
Chris Malcolm +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]