THE CASE FOR A MANDATORY CYCLE HELMET LAW 
(IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA)

Andre Jute:
On Sunday, November 4, 2012 6:23:28 PM UTC, Sepp Ruf wrote:
Andre Jute:
a compulsory helmet law in the States will save lives.

You collectivists really like the concept of compulsion, don't you?

I'm a notorious libertarian.

Guess I found your original "terrorist" label much easier to remember.

I bet that Gary Johnson, in his debate with Jill Stein, will not be
making any remarks in favor of mandatory helmet laws.

More than the concept of liberty which undoubtedly is totally foreign
to their Constitution.

Whose Constitution?

USA

Note that it isn't everybody I want to force to wear helmets, only
Americans. And I wouldn't even be interested in those, except that
Krygowski is such a huge arsehole.

How weird, a "notorious libertarian" fancying collective punishment
just because he feels sexually attracted to Frank.

whatever.

On 11/5/2012 5:09 AM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 21:54:21 -0600, "Tom $herman (-_-)"
" wrote:

On 11/4/2012 6:33 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 15:23:15 -0600, "Tom $herman (-_-)"
" wrote:

On 10/29/2012 6:20 PM, Curtis wrote:
"Andre Jute" wrote

"It is a risible myth that your average American is a tall-walking free
?individual untrammeled by government: he is in fact just as much
?constricted as a European soft-socialist consumerist or Japanese
?collective citizen, though it is true that the American is controlled ?in
different areas of his activity than the European or the Japanese."

Unfortunate truth, control from the nanny state.

"To some the uncontrolled areas of American life, for instance the ability
to own and use firearms, smacks of barbarism rather than liberty. "

And that "smacks" of STUPIDITY from those willing to endure tyranny for a
FALSE sense of security.


Nanny state my arse - the goal of the US government is to destroy the
country and turn it into 3rd world status - has been since 12:30 CST on
November 22, 1963. Get back to me in 10 years if you disagree.

Somehow, there appears to be a lack of logic here. Why in the world
would the government want to turn the U.S. into a desperately poor 3rd
world nation. After all, poor = fewer with the ability to pay taxes;
fewer paying taxes = less money in the G'ment coffers for programs
that will generate kick-backs = lower income for Bureaucrats.

If you think the war for US independence ended with Cornwallis
surrendering, you have been played for a fool.

Henry Kissinger let the cat out of the bag when he referred to the
non-elite as "worthless eaters". If you are not a member of the Eight
Families [1] or their close associates, you are worth nothing more than
cattle. A free, democratic, and prosperous society is everything they hate.

[1] The Goldman Sach's, Rockefeller's, Lehman's and Kuhn Loeb's of New
York; the Rothschild's of Paris and London; the Warburg's of Hamburg;
the Lazard's of Paris; and the Israel Moses Seif's of Rome. Together
they control at least $250 trillion in assets.

Do they pay taxes?

Compared to their income, not much. These days they create money for
free, lend it to every government with a private central bank, and let
the taxpayers pay them interest. Biggest financial scam in history by far.

Kennedy was going to have the government issue Treasury Notes directly
(instead of privately issued Federal Reserve Notes), and died in a hail
of bullets (ask G.H.W. Bush what he was doing on Dealey Plaza that day).

--
Tºm Shermªn - 42.435731°N, 83.985007°W
Post Free or Die!

On Monday, October 29, 2012 9:55:13 AM UTC-6, Andre Jute wrote:
THE CASE FOR A MANDATORY CYCLE HELMET LAW


(IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA)




by Andre Jute



It is a risible myth that your average American is a tall-walking free 
individual untrammeled by government: he is in fact just as much 
constricted as a European soft-socialist consumerist or Japanese 
collective citizen, though it is true that the American is controlled 
in different areas of his activity than the European or the Japanese. 
To some the uncontrolled areas of American life, for instance the 
ability to own and use firearms, smacks of barbarism rather than 
liberty. In this article I examine whether the lack of a mandatory 
bicycle helmet law in the USA is barbaric or an emanation of that 
rugged liberty more evident in rhetoric than reality.



Any case for intervention by the state must be made on moral and 
statistical grounds. Examples are driving licences, crush zones on 
cars, seatbelts, age restrictions on alcohol sales, and a million 
other interventions, all now accepted unremarked in the States as part 
of the regulatory landscape, but all virulently opposed in their day.



HOW DANGEROUS IS CYCLING?


Surprisingly, cycling can be argued to be "safe enough", given only 
that one is willing to count the intangible benefits of health through 
exercise, generally acknowledged as substantial. Here I shall make no 
effort to quantify those health benefits because the argument I'm 
putting forward is conclusively made by harder statistics and 
unexceptional general morality.



In the representative year of 2008, the last for which comprehesive 
data is available, 716 cyclists died on US roads, and 52,000 were 
injured.



Source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration



The most convenient way to grasp the meaning of these statistics is to 
compare cycling with motoring, the latter ipso facto by motorists' 
average mileage accepted by most Americans as safe enough.



Compared to a motorist a cyclist is:


11 times MORE likely to die PER MILE travelled 


2.9 times MORE likely to die PER TRIP taken



By adding information about the relative frequency/length/duration of 
journeys of cyclists and motorists, we can further conclude that in 
the US:



Compared to a motorist, a cyclist is:


3 to 4 times MORE likely to die PER HOUR riding 


3 to 4 times LESS likely to die IN A YEAR's riding



Source: 
http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=htt...ite/Banco/7man...



It is the last number, that the average cyclist is 3 to 4 times less 
likely to die in a year's riding than a motorist, and enjoys all the 
benefits of healthy exercise, that permits us to ignore the greater 
per mile/per trip/per hour danger.



This gives us the overall perspective but says nothing about wearing a 
cycling helmet.



HELMET WEAR AT THE EXTREME END OF CYCLING RISK

What we really want to know is: what chance of the helmet saving your 
life? The authorities in New York made a compilation covering the 
years 1996 to 2003 of all the deaths (225) and serious injuries 
(3,462) in cycling accidents in all New York City. The purpose of the 
study was an overview usable for city development planning, not helmet 
advocacy, so helmet usage was only noted for part of the period among 
the seriously injured, amounting to 333 cases.



Here are some 
conclusions:

• Most fatal crashes (74%) involved a head injury.

fatal crashes, but 13% in non-fatal 
crashes

Source: 
http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/download...ike-report.pdf

This concatenation of facts suggests very strongly that not wearing a 
helmet may be particularly dangerous.

• It looks like wearing a helmet saved roundabout 33 cyclists or so 
(of the 333 seriously injured for whom helmet use is known) from 
dying.


• If those who died wore helmets at the same rate of 13% as those in 
the study who survived, a further 22 or so could have lived. 


• If all the fatalities had been wearing a helmet (100%), somewhere 
between 10% and 57% of them would have lived. This number is less firm 
to allow for impacts so heavy that no helmet would have saved the 
cyclist. Still, between 22 and 128 *additional* (to the 33 noted 
above) New Yorkers alive rather than dead for wearing a thirty buck 
helmet is a serious statistical, moral and political consideration 
difficult to overlook.



SO HOW MANY CYCLISTS CAN HELMETS SAVE ACROSS THE NATION? 
New York is not the United States but we're not seeking certainly, 
only investigating whether a moral imperative for action appears.



First off, the 52,000 cyclists hurt cannot be directly related to the 
very serious injuries which were the only ones counted in the New York 
compilation. But a fatality is a fatality anywhere and the fraction of 
head injuries in the fatalities is pretty constant.



So, with a caution, we can say that of 716 cycling fatalities 
nationwide, helmet use could have saved at least 70 and very likely 
more towards a possible upper limit of around 400. Again the 
statistical extension must be tempered by the knowledge that some 
impacts are so heavy that no helmet can save the cyclist. Still, if 
even half the impacts resulting in fatal head trauma is too heavy for 
a helmet to mitigate, possibly around 235 cyclists might live rather 
than die on the roads for simply wearing a helmet. Every year. That's 
an instant reduction in cyclist road fatalities of one third. Once 
more we have arrived at a statistical, moral and political fact that 
is hard to igno Helmet wear could save many lives.



THE CASE AGAINST MANDATORY HELMET LAWS

• Compulsion is anti-Constitutional, an assault on the freedom of the 
citizen to choose his own manner of living and dying 


• Many other actitivities cause fatal head injuries. So why not insist 
they should all be put in helmets? 


• 37% of bicycle fatalities involve alcohol, and 23% were legally 
drunk, and you'll never get these drunks in helmets anyway 


• We should leave the drunks to their fate; they're not real cyclists 
anyway 
• Helmets are not perfect anyway


• Helmets cause cyclists to stop cycling, which is a cost to society 
in health losses 
• Many more motorists die on the roads than cyclists. Why not insist 
that motorists wear helmets inside their cars?


• Helmets don't save lives -- that's a myth put forward by commercial 
helmet makers 
• Helmets are too heavily promoted 


• Helmet makers overstate the benefits of helmets 


• A helmet makes me look like a dork 


• Too few cyclists will be saved to make the cost worthwhile



THE CASE FOR A MANDATORY HELMET LAW IN THE STATES


• 235 or more additional cyclists' lives saved 


• 716 deaths of cyclists on the road when a third or more of those 
deaths can easily be avoided is a national disgrace


• Education has clearly failed 


• Anti-helmet zealots in the face of the evidence from New York are 
still advising cyclists not to wear helmets 


• An example to the next generation of cyclists


• A visible sign of a commitment to cycling safety, which may attract 
more people to cycling



© Copyright Andre Jute 2010. Free for reproduction in non-profit 
journals and sites as long as the entire article is reproduced in full 
including this copyright and permission notice.

I have a thought experiment that I haven't replicated yet. Place a helmet on top of a hard round surface. Lift a bowling ball approximately, 1 centimeter above the helmet and drop it, continue ding this one centimeter increment at the time until the helmet cracks. Not sure how hight I would like to lift the bowling ball before it does crack the helmet, but I am certain that I wouldn't like to have the bowling ball fall over my head event below the cracking threshold.

Many would argue that the forces created by a bowling ball may not be the same one from a bike accident. But, I have been in two bike accidents over a period of 25 years, where I cracked a helmet. I am glad that my head w/o a helmet did not have to absorb the same impact. maybe, the reason that I am kind of dumb is that the helmets did not protect me enough.

Regarding those who want zero government control, I wonder where they live. If the own or rent property, if there are paved sidewalks and street outside of their homes, if they don't walk naked whenever they want to, if they use public transportation, or private transportation, or bicycles, or skateboards, or eat in restaurants, or at home, or have their own little private gardens and grow their own food, or take subways, or go out and vote, work, or do anything at all in their lives, they live under "social rules" directed by government. Without them society would simply collapse.

Im not saying that government control is good or bad. But wanting to avoid government control by not wearing helmets, or seat-belts, or joining perma-culture then you are totally naive. Our entire lives are control by a system of government that regulate most of what we do. Thats the case for all societies.

If you want no government control, living alone outside of the grid is the only solution. Buying a bike, from manufacturing to selling, to shipping, to getting it at the bike shop, or at home, or at the swap meet is controlled by government ordinances of all kinds. So, you have a bike, but you think that you are fighting government control by not wearing a helmet? Lol.

On 11/5/2012 2:12 PM, Andre Jute wrote:
On Sunday, November 4, 2012 9:39:38 PM UTC, Tom $herman (-_-) wrote:
On 11/3/2012 6:24 PM, Andre Jute wrote:

[snip for bandwidth, all the stuff that Liddell Tommi lies that he didn't read for fear that a little rationality would fry his brains, such as they are]

Andre Jute



Dude,



In case you have not noticed, most people in the US do not live in the

hell-hole of NYC.



HTHBKIW



--

T�m Sherm�n - 42.435731�N, 83.985007�W

Post Free or Die!

Hello, Liddell Tommi. How goes RBT's Chief Anti-Semite?

I have nothing against Arabs as group. Anti-goyim tribal supremacists
on the other hand...

"How can we be anti-Semitic when we have become Palestinians, true
Semitic people?" - William A. Cook

Jute is either an ignoramus, or far worse morally, has an inkling of the
truth and supports evil.

Save your BS for someone else, as I am on to most of the lies presented
as history and conventional wisdom.

--
Tºm Shermªn - 42.435731°N, 83.985007°W
Post Free or Die!

On 11/5/2012 8:16 AM, (PeteCresswell) wrote:
Per "Tom $herman (-_-)"
":
In case you have not noticed, most people in the US do not live in the
hell-hole of NYC.

When I was living in "Paradise" (Honolulu, Hawaii) and working in
a Waikiki hotel while going to college I came to look forward to
the tour groups from New York City.

They were outspoken, in-your-face... but they could *talk* and
they understood everything I said, first time around.

When I finally moved back to the East Coast, I had occasion to
visit NYC a few times. Contrary to the apocryphal statement
that "Society has ceased to exist in New York City", if found
people there to be direct, no BS. Frankly, I enjoyed
interacting with them.

Any place crowded with people and covered mostly with pavement and
buildings is a hell hole.

--
Tºm Shermªn - 42.435731°N, 83.985007°W
Post Free or Die!

On 11/5/2012 8:16 PM, wrote:
I have a thought experiment that I haven't replicated yet. Place a helmet on top of a hard round surface. Lift a bowling ball approximately, 1 centimeter above the helmet and drop it, continue ding this one centimeter increment at the time until the helmet cracks. Not sure how hight I would like to lift the bowling ball before it does crack the helmet, but I am certain that I wouldn't like to have the bowling ball fall over my head event below the cracking threshold.

Try this experiment. Put a foam bicycle hat on a hard surface and whack
it hard with a gloved hand. Then put a Snell M2010 rated moto lid next
to it and whack it hard with a softball bat. See which one is in better
condition afterwards.

--
Tºm Shermªn - 42.435731°N, 83.985007°W
Post Free or Die!

On Mon, 05 Nov 2012 19:51:18 -0600, "Tom $herman (-_-)"
" wrote:

On 11/5/2012 5:09 AM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 21:54:21 -0600, "Tom $herman (-_-)"
" wrote:

On 11/4/2012 6:33 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 04 Nov 2012 15:23:15 -0600, "Tom $herman (-_-)"
" wrote:

On 10/29/2012 6:20 PM, Curtis wrote:
"Andre Jute" wrote

"It is a risible myth that your average American is a tall-walking free
?individual untrammeled by government: he is in fact just as much
?constricted as a European soft-socialist consumerist or Japanese
?collective citizen, though it is true that the American is controlled ?in
different areas of his activity than the European or the Japanese."

Unfortunate truth, control from the nanny state.

"To some the uncontrolled areas of American life, for instance the ability
to own and use firearms, smacks of barbarism rather than liberty. "

And that "smacks" of STUPIDITY from those willing to endure tyranny for a
FALSE sense of security.


Nanny state my arse - the goal of the US government is to destroy the
country and turn it into 3rd world status - has been since 12:30 CST on
November 22, 1963. Get back to me in 10 years if you disagree.

Somehow, there appears to be a lack of logic here. Why in the world
would the government want to turn the U.S. into a desperately poor 3rd
world nation. After all, poor = fewer with the ability to pay taxes;
fewer paying taxes = less money in the G'ment coffers for programs
that will generate kick-backs = lower income for Bureaucrats.

If you think the war for US independence ended with Cornwallis
surrendering, you have been played for a fool.

Henry Kissinger let the cat out of the bag when he referred to the
non-elite as "worthless eaters". If you are not a member of the Eight
Families [1] or their close associates, you are worth nothing more than
cattle. A free, democratic, and prosperous society is everything they hate.

[1] The Goldman Sach's, Rockefeller's, Lehman's and Kuhn Loeb's of New
York; the Rothschild's of Paris and London; the Warburg's of Hamburg;
the Lazard's of Paris; and the Israel Moses Seif's of Rome. Together
they control at least $250 trillion in assets.

Do they pay taxes?

Compared to their income, not much. These days they create money for
free, lend it to every government with a private central bank, and let
the taxpayers pay them interest. Biggest financial scam in history by far.

Kennedy was going to have the government issue Treasury Notes directly
(instead of privately issued Federal Reserve Notes), and died in a hail
of bullets (ask G.H.W. Bush what he was doing on Dealey Plaza that day).


I'm interested in this "create money for free" stuff.... Maybe a few
details and I won't have to worry about inflation.

--
Cheers,
John B.

DATAKOLL'S ICY DRIVING EXERCISE

find a large parking lot with few light poles

wait for an ice storm

with glaze on lot, approach from street at 70 mph

enter lot in slide then spin and correct.

do not wear a helmet....causes to much attention.

itsa regional problem.

have you met people from Sascatchuwan ? WHOA!

HELMET DISCUSSIONS prove cyclists should wear helmets from an early age eg 3.