Bicycle accident = glad i had my Helmet on this time

On Aug 7, 2:54*am, wrote:
On Thu, 5 Aug 2010 23:57:12 -0700 (PDT), James



wrote:
On Aug 6, 4:14*pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:

The simple facts are these: *There seem to be thousands of "my helmet
saved my life" (or at least "my helmet saved me from serious injury"
stories every year in America. *But the number of lives lost while
cycling, and the number of serious head injuries while cycling, have
not changed since helmet use began rising.

It's very improbable that the national data is wrong. *Therefore the
majority of such stories must be wrong, no matter how sincerely they
are believed.

This doesn't disprove any one claim. *It may be that Peter's claim is
absolutely correct. *But we simply cannot say that about the vast
majority of such claims. *It defies logic.

Read this, which is a good introduction to the discrepancy.http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1028.html

- Frank Krygowski

From the statistics page, the title is:
"Cyclists requiring treatment in US Hospitals 1991 to 2000"

I guess if you didn't suffer an injury because you were wearing a
helmet and didn't need hospitalisation, you went unnoticed by these
statistics. *Also, had a cyclist died wearing a helmet or not wearing
one, they wouldn't need hospitalisation either, and again would go
unnoticed by these statistics.

So no change in the percentage requiring treatment, but what about the
rest? *There's no mention of the type of head injury either.

From the article;
"Almost no one suggests that riders should stop wearing helmets, which
researchers have found can reduce the severity of brain injuries by as
much as 88 percent. "

They made an exception for you it seems, Frank. *You must be the
someone that makes it "almost no one". ;-)

Then there's this:

"Dr. James P. Kelly, a neurologist and a concussion expert at
Northwestern University Medical School, said that even as helmets were
currently designed, patients who were wearing them when they were
injured were much better off than those who were not."

"Bicycle helmet technology is the best we have for protecting the
brain," Dr. Kelly said. "The helmets serve the function of an air
bag."

Personally, I don't care for statistics much. *They're often twisted
in favour of someones agenda. *Possibly as useful as consumer reports,
IMHO. *Furthermore, if a helmet only saves you once in a lifetime, ...
well at least you still have some lifetime afterward.

JS.

Dear James,

You should look into the details of the 88% claim.

It comes from a study in which helmet-wearing apparently reduced leg
injuries by over 70%.

Here's a good place to learn a great deal mo

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk:8080...uments/cycle_h...

Briefly, small and amazingly badly designed studies by enthusiasts
often make claims that bicycle helmets will reduce the rate of serious
head injuries and deaths. But when helmet use rises from under 50% to
nearly 100% due to helmet laws, the rate of serious head injuries and
deaths remains unchanged. In other words, the predictions of the small
studies have repeatedly failed.

Studies and statistics are usually funded by an interested party, and
somehow come out in their favour. So naturally we get studies and
statistics that *prove* both sides.

I've had a few accidents over the years and never hit my head. I
won't stop wearing a helmet because statistically it's unlikely that I
will have an accident in which I do hit my head. I know others who
have not suffered nasty injuries as a result of wearing a helmet. One
such ended up with a deep chainring imprint across the front of his
helmet after a bunch crash. Had he not worn a helmet, he'd look like
Frankensteins monster.

Cheers,
James.

On Fri, 6 Aug 2010 15:30:18 -0700 (PDT), James
wrote:

On Aug 7, 2:54*am, wrote:
On Thu, 5 Aug 2010 23:57:12 -0700 (PDT), James



wrote:
On Aug 6, 4:14*pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:

The simple facts are these: *There seem to be thousands of "my helmet
saved my life" (or at least "my helmet saved me from serious injury"
stories every year in America. *But the number of lives lost while
cycling, and the number of serious head injuries while cycling, have
not changed since helmet use began rising.

It's very improbable that the national data is wrong. *Therefore the
majority of such stories must be wrong, no matter how sincerely they
are believed.

This doesn't disprove any one claim. *It may be that Peter's claim is
absolutely correct. *But we simply cannot say that about the vast
majority of such claims. *It defies logic.

Read this, which is a good introduction to the discrepancy.http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1028.html

- Frank Krygowski

From the statistics page, the title is:
"Cyclists requiring treatment in US Hospitals 1991 to 2000"

I guess if you didn't suffer an injury because you were wearing a
helmet and didn't need hospitalisation, you went unnoticed by these
statistics. *Also, had a cyclist died wearing a helmet or not wearing
one, they wouldn't need hospitalisation either, and again would go
unnoticed by these statistics.

So no change in the percentage requiring treatment, but what about the
rest? *There's no mention of the type of head injury either.

From the article;
"Almost no one suggests that riders should stop wearing helmets, which
researchers have found can reduce the severity of brain injuries by as
much as 88 percent. "

They made an exception for you it seems, Frank. *You must be the
someone that makes it "almost no one". ;-)

Then there's this:

"Dr. James P. Kelly, a neurologist and a concussion expert at
Northwestern University Medical School, said that even as helmets were
currently designed, patients who were wearing them when they were
injured were much better off than those who were not."

"Bicycle helmet technology is the best we have for protecting the
brain," Dr. Kelly said. "The helmets serve the function of an air
bag."

Personally, I don't care for statistics much. *They're often twisted
in favour of someones agenda. *Possibly as useful as consumer reports,
IMHO. *Furthermore, if a helmet only saves you once in a lifetime, ...
well at least you still have some lifetime afterward.

JS.

Dear James,

You should look into the details of the 88% claim.

It comes from a study in which helmet-wearing apparently reduced leg
injuries by over 70%.

Here's a good place to learn a great deal mo

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk:8080...uments/cycle_h...

Briefly, small and amazingly badly designed studies by enthusiasts
often make claims that bicycle helmets will reduce the rate of serious
head injuries and deaths. But when helmet use rises from under 50% to
nearly 100% due to helmet laws, the rate of serious head injuries and
deaths remains unchanged. In other words, the predictions of the small
studies have repeatedly failed.

Studies and statistics are usually funded by an interested party, and
somehow come out in their favour. So naturally we get studies and
statistics that *prove* both sides.

I've had a few accidents over the years and never hit my head. I
won't stop wearing a helmet because statistically it's unlikely that I
will have an accident in which I do hit my head. I know others who
have not suffered nasty injuries as a result of wearing a helmet. One
such ended up with a deep chainring imprint across the front of his
helmet after a bunch crash. Had he not worn a helmet, he'd look like
Frankensteins monster.

Cheers,
James.

Dear James,

Please let us know if you find a whole-population study that shows a
significant effect for bicycle helmets.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

Per Duane Hebert:
My helmet was cracked and dented.
My head wasn't. Without the helmet, my head would have taken that impact. Would it
have killed me?

If it was anything like the video I saw of a guy on a skate board
with a small windsurfer sail falling (at about 2 mph) I think it
would. Looked like he rapped his melon on the edge of the curb.
He was DOA per the video.
--
PeteCresswell

Phil W Lee wrote:

:And I think you are being over-dismissive of the strength of the
:skull. It is a lot stronger than most people think.

Yeah, so? People die of head injuries that cause zero damage to the
skull every day. Skull isn't the problem. Brain is the problem.
Brains are a whole hell of a lot more fragile than most people want to
think.


--
sig 8

On Aug 6, 9:42*pm, Sir Ridesalot wrote:

To be really honest Frank I don't get your assertion that I must have
been exaggerating the severity of the impact or what the most likely
consequence would have been had I not been wearing a helmet at the
time of that impact. I know what a hard impact sounds and feels like
and whether *YOU* believe it or not it was a very hard impact. The
force of the impact and the speed of the impact were far greater than
what my neck could have prevented my head from striking the pavement
with considerable force had there been just the extra inch of
clearance gained from the lack of the helmet shell had I not been
wearing the helmet. Had I not been wearing the helmet it still would
have been my temple that struck the asphalt. That is easily discerned
by just by the force of the impact I did have.

And you may be correct. That is, you may be the unusual person who
correctly assessed the severity of the impact your helmet sustained;
and you may also be the unusual person who can correctly tell that the
impact of your bare head would have caused serious injury.

But do you understand that if so, you are very unusual indeed?
Because even this relatively tiny discussion group has seen lots of
these claims. Extrapolating our sample, there must be many hundreds,
perhaps many thousands of such claims across the country. And almost
all those _other_ folks apparently _cannot_ tell what you can
confidently tell.

We can say that because there have not been thousands of lives saved,
nor thousands of head injuries prevented. Head injuries for cyclists
have trended exactly the same as head injuries for pedestrians in
every place that's kept track, despite helmet use rising rapidly.
Head injuries per cyclist, when that number is available, seem to have
actually gone up. Re-read the article I linked upthread.

So again: You may be right in your case. But the vast majority of
your compatriots, who are equally confident, MUST be wrong. That's
certainly worth pondering, no?

- Frank Krygowski

On Aug 6, 4:42*pm, "Duane Hebert" wrote:

What's the downside? *No one is arguing for legislation here.

Downsides?

One is that even if no one is arguing for legislation _here_, there
are hundreds of other people who are arguing for it, lobbying hard for
it, passing such legislation, and enforcing it. I see that as a
problem in many ways, which we can detail if you like.

Another is that helmet promotion is the source of the fallacy that
cycling is a huge risk for serious head injury. Peter's case is part
of that - everyone he tells his story to is expected to think "Wow -
he'd be dead if he'd ridden bareheaded!" This fallacy has to dissuade
some people from riding.

Perhaps worse, it's already led to the common presumption that riding
without a helmet is negligent. (Note that newspaper reports usually
include the "victim was not wearing a helmet" line whether or not it
would have made a difference.) This adds another disadvantage to
cyclists in the legal system; it tends to further excuse the motorists
who harm cyclists.

The helmet fixation also prevents wider adoption of the public bike
schemes. These schemes seem to work very well in places like Paris
and Quebec City, where helmet fixation is less. The one recently
started in mandatory-helmet Australia is flopping totally.

Furthermore, all the helmet fixation is overpowering safety efforts
that might actually do some good. About a month ago, our local paper
carried yet another article on yet another "Bike Safety" day put on by
a suburban police force. The article - about 600 words long, IIRC -
was all about helmets, except for one phrase "and rules of the road."
Helmets have become the be-all, end-all of bike safety.

All this would be bad enough if the things were really effective
against serious or fatal injuries. But the best data makes it clear
that they're not. Despite the promises of case-control studies with
self-selected subjects, population data shows that 15 to 20 years of
rising helmet use has done nothing statistically worthwhile. Oh,
except make lots of money for the styrofoam handlers.

- Frank Krygowski

On Aug 6, 6:30*pm, James wrote:

Studies and statistics are usually funded by an interested party, and
somehow come out in their favour. *So naturally we get studies and
statistics that *prove* both sides.

What you say is often true. It looks like Thompson & Rivara (authors
of the study generating the ludicrous "85%" claim) are well supported
by the Snell foundation, if not others. And it's easy to see why
helmet manufacturers would help fund and disseminate studies of a type
that tended to give helmet-promoting results.

But there are interesting counterexamples. Here are a few:

Paul Scuffham's original study on the issue, published as "Trends in
Cycling Injuries in New Zealand..." was funded by the road safety
bureau for which he then worked. It was intended to show that the
recent huge surge in helmet use (just before the NZ nationwide law
took effect) had already had proven benefits. It found just the
opposite - no matter how sophisticated the mathematical analysis, it
could find zero benefit to bike helmets regarding keeping people out
of hospitals. (The study examined almost all medical records for
cyclists in NZ and was specifically designed to find those "missing"
cyclists who had been saved a hospital visit. But it instead showed
they don't exist.)

More recently, Dr. Patrick Crocker has been a strident voice for an
all-ages helmet law in Austin,TX. To further his efforts he finally
ran a case-control study on helmet protection. This was a good
strategy, since case-control studies have inherent weaknesses that
cause large overestimates of helmet effectiveness; they make for good
propaganda.

But Crocker also included data on alcohol use, and ruined his plan.
The data and analysis show no correlation between helmet use and head
injury; but they DO show a strong correlation between alcohol use and
head injury. This exposes a further weakness of past case-control
studies, since (AFAIK) none of the others controlled for alcohol use,
and few of the boys who lost their license and have to ride home from
the bar - with no lights, facing traffic - bother with helmets. The
boys' other problems pollute the helmet data, so to speak; but this
data pollution hasn't been previously recognized nor corrected for.

So that's two "funded by promoters" researchers whose data worked
against the promoters.

There are also researchers who certainly get no funding from profit-
seeking companies. Dr. Dorothy Robinson (who once posted eloquently
here, before being driven off by rudely ignorant yahoos) is probably
the most prominent helmet-skeptic researcher. You can be sure she's
getting no money from Bell, Snell, or the rest. She seems driven by a
love for bicycling and a love for truth. She's the one who found that
Thompson & Rivara's "85% effective" helmets also seemed to prevent
about 75% of leg injuries. (Magic! ... or just terrible study
design? You decide.)

As they say, you can learn a lot if you follow the money.

- Frank Krygowski

On Aug 6, 2:40*pm, David Scheidt wrote:


Frank has an irrational belief that helmets are unmitigated evil. *
It's a relgious view point, and you're not going to convince him
he's wrong. *

Don't call it religous, David. I once believed firmly in helmets, and
used one for almost all of my riding. I even promoted their use.

But then I started looking at real data (not just 85%!!! claims). I
started reading the original research papers, both pro-helmet and
helmet-skeptic ones. I started taking part in fairly high-level
discussions of the findings.

I decided I'd been wrong, and I decided that based on science, data
and mathematics, not religion. Furthermore, AFAIK every person who's
changed their opinion based on science has changed from pro-helmet to
helmet skeptic, not the other way around.

Now: What, exactly, are your beliefs based upon?

- Frank Krygowski

Carl Fogel wrote:

James wrote:

Carl Fogel wrote:

Briefly, small and amazingly badly designed studies by enthusiasts
often make claims that bicycle helmets will reduce the rate of serious
head injuries and deaths. But when helmet use rises from under 50% to
nearly 100% due to helmet laws, the rate of serious head injuries and
deaths remains unchanged. In other words, the predictions of the small
studies have repeatedly failed.

Studies and statistics are usually funded by an interested party, and
somehow come out in their favour. *So naturally we get studies and
statistics that *prove* both sides.

Dear James,

Please let us know if you find a whole-population study that shows a
significant effect for bicycle helmets.

Or if you find someone making money by demonstrating that cycle
helmets don't work as claimed.

Chalo

Op 7-8-2010 14:20, Phil W Lee schreef:
David considered Fri, 6 Aug 2010 23:47:16
+0000 (UTC) the perfect time to write:

Phil W wrote:

:And I think you are being over-dismissive of the strength of the
:skull. It is a lot stronger than most people think.

Yeah, so? People die of head injuries that cause zero damage to the
skull every day. Skull isn't the problem. Brain is the problem.
Brains are a whole hell of a lot more fragile than most people want to
think.

And helmets do absolutely squat to reduce the two most common types of
fatal or disabling head injury - there is some evidence that they may
actually make the most common one (rotational) even more likely.


Do you say that you better not wear a helmet at any time?

Lou