Shimano Headset

On Wed, 17 May 2017 12:26:03 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 5/17/2017 6:05 AM, Duane wrote:
wrote:
On Tue, 16 May 2017 15:45:02 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 5/16/2017 1:06 PM, Duane wrote:
On 16/05/2017 12:54 PM, jbeattie wrote:
IMO, the fact that helmets
are proven to prevent certain injuries does not justify mandating
helmet use. It does justify the personal choice to wear a helmet,
particularly for those people who ride dirt trails, wet descents, in
snow, etc.


Or apparently those who ride with a group containing a member trying to
channel Chris Froome.

As I've written in articles for our club's newsletter, I think it's
important to stay well away from certain riders. I've seen bad riders
take out good riders.
I'm sure you've seen what you would have considered good riders, up
untill the incident, take out other good and not so good riders too.


Right. Only bad riders have accidents. Like Chris Froome. Ridiculous.

What I've written about is avoiding riders who don't hold a steady line;
or riders who pass close without warning, especially on one's blind
side; or riders who take unnecessary risks, like taking corners at
extreme speeds; or riders who flout traffic laws.

Having said that, we had one r.b.tech denizen who claimed one could not
be a good rider unless he crashed a lot. I think that's total nonsense.

I claim that almost every crash is an indication of a rider mistake. To
me, "There was gravel in that corner!" translates as "I didn't think to
look for gravel in that corner." To me, "That driver right hooked me"
translates as "I was going straight, but I put myself to the right of a
right turning car." To me, "She opened her car door right in front of
me!" translates as "I was dumb enough to ride in the door zone."

I can visualize a few motorist moves that a cyclist could not prevent.
I can visualize a few crash types caused by unpredictable component
failure. But I think almost every bike crash indicates a mistake at
some point by the bike rider.

But who am I to talk? I have so little experience with crashing. I've
had only two moving on-road falls since beginning adult riding in 1972.

Way back in the dim and distant past my high school offered an
optional course called a "Driving Class" which taught a technique that
they referred to as "defensive driving". This course was, of course,
oriented toward automobile driving but the techniques certainly
applied to bicyclists also. The basic theory was "drive so you don't
have an accident".

But I suppose that these ancient ideas are now as passee as the buggy
whip.


--
Cheers,

John B.

On Wed, 17 May 2017 22:10:26 +0200, Emanuel Berg
wrote:

Exactly how do you do that? 98% of bicycle
accidents are never reported since they have
no severe injuries.

If an accident isn't reported and involve no
severe injuries it might as well be cancelled
out of the investigation. For such accidents
the helmet shouldn't really play a role anyway.


I'm not so sure that will provide accurate information. If you count
only those who go to the hospital if your statistics provide data on
bicycle safety. One report I read estimated that there may be as many
as double as many bicycle accidents as reported by medical treatment
centers.

If you have 100 people that have an accident with their bike and 50 of
them go to the hospital and 25 have head injuries then do you report
that 50% of bicycle accidents are head injuries?

hospitals have enough to do without worrying
about keeping statistics for someone else.

Not true, at least in most countries there are rather extensive
reporting agencies that do keep track of hospital treatments.

Don't you have universities and Ph.D.
students who produce research on sport safety,
traffic safety, who test and compare safety
gear, not to mention university hospitals that
do research on all kind of trauma to the body
and the head?

That might be so. But the defining statistics are not based on collage
student reports.

But yes, no matter who deiced and/or financed
the undertaking it would have to be done with
the approval of the hospitals.

Not so, in the U.S., at least. One recent study I read was done by the
Harvard Medical School in conjunction with a major insurance company
and also referenced studies done by the Communicable Disease Center
(CDC) which is a government agency (I believe).
--
Cheers,

John B.

rOn Wed, 17 May 2017 22:17:41 +0200, Emanuel Berg
wrote:

Frank Krygowski wrote:

Wonderful. But it's never going to happen.
Why? Because contrary to the current myth,
there are simply not enough bicycle TBI cases
to make it worthwhile. Remember, in the U.S.
about 99.4% of TBI fatalities have nothing to
do with bicycling. About 99% of all hospital
treated TBIs have nothing to do
with bicycling.

0.6% of TBI fatalities is *plenty enough*.
Besides, how many TBIs are non-fatal?


In a presentation made to the U.S. Congress: "Each year an estimated
1.5 million Americans sustain a TBI. As a consequence of these
injuries: 50 thousand people die"'

There are research on stuff considerably more
goofy/arcane and detached than that.

And such a study wouldn't even be expensive or
difficult. Any small group of Ph.D. students in
their 20s and 30s should be able to carry it
out and compile the result.

In the U.S. "Public Law 104-166, the Traumatic Brain Injury Act of
1996, authorizes State surveillance systems to obtain information on
the number of people affected by traumatic brain injury (TBI), the
causes of these injuries, and their severity."
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Thu, 18 May 2017 01:11:16 +0200, Emanuel Berg
wrote:

Frank Krygowski wrote:

To gain knowledge and in the long run
decrease the number of such injuries and/or
reduce their severeness.

But why start with the 0.6%?

That is the part that will help us answer the
question if helmets are beneficial.

But of course all approaches that make sense
should be carried out simultaneously. Which is
how it works, as well.

It's _much_ more sensible to attack the
biggest sources of the problem.

People who are at some university institution
or some science facility carry on with their
own research. There are enough researchers and
Ph.D. students to allow for that.

In the U.S. there are about 50,000 to 60,000
TBI fatalities per year. (It varies, and counts
are not precise.) For one year I researched,
the count was 56,000. That year there were
there were about 750 bicyclist fatalities, of
which about 335 were due to TBI.

335/year is plenty enough to do research on.

I suggest that there are other things to be excited about.

Several studies have indicated that a large percentage of bicycle-auto
collisions were the fault of the bicyclist not obeying traffic
regulations, the year long study done by the California Highway Patrol
in Los Angeles county reported that more then half of the collisions,
where fault could be determined, were the fault of the cyclist..
Another study reported that 27% of the bicyclists killed had Blood
alcohol over .01 g/dl.

It might be suggested that obeying the law and not drinking are
significantly more important then simply wearing a helmet.
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Wed, 17 May 2017 21:50:42 -0400, Radey Shouman
wrote:

Emanuel Berg writes:

Radey Shouman wrote:

By requiring a head injury, you exclude the
cases where helmets actually prevented head
injury (or where helmets caused a head injury
that would otherwise not have happened).

By requiring an accident, you exclude the
cases where a helmeted rider took more risk
than she otherwise would have, and had
a crash she would have avoided without
a helmet.

By comparing bikers with and without helmets,
you risk comparing two populations that are
quite different, in ability, in age, in their
tendency to follow traffic rules or to seek
medical attention, in economic status, and
many other factors.

Still, it is bikes, helmets, accidents, and
head injuries, as opposed to pedestrians,
MCs, etc.

All of us are pedestrians at some point, so head injuries to pedestrians
should have some personal interest. Similarly most of us are drivers,
and almost all are passengers in motor vehicles at least some of the time.

And who never uses a ladder?

It's reasonable to ask whether wearing a bike helmet reduces ones
chances of suffering a brain injury, today, this year, or over a
lifetime. But it's also reasonable to ask, if you're a health
researcher, what the best way of minimizing brain injuries over a whole
population, many of whom may not ever ride a bicycle.

Frank seems to think it was purely mercenary, but I suspect that the
original question in the minds of those who started the bike helmet
thing was: In what activity with a non-trivial risk of brain injury can
we actually change human behavior, to use the protective equipment that
surely will fix the problem?

And they chose well. Biking in the USA, and in other countries where
helmets have become popular, is frequently done by children (think of
the children!), or for sport (with rules). For most it's an optional
recreational activity, for which a little inconvenience in the name of
safety hardly seems unreasonable.

And, in a country where bicycles are still used as transportation,
helmets seem to be very much a part of the lycra clad uniform while
folks pedaling to the market for their daily shopping don't use them
at all. I can't remember ever seeing someone riding a bicycle with a
basket on the front and wearing a helmet.

Kids? Again, I can't remember seeing a kid wearing a helmet and when
in Phuket I am the neighborhood bike fixer for the local kids.


The reason walking or driving helmets never got off the ground is not
that they make less sense than biking helmets, it's just that few
would accept them for ordinary daily activities. A few years ago there
was a push by doctors in the UK to ban pointy knives. They said that
chefs didn't actually need points, and could work without; points are
only good for stabbing others. That one didn't take hold either.

--
Cheers,

John B.

On 5/17/2017 8:30 PM, wrote:

snip

When I was growing up, just about every kid had a bicycle in Canada -
and it seemed there were a lot more in the USA. Every school had a
bank of bike racks, and large numbers of kids biked to school instead
of being ferried in by parents in mini-vans / suvs, cuvs etc. Every
small town had at least one bicycle shop,
In the summer, there were kids on bikes all over town, and we biked
out to our favorite fishing holes and swimming holes. The common bike
was a single speed coaster bike - with 3 speed Sturmey Archer equipped
bikes a close second, and "french gear" bikes - usually 5 or 10 speed,
but not uncommonly even 3 and 6 speed (3 on the back and 2 on the
crank)

That's how it was in the U.S. too. I can't recall ever being driven to
school, though perhaps it happened on occasion. The bike racks in
elementary school were packed.

It continued in college, where a bicycle was really necessary to go
between classes because it was a very large campus, though there are
compact campuses where bicycling is rare (Cal Berkeley) but large
campuses where bicycling is popular (UC Santa Cruz, UC Davis...).

Now where I live it would be extremely rare to see a kid bicycling alone
to elementary school, but I'm in a different city now, with very
different demographics. I still see a few kids riding to elementary
school, but not alone. I don't recall any bicycle racks at the school.
But for middle school and high school there are still a lot of cyclists.
Every Thursday morning I go to my Toastmaster's club which meets
directly across from the high school and which starts at the same time
as the high school. I end up riding with a bunch of high school kids.

But what's changed in the U.S., is a huge increase in adult cycling, for
several reasons. You have the day workers riding in from San Jose. You
have the grandparents from China, who don't drive but live with their
children, riding to the store or to the park. And you have the
professionals riding to Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Facebook, Yahoo,
Apple, HP, Kaiser, etc.. As the bicycling infrastructure has improved
you have more and more adult cyclists riding to work. In my city we're
in the middle of an ambitious bicycle plan
http://www.cupertino.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=3479 to
add Class 4 bicycle lanes. Sadly, it took the death of a student to spur
the city into action. Two of us on the City Council are pushing for a
more aggressive schedule for completion.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/08/bike-commuting-popularity-grows/8846311/.
Unfortunately, large percentage increases in the number of people
bicycling to work don't translate to a huge increase in much of modal
increase.

John B. writes:

I'm not so sure that will provide accurate
information. [...]
If you have 100 people that have an accident with
their bike and 50 of them go to the hospital and 25
have head injuries then do you report that 50% of
bicycle accidents are head injuries?

Only the injuries reported would be studied with an
emphasis on helmet use and its impact on the damage.

How would one provide more accurate information than
to study it first hand?

hospitals have enough to do without worrying about
keeping statistics for someone else.

Not true, at least in most countries there are rather
extensive reporting agencies that do keep track of
hospital treatments.

(I didn't write that.)

But yes, no matter who deviced and/or financed the
undertaking it would have to be done with the
approval of the hospitals.

Not so, in the U.S., at least. One recent study
I read was done by the Harvard Medical School in
conjunction with a major insurance company and also
referenced studies done by the Communicable Disease
Center (CDC) which is a government agency (I
believe).

OK, and where do they get the data, if the hospitals
and/or emergency services do not approve to
share them?

--
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

John B. writes:

It might be suggested that obeying the law and not
drinking are significantly more important then
simply wearing a helmet.

Now we are back to the 99.4% or "what's more
important" argument. Luckily, research doesn't work
that way.

Even if 0.6% is considered small, which in fact, it
isn't, people research all kinds of things.

Right now there is probably some dude doing research
on the birds in Scandinavia. Why? There are many more
birds in the rain forest! And why birds? There are
many more insects! And why animals? Isn't man
more important?

It doesn't work like that, thank God.

--
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

On Thu, 18 May 2017 07:30:21 +0200, Emanuel Berg
wrote:

John B. writes:

I'm not so sure that will provide accurate
information. [...]
If you have 100 people that have an accident with
their bike and 50 of them go to the hospital and 25
have head injuries then do you report that 50% of
bicycle accidents are head injuries?

Only the injuries reported would be studied with an
emphasis on helmet use and its impact on the damage.

That is my exactly my point. You and I crash and hit our head on the
ground. You elect to visit a clinic where they clean the wound and
apply a bandage and record the treatment. I elect to go home, my wife
cleans the wound and applies a bandage.

If only the reported injury is considered then apparently 100% of bike
crashes result in head injuries requiring medical attention.

The problem, of course, is that incomplete data results in erroneous
conclusions.




How would one provide more accurate information than
to study it first hand?

hospitals have enough to do without worrying about
keeping statistics for someone else.

Not true, at least in most countries there are rather
extensive reporting agencies that do keep track of
hospital treatments.

(I didn't write that.)

But yes, no matter who deviced and/or financed the
undertaking it would have to be done with the
approval of the hospitals.

Not so, in the U.S., at least. One recent study
I read was done by the Harvard Medical School in
conjunction with a major insurance company and also
referenced studies done by the Communicable Disease
Center (CDC) which is a government agency (I
believe).

OK, and where do they get the data, if the hospitals
and/or emergency services do not approve to
share them?

They are required to supply the data. By public law in the case of the
U.S. Communicable Disease Center.
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Wednesday, May 17, 2017 at 1:10:30 PM UTC-7, Emanuel Berg wrote:
Exactly how do you do that? 98% of bicycle
accidents are never reported since they have
no severe injuries.

If an accident isn't reported and involve no
severe injuries it might as well be cancelled
out of the investigation. For such accidents
the helmet shouldn't really play a role anyway.

hospitals have enough to do without worrying
about keeping statistics for someone else.

Don't you have universities and Ph.D.
students who produce research on sport safety,
traffic safety, who test and compare safety
gear, not to mention university hospitals that
do research on all kind of trauma to the body
and the head?

But yes, no matter who deiced and/or financed
the undertaking it would have to be done with
the approval of the hospitals.

So let me get this straight. If bicyclists and pedestrians had a certain comparable number of head injuries and the bicyclists go from 0% to 30% of helmet use and this percentage hasn't changed you're saying that suddenly bicyclists started having a large number of crashes in which they were saved from head injuries by wearing helmets.

Why the logic of that is inescapable to some sort of helmet nut.