Shimano Headset

On 5/18/2017 4:52 PM, wrote:
On Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 11:58:54 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/18/2017 12:15 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 8:46:49 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/18/2017 12:32 AM, sms wrote:
On 5/16/2017 12:24 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:

-snip interesting discursions-

But the MERE statement that "helmets save lives" is more dependable than St. Thomas.


St Thomas? Did he ride with a helmet?
A search for 'bicycle helmet Goa India' yields zip.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On Thu, 18 May 2017 15:06:58 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 5/18/2017 1:52 PM, sms wrote:
On 5/18/2017 7:20 AM, Radey Shouman wrote:

snip

I think that was my first point, which you snipped. Not that I agree
that helmet effectiveness is under-estimated.

No one reports head impact crashes where there is no injury. As Jay
pointed out, there are a lot of crashes where a helmet completely
prevents lacerations, and those don't result in an ER visit.

There are also no reports when a wooly hat prevents a laceration. Guy
Chapman's experience, when he was "saved" by his wooly hat, is in no
database.

The wooly hat manufacturers should learn from the helmet manufacturers.
Think of the marketing possibilities!

I've always wondered about the Danger, Danger, would one say clique? I
started riding a bicycle when I was about 12 years old and have
ridden, with a number of interludes, ever since, and the cries of
"D,D" seem to be a recent phenomena. When I was in collage in the
early '50's I rode a motorcycle and essentially nobody used a helmet
riding on the road.

I do remember one fellow who did wear a helmet and full racing
leathers every time he got on a motorcycle, but people generally
viewed him as being a bit (well) strange.

Then I was in the Military and Uncle sent me to Japan where bicycles
were a means of transportation and nobody wore a helmet. After we
married and the kids were old enough they had bicycles and I can't
remember anyone considering them dangerious.

After I retired I came back overseas and have worked/lived in S.E.A.
since, and still bicycles weren't considered as dangerious, although I
do remember one chap, in Central Java telling me that it was
dangerious to carry two 100 Kg. sacks of rice on a bicycle - the tires
might explode.

But, since I discovered this site there has been an almost constant
barrage of Danger, Danger, Gota wear a helmet, Gotta wear a helmet!

So, essentially, bicycles seem to have been considered a rather benign
object until relatively recently. One can only speculate how the
bicycle suddenly became so dangerious.

--
Cheers,

John B.

On Thu, 18 May 2017 10:23:42 -0400, Radey Shouman
wrote:

John B. writes:

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.

We have electronic devices that do that for us today. Soon we won't
have to do a thing.

Yup. Singapore has been in for forefront of implementing a fully
electronic transportation system with driverless buses. Unfortunately,
I read in the news the other day, their plans have had a bit of a
problem as one of their driverless buses drove into an truck. The news
blurb I read said, "further study appears necessary".

I have no real evidence, but believe that early experience riding in the
streets tends to make one a better driver later on, being a
keener observer of driver behavior.

Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with
what happens to him. ~Aldous Leonard Huxley, Texts and Pretexts, 1932
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Thu, 18 May 2017 10:50:56 -0500, AMuzi wrote:

On 5/18/2017 10:37 AM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/17/2017 11:30 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 17 May 2017 22:40:05 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 5/17/2017 9:50 PM, 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?

That might be a possible explanation if the promotions
weren't kick
started almost entirely by Bell Inc.

The very first article I read touting bike helmets was
talking about
Bell Biker helmets, when they first arrived on the
market. (There was
one tiny manufacturer, Skid-Lid, before Bell. I don't
recall anything
but its own ads promoting it.)

Bell soon became a sponsor of Safe Kids Inc. Safe Kids
began lobbying
for mandatory helmets, and we were off to the races, as
they say.

Also, note that the entire industry started in the U.S.,
a country where
bicycling has always been comparatively rare, thus easy
to portray as
dangerous. If public health people were really at the
root of the
promotion, why would it not have happened in those
European countries
where there is lots of cycling, so lots more (purported)
benefit?
Cycling has always been camparatively rare in the USA????

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)

I think you missed the word "comparatively." Bike use in
the U.S. has always been much smaller than in Europe and Asia.

And it's interesting that American kids once rode bikes very
much more than they do now. My friends and I certainly rode
a lot when I was a kid; but the only common warning then was
from a mom saying "Watch out for cars."

Today, warnings come from well-funded institutions pushing
publications saying "You can fall off your bike and die even
in your own driveway! You MUST wear a helmet every time you
ride a bike!"

Do you think there may be a connection between the "Danger!
Danger!" warnings and the drop in kids' bicycling? Just maybe?



True but cultural changes are even larger than that.
Military theorists have been writing about policy effects of
an only-child population for years and then there's modern
media which sensationalize crimes against children
(horrible, every one) despite USA children being safer in
every measurable respect than any population ever before in
history. How safe? Mothers can obsess over supposed vaccine
side effects and trace materials in food because they don't
have enough real dangers to worry over.

It used to be mothers told the kids, "Don't try flying off the garage
roof or I'll tell your father!" Now, from what I read, it is "don't
eat cheerios, they have sugar in them" :-)
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Thu, 18 May 2017 10:06:25 -0700 (PDT), Sir Ridesalot
wrote:

Now that this Shimano Headset thread has degenerated into yet another helmet war I wonder how many pages it'll run to. Any guesses? It[s at 10 pages so far counting the headset pages. 15 pages before it ends?

Cheers

It's the biggest show in town, in T.V. viewing terms 55% are viewing
our program :-).
--
Cheers,

John B.

On 5/18/2017 4:24 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 11:58:54 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/18/2017 12:15 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 8:46:49 AM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/18/2017 12:32 AM, sms wrote:
On 5/16/2017 12:24 PM, Radey Shouman wrote:

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.

And you have all the crashes that are not reported at all because the
helmet prevented a trip to the emergency room. Helmet effectiveness is
vastly under-estimated because there's no way to determine how many
people don't seek treatment because they have no injury because of the
helmet.

Bull****.

If there were vast numbers of concussions prevented by helmet use, the
number of bike-related concussions in the U.S. would not have risen at
the same time helmets surged in popularity.

From the article "Senseless" in the June 2013 issue of _Bicycling_
magazine: "Here’s the trouble. Stat #3: As more people
buckled on helmets, brain injuries also increased.
Between 1997 and 2011 the number of bike-related
concussions suffered annually by American riders
increased by 67 percent, from 9,327 to 15,546, according to the National
Electronic Injury Surveillance
System, a yearly sampling of hospital emergency
rooms conducted by the U.S. Consumer Product
Safety Commission (CPSC)"

Again, the needle is not even moving in the right direction.

Likewise, if there were lots of lives saved by helmets, bike fatalities
since (say) the mid-1980s should have dropped by a greater percentage
than pedestrian fatalities. But they did not, as shown by
http://vehicularcyclist.com/fatals.html
and http://vehicularcyclist.com/kunich.html

Ordinary helmets don't prevent minor TBIs, although they can prevent skull fracture and serious scalp injury. I've seen some scalp injuries that would make your skin crawl.

Citing to Kunich? Gawd. Go to MedLine: Clinical Surgery; Bicycle helmets work when it matters the most; (2017) 213 AMJLSU 2 413-417:

Results

A total of 6,267 patients were included. About 25.1% (n = 1,573) of bicycle riders were helmeted. Overall, 52.4% (n = 3,284) of the patients had severe TBI, and the mortality rate was 2.8% (n = 176). Helmeted bicycle riders had 51% reduced odds of severe TBI (odds ratio [OR] .49, 95% confidence interval [CI] .43 to .55, P .001) and 44% reduced odds of mortality (OR .56, 95% CI .34 to .78, P = .010). Helmet use also reduced the odds of facial fractures by 31% (OR .69, 95% CI .58 to .81, P .001).

Conclusion

Bicycle helmet use provides protection against severe TBI, reduces facial fractures, and saves lives even after sustaining an intracranial hemorrhage.

• The aim of this study was to assess the association of helmets with severity of traumatic brain injury and facial fractures after bicycle-related accidents.
• Results of our study strongly support our hypothesis that helmet use in bicycle riders with intracranial bleed is independently associated with reduction in overall facial fractures and severity of TBI.
• Injury prevention programs should advocate the use of helmets in bicycle riders especially in the teenage group where least compliance with bicycle helmet use was observed.


Who knows if it's accurate, but I would tend to trust a group of University of Arizona researchers and trauma doctors more than some dopey bloggers.

The "dopey bloggers" were simply posting government statistics, Jay.
Despite lots of studies replicating the 1989 helmet promotion paper by
Thompson & Rivara and getting vaguely similar results, the TBI cases
have _risen_ with massive helmet use; and the fatalities have not fallen
as fast as pedestrian fatalities. You may not like the guy who posted
the numbers, but those ARE the numbers!


The study you linked is very typical, and very similar to the Thompson &
Rivara study that served as its prototype. The T&R "85%"study has
gotten the most discussion in efforts to explain why its predictions
simply don't come true in the real world (and why its results are
officially disowned by the federal government); but the criticisms of
T&R apply to almost all studies on the same model. Here are some of them.

First, if you're studying helmeted vs. non-helmeted cyclists presenting
to ER, are you really studying similar groups? Fatalities are mentioned
above; but as John has noted several times, roughly a quarter of bike
fatalities involve blood alcohol above the legal limit. AFAIK only one
helmet study of this type included alcohol as a confounding factor, and
it found that alcohol use correlated with brain injury; helmet use did
not significantly correlate. More briefly, drunks don't usually wear
helmets, but they affect studies such as the one above.

In the T&R study, other reviewers showed that helmeted kids were seven
times as likely to be presented to ER compared to non-helmeted kids.
Why? In that case, it appeared that kids (and today, adults) in helmets
had significantly better medical insurance, and would appear at ER "just
in case." Non-helmeted kids that presented were in much more serious
crashes overall, since the uninsured probably saved money by treating
minor injuries at home. More briefly, insurance coverage is a
confounding factor that's normally ignored. Did the study above account
for it?

Other confounding factors are likely, such as crash details (wrong way
into an oncoming car, or slip on gravel?), economic status (which goes
beyond insurance), availability of transportation (poor people are less
likely to wear helmets and less likely to have an easy way to get to ER)
and more.

If these confounding factors could all be accounted for - something I
doubt is possible - I suspect these "case control" studies would much
more closely match the observed results on a national scale, which is
that helmets make no great difference overall.

Former pro rider Chris Boardman said "Helmets not even in top 10 of
things that keep cycling safe." They've been heavily promoted for over
25 years and the needle is still moving in the wrong direction, even for
the minuscule portion of serious TBI that happens to bicyclists. Why
are we still giving them any attention?

Because they prevent certain injuries. Skip the case studies and go to FEA:

Bicycle helmets are highly effective at preventing head injury during head impact: Head-form accelerations and injury criteria for helmeted and unhelmeted impacts; (2014) 70 ESACAP C 1-7

The protective effect of a helmet in three bicycle accidents—A finite element study; (2016) 91 ESACAP 135-143

There are all sorts of these studies. Not surprisingly, they prove that if you hit your head on a hard object, you're better off if you're wearing a helmet. That's kind of why we have helmets, no?

Not in the case of bike helmets. Because if it were really that simple,
we would have helmets for walking, for jogging, for ladder climbing, for
stair descending, for riding in cars, and for all the other normal
activities that produce more TBI cases than riding bikes.

We have bike helmets for a different reason: Bell Sports, then other
companies, saw that it was possible to sell them by portraying bicycling
as a big source of serious brain injury.

And it worked because from their point of view, bicycling hit a sweet
spot: Unpopular enough to be considered "not a normal activity" and
thereby having few defenders; but popular enough to form a profitable
market.


--
- Frank Krygowski

On Thu, 18 May 2017 11:37:12 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 5/17/2017 11:30 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 17 May 2017 22:40:05 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 5/17/2017 9:50 PM, 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?

That might be a possible explanation if the promotions weren't kick
started almost entirely by Bell Inc.

The very first article I read touting bike helmets was talking about
Bell Biker helmets, when they first arrived on the market. (There was
one tiny manufacturer, Skid-Lid, before Bell. I don't recall anything
but its own ads promoting it.)

Bell soon became a sponsor of Safe Kids Inc. Safe Kids began lobbying
for mandatory helmets, and we were off to the races, as they say.

Also, note that the entire industry started in the U.S., a country where
bicycling has always been comparatively rare, thus easy to portray as
dangerous. If public health people were really at the root of the
promotion, why would it not have happened in those European countries
where there is lots of cycling, so lots more (purported) benefit?
Cycling has always been camparatively rare in the USA????

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)

I think you missed the word "comparatively." Bike use in the U.S. has
always been much smaller than in Europe and Asia.

And it's interesting that American kids once rode bikes very much more
than they do now. My friends and I certainly rode a lot when I was a
kid; but the only common warning then was from a mom saying "Watch out
for cars."

Today, warnings come from well-funded institutions pushing publications
saying "You can fall off your bike and die even in your own driveway!
You MUST wear a helmet every time you ride a bike!"

Do you think there may be a connection between the "Danger! Danger!"
warnings and the drop in kids' bicycling? Just maybe?
The drop in cycling happened prior to the helmet wars. Parents fear
of letting their kids play outside started it. Parents afraid to let
their kids walk or bike 2 or 3 blocks to school, and bussing kids to
school reduced kids cycling, long before helmets became mandatory or
even recommended in most areas.

I live less than a block from a school, and VERY few kids walk to
school, there are cars everywhere - and a lot of them from within the
"village" - a6 or 8 block radius from the school. Those that do walk
are walking with parents - and this is in a VERY safe part of a very
safe city.

On Thu, 18 May 2017 11:49:16 -0400, Radey Shouman
wrote:

Frank Krygowski writes:

On 5/18/2017 9:43 AM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:

On 5/17/2017 9:50 PM, 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?

That might be a possible explanation if the promotions weren't kick
started almost entirely by Bell Inc.

The very first article I read touting bike helmets was talking about
Bell Biker helmets, when they first arrived on the market. (There was
one tiny manufacturer, Skid-Lid, before Bell. I don't recall anything
but its own ads promoting it.)

Bell soon became a sponsor of Safe Kids Inc. Safe Kids began lobbying
for mandatory helmets, and we were off to the races, as they say.

Also, note that the entire industry started in the U.S., a country
where bicycling has always been comparatively rare, thus easy to
portray as dangerous. If public health people were really at the root
of the promotion, why would it not have happened in those European
countries where there is lots of cycling, so lots more (purported)
benefit?

Because such a promotion would have succeeded just like driving helmets
would in the US. Extra hassle for activities seen as ordinary and
obligatory is hard to sell.

Precisely. And the word "sell" is very appropriate.

Ideas are sold, not just products. Like, say, the idea that
refrigerator doors should be removed before putting them on the curb.
You got a problem with that???
A kid creawls into s frig to hide as part of a game, and the door ,
with a magnetic seal ispretty easy to open. No problem, right? Untill
the frig gets knocked over or the door gets blocked. Too many kids
died in refrigerators and fweezers beforwe the law was changed
requiring the doors to be removed. It's only a couple bolts - not a
problem at all for ANYONE who can move a fridge to remove.

On Thu, 18 May 2017 15:03:39 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 5/18/2017 1:34 PM, sms wrote:
On 5/18/2017 9:15 AM, jbeattie wrote:

snip

Ordinary helmets don't prevent minor TBIs, although they can prevent
skull fracture and serious scalp injury. I've seen some scalp injuries
that would make your skin crawl.

True. It's popular for AHZs to try to always move the conversation to
TBIs, because it suits their agenda, but the reality is that there are
other types of head injuries as well, and it is necessary for them to
ignore those other types.

Yes, "head injury" is not the same as Traumatic Brain Injury, despite
decades of helmet pushers deliberately conflating the two.

But non-TBI head injuries are things like scrapes, cuts, scratches,
bruises. A scrape on the head is precisely as dangerous as a scrape on
the knee (the most common injury in cycling). And it can be prevented
with many kinds of hats. Guy Chapman posted many times here about his
being "saved" by wearing a wooly cap.

Don't make mountains out of molehills in your effort to get everyone to
wear styrofoam.
Where do you put skull fractures without brain injury? They happen.

On Thu, 18 May 2017 23:45:29 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 18 May 2017 11:49:16 -0400, Radey Shouman
wrote:

Frank Krygowski writes:

On 5/18/2017 9:43 AM, Radey Shouman wrote:
Frank Krygowski writes:

On 5/17/2017 9:50 PM, 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?

That might be a possible explanation if the promotions weren't kick
started almost entirely by Bell Inc.

The very first article I read touting bike helmets was talking about
Bell Biker helmets, when they first arrived on the market. (There was
one tiny manufacturer, Skid-Lid, before Bell. I don't recall anything
but its own ads promoting it.)

Bell soon became a sponsor of Safe Kids Inc. Safe Kids began lobbying
for mandatory helmets, and we were off to the races, as they say.

Also, note that the entire industry started in the U.S., a country
where bicycling has always been comparatively rare, thus easy to
portray as dangerous. If public health people were really at the root
of the promotion, why would it not have happened in those European
countries where there is lots of cycling, so lots more (purported)
benefit?

Because such a promotion would have succeeded just like driving helmets
would in the US. Extra hassle for activities seen as ordinary and
obligatory is hard to sell.

Precisely. And the word "sell" is very appropriate.

Ideas are sold, not just products. Like, say, the idea that
refrigerator doors should be removed before putting them on the curb.
You got a problem with that???
A kid creawls into s frig to hide as part of a game, and the door ,
with a magnetic seal ispretty easy to open. No problem, right? Untill
the frig gets knocked over or the door gets blocked. Too many kids
died in refrigerators and fweezers beforwe the law was changed
requiring the doors to be removed. It's only a couple bolts - not a
problem at all for ANYONE who can move a fridge to remove.

Out of curiosity how common was this problem? Did hordes of kids get
trapped in fridges? Or is this another of these laws that are passed
primarily to demonstrate that "Your government really does care about
you?"

I ask as I did a quick search and could find no references to any data
whatsoever.
--
Cheers,

John B.