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#81
November 2nd 05, 05:42 PM
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advisor wanted
On Tue, 01 Nov 2005 23:34:08 -0800, wrote:
My last visit to an ER was for a broken collar bone in 1994 and the bill was for some $1500. How would a cycle helmet protect the collar bone? 
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#82
November 2nd 05, 07:58 PM
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advisor wanted
On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 15:12:53 +0000, Tony Raven
wrote: wrote: - that helmet promotion and compulsion reduce cycling, which is a healthy activity that on average prolongs life There is no other intervening variable causing that reduction? I doubt the direct link. I've no doubt you doubt it but then you haven't bothered to do any research on the subject. In all countries/states where helmet laws have been introduced, cycling has decreased and in those where they have been introduced but not enforced, helmet wearing peaked and then declined again while cyclist numbers dipped and then recovered. So the direct link is pretty conclusive. Just for information here are some of the figures on cycling decline in the year following the introduction of mandatory helmet laws: Helmet laws introduced = reduced riding is your, and the research point. My question stands: did they survey all those riders who reduced their riding and ask them "why?" If they did not, there may be an intervening variable. Unless that possibility can be ruled out, it exists. Appearances can be deceiving. The link can only be established directly by surveying those who reduced or quit riding and asking them why. Otherwise, there is a strong possibility that helmets use reduces riding, bt it is not definitive. BTW, what method was used to determine the riding levels? State Falls in cycle use Australian Capital Territory 33% to 50% New South Wales 44% to 90% for children Northern Territory 50% commuters, 17% to 39% schoolchildren Queensland 22% to 30% children South Australia 38% schoolchildren Victoria 36% to 46% children Western Australia 26% to 38% overall, more than 50% children British Columbia 28% Nova Scotia 40% to 60%.
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#83
November 2nd 05, 08:00 PM
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advisor wanted
On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:42:41 +0000, Bertie Wiggins
cycling_remove_bertie@yahoo_dot_co_dot_uk wrote: On Tue, 01 Nov 2005 23:34:08 -0800, wrote: My last visit to an ER was for a broken collar bone in 1994 and the bill was for some $1500. How would a cycle helmet protect the collar bone? Where did I say it did? Quit reading between the lines and read the lines. I was using it as an example of what an ER visit did cost me and my insurance company. jim
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#84
November 2nd 05, 08:05 PM
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advisor wanted
On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:42:41 +0000, Bertie Wiggins
cycling_remove_bertie@yahoo_dot_co_dot_uk said in : My last visit to an ER was for a broken collar bone in 1994 and the bill was for some $1500. How would a cycle helmet protect the collar bone? Tut tut! Surely you have read the 1989 Seattle study? If they can prevent broken legs and torso injuries they can surely prevent broken collar bones! Oh ye of little faith... Guy -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk "To every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken
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#85
November 2nd 05, 08:06 PM
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advisor wanted
On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 07:45:39 +0000, Tony Raven
wrote: wrote: The question you have avoided is: which is friendliest to cyclists - the US or Europe? I've already said, both the same and that from plenty of experience of both. Which would you say? Ah I forgot you have no experience of Europe so you don't know You call them even. That is now anecdotal. How does the shoe fit that you take me to task for? You talk physics, I talk about the possibility that helmets may reduce the severity of a head impact and keep someone from going to the ER. We've had a couple of people say that is the case anecdoatally. I guess that is irrelevant to you. Anecdote is anecdote. It tells you nothing about what is likely to happen. I know anecdotes of people who jumped out of planes at altitude without a parachute and walked away uninjured. Doesn't tell you anything about the advisability of jumping out of a plane without a parachute Excuse me? Anecdotal tells you that somehting outside the expected CAN happen. If things happened 100% the way non-helmet advocates say, there would be NO anecdotal evicdence to the contrary such as mine and another posted.. The fact is I destroyed a helmet and did not end up in the hospital for a head injury. That rock hitting my head would have been a different matter. That is a fact regardless of whether or not you like it. All stats aside. As useful as the anecdote about jumping without a parachute. See above. And how many times in Europe have you been deliberately and calculatedly squeezed to the side of a road by a driver? How many times in Europe have you had some driver you have never encountered yell out that they hope someone runs over you? How many times in Europe have you been run up behind and deliberately bumpered by a car and then the driver telling you to get off the road and on the sidewalk? I'm not addressing an accident here, but cold calculated intimidation of cyclists by motorists. Oh yes, and over what time span did all this happen? You clearly have never ridden in Europe or you would know it is about as common as in the USA. A Google of uk.rec.cycling will give you plenty of such stories. I asked YOU for specific information. Why are you dodging that? How many times . . . I'll not repeat them all again, they are immediately above. jim
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#86
November 2nd 05, 08:08 PM
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advisor wanted
On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 12:00:23 -0800, said in
: Quit reading between the lines and read the lines. I was using it as an example of what an ER visit did cost me and my insurance company. And given that there is no evidence of helmet use reducing ER visits in any real population, that is relevant how, precisely? Guy -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk "To every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken
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#87
November 2nd 05, 08:10 PM
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advisor wanted
On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 11:58:58 -0800, said in
: My question stands: did they survey all those riders who reduced their riding and ask them "why?" If they did not, there may be an intervening variable. Unless that possibility can be ruled out, it exists. They did survey them, and the largest single reason cited was the helmet law. This was particularly the case among teenaged girls (one district found that around 90% of those teenaged girls who had previously cycled, stopped doing so on passage of the law). Guy -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk "To every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken
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#89
November 2nd 05, 08:33 PM
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advisor wanted
On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 09:17:31 +0000, Peter Clinch
wrote: wrote: I suggest you read back up the thread before your mouth writes another check your ass cannot cash. I have always maintained that non-serious injuries are the ones that do not take you to the ER. But since non-serious injuries aren't serious, why does this affect your overall safety on a bike? Are you being deliberately obtuse? Or have you memeory problems from hitting your head too frequently? Someone was having rading problems and this was posted to clarify that. Did that go right past you? The question you have avoided is: which is friendliest to cyclists - the US or Europe? What measure do you want to use? Have *you* answered it objectively? That will be "no", then... Once again you ignore the fact that the burden of proof applies to you just as much as to people who disagree with you. I am simply asking a very direct question that you are also invited to answer: Which is friendliest to cyclists - the US or Europe? As close as I came to Europe was Greece. Does that count? If so, Europe would be my vote. Now, remove your head from that provebial dark place where your ASSumption about where I have ridden has placed it. You talk physics, I talk about the possibility that helmets may reduce the severity of a head impact and keep someone from going to the ER. Yet you can't come up with any figures to show this is the case. If they had gone to ER that would have been a serious injury and the serious injury rate would be higher as a result if your supposition was correct. The figures don't back you up. Nice turnaround. I have also maintained that these figures cannot be found ecause they are not collected. The body of the anecdotal evidence that helmets work would probably be in this area - as would the incident that happened to me. YOU on the other hand have only ventured into the seious injury category and try to use that information as being exlusive. It is not. We've had a couple of people say that is the case anecdoatally. I guess that is irrelevant to you. It is statistically irrelevant, yes, because the figures take *all* the anecdotes into account, and all those anecdotes of keeping people out of ER should be bringing the serious injury rates down with increasing helmet use. But they aren't. It s relevant because it shows that things do happpen outside the expected norms. The reports you cite do not include them because they are not collected. Or can you prove they were collected? The fact is I destroyed a helmet and did not end up in the hospital for a head injury. That rock hitting my head would have been a different matter. That is a fact regardless of whether or not you like it. All stats aside. But you may only have hit the rock in the first place as a result of wearing the helmet, directly from your head being bigger and heavier with a helmet on or indirectly through behaviour modified by risk homeostasis. And if it really did save you a trip to the ER and was entirely beneficial in that case then it doesn't affect any future incident when a helmet could make you worse off. Writing science fiction I see. Bad attempt, pete. Take SciFi Wriitng 101 again. While you would like to attribute it to some farfetched reason, they do not apply. I am a conservative rider. Had the helmet made a difference in my riding (assume going faster) I probably would have missed the rock despte the extra 12 onces on my 220+ pound body at that time. You missed the lead-in question didn't you? My mid definitely knows that a helmet kept me out of an ER. As above, you don't, and even if you did it doesn't have any effect on future incidents where a helmet could hinder things. The accident happened as described. Accept it or not, your choice. MY experience proves helmets work in the situation described. But you can't guarantee any future accident will be exactly that situation, so the knowledge is of no use. No, I cannot not and have never said that I could. Can you guarantee that someone else's accident will end up 100% the way you think it will vis-a-vis a helmet? The study nothwithstanding, someone can always be that 1 in x exception to the study. You cannot say that helmets are useless unless you can prove that 100% because yours has been and is a categorical statement, "helmets do not work." Wrong. They do. And how many times in Europe have you been deliberately and calculatedly squeezed to the side of a road by a driver? More than once. times in Europe have you had some driver you have never encountered yell out that they hope someone runs over you? More than once. How many times in Europe have you been run up behind and deliberately bumpered by a car and then the driver telling you to get off the road and on the sidewalk? Hasn't happened to me, but has happened to others reporting on uk.rec.cycling I'm not addressing an accident here, but cold calculated intimidation of cyclists by motorists. More than once. Oh yes, and over what time span did all this happen? It's been happening to people on and off for years in the UK, and continues to happen. Recent report in the UK press noted a cyclist was blinded by an egg thrown from a car. This is about YOU (whoever answers) not some incident in the papers. How many times and over what period of time in Europe? For reference, all these happened to me in a matter of two months in San Diego. I never, NEVER, had any such thing or close to it while riding in Greece. None of this is an objective measure of hostility, but may filter through to you that the UK isn't the jolly friendly cycling paradise you seem to imagine. And even in much more cycle friendly places serious cyclist injuries tend to be from impacts with motor vehicles and once you're in those accidents then there is no proof that a helmet makes any tangible difference to you coming out the other side intact. I would not consider the role of paradise for the jolly old UK, because I am not so supid as to believe that the UK constitutes the entirely of Europe. Nr would I consider Europe as being a paradise. Most of my friends that go to Europe to ride DO consider it as being much more cycling friendly than the roadways here in SoCal. jim
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#90
November 2nd 05, 08:37 PM
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advisor wanted
On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 07:37:46 +0000, Tony Raven
wrote: wrote: On Tue, 1 Nov 2005 10:04:04 -0000, "Dave Larrington" wrote: wrote: This comment fails to address the relative safety of cyclists because of attitudes and acceptance of cycling, doesn't it? Without that comparative information, the stats are interesting, but may not be telling you what YOU think they are. I'm betting you know people who have cycled in Europe who would not venture on the road in the US because of the attitude of US drivers. Speaking as a "European" who has recently covered almost six thousand miles on the roads of the US, I think I can safely state that driving standards, and attitudes towards other road users both powered and unpowered, differ as widely from state to state in the US as they do between countries in Europe. Personally I find it to be a toss-up between Belgium and California as to which is the most terrifying place to use the roads. Well, that may be, but overall? Europe or the US as cycling friendliest? Yep, I've cycled in Mexico on the roads and never had a driver deliberately try to squeeze me to the side of the road. I have that happen about a half dozen times in San Diego. Our roads are both smoother and wider than those I covered in Mexico. I would be convinced that Mexico is more cycxlist friendly, alathough trying to go through the main business roads in Tijuana is much more hazardous. So you haven't cycled in Europe then and you are imagining what it is like? Actually the worst of the countries we've discussed to cycle in is New Zealand IMO and there we have the data that helmets increased head injury rates. Greece is as close as I've been. My comments about that are elsewhere. My question about Eurpoe is based on my riding friends who do go to Europe and cycle while there. They consider Europe as being more cycling friendly. They ride the same roads I do here in SoCal. jim
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