Mostly OT/Head Injury and Death

On Mar 20, 8:07*pm, Tim McNamara wrote:
" wrote:

When I whacked the side of my head in a CX race I also got a bunch of
gravel cuts (actually it was the second time I'd fallen on this short
loose descent). We had a friend who was an EMT at the race and she
cleaned up my cuts while making a lot of small talk with me, which
later I realized was also a subtle way of doing a mental/head-injury
evaluation.

Good call, that was probably exactly what he was doing. *"Who's the
President" is really not that great a question for assessing these
things. *Also, since problems can develop over time, he was probably
re-checking periodically.

She. I don't remember if she actually re-evaluated me,
but since we were more or less in the same place over
the next couple of hours and I was capable of holding
a conversation with the rest of the hangers-on at the
scorers' tent, effectively yes.



I had a bad headache and sat around at the scorer's tent with my
friends who were running the race, occasionally helping a little,
until all the races were done and we cleaned up, by which time I was
just kinda sore and fine to drive home. *In retrospect it seems like
an obvious concussion, but the word or thought never crossed my mind
at the time. *This seems like a common reaction, much like the
impulse to get back on your bike w/o realizing that you're dripping
blood.

That's a common reaction to an accident, especially in a race. *It's
probably (1) a survival instinct and (2) the competitive spirit.

Adrenaline does a lot of things. We have a
theory on rbr about this. Even if you aren't
injured, you tend to jump back in the race without
fully checking the situation. I once fell in a CX
race and twisted my bars. I straightened them and
continued. Unfortunately, I was using a threaded
stem drilled as the cable stop for a front canti
brake, and it sank slightly in the process, so
later in the lap I got to a tricky descent and
discovered I had no front brakes.

Once when the same gang was running a multi-lap
MTB race, we had a guy go by the scorer's table with
blood dripping from his forehead. My pal Rod had to
run up the hill after him to force him to stop. He
really wanted to continue and Rod had to be very
firm to persuade him to stop and get bandaged up.
This guy was ~50 and not a reckless youngster.

Amusingly, another time we kept seeing this woman
go by the start/finish with blood seemingly dripping
down her inside leg. We were a little freaked out,
but she didn't notice. It turned out to be a cherry
flavored energy gel that she had tucked under her
shorts hem and had burst somehow.

FWIW:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concussion

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/concussion/DS00320

Yeah, I looked this stuff up afterwards, and have
now internalized the parts about evaluation and
not losing consciousness, but you generally don't
think of these things after you yourself get whacked.
Avoiding concussions is a good thing.

Ben

On Mar 20, 9:45*pm, "
wrote:
On Mar 20, 8:07*pm, Tim McNamara wrote:

" wrote:

When I whacked the side of my head in a CX race I also got a bunch of
gravel cuts (actually it was the second time I'd fallen on this short
loose descent). We had a friend who was an EMT at the race and she
cleaned up my cuts while making a lot of small talk with me, which
later I realized was also a subtle way of doing a mental/head-injury
evaluation.

Good call, that was probably exactly what he was doing. *"Who's the
President" is really not that great a question for assessing these
things. *Also, since problems can develop over time, he was probably
re-checking periodically.

She. *I don't remember if she actually re-evaluated me,
but since we were more or less in the same place over
the next couple of hours and I was capable of holding
a conversation with the rest of the hangers-on at the
scorers' tent, effectively yes.

I was once in that situation and was asked what day it was, I
answered "They tell me it's Thursday". Apparently, I'd already been
asked that question and been corrected.

Bret

On Mar 20, 1:57*pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Mar 20, 3:27*pm, Dan O wrote:





On Mar 20, 9:06*am, Frank Krygowski wrote:

In another article,http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29772691/*:

"The National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) of the United States
estimated 43 percent of skiers and snowboarders wore helmets in the
2007-08 season, against 25 percent five years earlier.
...

"The increase in the use of helmets has not reduced the overall number
of skiing fatalities," the NSAA said in a statement. "More than half
of the people involved in fatal accidents last season were wearing
helmets."

So more than half the fatalities were in helmets. *But fewer than half
wear them. *IOW, helmet use is _positively_ correlated with
fatality.

Risk compensation, anyone?

People who intend to ski as fast as they possibly can are the ones
more likely to wear a helmet.

Would they ski quite as fast, or in quite as risky a manner, if they
did not wear a helmet?

Judging by those figures above, probably not.

Yes, absolutely. I see skiers and snow boarders with no helmets doing
incredibly stupid things all the time. In fact, the skiers with
helmets tend to be far more color-in-the-lines than those who do not
wear helmets. Helmet wearers are considered dorks, and apart from the
racers, they generally are. As for the racers, they are the least of
my problems since they generally know what they are doing. It's the
idiot boarders (and sometimes skiers) hucking out of the trees and
then flopping down in front of me. Gawdamighty! Don't have a f*****
picnic in the middle of the trail. -- Jay Beattie.

X-No-Archive = Yes


On Mar 19, 3:24 pm, "
wrote:
On Mar 19, 10:16 am, Jay Beattie wrote:



On Mar 19, 9:44 am, pm wrote:

On Mar 19, 7:32 am, Jay Beattie wrote:

On Mar 19, 7:04 am, Tom Sherman
wrote:

aka Russell Seaton wrote:

On Mar 18, 7:57 pm, Jay Beattie wrote:
Gawdamighty -- you never know what will kill you. This sounds like a
subdural hematoma from a very mild head injury on the bunny slopes.
Note to self: see doctor after whacking head if headache persists.

Based on the story she did see a doctor in Montreal and New York. So
she did not neglect medical treatment, like most bicyclists would.
[...]

I will be the troll and ask - was she wearing a helmet?

No, but I'll even agree with Frank on this one that it probably would
not have made a difference. This sounds like the typical contre-coup
kind of injury where the brain sloshing against the cranium causes the
injury rather than the cranium getting cracked open on a hard
surface.

As far as I understand the various standards, this kind of injury from
over-acceleration is what foam helmets are intended to mitigate. S'why
they are tested by putting an accelerometer in a headform, as opposed
to a kind of test that would be appropriate for determining whether
the skull would crack.

I am not going to argue against helmets (I use one biking and skiinig)
-- and the autopsy is not in yet, so we don't know the exact cause of
death -- but hitting your head on a bunny slope is not the kind of
impact that will substantially deform a foam shell liner. I think
French bunny slope snow compresses easier than a helmet liner. The
impact is more like a whiplash, where your head snaps back, and your
brain sloshes around and whacks the cranium -- and the injury results
from the brain whipping around and not the cranium hitting a hard
surface.

Now if she went down hard on ice, that is like hitting your head on
cement, and I think a helmet would have been of some help, but then
again, I have done that with a helmet and practically knocked myself
out. I had an immediate headache, but I kept close track of my
symptoms, which did not worsen. I recall thinking that I fared no
better than when I did the same thing without a helmet, except that my
ears were warm and cozy.

I think the story is really more a cautionary tale about subdural
hematomas rather than helmets.

I'm not going to discuss helmets because it's one's
own decision on the balance between inconvenience
and safety and we don't really know what happened,
other than that it was actually Canadian bunny slope
snow, not French. One cautionary lesson is to treat
head injuries seriously - where I strongly agree with Jay
that "Note to self: see doctor after whacking head if
headache persists."

Richardson did get medical attention - I think the
ski patrol insisted on stretchering her, and then
she saw a doctor (I also think any time you get
stretchered the local first aid will insist on examining
you). There may have been nothing more that
could have been done. However, there are also
cases where someone whacks head, insists
they feel okay or it's just a headache, and then
passes out later. This can be really bad, so if
you whack your head, get evaluated and then
stay around people who are watching you in case
you start to slip out of it.

I have had someone do this for me after whacking
my head in a CX race. I also had a friend who
whacked her head on the bunny snowboard slope,
got the full expensive stretcher and ambulance ride
with restraints, and was basically okay ... but also
wound up having dizzy spells for a month.
I thought the ambulance ride might have been
overkill, but after this story, not so sure of myself.

Ben

I had two concussions in one season of flat-track motorcycle racing
(possibly more, but two are all tha tmatter in this story).

The first was at Castle Rock. I went down in the turn, the flagger
came out with the yellow flag, a bunch more guys came through that
turn, and then... thumpity-bump-bump - out like a light. They packed
me in the ambulance, hauled me to a hospital in Longview (I think it
was), where a candy striper kept me awake all night checking my blood
pressure every fifteen minutes or so. The next day at the Sidewinders
Regional the ref wouldn't give me back my license without a note from
the doctor.

The other one was at Bellingham. Up there they didn't bother with hay
bales around the outside of the turns (the locals liked to have a
chance to save it instead of hitting the bales, said the local ref).
I went into the first turn in the Main, some guys went down in front
of me, and I went around them to the outside. The last thing I
remember in the dark was a feeling of weightlessness as I went off the
end of the turn into what I later learned was "the Alligator Pit". I
woke up in the ambulance, but this time only my buddy was watching me,
we climbed out, I sat in the pits and watched him ride in the Expert
Main. They gave me back my license, we loaded up and got loaded and I
crashed in the van that night and woke up in an apartment complex
parking lot Portland.

Come to think of it maybe there was one more concussion that season -
on the front straightaway at Sidewinders (went down in a big pile
up). They cut off my helmet that time. I heard that I scared a lot
of people with my bodily convulsions right in front of the Grandstand.

Woo-hoo! :-)

On Mar 20, 2:57*pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Mar 20, 3:27*pm, Dan O wrote:



On Mar 20, 9:06*am, Frank Krygowski wrote:

In another article,http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29772691/*:

"The National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) of the United States
estimated 43 percent of skiers and snowboarders wore helmets in the
2007-08 season, against 25 percent five years earlier.
...

"The increase in the use of helmets has not reduced the overall number
of skiing fatalities," the NSAA said in a statement. "More than half
of the people involved in fatal accidents last season were wearing
helmets."

So more than half the fatalities were in helmets. *But fewer than half
wear them. *IOW, helmet use is _positively_ correlated with
fatality.

Risk compensation, anyone?

People who intend to ski as fast as they possibly can are the ones
more likely to wear a helmet.

Would they ski quite as fast, or in quite as risky a manner, if they
did not wear a helmet?

Judging by those figures above, probably not.

It's a chicken and egg question. Are people wearing helmets because
they're doing something dangerous or doing something dangerous because
they're wearing helmets? You think it's the latter. The former makes
much more sense to me but I don't know. You seem pretty sure of
something that is unknowable without more information. Maybe you're
the type that just doesn't know how to day "I don't know".

Bret

On Mar 19, 8:32*am, Jay Beattie wrote:
One thing we do have going for our resorts in the otherwise
crummy snow PNW are thick fir forests that give you a tree skiing
experience unlike the Rockies where you have whimpy little aspens. You
can crash in to really big, closely spaced trees up here. -- Jay
Beatte.

You don't really believe this do you? Aspen glades aren't really very
common in the Rockies. Besides the Shadows at Steamboat I can't think
of one. 99% of the trees are pines. That may change since the pines
are all dying from beetle-kill.

Bret

On Mar 20, 10:45 pm, Bret wrote:
On Mar 20, 2:57 pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:



On Mar 20, 3:27 pm, Dan O wrote:

On Mar 20, 9:06 am, Frank Krygowski wrote:

In another article,http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29772691/ :

"The National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) of the United States
estimated 43 percent of skiers and snowboarders wore helmets in the
2007-08 season, against 25 percent five years earlier.
...

"The increase in the use of helmets has not reduced the overall number
of skiing fatalities," the NSAA said in a statement. "More than half
of the people involved in fatal accidents last season were wearing
helmets."

So more than half the fatalities were in helmets. But fewer than half
wear them. IOW, helmet use is _positively_ correlated with
fatality.

Risk compensation, anyone?

People who intend to ski as fast as they possibly can are the ones
more likely to wear a helmet.

Would they ski quite as fast, or in quite as risky a manner, if they
did not wear a helmet?

Judging by those figures above, probably not.

It's a chicken and egg question. Are people wearing helmets because
they're doing something dangerous or doing something dangerous because
they're wearing helmets? You think it's the latter. The former makes
much more sense to me but I don't know. You seem pretty sure of
something that is unknowable without more information. Maybe you're
the type that just doesn't know how to day "I don't know".

Bret

They don't go especially fast *because* they happen to have a helmet
on; they put on the helmet because they intend to go fast, and mean to
ameliorate the obvious risk.

On Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:59:09 -0700 (PDT), Dan O
wrote:

On Mar 20, 10:45 pm, Bret wrote:
On Mar 20, 2:57 pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:



On Mar 20, 3:27 pm, Dan O wrote:

On Mar 20, 9:06 am, Frank Krygowski wrote:

In another article,http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29772691/ :

"The National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) of the United States
estimated 43 percent of skiers and snowboarders wore helmets in the
2007-08 season, against 25 percent five years earlier.
...

"The increase in the use of helmets has not reduced the overall number
of skiing fatalities," the NSAA said in a statement. "More than half
of the people involved in fatal accidents last season were wearing
helmets."

So more than half the fatalities were in helmets. But fewer than half
wear them. IOW, helmet use is _positively_ correlated with
fatality.

Risk compensation, anyone?

People who intend to ski as fast as they possibly can are the ones
more likely to wear a helmet.

Would they ski quite as fast, or in quite as risky a manner, if they
did not wear a helmet?

Judging by those figures above, probably not.

It's a chicken and egg question. Are people wearing helmets because
they're doing something dangerous or doing something dangerous because
they're wearing helmets? You think it's the latter. The former makes
much more sense to me but I don't know. You seem pretty sure of
something that is unknowable without more information. Maybe you're
the type that just doesn't know how to day "I don't know".

Bret

They don't go especially fast *because* they happen to have a helmet
on; they put on the helmet because they intend to go fast, and mean to
ameliorate the obvious risk.

Dear Dan & Bret,

The often-cited Munich taxi driver study measured and observed that
the taxi drivers routinely drove faster and followed more closely when
they drew an ABS taxi from the driving pool.
http://pavlov.psyc.queensu.ca/target/chapter07.html

Two things are often noted about risk compensation:

1) We often insist that we don't compensate for perceived risks.

2) We all compensate for risk when observed.

Ask skiers wearing helmets if they'd slow down without the helmets.

If they answer yes, then it's risk compensation,

If they answer no, then a study like the Munich taxi study is
practically a sure bet to show that they slow down, no matter how much
they insist otherwise.

That's why insurance companies stopped giving customers a discount for
anti-lock brakes--risk compensation led to the same level of
accidents.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

On Mar 20, 10:45*pm, Bret wrote:
On Mar 20, 2:57*pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Mar 20, 3:27*pm, Dan O wrote:
On Mar 20, 9:06*am, Frank Krygowski wrote:

In another article,http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29772691/*:

"The National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) of the United States
estimated 43 percent of skiers and snowboarders wore helmets in the
2007-08 season, against 25 percent five years earlier.
...

"The increase in the use of helmets has not reduced the overall number
of skiing fatalities," the NSAA said in a statement. "More than half
of the people involved in fatal accidents last season were wearing
helmets."

So more than half the fatalities were in helmets. *But fewer than half
wear them. *IOW, helmet use is _positively_ correlated with
fatality.

Risk compensation, anyone?

People who intend to ski as fast as they possibly can are the ones
more likely to wear a helmet.

Would they ski quite as fast, or in quite as risky a manner, if they
did not wear a helmet?

Judging by those figures above, probably not.

It's a chicken and egg question. Are people *wearing helmets because
they're doing something dangerous or doing something dangerous because
they're wearing helmets? You think it's the latter. The former makes
much more sense to me but I don't know. You seem pretty sure of
something that is unknowable without more information. Maybe you're
the type *that just doesn't know how to day "I don't know".

This argument about ski helmets and behavior also
suffers from a lack of information. We don't have any
idea whether the ski fatalities discussed refer to
only in-bounds or also out-of-bounds skiing, and
whether they are strictly impact related accidents.
On a bike, the main cause of getting hurt is crashing,
but this is not always so in skiing. Even if you
only consider crashing and rule out avalanches,
most ways of riding bike are pretty safe (excluding
at night without lights, and some extreme downhill
MTBing). This is not so true of downhill skiing, where
style can have a big effect on how likely you are
to get hurt.

I hesitate to get involved in a helmet thread, but IMO
looking at fatalities is not a great way to measure
whether helmets do anything. Many fatalities (ski or bike)
occur in impacts where only a helmet the size of a Green
Bay Cheesehead could have helped. IMO the effect of
helmets is more likely to occasionally mitigate what
would have been a bad concussion into a mild
concussion, or a mild concussion into just a sore spot.
Whether this is worth anything is up to the wearer.

Ben

On Mar 21, 7:33*am, "
wrote:

I hesitate to get involved in a helmet thread, but IMO
looking at fatalities is not a great way to measure
whether helmets do anything. *Many fatalities (ski or bike)
occur in impacts where only a helmet the size of a Green
Bay Cheesehead could have helped. *IMO the effect of
helmets is more likely to occasionally mitigate what
would have been a bad concussion into a mild
concussion, or a mild concussion into just a sore spot.
Whether this is worth anything is up to the wearer.

Ben

Helmets can save the cyclist months of discomfort or pain by
protecting his face against abrasion. That must be worth something.
I've had tiresome and painful and time-consuming plastic surgery after
a minor motorcycle accident without a helmet, and have come unscathed
(a few broken bones but otherwise very nearly unmarked) through a
major motorbike racing accident because the helmet, which was rubbed
almost through, protected my face. I wear a cycling helmet every time
I use my bike. Most vehicular accidents occur within five miles of
home so a ride to the shops is more dangerous per mile ridden than a
multimile tour.

Andre Jute
Up your statistics