My helmet saved me, and broke

On Mon, 29 Aug, onewheeldave wrote:

Ian Smith wrote:

I'm not trying to convinvce you otherwise. There's no need to
convince anyone otherwise, the 'otherwise' is simply fact. Over the
period that the helmet wearing rate has risen dramatically, the
serious injury rate has risen slightly.

If your assertion that helmets do more good than harm is true, how
can this be?

Ian Smith, you seem to be saying that many of those supporting helmet
wear are making invalid assumptions ie seing it as 'obvious' that they
offer protection, when, in your eyes, there is no real evidence.

Not quite - the objection is that the evidence shows the opposite -
increasing helmet wearing (both voluntarily and by mandating it)
increases the rate of serious injury to cyclists.

So, when someone says it's 'obvious' that, in a head impacting the
ground scenario, a helmet will tend to protect the head; it s analogous
to someone in the 12th century believing the earth to be flat because it
is 'obvious'.

Is that a correct summary of your opinion?

It's analogous, yes.

You yourself seem to believe that helmet use is actually, at best,
inneffective, and, at worst, may actually increase injuries.

No, I'm saying that at population level, increased helmet wearing rate
DOES correlate with an increase the rate of serious injuries.

You've concluded this because of studies which have shown that, in
places where helmets have been made compulsory, injuries have actually
risen.

And also where helmet wearing has risen without compulsion, the
serious injury rate for cyclists has not tracked that for pedestrians,
whereas before anyone wore helmets, the rates tracked each other quite
consistently.

That is, over time, the pedestrian injury rate fluctuates, but is on a
long-term downwards trend (at least in the UK). When no-one wore
helmets, the cyclist rate closely tracked the pedestrian rate (but at
a different rate). Since cycle helmets have become more common, the
cyclist and pedestrian rates have diverged, with the cyclist rate
showing less improvement than pedestrian rate, suggesting something is
making cyclists relatively less safe - and this 'something' started
happening at just about the time that cyclists started wearing
helmets.

and, if possible, also clarify, the breakdown of injury increases in
those studies ie taking three categories of 1 deaths, 2 serious
injuries, 3 non-serious injuries- how have each of those categories been
affected. I realise you may not have such info, but i think it is
relevant as, for example, a rise in injuries could actually be caused by
helmets doing their job because people who may, previous to helmet
wearing, have died, will now be pushed into the 'injuries' categories,
leading to an increase in the injury stats.

No, that does not explain it - the rate figures in question are 'ksi'
which is 'killed or seriously injured'. Converting a death to a
serious injury does not push the person into the category (or out of
it).

I don't have a breakdown of minor injuries - it's the ksi rate that is
generally recorded long term.

As it happens, I expect helmets _will_ have a beneficial effect on
minor injuries. I believe helmets are very good at protecting against
minor but painful and inconvenient (and maybe even scarring) injuries
(eg skin loss, blood-loss). However, none of the mandatory helmet law
proponents campaign for helmets in order to protect against painful
non-life-threatening injury, at the risk of increased death or serious
injury. I also observe that I have no substantiated basis for this
belief, so if someone came up with some figures that claimed to show
otherwise, I would examine them very carefully - I wouldn't discard
them out of hand because it's "obvious" that they must be wrong.

regards, Ian SMith
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This Pro / Con helmet discussion is like listening to a top 40 radio
station. We keep hearing the same thing over and over again. It's really
quite nauseating.

In the future, can't references be made to previous posts with the
points that each one is trying to make?!


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One on one - Proud member of the UALW and GUA

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he/she could black out."
-Memphis Mud

I went further than I had planned and had a testicle break at about 25
ks
-onebyone


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One on one wrote:
*This Pro / Con helmet discussion is like listening to a top 40 radio
station. We keep hearing the same thing over and over again. It's
really quite nauseating.
*


I agree. The only reason I've felt drawn to respond on this thread so
many times is because I wouldn't want some kid taking what they read
here as "justification" for not wearing a helmet, and then ending up
injured.

A search of previous posts reveals that the most controversial of the
posters on this thread has at least posted on a few other threads
without provoking controversy, otherwise I would have assumed him to be
simply a troll.

My last post on this thread.


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Here we go again…
Ian Smith wrote:
*Why is my simple explanation (set out above) patently wrong,*

Possibly because all your conclusions are based on conclusions in
reports based on statistics, not on actual facts (statistics are not in
themselves facts). This thread was started by steveyo writing about a
fact (BTW steveyo glad your OK)

There’s an exercise you can do (I did it many years ago) where you write
two reports based on the same data (statistics, figures etc.) with the
aim that the conclusions of the reports will both be logically correct
yet oppose each other. The lesson? Don’t trust reports (something all
too apparent these days).

At this point maybe I should state my educational qualifications, or
not.


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On Mon, 29 Aug 2005 09:31:34 -0500, Irideonone wrote:

Here we go again
Ian Smith wrote:
*Why is my simple explanation (set out above) patently wrong,*

Possibly because all your conclusions are based on conclusions in
reports based on statistics, not on actual facts (statistics are not in
themselves facts). This thread was started by steveyo writing about a
fact (BTW steveyo glad your OK)

Statistics can be facts. Just because you can confound by using
statistics does not mean all statistics are automatically misleading.

The only facts in teh opening post were that he fell off and his
helmet broke. The conclusion he drew was speculation about what the
consequence would have been had he not geen wearing a helmet.

regards, Ian SMith
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On Mon, 29 Aug 2005 11:05:22 -0500, Duffle wrote:

Have you posted a link to this study, rather than just talking about it?
I'm curious to see it firsthand...

If you mean the cyclist v. pedestrian casualty rates, the easiest
place to read it is http://www.cyclehelmets.org/papers/c2018.pdf
Note particularly the graph at the bottom of the first page. While
this particular write-up is not a peer-reviewed paper (as presented)
the references all are, and the basic observations regarding
'accident' severity are from UK official statistics.

If you want to see the same effect (or absence of it) in US
statistics you can do so at http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/kunich.html.
For Canadian, try http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/fatals.html. It doesn't
seem to be a specifically UK effect.

regards, Ian Smith
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Ian Smith wrote:
*
snip
*


You were making the claim that helmet wearing does more harm than good,
and I was saying your evidence doesn't support that. And the simplest
explanation for your evidence is that a helmet does good but other
factors contributed to accident severety, possibly the same factors that
fueled the creation of the law in the first place.

The explanation that covering your head in foam makes the accident worse
or is inconsequentional, as you assert, IS NOT the simplest because that
infers that all the scientist researching and manufacturing helmets are
wrong, which would then infer that the modern physics that they studied
in school is wrong, etc etc. That's by no means a simpler explanation
as you assert, even though you do a good job pretending it is.


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Ian Smith wrote:
[b]On Mon, 29 Aug 2005 11:05:22 -0500, Duffle wrote:

Have you posted a link to this study, rather than just talking
about it?
I'm curious to see it firsthand...

If you mean the cyclist v. pedestrian casualty rates, the easiest
place to read it is http://www.cyclehelmets.org/papers/c2018.pdf
Note particularly the graph at the bottom of the first page. While
this particular write-up is not a peer-reviewed paper (as presented)
the references all are, and the basic observations regarding
'accident' severity are from UK official statistics.

If you want to see the same effect (or absence of it) in US
statistics you can do so at http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/kunich.html.
For Canadian, try http://www.magma.ca/~ocbc/fatals.html. It doesn't
seem to be a specifically UK effect.


Ok, that's a bit better. Now I see where some of these numbers are
coming from.

I don't, however, think those studies are drawing proper conclusions
based upon the data presented. The statistics used are simply
broad-spectrum fatalities, and aren't looking at fatalities due to head
injury. This leaves a rather gaping hole.

To get a clearer idea of what is happening, we need to know what
percentage of total cyclist fatalities or injuries occur because of
severe head trauma, and plot those results alongside helmet use.


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Ian Smith wrote:
*Statistics can be facts. Just because you can confound by using
statistics does not mean all statistics are automatically misleading.
*

-Statistics:- The mathematics of the collection, organization, and
interpretation of numerical data, especially the analysis of population
characteristics by inference from sampling.

-Fact:- Something that has actual existence; a matter of objective
reality

A statistic is not, as I said, a fact, even if the statistic was
initially derived from a collection of facts it is still only a derived
numerical datum.

Ian Smith wrote:
*
The only facts in teh opening post were that he fell off and his
helmet broke. The conclusion he drew was speculation about what the
consequence would have been had he not geen wearing a helmet.*

The facts were that steveyo fell off, hit his helmet (front right edge),
the helmets foam compressed & cracked, he didn't injure his head but he
did injure his thumb and knee. I think the conclusion that he derived
had he not been wearing a helmet is perfectly logical and very highly
probable. What would your conclusion be had he not been wearing a
helmet? Would he have had fewer injuries or more?


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On Mon, 29 Aug 2005 12:55:30 -0500, Seager wrote:

You were making the claim that helmet wearing does more harm
than good,

No, I don't think I have made that claim. I have observed that when
helmet wearing rates have risen, serious injury rates have not fallen,
and that this contradicts the assertion that helmets "obviously" do
more good than harm. That is a different claim entirely.

I think you have me confused for a straw man.

The explanation that covering your head in foam makes the accident
worse or is inconsequentional, as you assert, IS NOT the simplest
because that infers that all the scientist researching and
manufacturing helmets are wrong, which would then infer that the
modern physics that they studied in school is wrong, etc etc.
That's by no means a simpler explanation as you assert, even though
you do a good job pretending it is.

It does not imply what you claim it infers. The manufacturers and
designers state that helmets are no good at protecting against the
sort of impacts that kill and seriously injure. The manufacturers
claim that helmets mitigate minor impacts - the sort that don't kill
people, and only rarely seriously injure them.

My explanation is entirely compatible with the design criteria and
manufacturers statements regarding the efficacy of helmets.

regards, Ian SMith
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