Are Helmets Completely Worthless as a Safety Device for a Bike Commuter?

On Mar 9, 8:01*pm, still just me wrote:
The issue is that, at least as far as I have seen, no one has yet
conducted a long term, random survey of cyclists to determine injury
occurrence and injury levels with and without helmets. Studying
_reported_ accident statistics is even less valid than "Dewey Wins".

IMO, the ideal place for this would have been pro cycling before and
after the helmet rule. A single year of each should have given plenty
of data. Stable population and riding circumstances, plenty of
crashes, etc. Too late now though, unless they'd like to repeal the
rule for awhile.

On Mar 10, 5:30*am, SMS wrote:
Andre Jute wrote:
On Mar 9, 5:24 am, Ron Ruff wrote:
This shows the *upward* shift in the percentage of head injuries for
cyclists in the US from 1991 to 2005.http://www.cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1177

Thanks for the link, Ron. I know that site. It is pretty partisan, the
sort of place where every time I pick up a single statistic, I want to
wash my hands.

That site is pretty worthless, it's so hopelessly biased. Always be
extremely wary of any site that talks about "extracting data."

I.e., if you query the Neiss database for concussions from bicycle
related injuries, you see the rates trending downward from 2000 until
the last year of available data (2006), but there are earlier years
where there are even less concussions than in 2006. There are so many
other variables that it's impossible to know if helmets were the reasons
for the decline toward the end of the reported data or not.

2000 13168
2001 10562
2002 12104
2003 11914
2004 11732
2005 12610
2006 11674

I'm familiar with environmentalists extracting short series to try and
make their point, when the true trend in the longer term is in exactly
the opposite direction. It is dishonest whoever does it. Since so many
cyclists are also environmentalists, it is possible that a belief has
grown up that such tricks are acceptable. They're not. Lies are lies,
and despicable. Statistics perverted as advocacy demeans into mere
propaganda the very act of disseminating information.

Andre Jute
Extractions belong to dentistry

Andre Jute wrote:

I'm familiar with environmentalists extracting short series to try and
make their point, when the true trend in the longer term is in exactly
the opposite direction. It is dishonest whoever does it. Since so many
cyclists are also environmentalists, it is possible that a belief has
grown up that such tricks are acceptable. They're not. Lies are lies,
and despicable. Statistics perverted as advocacy demeans into mere
propaganda the very act of disseminating information.

Not sure if I'd insult environmentalists by equating them with these people!

All of these anti-helmet websites have serious flaws with their
interpretation of statistics and their conclusions. The fact that
statistics support helmet use infuriate them, so they go out and
"extract" statistics.

I could understand why they feel that they have to resort to this sort
of thing if it were only to fight compulsory helmet laws. But many do it
just to try to justify their own non-use to others--behavior that has to
be justified to no one since it's their choice.

I've only ever seen one "pro-helmet" web sites, the "Bicycle Helmet
Safety Institute" site, and at least they clearly state "Below are acres
of stats from every source we can find. They do not always agree,
indicating that some of them are could be less than totally accurate."

At least the pro-helmet people understand that statistics can be wrong,
and are trying to find out what the truth is in a mass of anti-helmet
misinformation and propaganda.

I don't like MHLs, but the way to fight them is with facts and logic,
not by making up propaganda that is so easily discredited.

On Mar 10, 8:48*am, SMS wrote:
All of these anti-helmet websites have serious flaws with their
interpretation of statistics and their conclusions. The fact that
statistics support helmet use infuriate them, so they go out and
"extract" statistics.

I've yet to see statistics that support helmet use... except for
studies that are obviously and seriously flawed. Still waiting for you
to present one. On the contrary, the anti-helmet sites are the only
ones that have at least attempted to account for other variables, and
to look at whole-population statistics. I'm also waiting for you to
discredit or "explain" this data.

I could understand why they feel that they have to resort to this sort
of thing if it were only to fight compulsory helmet laws. But many do it
just to try to justify their own non-use to others--behavior that has to
be justified to no one since it's their choice.

I wore a helmet for over 20 years and only began to question it based
on data showing it to be ineffective. I know this to be true of
several others... probably the majority of those who take the time to
question helmet efficacy.

I've only ever seen one "pro-helmet" web sites, the "Bicycle Helmet
Safety Institute" site, and at least they clearly state "Below are acres
of stats from every source we can find. They do not always agree,
indicating that some of them are could be less than totally accurate."

True... every single pro-helmet study they reference is obviously
worthless.
What about the many case studies online which were funded and
undertaken to show that helmets are effective? Wouldn't you call them
pro-helmet sites? I would.

I don't like MHLs, but the way to fight them is with facts and logic,
not by making up propaganda that is so easily discredited.

You seem to be full of rhetoric like this, but never present anything.
No facts... no logic. If you actually are an engineer, do you work in
the PR branch?

On Mar 9, 10:30 pm, SMS wrote:
Andre Jute wrote:
On Mar 9, 5:24 am, Ron Ruff wrote:
This shows the *upward* shift in the percentage of head injuries for
cyclists in the US from 1991 to 2005.http://www.cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1177

Thanks for the link, Ron. I know that site. It is pretty partisan, the
sort of place where every time I pick up a single statistic, I want to
wash my hands.

That site is pretty worthless, it's so hopelessly biased. Always be
extremely wary of any site that talks about "extracting data."

I.e., if you query the Neiss database for concussions from bicycle
related injuries, you see the rates trending downward from 2000 until
the last year of available data (2006), but there are earlier years
where there are even less concussions than in 2006. There are so many
other variables that it's impossible to know if helmets were the reasons
for the decline toward the end of the reported data or not.

2000 13168
2001 10562
2002 12104
2003 11914
2004 11732
2005 12610
2006 11674

Yes, we know (or should know) that there are many variables that
affect the count of bike related concussions. A partial list might
include:

The amount of bike riding (affected by fashion, weather, etc.)
The type of bike riding that's popular (risky mountain biking vs.
plodding on park MUPs, etc.)
Behavior of cyclists (affected by education, experience, and response
to things like bike lane stripes)
Accuracy of diagnosis (affected by medical technology)
Behavior of drivers (affected by cell phone use, car ad psychology,
bike lane stripes)

I think most of these effects are minor, and take place somewhat
slowly - that is, _certainly_ no faster than on a five-year time
span. And, as always, we have to remember that even a concussion from
a bike ride is a very, very rare event on a per-mile-ridden basis,
meaning the numbers are subject to a lot of random variability. You
can see that in the data Scharf has listed - it should be obvious that
bicycling didn't get 20% safer from 2000 to 2001, then suddenly get
more dangerous again the next year.

The upshot is that one can't look at a raw count of injuries on a five
year span and detect much helmet influence, especially if one has no
data on percentage of cyclists who are helmeted.

There are two techniques that have been used to overcome these when
analyzing whole-population statistics. One is to use pedestrians as a
control group, especially when looking at data over long time
periods. Peds are subject to most of the same influences as
cyclists. If you see a long-term change in the ratio of cyclist head
concussions vs. pedestrian concussion as helmets become more popular,
that might indicate the helmets are actually doing some good.

The second technique is more direct: Track cyclist concussions when
helmet use is made to suddenly increase by a very large amount. But
do it on a per-cyclist basis, since forcing helmet use has been shown
to decrease cycling any time meaningful counts have been done.

And of course, both of those techniques have been used, and the
results published. And of course, both of those techniques show no
great benefit from increased helmet use.

- Frank Krygowski

On Sun, 9 Mar 2008 22:21:37 -0700 (PDT), Ron Ruff
wrote:

I certainly understand that. I'd be willing to allow electric
velomobiles as well. No trouble with hills, no sweating in summer, no
freezing in winter. Any city can function in essentially the same way
as Amsterdam.


Wanna try biking here all winter? see:
http://www.on-the-net.ca/march08storm.htm
See my bike on picture 18???

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

On Mar 8, 3:54 pm, Dan O wrote:
On Mar 7, 10:45 am, wrote:


Absolutely wrong. The fundamental fact is, appropriate protection for
an activity should be judged based on the level of risk of an
activity. And the _only_ reasonable way to judge the level of risk of
an activity is by comparison with other activities.

Absolutely wrong. Appropriate protection for an activity should be
judged based on the probability of a harmful event and the cost of its
consequences (risk) vs. the cost and effectiveness of protection.

The risk(s) of any other activity is utterly irrelevant to this
assessment.

So, Dan, let's say you were getting ready to take up some new
activity, whether it was extreme tap dancing, recreational tree
climbing, whatever.

If someone came up to you and said "Dan, we've got good data; the risk
of serious head injury in that activity is 1.68 serious HI per million
hours activity." How would you evaluate that raw information?
Specifically, how would you know if that tells you "Whoa! I'd better
find _some_ kind of helmet!" vs. "Hey, 'per million' make it sound
fine to me!"

The only rational way to actually judge is by comparison with other
activities.

IOW, if you're a backpacker, and you find that number pretty well
matches the number for backpacking, then you _should_ conclude "I
don't wear one for backpacking, so I won't wear one for tree
climbing." OTOH, if you play tackle football and you find out extreme
tap dancing is as dangerous as tackle football, you should probably
say "Gee, I wouldn't want to play tackle football without a helmet, so
I'd better be consistent and wear it for tap dancing over obstacle
courses."

If the same number generates a desire for inconsistent protection in
two different activities, I'd say the odds are strong that you're
responding to advertising hype, rather than real information.

As someone who has fallen from a bike and hit his head both with and
without a helmet (and many, many other personal experiences that bear
on the assessment), I think there is some good protection against
potentially devastating consequences to be had from a good helmet, and
for me this perceived value far outweighs the cost of wearing a
helmet,

Realize that "some good protection" is pretty vague. Also realize
that the phrase "for me" is key. The people that yell "Where's your
helmet??" or that pay for promotional literature saying "Never leave
your driveway without a helmet" are not saying "for me." They are
telling others what to do. So are the people who write into law "Any
cyclist operating on public rights of way shall wear..."

Definitively pinning down the costs and benefits and consequences and
probabilities is infinitely complex. It varies wildy from one case to
another, and boils down to individual perception, the rationality of
which necessarily varies. (Witness your "skilled rider on icy
downhill potholes vs. less skilled rider on a safer route" scenario.)

In any case, it bothers me that some people seem to be trying to
actively discourage consideration of a helmet as sensible protection.

If I'm trying to actively discourage anything, it's the assumption
that ordinary bicycling is so dangerous that special headgear is
highly desirable. That, and the idea that these fragile, certified-
for-14-mph caps somehow offer magic protection far beyond their design
standards - despite reams of data showing the minimal protection
actually jibes with the minimal design standards.

- Frank Krygowski

On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:29:06 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

There are two techniques that have been used to overcome these when
analyzing whole-population statistics. One is to use pedestrians as a
control group, especially when looking at data over long time
periods. Peds are subject to most of the same influences as
cyclists. If you see a long-term change in the ratio of cyclist head
concussions vs. pedestrian concussion as helmets become more popular,
that might indicate the helmets are actually doing some good.

The second technique is more direct: Track cyclist concussions when
helmet use is made to suddenly increase by a very large amount. But
do it on a per-cyclist basis, since forcing helmet use has been shown
to decrease cycling any time meaningful counts have been done.

And of course, both of those techniques have been used, and the
results published. And of course, both of those techniques show no
great benefit from increased helmet use.

- Frank Krygowski

Dear Frank,

Here's a graph illustrating the tracking of pedestrian versus cyclist
injuries, with the rise in helmet use from ~0% to ~100% over 8 years
in New Zealand :

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk:8080...ElemFormat=gif

As you point out, the pedestrian and cyclist injury rates match each
other. Helmets had no apparent effect on the cyclist injury rate, even
when helmet use rose from 60% to nearly 100% in half a year between
September 1993 and March 1994.

The text for the graph and other matters:

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk:8080...s?OpenDocument

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

On Mar 10, 3:28*pm, Ron Ruff wrote (not to me,
to someone else):
You seem to be full of rhetoric like this, but never present anything.
No facts... no logic. If you actually are an engineer, do you work in
the PR branch?

That's the authentic sound of someone who has lost the argument, Ron:
you've just started on a career of character assassination.

Is that really what you want to do and be, Ron? I urge you to retract
the slight immediately. Stop and think. That sort of underhand smear
lowers the tone of your case (1) to the despicable level of fogelism.

Andre Jute
Roget's Rules

(1) I don't know if you have a case -- while I'm generally
professionally interested in the use of statistics, I'm just not
passionate enough about helmets to be bothered to make a thorough
analysis of the available data -- but if this is your mode of
argument, then you appear to believe your case is lost, and if you
don't believe in your case, why should I even give you a hearing?

On Mar 10, 5:29*pm, wrote:
On Mar 9, 10:30 pm, SMS wrote:



Andre Jute wrote:
On Mar 9, 5:24 am, Ron Ruff wrote:
This shows the *upward* shift in the percentage of head injuries for
cyclists in the US from 1991 to 2005.http://www.cyclehelmets.org/mf.html?1177

Thanks for the link, Ron. I know that site. It is pretty partisan, the
sort of place where every time I pick up a single statistic, I want to
wash my hands.

That site is pretty worthless, it's so hopelessly biased. Always be
extremely wary of any site that talks about "extracting data."

I.e., if you query the Neiss database for concussions from bicycle
related injuries, you see the rates trending downward from 2000 until
the last year of available data (2006), but there are earlier years
where there are even less concussions than in 2006. There are so many
other variables that it's impossible to know if helmets were the reasons
for the decline toward the end of the reported data or not.

2000 13168
2001 10562
2002 12104
2003 11914
2004 11732
2005 12610
2006 11674

Yes, we know (or should know) that there are many variables that
affect the count of bike related concussions. *A partial list might
include:

The amount of bike riding (affected by fashion, weather, etc.)
The type of bike riding that's popular (risky mountain biking vs.
plodding on park MUPs, etc.)
Behavior of cyclists (affected by education, experience, and response
to things like bike lane stripes)
Accuracy of diagnosis (affected by medical technology)
Behavior of drivers (affected by cell phone use, car ad psychology,
bike lane stripes)

The more columns you can show, the more you can charge for the
research, sure. But any study which correlated all these sets, say to
a level of unassailability by nit-pickers like you lot in the anti-
helmet cabal, would cost more than the US National Debt.

Surely you know, Krygo, because no adult can fail to know, that
decisions, any and all decisions bar none, are always made on
inadequate information -- and that is by any reasonable standard as
practiced by reasonable people, not by the ludicrously high bar to
decision-making erected by wannabe flypoop-and-pepper separators like
you (1).

Andre Jute
Psychologists and economists are just jumped-up statisticians with a
bit more imagination and class than mathematical statisticians.

(1) Anyone else remember Honda's little 50cc motorbikes that appeared
at the turn of the1960's? I described them in my teenage newspaper
column as snot-separators and was sued for libel by the importer!
(Those of you who don't catch the reference, get someone from a dairy
district to describe to you the sound of a cream separator or a butter
churn.)

I think most of these effects are minor, and take place somewhat
slowly - that is, _certainly_ no faster than on a five-year time
span. *And, as always, we have to remember that even a concussion from
a bike ride is a very, very rare event on a per-mile-ridden basis,
meaning the numbers are subject to a lot of random variability. *You
can see that in the data Scharf has listed - it should be obvious that
bicycling didn't get 20% safer from 2000 to 2001, then suddenly get
more dangerous again the next year.

The upshot is that one can't look at a raw count of injuries on a five
year span and detect much helmet influence, especially if one has no
data on percentage of cyclists who are helmeted.

There are two techniques that have been used to overcome these when
analyzing whole-population statistics. *One is to use pedestrians as a
control group, especially when looking at data over long time
periods. *Peds are subject to most of the same influences as
cyclists. *If you see a long-term change in the ratio of cyclist head
concussions vs. pedestrian concussion as helmets become more popular,
that might indicate the helmets are actually doing some good.

The second technique is more direct: Track cyclist concussions when
helmet use is made to suddenly increase by a very large amount. *But
do it on a per-cyclist basis, since forcing helmet use has been shown
to decrease cycling any time meaningful counts have been done.

And of course, both of those techniques have been used, and the
results published. *And of course, both of those techniques show no
great benefit from increased helmet use.

- Frank Krygowski