Ontario Helmet Law being pushed through

I can see both sides of the helmet issue. The pro-helmet people vastly
over-exaggerate the statistical benefit of helmets, while the
anti-helmet people will simply ignore the evidence regarding injuries
in
helmet versus non-helmet head injury studies.

I guess it would depend on the definition of dangerous, wouldn't it?
How many people are killed on stairs, in the bathtub/shower, walking
on the street.

None of this is relevant to the bicycle helmet debate.

Some people accept the added risk inherent in not wearing a helmet,
because
the risk of being involved in an accident where head injuries are involve
are small. Very few people deny the evidence that shows that helmeted
riders
had less severe head injuries in crashes involving head injuries.


Granted. However, the debate here is on mandatory helmet laws. The important
question to be answered is "Will mandatory helmet laws make the streets
safer for cyclists?".

I'm not going to re-hash all my reasons (i've given them in other posts),
but I firmly believe that they will NOT improve the situation.

Paul

Ken [NY] wrote:

On Mon, 08 Nov 2004 15:51:30 -0500, Frank Krygowski
claims:


I seem to recall some Texas governor presiding over record numbers of
executions, while loudly calling himself a Christian. (But you're right
about televising it; that would be bad for election campaigns.)


Oh come on, Frank. I know you are not the sharpest knife in
the drawer, but surely you know that a sitting Governor does not
preside over executions. That is the job of the judicial, not the
executive branch.


Frank, you were complaining that I and other conservatives
don't confess our mistakes. In that light, I am still waiting for you
to apologize for your above massive error.

Perhaps I'm not perfect, Ken. But I'm not sure what you consider
mistaken in what I wrote.

AFAIK, a Texas governor (like those in most other states) has the power
to commute or even pardon death sentences. Is that wrong? If you say
it is, please give some evidence.

If that is the case, then every person executed is killed with the
governor's final approval. In other words, he has presiding authority.

And as I recall, the governor in question has frequently proclaimed his
Christian beliefs.

Now I'll admit, I haven't studied up on Texas law. If it turns out the
governor has no authority to do what I said, I'll apologize. All you've
got to do is demonstrate that.

If you can't, I don't plan on answering any more of your attempts to
divert bike discussions into prejudiced right wing propaganda.



--
Frank Krygowski [To reply, remove rodent and vegetable dot com.
Substitute cc dot ysu dot
edu]

Paul R wrote:

Granted. However, the debate here is on mandatory helmet laws. The important
question to be answered is "Will mandatory helmet laws make the streets
safer for cyclists?".

That is not the question. The reason that the mandatory helmet law is
being advocated is because it will reduce the severity of head injuries
when a crash occurs. In Canada, with its universal health care, they
have a vested interest in reducing injuries, due to the cost of treatment.

I am not saying that the MHL is a good idea, but the reasoning behind it
is not to make the streets safer; making the streets safer is desirable,
but a separate issue.

The government is misguided in its effort because the absolute number of
injuries (or reduction in severity of injuries) that the helmet law will
impact (no pun intended) is very small. They are taking an emotional
response to a couple of accidents where helmets would likely have made a
difference between life and death. I'm not saying that anyone dumb
enough not to wear a helmet deserves death, but it was their choice to
take the risk, and they have to accept the consequences. Maybe the
province should simply insert a provision into the health care laws that
they will not treat bicycle related injuries that would have been
prevented by the wearing of helmet; treatment will be at the patient's
expense.

Steve
http://bicyclelighting.com

"Let’s pass more laws to make everything safe for everybody"
P.J. O'Rourke, National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody, (c)1978
(wll be re-issued on 11/16/04).

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 14:17:53 +0000 (UTC), "PK"
wrote:


A sceptic would say: "Arguments that appear to disavow the efficacy or
utility of cycle helmet wearing, or on the other hand claim it as the
major influence in reducing injury to cyclists, are both wide of the
mark. In particular, campaigns seeking to present cycling as an
inevitably dangerous or hazardous activity, or which suggest that
helmet wearing should be made compulsory, risk prejudicing the
delivery of those very benefits to health and environment which
cycling can deliver: they also serve to confuse the general public
about the wider social and economic advantages of cycling. As a
result, the NCS Board is anxious that the question of wearing helmets
is placed in its proper context"

Good summary guy, but the sceptic bit is incomplet. You need another
sentence still!

Not really. "Arguments that appear to disavow the efficacy or utility
of cycle helmet wearing, or on the other hand claim it as the major
influence in reducing injury to cyclists, are both wide of the mark"
says exactly what you propose, but in strictly neutral terms.

As a helmet-sceptics mantra it lacks very little :-)

After "In particular....advantages of cycling" you need something like
"Conversly, claims by some that helmets provide zero or negative safety
benefit to the user are at best unproven and might lead novice or offroad
cyclists for whom helmets may have more benefit to forgo that benefit in
error"

But that would itself be incomplete without a reference to the proven
existence of risk compensation in road cyclists, including children,
and then the sentence is even longer. The NCS Board did a good job of
summarising the balance, and I endorse their view.

After all, i would put you firmly in the "Anti compulsion zealot" camp but
the "Sceptic" camp wrt helmets in general - sometimes you wear one sometimes
you don't as circumstances guide your judgement of need.

An anti-compulsion zealot? That's like being an extreme moderate :-)

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 09:46:07 -0500, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

Gentlemen, even if you don't like a person who maintains a website, that
doesn't mean every piece of data posted there is false!

You mean there are facts on BHSI? Tell me it ain't so!

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 16:06:46 GMT, "Steven M. Scharf"
wrote:

Very few people deny the evidence that shows that helmeted riders
had less severe head injuries in crashes involving head injuries.

But many deny the evidence - robust though it is, and colected by
traffic statistics programmes which have existed for decades - that
helmets have no measurable effect at the population level.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

On Tue, 9 Nov 2004 04:28:49 -0500, "Michael"
wrote:


Don't wanna wear one? Fine by be. Wanna drool on your grandkids when your
50. Go right ahead, There's a good chance nothing will happen to you.
Thiere is a risk something will, Me I prefer my kids don't need to change my
Diapers, but hey thats just me.


Oh, how original, a faith-based pro-helmet post. Pity the data
doesn't support your faith, really.

10 year trends, as published by CPSC, show that helmet use in the USA
rose from 18% to 50%, head injuries increased 10%, numbers cycling
reduced 21%.

The problem is that zealots like you take the statement "if you crash,
you are probably better off wearing a helmet" and ignore the bit
before the comma.

He didn't ignore the part before the comma at all. Didn't you see what
he wrote? "There's a good chance nothing will happen to you." This is
why many people choose to not wear helmets. The risk of being involved
in a head injury crash is small enough that the annoyance of a helmet
isn't worth it to them. They understand that they'd be less likely to be
injured in the event of a crash if they were wearing a helmet.

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 16:12:51 GMT, "Steven M. Scharf"
wrote:

And the sceptics acknowledge both, look at the injury trends for whole
populations (which are necessarily more robust than for the tiny
groups in pro-0helmet observational studies) and conclude that,
overall, if you want to reduce cyclist injuries, helmets are a long
way down the prority list.

That is the typical flawed logic we've seen in this thread. The fact that
there are other ways to also reduce injuries, are irrelevant. These other
measures should be taken, but they are not exclusive. The anti-helmet
zealots want to prove that helmets don't prevent injuries, but the facts
speak for themselves. You have to look at how helmeted versus non-helmeted
cyclists fare in crashes, the fact that traffic calming might have prevented
some of the accidents doesn't figure into the equation.

Steven, please introduce me to an anti-helmet zealot some time. I
have never met one. I have met one person who is anti-helmet (in two
years of active campaigning at a national level), but he is an
academic and absolutely not a zealot of any description.

The logic is not flawed. Mention cyclist safety in almost any public
context and helmets will be the first ting mentioned. The reason for
that is that helmet zealots are obsessed with them. They put up
posters, they have websites, they lobby parliaments, they write bills
which sometimes become law, they fill the medical press, they are in
the newspapers and on TV. When was the last time you saw any
large-scale campaign on cycle safety which was not primarily focused
on helmets?

There is simply no justification for this monomania. We know that in
New Zealand %HI for peds and cyclists trended identically through a
period where helmet use went from the mid 40s percent to the high 90s.
We know that head injury risk per cyclist in the USA increased by 40%
as helmet use rose from 18% to 50%. We know that the two safest
cycling countries - Netherlands and Denmark - have negligible helmet
wearing rates. We know that the countries with the worst cyclist
safety records have high helmet wearing rates.

Any remotely sane approach to cyclist safety cannot help but view
helmets as a controversial irrelevance, a sideshow. The known bad
effects - portraying cycling as dangerous and thus deterring
participation; and giving an exaggerated view of the benefit of
helmets - make even promotion a risky business, let alone compulsion.

I can't immediately think of any other area of public policy where the
glare of legislative attention is focused so brightly and so
relentlessly on so obviously the wrong target.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

But many deny the evidence - robust though it is, and colected by
traffic statistics programmes which have existed for decades - that
helmets have no measurable effect at the population level.

But that is not the data that is being used to push through the MHLs.

The MHL proponents look at the comparative injury data of helmeted
versus non-helmeted cyclists. This data is compelling on its own. Also,
since they measure and report the severity of the injuries, a lot of
injuries that would be classified as minor on a non-helmeted rider show
up in the statistics, while the helmeted rider would not even go into
the ER for treatment.

I agree that they should look at the overall data, not just the
comparative severity of injury data when injuries occur. No law is
needed. They'd be better off finding another way to encourage helmet
use, i.e. charging for emergency care to non-helmted cyclists involved
in crashes where helmets would have an effect.

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 17:29:56 GMT, "Steven M. Scharf"
wrote:

The problem is that zealots like you take the statement "if you crash,
you are probably better off wearing a helmet" and ignore the bit
before the comma.

He didn't ignore the part before the comma at all. Didn't you see what
he wrote? "There's a good chance nothing will happen to you." This is
why many people choose to not wear helmets. The risk of being involved
in a head injury crash is small enough that the annoyance of a helmet
isn't worth it to them. They understand that they'd be less likely to be
injured in the event of a crash if they were wearing a helmet.

No, that's not actually the point. The point is that, given we have
seen in NZ that a doubling of helmet use to near 100% levels has not
changed the head injury rate, and given that helmets must prevent at
least some injuries, then they must cause at least as many as they
prevent.

The mechanism usually advanced to explain this is risk compensation.

Interestingly, of the four criteria any one of which is reckoned to
predict compensatory behaviour, cycle helmets score high on all four.

There is no doubt in my mind that the routine exaggeration of the
protective effect of helmets by the pro compulsion lobby is a
contributory cause here. And I kow they exaggerate because I have had
a pro helmet advert pulled by our advertising standards body.

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University