Helmet ******s

"Rick Onanian" wrote

snip
Did you see last year's big helmet
war? Probably a good two thousand messages among three or four
threads, and I doubt that there was a single person who was
influenced in any way.

I was ... I decided that when I go visit my cousin in the Peoples Republic
of Canadia this summer to cover my (mandatory) magic foam hat with tin foil
(c:

C.Q.C.

Q. LostVideos-AT-hotmail.com wrote:
: Ahhhh ... the good ol' days of Commodore 64's and daisy wheel printers
: *sniff*

for me it was imsais & apple2's .. novation applecats, catfur, ascii express,
blue boxing bell south, CP/M, g-files, gbbs, fidonet, LoD, pdp11s, RSTS/E,
VMS, unix, the 414 gang and busts by the secret service.

ahhhhh, youth!

& those graphics were beautiful. picture #6 is in the style i remember.

somewhere around here i've got a mess of floppies full of g-files and BBS
sessions. pity i don't have an 8" drive anywhere.
--
david reuteler

Rick Onanian wrote in message . ..
On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 01:45:04 GMT, "Tom Kunich"
wrote:
As is always the case at this time of the year, some ****** has to bring up
helmets in a way that shows helmet ******s as what they are - stupid ass
blowhards:

As is always the case when some jerkoff wants a MHL, somebody trolls
to start another usenet helmet war.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3451325.stm

That is pretty dumb.

Indeed. I would say the health benefits from a wide brimmed hat
outweight the slight chance of a head injury from falling in that
environment. The case in point was from 2001? It's hardly an epidemic.


You can take the cowboy out of the country but you can't take the hat off of
the cowboy.

Don't confuse country cowboys with Australian bushmen a la Crocodile
Dundee.

WTF? Bushmen live in the Kalahari, and I'm sure even they don't call
themselves that. The correct term is jackaroo. For the record,
'Crocodile' Dundee, in the fictional universe created in the movie,
was neither a bushman nor a jackaroo. The correct term for what he was
is 'poacher'.

HTH

Allister

On 3 Feb 2004 19:04:37 -0800, (Allister
McLaren) wrote:
You can take the cowboy out of the country but you can't take the hat off of
the cowboy.

Don't confuse country cowboys with Australian bushmen a la Crocodile
Dundee.

WTF? Bushmen live in the Kalahari, and I'm sure even they don't call
themselves that. The correct term is jackaroo.

....and cowboys live everywhere, and don't call themselves that. The
correct term is farmer. I was saying "get your stereotypes right",
not "stop stereotyping". "Stop stereotyping" is a whole other
argument.

For the record,
'Crocodile' Dundee, in the fictional universe created in the movie,
was neither a bushman nor a jackaroo. The correct term for what he was
is 'poacher'.

He claimed to be a bushman, just as characters in western movies
call themselves cowboys when they never touch a cow...the correct
term is 'outlaw' or sometimes 'vigilante'.
--
Rick Onanian

"CSB" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 01:45:04 GMT, "Tom Kunich"
wrote:

snip

You can take the cowboy out of the country but you can't take the hat off
of
the cowboy.


as it happens a young cattle drover was recently killed by a fall. It is a
tradition for these guys to wear Akubra hats while on a muster. Not anymore
say WorkCover (Govt Dept). The station owner was negligent for not making
these guys wear helmets.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...570335910.html

On Wed, 04 Feb 2004 00:52:02 +0000, Tom Kunich wrote:

"Peter Keller" wrote in message
news
Christopher Reeves fell from a horse and landed *helmet first* ... fat
lotta
good it did him.

C.Q.C.

You wouldn't expect it to. I don't see any way a helmet can protect
against neck injury.

--
This transmission is certified free of viruses as no Microsoft products
were used in its preparation or propagation.


Of course you can't relive an old injury but some people believe that if he
wasn't wearing the helmet he would have sustained a fractured skull that
would have given him a better chance of complete recovery.

But "what if's" aren't worth a damn.

I agree. I can think of advantages and disadvantages, reasons to wear a
helmet and reasons not to wear. The statistics are, to say the least,
inconsistent and randomly confusing; unlike the statistics for wearing
seatbelts which show in general a good positive effect. In this situation
I don't think a mandatory law is helpful at all; intelligent people should
be able to make up their own minds considering their personal
circumstances.
Peter

--
This transmission is certified free of viruses as no Microsoft products
were used in its preparation or propagation.

"John Doe" wrote in message
...

as it happens a young cattle drover was recently killed by a fall. It is
a
tradition for these guys to wear Akubra hats while on a muster. Not
anymore
say WorkCover (Govt Dept). The station owner was negligent for not making
these guys wear helmets.

So that makes the fatality rate - what? one per century?

--
Guy
===

WARNING: may contain traces of irony. Contents may settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

So that makes the fatality rate - what? one per century?

About 15 a year apparently.

Of course, inevitably, they are going to have to apply the same standard
to all those people driving company cars and force them to wear helmets.

Terry Collins wrote:

So that makes the fatality rate - what? one per century?

About 15 a year apparently.

Of course, inevitably, they are going to have to apply the same standard
to all those people driving company cars and force them to wear helmets.

Car helmets - bad idea, obviously. If it wasn't, racing drivers would
wear them. Oops, they do.

Remember, there were once people (backed up, no doubt, by the results
described in peer reviewed scholarly journals) who claimed it was safer
to be thrown clear of a car in a smash than be strapped in by
seatbelts.

----
If you ride a bicycle for long enough, well, statistically, you're going
to take falls, and take a bad fall sometime or other. If you don't
think so, you are either or both of a) lucky b) a fool.

Collar-bones heal. Scafoids (most times) heal. Broken arms, dislocated
shoulders, skin over ankles, knees, hips, back, arms and hands all
heal. Acquired brain injuries don't heal. Of course, people with ABIs
can and do sometimes regain abilities. But it's not like waiting six
weeks for the cast to come off then simply doing what you did before the
fall - ask someone with an ABI.

A bicycle helmet (probably) didn't save my life, nor did it stop me from
getting smashed and ripped up really badly, which generally happens when
you hit the asphalt at 60 kph. But it did mean I can still walk, talk,
ride a bicycle.

And same goes for all the many less major falls before and after - any a
hit to my bare head, on pavement, car, trail or whatever, might have
meant a concussion, a subdural haemorrhage, or worse. I haven't had to
find this out, though. Because... well, you know why.

I could go on, but time to stop sermonising. And sorry for the
crosspost to u.r.c, but, ummm, you started it? (joke!)

xxx

p

"Fred Nieman" wrote in message
...

Remember, there were once people (backed up, no doubt, by the results
described in peer reviewed scholarly journals) who claimed it was safer
to be thrown clear of a car in a smash than be strapped in by
seatbelts.

Remember there were once people who compared the fatality rates in countries
with and without sealt belt laws and found them to be the same. Obviously
that couldn't be right, so that data was buried. Amazingly, when the UK
introduced sealt belt legislation - driver fatalities stayed the same! But
there was a substantial rise in pedestrian, cyclist and rear-seat passenger
fatalities.

If you ride a bicycle for long enough, well, statistically, you're going
to take falls, and take a bad fall sometime or other. If you don't
think so, you are either or both of a) lucky b) a fool.

There is no inevitability about it.

Collar-bones heal. Scafoids (most times) heal. Broken arms, dislocated
shoulders, skin over ankles, knees, hips, back, arms and hands all
heal. Acquired brain injuries don't heal.

And acquired brain injuries - amazingly - are mostly caused by crashes well
outside the design envelope of hlemets, and by mechanisms which helmets do
nothing to mitigate.

A bicycle helmet (probably) didn't save my life, nor did it stop me from
getting smashed and ripped up really badly, which generally happens when
you hit the asphalt at 60 kph. But it did mean I can still walk, talk,
ride a bicycle.

Or not. Maybe it was your Mk. 1 Skull which did the job. That would be a
reasonable assumption, given that people not wearing helmets also often
survive without significant injury. That's the problem with
helmet-saved-my-life anecdotes, they always attribute the outcome solely to
helmets. Why? Lids are designed for straight impacts at speeds up to about
12mph. Why should we assume that they work in glancing or rotational
impacts at higher speeds? And what about the people who die when wearing
helmets? And the people who don't die when not wearing helmets?

At the population level it's not possible to proive that helmets have any
effect on brain injury. And even then, most cyclists who die of head injury
turn out to have other mortal injuries as well.

The case for helmets really is not half as cut-and-dried as the Liddites
would like us to believe.

The only absolutely repeatable effect of helmet legislation is a substantial
drop in cycling. And the major determinant of risk for cyclists appears to
be the number of cyclists - the more people cycle, the safer it gets.

And same goes for all the many less major falls before and after - any a
hit to my bare head, on pavement, car, trail or whatever, might have
meant a concussion, a subdural haemorrhage, or worse. I haven't had to
find this out, though. Because... well, you know why.


Why? I have had several crashes with and without helmets and there was no
noticeable difference in outcomes. The most serious head injury I ever had
was going through a low doorway. Should we have compulsory helmets in old
buildings? Or only for tall people?

--
Guy
===

WARNING: may contain traces of irony. Contents may settle after posting.
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