My helmet saved me, and broke

Ian, when I read some of the points that you and others with your views
post, my first reaction has been that they are 'obviously' wrong,
however, when I follow some of the links and look into it a bit more, I
sometimes think that, yes, there is room for debate there, and some of
the points make a lot of sense.

Presumably that's what you, and others with your views, are trying to
achieve- to get us to see beyond the 'obvious' and challenge the
knee-jerk response of 'helmets=good under all circumstances'.

I would say though, that part of getting that viewpoint across consists
of not alienating the people you're trying to convince. If one of the
reasons you and others consistently enter into any thread that mentions
helmets, is to ultimately cut down the chance that helmet compulsion
comes into force, the last thing you need to be doing is alienating a
group of people who, despite what you see as their knee-jerk pro-helmet
stance, actually, in the main, -agree- with you that helmet compulsion
is bad.

You may think that any alienation taking place is actualy purely down to
them being unreasonable and refusing to see the facts- In my opinion
there's more to it than that. It feels to me when reading some of your
posts that you're sometimes not giving much thought to -communicating-
your points, as much as you are in -winning-.

As an example I'll use the recent issue where people have stated quite
clearly that they are asking a very specific question- if a persons head
hits the ground after falling off a unicycle, will a helmet tend to lead
to less injury?

Now it's true that, if they weren't wearing a helmet, they may indeed
not be falling off (eg they may not have been as complacent and
therefore not be falling)- but, as as quite clearly been stated, that is
not the scenario.

The scenario is that a head is about to hit the ground, the possibility
of avoidance prior to the fall is -not- an option in this scenario- the
fall has happened and impact is inevitable- in that scenario, will a
helmet tend to offer some protection?

In a discussion there has to be some leeway, to state a proposition
-exactly- takes a lot of time and typing. I feel that, in the way you've
dealt with the above scenario, you've done yourself a disservice by
unnecessarily losing respect in the eyes of the people you're trying to
convince.

I'm hoping that you'll see this as sincere constructive critisism of
your approach; I'm also hoping that you'll now address the scenario and
say whether you believe that in the situation where a head is about to
hit concrete (ie it definitly -is- going to impact- all questions of
over compensation etc are irrelevant) would you prefer to be wearing a
helmet, or, would you prefer to be not wearing a helmet?

Answer that question honestly, and then we can get on with the points
you raise that are valid- alternatively, avoid it and basically lose the
ears of the small minority here who would otherwise be receptive to some
of the points you're raising.


--
onewheeldave - Semi Skilled Unicyclist

"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the ******* work for it."

--MAJOR KORGO KORGAR,
"Last of The Lancers"
AFC 32
------------------------------------------------------------------------
onewheeldave's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/874
View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/42900

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005, onewheeldave wrote:

As an example I'll use the recent issue where people have stated quite
clearly that they are asking a very specific question- if a persons head
hits the ground after falling off a unicycle, will a helmet tend to lead
to less injury?

1: It's an irrelevant and unreasonable question (have you stopped
beating your wife yet?).

2: I have answered that question. I don't know. You don't know.
There are mechanisms by which it might reduce teh injury. There are
mechanisms by which it might increase the injury. Saying much more is
pretty-nearly baseless speculation.

I'm hoping that you'll see this as sincere constructive critisism of
your approach; I'm also hoping that you'll now address the scenario

I have done so, yet again. How many times should I answer the
question?

I don't know.
You don't know.

I don't know.
You don't know.

That's anotehr couple, in case you missed the last one, in addition to
all teh previous ones.

Out of interest, how many times would you answer a question simply and
directly before considering it reasonable to become frustrated when
people say you're refusing to answer it?

Answer that question honestly,

I will, after you tell me (with a simple yes or no) whether you've
stopped beating your wife.

alternatively, avoid it and basically lose the ears of the small
minority here who would otherwise be receptive to some of the
points you're raising.

It is not a reasonable question. I can't provide a reasonable answer
to an unreasonable question. The fact that you can formulate
unreasonable questions has no bearing on teh debate. You may as well
ask "if helmets are proved to cause injury, should you wear one?"

regards, Ian SMith
--
|\ /| no .sig
|o o|
|/ \|

I don't have a wife, so no, I don't beat her.

-------------------------

Actually Ian, I-do- know the answer to-

"in the situation where a head is about to hit concrete (ie it definitly
is going to impact- all questions of over compensation etc are
irrelevant) would you prefer to be wearing a helmet, or, would you
prefer to be not wearing a helmet?
"

I would prefer to be wearing a helmet for the same reason that, if an
egg i value must be dropped onto hard concrete and I have the option
of-

1. just dropping it on the concrete

0r

2. placing a big sheet of soft foam between it and the concrete

I'll go for 2. I won't be looking at statistical studies; I won't be
concerned by the fact that the egg may still break on the foam, because
I'll be playing the odds and know that, in the majority of cases, the
egg will fare far better on the foam.

Neither will the fact that there are possible scenarios in which the
foam could make the egg fare worse (eg, there's a, albeit very small,
chance that a egg could hit concrete and survive, but, on hitting foam
be bounced off and hit the concrete from a different angle than it
otherwise would have)- because, again, I'll play the odds and go for the
most likely result.

Fact is that eggs are fragile and concrete is hard and simple physics
dictates that dropping the former on the latter will likely result in
breakage.

Same with my head- it's fragile; in the situation where my fragile head
is going to hit something hard, given the choice I'll interpose a
yielding barrier.

Maybe I'm being really dumb here and entirely missing your point- to
clarify this I'll ask you this-

"assuming you're going to get shot in the chest, would you prefer to be
wearing a bullet-proof vest, or not?"

I'm asking that because I see it as an analogous question to the helmet
one (the helmet question on -this- post, not other helmet questions
elsewhere) and I'm interested in seeing whether your answer to that
corresponds to the one you gave to the helmet one, or, whether you see
the two as not being analogous.


--
onewheeldave - Semi Skilled Unicyclist

"You can't outrun Death forever.
But you can make the ******* work for it."

--MAJOR KORGO KORGAR,
"Last of The Lancers"
AFC 32
------------------------------------------------------------------------
onewheeldave's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/874
View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/42900

Ian Smith wrote:
*1: It's an irrelevant and unreasonable question
...
Ian SMith*

So Ian you are quite prepared to formulate an opinion regarding the
probabilities of wearing helmets etc. based on statistics yet to the
question proposed to you here (in ever more simply terms) you say you
‘don’t know’. It reminds me of talking to a teenager - highly amusing –
please do carry on.


--
Irideonone
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Irideonone's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/10550
View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/42900

Fun stuff!Ian Smith wrote:
*1: It's an irrelevant and unreasonable question (have you stopped
beating your wife yet?).*
My personal answer on the wife beating question: I don't know. You don't
know. Wow, that really gets us somewhere.

If you really think those two questions are about equal, I'm done
debating. But let's go back to the question that I used in my previous
post:

Do you really think Steveyo's injuries would have been equal had he not
been wearing a helmet?

This question is a lot less ambiguous. "I don't know" still works (as a
*LAME*) response, but if that's the way you choose to go I'm going to
say you are avoiding the issue. Nobody can be sure to what degree the
trauma to Steveyo's head would be different, I'll agree with that. I'm
just asking if you believe it would be worse, or not? If you really
think it's about a 50/50 chance that his head trauma level would be
about the same, then "I don't know" is an acceptable answer. Perhaps
your statistics tell you it's +- 50% and you can't think beyond that.
We're just asking you to estimate, not publish a study on it. So far you
are avoiding the issue. You can say you aren't, but some of us think you
are.

In case there's any confusion, we're talking about the exact same fall
Steveyo describes in his original post, minus the helmet. If you want to
get technical, minus the *mass* of the helmet also, along with any
additional acceleration it may have imparted to his head and upper body
on the way down. So this is a falling situation, not a "would he still
be falling" situation, and not a "would he fall as hard" situation. Same
fall. Easy.

Back to the earlier post:
*There are mechanisms by which it might reduce teh injury. There
are
mechanisms by which it might increase the injury.*
What kinds of mechanisms? On the reduction side I see the foam
compressing. What about on the increasing side?
*You may as well ask "if helmets are proved to cause injury, should
you wear one?"*
What's so hard about that one? How about "Probably not." with the
Probably being based on some additional information that probably goes
along with the proof.

Anyway, Onewheeldave made a good point. If you're trying to educate
people, or convince them to be aware of the existing studies on helmets,
the way you're doing it is not very effective. By avoiding more obvious
situations of helmet vs. no helmet in specific impacts, it makes it look
like you have something to hide.


--
johnfoss - More Moab Fun

John Foss, the Uni-Cyclone
"jfoss" at "unicycling.com" -- www.unicycling.com

"Read the rules!" -- 'IUF Rulebook'
(http://www.unicycling.org/iuf/rulebook/) -- 'USA Rulebook'
(http://www.unicycling.org/usa/competition/)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
johnfoss's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/832
View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/42900

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 11:20:40 -0500, onewheeldave wrote:

Actually Ian, I-do- know the answer to-

"in the situation where a head is about to hit concrete (ie it definitly
is going to impact- all questions of over compensation etc are
irrelevant) would you prefer to be wearing a helmet, or, would you
prefer to be not wearing a helmet? "

I would prefer to be wearing a helmet

Then I think you're misguided.

There are circumstances where it won't do any good (I guarantee it).
That you would rather be wearing a helmet even in circumstances where
it's guaranteed to make no difference whatsoever is, of course, your
choice.

I remain of the opinion that I don't know. The question is a
pointless question.

Wearing a helmet is less comfortable than not wearing it (normally).
Presumably you agree, since otherwise you'd wear the helmet all the
time, irrespsective of whether you are cycling, unicycling or
whatever, just for comfort. (I admit I am assuming you don't wear
your helmet all the time, but I've rarely met anyone that does).

Therefore, in a circumstance where it's not going to do any good, I'd
rather not wear it. In a circumstance where it will do good I'd
rather wear it. In answer to the question asked - I don't know, it's
not a useful question. As I have said.

Repeatedly.

Ad nauseum.

Despite people claiming I haven't answered the question.

Maybe I'm being really dumb here and entirely missing your point- to
clarify this I'll ask you this-

"assuming you're going to get shot in the chest, would you prefer to be
wearing a bullet-proof vest, or not?"

I don't know enough aboput bullet-proof vests to have any useful
notion of their efficacy. So the answer is "I don't know". In that
particular case, I'd need to find out something about bullet proof
vests to answer the question.

The relevance of the analogy, actually, is that I would endeavour to
find out something about bullet proof vests before answering the
question. Lots of people on the group seem to think it would be
better to be absolutely certain that they'd rather wear something they
actually know very little about, on the assumption that it must be
better than nothing.

I doubt bullet-proof-vests are actually bullet-PROOF, and if the 'shot
in the chest' in question is with (eg) the main gun on an Abrams M1A,
then if tehre's any detriment in wearing the bullet-proof-vest, I
expect I wouldn't bother (after all, if the bullet in question has a
depleted uranium core and can penetrate a foot of hardened steel, I
doubt any vest will have any effect at all).

Even this neglects the observation that it's a pointless question
becasue of the "assuming". It's as relevant as me asking "Assuming
that you will die from the next UPD if (and only if) you are wearing
your helmet, are you going to wear it?". Presumably the answer to
that is no, but because of the formulation of the question, the answer
is irrelevant to any meaningful debate about helmets.

elsewhere) and I'm interested in seeing whether your answer to that
corresponds to the one you gave to the helmet one, or, whether you see
the two as not being analogous.

The answer matches exactly, but for very different reasons -

In the helmet case, I know that at population level helmets do not
show the effects that a naive assesmnet of them might expect.
Consequently, I know that their effects on the individual level are
likely to be not as simple as it might seem. One possible explanation
for this could be that they exacerbate serious injury in a significant
proportion of cases. Consequently, in a scenario where I do not know
whether it falls within the proportion of cases where a helmet will
make injury worse, I do not know whether I'd prefer to be wearing a
helmet. I'm genuinely surprised this is contentious.

Suppose I set up an experiment in which wearing a helmet WILL make
your injuries much worse. Would you rather wear a helmet? Now I set
up another where wearing a helmet WILL make your injuries slightly
less severe. Would you rather wear a helmet? Suppose I set up an
experiment but don't tell you which it is. Would you rather be
wearing a helmet? Or don't you know?

In the bullet-proof-vest case, I don't know because I just don't know.
It's analogous to me asking you what number I'm thinking of as I type
this - you just don't know, you don't have any data on which to hazard
anything other than an absolute guess. In such circumstances, I think
it more honest and more useful to say I don't know than to pretend I
have knowledge I don't.

regards, Ian SMith
--
|\ /| no .sig
|o o|
|/ \|

On Tue, 30 Aug 2005 12:29:55 -0500, Irideonone wrote:

Ian Smith wrote:
*1: It's an irrelevant and unreasonable question
...
Ian SMith*

So Ian you are quite prepared to formulate an opinion regarding the
probabilities of wearing helmets etc. based on statistics yet to the
question proposed to you here (in ever more simply terms) you say you
dont know

Yes. I'm surprised that's contentious.

It's entirely reasonable to have an opinion on a particular part of a
topic without have omniscient knowledge of teh entire topic, and know
the answer to a specific (but undefined) scenario.

Do you have an opinion on what 2+2= ?

Is it surprising that you have this opinion despite not knowing the
number I'm thinking of as I type this?

I would say not, but your comment above seems to imply that you think
it is.

I have an opinion on whether it is worthwhile or not to wear a helmet
when cycling (and I regularly ride one, two and three-wheeled cycles).
I am not surprised that I hold this opinion despite not knowing the
answer to whether I'd rather be wearing a helmet when being subject to
an undefined situation.

I am surprised that you find it surprising.

It reminds me of talking to a teenager - highly amusing

That too I find surprising. In my experience, it is teenagers that
feel the need to be world expert on every topic and rather not admit,
when they don't know soemthing, to not knowing.

Are you really claiming that you regard it as a sign of maturity to
guess, or lie, or plain spout nonsense if you're asked a question that
you don't know the answer to? Personally, if I don't know, I'll say I
don't know. You are unlikley to convince me it is better to pretend I
know the answer to a question when I don't. I doubt you'll convince
me that doing so is a sign of maturity.

regards, Ian SMith
--
|\ /| no .sig
|o o|
|/ \|

I've ridden mountain bike and bmx for a dozen years or so, and now
unicycle for a couple of years. I'm also incredably clumsy, and
constantly ride faster and hard than my true ability dictates. I fall
and crash a lot, i've hit my head a fair few times to say the least.
Every time i've gone head long into a tree, the ground or ramp, my
helmet has cushioned the blow, and at the very least avoided many
brusies and cuts to my melon (and when i say melon its a metephore for
head before we go off topic). I have never had an accident or injury
exacebated by wearing helmet, so in my experience wearing a helmet is a
VERY good idea, and not wearing one is clearly asking for trouble


--
andyparry
------------------------------------------------------------------------
andyparry's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/8106
View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/42900

andyparry wrote:
*I've ridden mountain bike and bmx for a dozen years or so, and now
unicycle for a couple of years. I'm also incredably clumsy, and
constantly ride faster and hard than my true ability dictates. I fall
and crash a lot, i've hit my head a fair few times to say the least.
Every time i've gone head long into a tree, the ground or ramp, my
helmet has cushioned the blow, and at the very least avoided many
brusies and cuts to my melon (and when i say melon its a metephore for
head before we go off topic). I have never had an accident or injury
exacebated by wearing helmet, so in my experience wearing a helmet is
a VERY good idea, and not wearing one is clearly asking for trouble *
Amen to that, brother.


--
steveyo - Last will be first

steveyo

"I complained I need new shoes, until I met a man with no feet." -
unknown

"Do whatever steps you want if
you have cleared them with the pontiff"- Tom Lehrer


------------------------------------------------------------------------
steveyo's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/7228
View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/42900

andyparry wrote:
*I have never had an accident or injury exacebated by wearing helmet,*

I have.
It also seems like I am my graceful (and more quick to move my head
through branches when I am not wearing a helmet.

Ian has overlooked the obvious answer that others are hounding him on.

The answer is clearly:
Question:
in the situation where a head is about to hit concrete (ie it definitly
is going to impact- all questions of over compensation etc are
irrelevant) would you prefer to be wearing a helmet, or, would you
prefer to be not wearing a helmet?

If the helmet is going to reduce injury, (and/or save a life when
survival is desired) then I would prefer to be wearing the helment.
However, if there was *any* circumstance were to increase injury (or
preserve my life when survival is not desired) I would prefer NOT to be
wearing the helmet.

That spells it out for the people that don't understand his reluctance
to answer the question.


I recently rode a trail at the same speed and such with and without a
helmet. I hit my head both times on a branch (I'm tall so that happens
quite a bit). The helmet's height increased the amount of force to my
head and neck, and before reaching the branch I was more confident (that
I would duck low enough and that even if I wasn't low enough the helmet
would protect me).


BAM!!!


After regaining my vision, I definitely would have preferred to be
wearing my baseball cap.




Tree branches lock into the holes of my helmet, pull up on the helmet
and either stop me in my tracks or "lift me up" by my neck strap. I
definitely would have preferred to be wearing my baseball cap.

I rode the Vortex trail in Ocala Florida. Overconfident that I had made
an "easy rocky descent" I reduced concentration and power. I fell down
to my hands and my head slapped on the ground. I definitely preferred
the helmet.

In sum, the answer to that loaded question is clearly an "if then"
statement.



P.S. While Ian can disregard the question's importance, he should
re-read the advice about communicating with others and speaking
"acceptably" enough to have his message accepted.


--
ChangingLINKS.com - member

Wishing you Happiness, Joy and Laughter,
Drew Brown
'Changing LINKS' (http://www.ChangingLINKS.com)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ChangingLINKS.com's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/5468
View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/42900