Saved by a helmet

Phil W Lee phil(at)lee-family(dot)me(dot)uk writes:

Maybe a helmet with an integral wig, free to rotate on the shell,
would remove this risk.

And if it were a blonde wig may also reduce the chance of being hit in
the first place ...


-dan

JNugent wrote:

I don't wear a helmet but certainly would be less careful if I did.

Why?

Why I don't wear one? I ride carefully and don't expect to fall off.
However, I do know that eventually I will come off, but think the
discomfort of wearing a helmet is outweighed by the extra enjoyment of
not wearing one.

Why I wouldn't be less careful? Just because I have a helmet on, I
still don't want to come off.

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

So perhaps the time is right for you to post your evidence that the
incidence of skull fractures is (a) significant and (b) correlated in
any way with helmet use?

Evidence is unnecessary - it should be obvious to you that any covering
of the head will protect the skull.

On Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:45:34 +0100, Jerry J wrote:

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

So perhaps the time is right for you to post your evidence that the
incidence of skull fractures is (a) significant and (b) correlated in
any way with helmet use?

Evidence is unnecessary - it should be obvious to you that any covering
of the head will protect the skull.

We could save a lot of time and money in courts with that perspective.

"Evidence is unnecessary - it should be obvious to you he's guilty"

On Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:45:34 +0100, Jerry J wrote:

Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

So perhaps the time is right for you to post your evidence that the
incidence of skull fractures is (a) significant and (b) correlated in
any way with helmet use?

Evidence is unnecessary - it should be obvious to you that any covering
of the head will protect the skull.

Yes, I am convinced that my knitted acrylic balaclava did indeed Save
My Life [TM] some years back, but the plural of anecdote is not
evidence and the question was actually whether the incidence of skull
fracture is either significant or correlated with helmet use, not
whether a helmet was capable of preventing skull fractures in some
unknown number of marginal cases. You would surely not fall prey to
the fallacious assumption that wearing a helmet makes no difference to
the cyclist's behaviour.

Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/urc | http://www.nohelmetlaw.org.uk/

"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken

Newsgroup may contain nuts.

"Jerry J" wrote in message ...
Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

So perhaps the time is right for you to post your evidence that the
incidence of skull fractures is (a) significant and (b) correlated in
any way with helmet use?

Evidence is unnecessary - it should be obvious to you that any covering of
the head will protect the skull.

Argument is futile in this newsgroup which thankfully is unrepresentative of
the average cyclist.

In article , Jerry J wrote:
Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

So perhaps the time is right for you to post your evidence that the
incidence of skull fractures is (a) significant and (b) correlated in
any way with helmet use?

Evidence is unnecessary - it should be obvious to you that any covering
of the head will protect the skull.

It is only obvious to those who have never bothered to think about
the issue or investigate the known facts. There are at least as
many reasons to believe that helmets increase the risk of brain
damage as that they reduce it. And I am referring to well-researched
data, too.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

On Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:51:00 +0100, "Just zis Guy, you know?"
wrote:

On Sun, 31 May 2009 16:44:10 -0700, "Mike Easter"
wrote:

Yes. I completely concede that you personally can easily tear apart both
US & UK helmets with your bare hands as you've stated.

shrug.

I further concede
that anyone wearing a helmet automatically rides much more dangerously,
and inattentively thus significantly imperiling their life and limb as
others have stated.

Not /much/ more dangerously, just less safely. The theory is called
risk compensation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation


That'll be the "research" that found:

The closer a driver is to the cyclist, the greater chance of a
collision.

Drivers passed closer to the rider the further out into the road he
was.


No **** ! What a surprise.

There is of course the other "research" which you quote regularly:

When five school children were asked if they drove faster when wearing
a helmet - they said that they did.

That well known unbiased site cyclehelmets.org said : that this was
the "First empirical evidence of risk compensation when cycling."



Guy


--

The BMA (British Medical Association) urges legislation to make the wearing of cycle helmets compulsory for both adults and children.

The evidence from those countries where compulsory cycle helmet use has already been introduced
is that such legislation has a beneficial effect on cycle-related deaths and head injuries.
This strongly supports the case for introducing legislation in the UK.
Such legislation should result in a reduction in the morbidity and mortality associated with cycling accidents.

In ,
Mr. Benn %%@%%.% tweaked the Babbage-Engine to tell us:

It is not known at the moment what the exact circumstances of the
accident were so it is unfair to judge what the cause was until there
is more information available.

But you rely on the unsupported word of a doctor that a helmet saved your
mate's life?

--
Dave Larrington
http://www.legslarry.beerdrinkers.co.uk
Pathetic earthlings - who will save you now?

On May 30, 7:16*am, "Mr. Benn" %%@%%.% wrote:
I've just taken a phone call to let me know that one of my close friends
has been taken by air ambulance to a hospital in Romford. *He was in
collision with a car on a roundabout in Stevenage. *The car pulled onto the
roundabout without noticing my friend on his bicycle.

Seehttp://tinyurl.com/nptqvefor details of the incident.

Fortunately, my friend was wearing a helmet. *He is in the Acute Assessment
ward being monitored after suffering head injuries. *The doctor treating
him told him that he would probably be dead if he hadn't been wearing a
helmet. *Apparently, his helmet now has a chunk missing out of it and is
partially squashed.

I cannot understand why some people still believe that it's safer *not* to
wear a helmet. *Logic seems to defy some people. *Cyclists have a
responsibility to themselves to so everything to avoid accidents and
injury. *Wearing a helmet is probably the simplest and most effective thing
to achieve this.

Thanks to his helmet, my friend is likely to survive his ordeal. *At least
I hope so.

I can imagine your friends helmet did help prevent some superficial
damage to his head and that's why I wear one mountain biking. But
saving his life or preventing brain damage is not something a basic
cycling helmet is capable of. The problem seems to stem from the
statement 'Helmets save lives', which in itself is almost true. People
take this statement and look at a standard cycling helmet and say,'
it's a helmet and therefore it too must save lives' without
considering whether it is actually capable of that. A motorcycle
helmet is a helmet I think can save lives, a downhill full face
mountain bike helmet is also a helmet I think can save lives, but a XC
type lid isn't. In an effort to make a helmet light enough to wear
cycling I think its ability to prevent death has gone and the original
statement should be 'Some helmets save lives' and not assume the all
helmets do.

Best wishes and speedy recovery to your friend.