Extended stems

On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:01:16 -0500, !Jones wrote:

On Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:19:21 GMT, in rec.bicycles.tech Johnny
Twelve-Point presented by JFT wrote:

I look forward to your attempt to evade this question.

Actually, I'm simply going to ignore it.

Writing a few words is ignoring something?

Hahahaha. How dopey.

On Jul 14, 7:11*pm, !Jones wrote:
On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:00:11 -0700 (PDT), in rec.bicycles.tech Frank

Krygowski wrote:
That helmet saved my wife's life.

Ah yes. *There are countless "the helmet saved my life" stories.

So... do you mind terribly if I wear one? *I'd appreciate it.

I don't mind if you wear one. If you like, you can wear knee pads,
elbow pads, pink riding shorts and a clown nose as well.

I do mind people portraying ordinary bicycling as being so dangerous
that head protection is necessary. And I despair for our education
system when I meet people who think that every dent in styrofoam
represents a life saved.

- Frank Krygowski

!Jones wrote:
On Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:19:21 GMT, in rec.bicycles.tech Johnny
Twelve-Point presented by JFT wrote:

On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:22:44 -0500, !Jones wrote:

On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:01:48 -0700 (PDT), in rec.bicycles.tech Frank
Krygowski wrote:

Are you claiming you did _not_ say, "I would not compel you to
wear a helmet; however, I would certainly agree that, should you
choose not to use a helmet and (hopefully never) suffer head
trauma, then it's your problem, not
mine, even if I'm at fault for the precipitating event"?

Yes, I said that. I would *never* force you to wear a helmet,
however I think it is negligent on your part not to. OTOH, it's a
free country.

So if a car hits you when you're out walking and your head is
injured, can we say you were negligent to not wear helmet?

It's a simple and pertinent question.

I look forward to your attempt to evade this question.

Actually, I'm simply going to ignore it.

He gets that a lot. ROTFL

On Jul 14, 5:20 am, Johnny Twelve-Point presented by JFT
wrote:
On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:13:00 -0500, !Jones wrote:
On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:43:46 GMT, in rec.bicycles.tech Johnny
Twelve-Point presented by JFT wrote:

I note you didn't answer any of my other questions...

Excuse me, sir. Please explain to me exactly how the fact that you
spew a string of silly-assed questions onto Usenet places me under
some kind of an obligation to provide you with answers.

You address that question, then we'll consider yours.

Nice dodge attempt.

You're under no "obligation" to answer my question, but if you can't
answer my questions it surely undercuts your earlier assertion.

My questions are for analogous situations to the one in which you
claim a person not wearing a helmet on a bike is somehow partially
liable to damages he/she gets simply due to the fact that he/she is
not wearing a helmet.

If your claim is true, it should hold up in similar situations
involving other types of activities and injuries. So here are the
questions for you again:

What about if I'm driving a car and hit you when you're walking on the
sidewalk? That happens all the time -- is some of the liability for
the injury yours?

What if I'm driving and you're sitting in the back seat of a car and
injure your head? Should you have been wearing a helmet? What if
you're in a car that doesn't have side curtain airbags and I hit your
car with mine, from the side? Is some of the liability yours?

You assume risk when you go out for a walk on the sidewalk, or when
you go for a ride in somebody else's car, or drive in a car with less
than optimum safety features, or... (etc.)

On Jul 14, 7:24 pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Jul 14, 7:11 pm, !Jones wrote:

On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:00:11 -0700 (PDT), in rec.bicycles.tech Frank

Krygowski wrote:
That helmet saved my wife's life.

Ah yes. There are countless "the helmet saved my life" stories.

So... do you mind terribly if I wear one? I'd appreciate it.

I don't mind if you wear one. If you like, you can wear knee pads,
elbow pads, pink riding shorts and a clown nose as well.


See, this is derisive, supercilious crap. You can't just leave it at,
"I respect your personal choice" (because, I think, you don't).

On Wed, 15 Jul 2009 02:05:21 GMT, in rec.bicycles.tech Johnny
Twelve-Point presented by JFT wrote:

I look forward to your attempt to evade this question.

Actually, I'm simply going to ignore it.

That pretty much sums up your argument -- it can't stand up to a
simple and closely related analogy.

Well, OK, I will answer your questions on a quid pro quo basis.
First, you must answer a question of mine in essay format, then I will
answer one question of yours.

You must first respond to me, only then will I respond to you.

That is *my* standard response when someone tries to run the old "give
me answers" troll on me. I have seen that one used all over Usenet.
It's quite common in the "alt" hierarchy; however, one encounters it
as far south as the support groups, occasionally. See also: the "more
information troll" and the tried and true "give me a citation troll".

If that's OK with you, then I will post my first question. I doubt
that you will because you're not seeking any answers; you simply want
to grab control of the conversation.

Jones

On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:24:50 -0700 (PDT), in rec.bicycles.tech Frank
Krygowski wrote:

I don't mind if you wear one. If you like, you can wear knee pads,
elbow pads, pink riding shorts and a clown nose as well.

I do mind people portraying ordinary bicycling as being so dangerous
that head protection is necessary. And I despair for our education
system when I meet people who think that every dent in styrofoam
represents a life saved.

I think that I can easily find 50 citations published in peer-reviewed
journals of medicine that argue for the effectiveness of helmets.
Actually, I ran a quick JUSTOR search and found seventeen such studies
in 20 seconds... my first search. *All* of them are targeted on
bicycles and all find helmets to be effective... at least, they do
according to the abstracts (OK, Lillis, 1990 didn't explicitly say one
way or the other); I didn't look up the primary source documents.
I'll bet I can find 100! I'll give you 500 if you'll let me include
motorcycle studies.

I'm going to call the efficacy of helmets a proven fact. (Insert
screaming here) At some point, it becomes like cigarette smoking or
global warming... these are not theories; they're as obvious as
gravity and supported by the full weight of science.

And, with that, my AT&T news server turns into a pumpkin at midnight
tonight and I'm not inclined to go get another one... just too much
trouble. I'm afraid that this will be my last posting. When I used
to troll more back in the day, I have killed three NNTP servers in a
single day if I got into a serious flame war... I always had a hot
backup... but, no more.

Here are the results of my quick JUSTOR search for your reading
pleasu

Rogers GB. Bicycle and bicycle helmet use
patterns in the United States in 1998. J Safety Res 2000;31:149-58.



Thompson RS, Rivara FP, Thompson DC. A
case-control study of the effectiveness of bicycle safety helmets. N
Engl J Med 1989;320:1361-7.



Sacks JJ, Holmgreen P, Smith SM, Sosin DM.
Bicycle-associated head injuries and deaths in the United States from
1984 through 1988: how many are preventable? JAMA 1991;266:3016-8.



Sacks JJ, Kresnow MJ, Houston B, Russell J.
Bicycle helmet use among American children, 1994. Inj Prev
1996;2:258-62.



Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(US): Shulman J, Provenzano G, Wolters C, Mitchell K. Preventable
injuries costs and related deaths (PICARD). Final report. Baltimore
(MD): Battelle Center for Public Health Research and Evaluation; 1998
Sept. 8.



Logan P, Leadbetter S, Gibson RE, Schieber R,
Branche C, Bender P, et al. Evaluation of a bicycle helmet giveaway
program—Texas, 1995. Pediatrics 1998; 101:578-82.



Ni H, Sacks JJ, Curtis L, Cieslak PR, Hedberg
K. Evaluation of a statewide bicycle helmet law via multiple measures
of helmet use. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 1997;151:59-65.



Womack KN. Bicycle helmet observation in six
Texas cities: a report to the Texas Department of Health. College
Station: Texas Transportation Institute; 1994 Oct.



Humphreys J. Final report to CDC: State injury
intervention program to prevent bicycle related head injuries. Austin
(TX): Texas Department of Health; 1996.



Becker LR, Mandell MB, Wood K, Schmidt ER,
O’Hara F. A community based approach to bicycle helmet use counts. Inj
Prev 1996;2:283-5.



Schieber RA, Kresnow MJ, Sacks JJ, Pledger EE,
O’Neil JM, Toomey K. Effect of a state law on reported bicycle helmet
ownership and use. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 1996;150:707-12.



DiGuiseppi CG. Rivara FP. Koepsell TD.
Polissar L. Bicycle helmet use by children. Evaluation of a
community-wide helmet campaign. JAMA 1989;262: 2256-61.



Lillis RP. Method for evaluation of bicycle
helmet projects: a manual for local programs. Albany: New York State
Department of Health; 1990.



Coté TR, Sacks JJ, Lambert-Huber DA,
Dannenberg, AL, Kresnow MJ, Lipsitz CM, et al. Bicycle helmet use
among Maryland children: effect of legislation and education.
Pediatrics 1992;89:1216-20.



Thompson NJ, McClintock HO. Evaluating your
program’s worth: a primer on evaluation for programs to prevent
unintentional injury. Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (US), National Center for Injury Prevention and Control;
1998.



Kinde M, Briske L. Final report to CDC: State
injury intervention program to prevent bicycle-related head injuries.
Minneapolis: Minnesota Department of Health, 1996.

On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:59:44 -0700 (PDT), Dan O
wrote:

On Jul 14, 7:24 pm, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Jul 14, 7:11 pm, !Jones wrote:

On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:00:11 -0700 (PDT), in rec.bicycles.tech Frank

Krygowski wrote:
That helmet saved my wife's life.

Ah yes. There are countless "the helmet saved my life" stories.

So... do you mind terribly if I wear one? I'd appreciate it.

I don't mind if you wear one. If you like, you can wear knee pads,
elbow pads, pink riding shorts and a clown nose as well.


See, this is derisive, supercilious crap. You can't just leave it at,
"I respect your personal choice" (because, I think, you don't).

Here's the thing - I make plenty of logically unsupported or even
superstitious decisions in my life. We all do - we don't have perfect
information so we have to go by guesses, fears, speculation and
half-baked theories. That's norml and even good.

But sometimes better information is available. Ideally we'l change
our behavior based on the better information. Or at least, if we
can't we'll recognize our irrationallity and not argue about it,
stating facts that are untrue such as IJones recently has to support
it. We'll just shut up. And if we don't, like IJones, we deserve to
be mocked and disrespected.

On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:05:30 -0500, !Jones wrote:

On Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:17:34 GMT, in rec.bicycles.tech Johnny
Twelve-Point presented by JFT wrote:

Funny, again you point to only one example of mine and not the other,
most closely analogous ones: does a pedestrian or passenger in a car
who gets a head injury have higher liability if he/she was not wearing
a helmet?

You can make a good case for wearing helmets in cars,

Thanks - at least some rationality appears from !Jones.

Now how does that liability issue go with that?

Since you object to wearing one on a bicycle,
And you know that how?

On Jul 14, 11:27*pm, !Jones wrote:
On Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:24:50 -0700 (PDT), in rec.bicycles.tech Frank

Krygowski wrote:
I don't mind if you wear one. *If you like, you can wear knee pads,
elbow pads, pink riding shorts and a clown nose as well.

I do mind people portraying ordinary bicycling as being so dangerous
that head protection is necessary. *And I despair for our education
system when I meet people who think that every dent in styrofoam
represents a life saved.

I think that I can easily find 50 citations published in peer-reviewed
journals of medicine that argue for the effectiveness of helmets.
Actually, I ran a quick JUSTOR search and found seventeen such studies
in 20 seconds... my first search. **All* of them are targeted on
bicycles and all find helmets to be effective... at least, they do
according to the abstracts (OK, Lillis, 1990 didn't explicitly say one
way or the other

And I think you need to read more than the abstracts.

To begin with, people who have delved into this in an impartial manner
have noted that almost all "bike helmets are very effective" papers
are case-control studies with self selected subjects. You've claimed
ignorance of the "case-control" term, so I'll explain. Hospital ER
records are examined for presence of head injury, and for claimed use
of a bike helmet. Percentage head injured are computed for those with
and without helmets, and comparisons are made. In some studies,
comparisons are also made with cyclists contacted randomly in their
homes.

Again, these always show some benefit to helmets. The record is the
"85%" of the Thompson and Rivara study (which you blithely added to
your list, despite your prior assertions that it was worthless!).
That alone should give you a clue that your list is, at the very best,
overly credulous.

The major problem with such studies is that they are ALL based on self-
selected subjects. People choose whether to wear a bike helmet, and
subjects choose whether or not to go to the ER after a fall off their
bike. In 1989, the same terrified-of-brain-injury folks that donned
the earliest bike helmets also ran to the ER as soon as they tumbled
off their bikes. (Correction: The terrified parents drove them to
the ER.) This showed up in various ways - e.g. that the ER saw
roughly seven times the helmet use as did street surveys, and that the
bike helmets "prevented" about 3/4 of the leg injuries. And, as was
immediately pointed out, those early helmet adopters were much more
likely to be kids riding with parents (vs. riding alone), on bike
trails (vs. streets), falling on soft surfaces (vs. hard), involved
with motor vehicles (vs. simple tumbles) etc.

We have an exact analogy in the issue of Hormone Replacement Therapy
for post-menopausal women. The early, volunteer adopters of HRT
showed much less heart disease. Based on that, HRT was widely
prescribed for a while - but larger studies involving non-self-
selected women showed HRT greatly _increased_ the risk of heart
disease (and as is now known, breast cancer). They rarely prescribe
HRT these days; in fact, they caution against it.

Self selected subjects tend to be much different from the general
population. Their different behavior twists the results. You simply
can't accept such evidence - which is why the FDA uses double blind
tests of drugs. It would never accept studies like these for any
medical use.

Other supposedly pro-helmet studies are really just jumping on the
publication bandwagon, using any justification at all to get something
in print, because pro-helmet garbage has to meet almost no standards
at all. For example, someone recently pointed to the Berg &
Westerling paper out of Sweden, claiming it "proved" helmets reduced
head injury. Even ten minutes of reading showed it to be garbage.
The conclusions were based on the following "facts": Helmet use in
Sweden was assumed (not measured) to have increased in the past ten
years. The number of head injuries of adult cyclists hadn't changed.
The number of head injuries of kids dropped about 11%. There was no
data on the amount of kids cycling or how that had changed. But since
there was a modest decrease for kids, and since it's assumed that kids
helmet use rose, then the helmets MUST have been effective in causing
that decrease! (Um... but we won't mention the adults again.)

Can you name another field in which such a paper would be accepted??

Furthermore, many pro-helmet papers (including, I believe, some you've
cited) do not examine the effect of helmet use. Instead, they take as
a given that helmet use MUST reduce head injuries, and they examine
methods of forcing people to wear helmets. Their abstracts often
contain phrases like "Bicycle helmets have been proven effective in
reducing head injuries" (most often, followed by a citation of the
"85%" garbage study) but the point of the paper is compulsion, not
examination.

What you need to find is this: Time series data that involves a large
percentage of a jurisdiction's population during a time when helmet
use increases, preferably increases rapidly (so environmental
variables don't confound things). You need to correlate _serious_
head injuries _per cyclist_ with helmet use. And BTW, you need a true
control group, since medical technology, diagnostic techniques and
hospital admission standards change over time, and fewer people are
admitted as years go by. Pedestrians form a useful control group;
that is, if serious pedestrian head injuries decline in the same
manner that bicyclist head injuries decline, then any increase in bike
helmet wearing means nothing. Unless, that is, you really did get the
peds to start protecting their heads.

Oh, one more thing: Be sure the study properly defines "head
injury." Thompson & Rivara, in coming up with their "85%" figure,
counted cut ears and scratched chins as "head injuries." Many other
pro-helmet studies have used similar word tricks.

For what it's worth, I've looked for studies like that - i.e. non self-
selected and all the rest - but I've never found one that showed any
significant helmet benefit. That's the main thing that changed me
from a helmet promoter to a helmet skeptic.

Let me know what you find.

- Frank Krygowski