Bicycle helmet law can save lives

Frank Krygowski wrote in part:

...Cycling is NOT a significant source of serious or fatal head injury.

This idea never existed before the advent of commercially available
helmets. From the birth of the "safety bicycle" (replacing the
"ordinary" or "high wheeler") until roughly 1980, bicycles were
accurately considered quite safe.

Once there was money to be made by selling protective headgear, the
publicity started, claiming that bicycling is actually quite dangerous,
and that protective equipment is necessary. What balderdash!

It's understandable, I suppose, that unscrupulous manufacturers might
wish to spread fear to sell their products. It's understandable, I
suppose, that the usual contingent of hand-wringers picked up on this,
and added it to the long list of things to warn everyone about....


Frank, this is a plausible chronology, but what is your source for it?
I seem to remember being corraled into some kind of bike safety
rodeo back in '77 or '78. Maybe the hand-wringers were at it
before the helmet guys caught on.

Robert

AustinMN wrote:
There have been some really spectacular head-plant impacts that resulted in
no serious injury without a helmet.

Same is true for some supposedly useless (i.e. pre-standard) helmets.

Skid-Lid was an early brand of helmet which, according to some people,
the standards seemed written to purposely exclude. Bell and others
claimed it was useless, and when Bell & Snell got the current standard
implemented, Skid-Lid lost their court appeal and were driven out of
business.

But Skid-Lid had testimonials from people who were thrown over their
handlebars - in one instance, IIRC, more than 15 feet - and landed on
their heads. They claimed the helmet saved their life. Of course, Bell
said that was bull****.

But if one of today's helmets make that claim? It's Gospel!


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

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Just zis Guy, you know? wrote:

Our
gun crime levels were very low and are still very low, almost entirely
restricted to gangs and drug dealers. The major source of domestic
and accidental firearms injuries, shotguns, continue to be regulated
precisely as before.

Interesting. One of my local gun nuts swore that gun crime in Britain
was surging tremendously, "proving" the foolishness of any gun regulations.

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

R15757 wrote:

Frank, this is a plausible chronology, but what is your source for it?
I seem to remember being corraled into some kind of bike safety
rodeo back in '77 or '78. Maybe the hand-wringers were at it
before the helmet guys caught on.

My source is my own memory, but I could probably dig out some examples,
given enough time.

It's not that there were no bike safety programs before that time. In
fact, I volunteered to help run some, beginning sometime around 1975.

What was different was the general attitude. There was no mention of
head injuries, no warnings of death, no fear mongering. Instead, it was
just "This is how to ride properly."

Today, swimming instruction doesn't harp on the number of deaths and
permanent brain injuries from drownings or near-drownings, although both
numbers far exceed those for cycling. They just concentrate on telling
you how to do things properly, and emphasize the fun of doing it right.

Bicycling used to be like that. But now even avid cyclists are pleased
to make ordinary riding sound like an "extreme" adventure, something
akin to mountain climbing.

It's foolish and harmful.


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

Greetings,

Quote by Frank Krygowsky:

"The assumption that you seem to make is that if one rides a bike, one
_will_ destroy either one's helmet or one's head. That assumption is
false."

I make no such assumption and I agree that it is false. His story is that he
suffered two crashes that resulted in his helmets being destroyed. His story
is not that he suffered destroyed helmets while riding. By replacing helmet
with skull in his story, one could suggest that his head would have suffered
the same fate as his helmets in both crashes.

A rider will not hurt himself while riding unless he's a friggin idiot and
does something stupid like bite his own lip or poke his eyes with his own
fingers. A rider may hurt himself while falling.

Cycling is not dangerous, falling is. I state that in certain circumstances,
a helmet may mitigate damage suffered in a fall.

The bad thing about falling is the impact at the end of the fall, not the
fall itself. Do not kid yourself, we all fall. Some of us will suffer no
injury whatsoever while some of us will die. Most of us will suffer some
sort of injury at different degrees in between nothing and death. Wearing a
helmet during a fall may help bring the average closer to nothing. How do
you know you're going to fall? How do you know you're going to hit the
pavement? How do you know you're going to hit your head on the pavement? You
don't, neither do I. All I know is that I will fall, eventually, someday,
perhaps. I fell in the past, why shouldn't I fall in the future?

I'm not pro-law, I'm pro-helmet. I'm also pro-common sense. If common sense
dictates that a helmet law will reduce the number of cyclists while changing
not in the least the number of cyclists who wear helmets, then this helmet
law will have to be left out. It seems, by all accounts, that a helmet law
has the only effect of reducing the number of cyclists while not achieving
its intended goal. Unless its intended goal is indeed to reduce the number
of cyclists, such a law appears to have failed.


ML

Martin Levac wrote:

Greetings,

Quote by Frank Krygowsky:

"The assumption that you seem to make is that if one rides a bike, one
_will_ destroy either one's helmet or one's head. That assumption is
false."

I make no such assumption and I agree that it is false. His story is that
he suffered two crashes that resulted in his helmets being destroyed. His
story is not that he suffered destroyed helmets while riding. By
replacing helmet with skull in his story, one could suggest that his head
would have suffered the same fate as his helmets in both crashes.

Sure, and one could also suggest that skulls are made of Styrofoam, and
several inches larger than they appear. The suggestion wouldn't make it
correct, however.

The bad thing about falling is the impact at the end of the fall, not the
fall itself. Do not kid yourself, we all fall. Some of us will suffer no
injury whatsoever while some of us will die. Most of us will suffer some
sort of injury at different degrees in between nothing and death. Wearing
a helmet during a fall may help bring the average closer to nothing. How
do you know you're going to fall? How do you know you're going to hit the
pavement? How do you know you're going to hit your head on the pavement?
You don't, neither do I. All I know is that I will fall, eventually,
someday, perhaps. I fell in the past, why shouldn't I fall in the future?

Not only is this all true, none of it is specific to cycling!

--
Benjamin Lewis

On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong." -- Wolfgang Pauli

Frank Krygowski wrote in part:

Frank, this is a plausible chronology, but what is your source for it?
I seem to remember being corraled into some kind of bike safety
rodeo back in '77 or '78. Maybe the hand-wringers were at it
before the helmet guys caught on.

My source is my own memory, but I could probably dig out some examples,
given enough time.

It would be an interesting research project. But I don't think you should throw
out claims like the helmet manufacturers were responsible for changing
attitudes about the danger of cycling without any kind of backup. And I think
you should see the two issues as separate--helmets versus the general danger of
cycling--as we can agree with you on one but disagree on the other.

Bicycling used to be like that. But now even avid cyclists are pleased
to make ordinary riding sound like an "extreme" adventure, something
akin to mountain climbing.

Frank any time you are in traffic there is the potential for great bloody
disasters. You haven't experienced it so you don't feel it.

It's foolish and harmful.

It's foolish and harmful to jinx yourself like that, from what I've seen. In
traffic, a little fear is helpful.

Robert

"AustinMN" wrote in message
...
Del Cecchi wrote:
(snipped)


The problem is, neither you nor anyone else knows what the outcome would
have been without the helmet. The statistical evidence is that it would
either have been the same or worse, but as said before, there's a lot of
problems with the statistics.
(snipped)
Austin

Mark twain on statistics: "There's lies, damn lies and then there's
statistics."

Regarding helmet use. If you feel safer with it wear one if not you take
your chances.
Peter

Greetings,

That a helmet breaks during a fall is one thing, that a skull breaks during
a similar fall is another. I don't state that a skull and a helmet are the
same thing. A helmet serves the purpose of protecting the head while a skull
serves the purpose of protecting the brain. A helmet may have protected the
skull during the fall that broke the helmet by interposing itself between
the skull and the pavement.

Quote by Benjamin Lewis:

"Sure, and one could also suggest that skulls are made of Styrofoam, and
several inches larger than they appear. The suggestion wouldn't make it
correct, however."

I see no point in the above quote unless the point was an attemp at
ridicule.

Another quote by Benjamin Lewis:

"Not only is this all true, none of it is specific to cycling!"

Actually, all of it is specific to cycling. We're talking about the benefits
of wearing a helmet while riding. This is rec.bicycles.tech.


ML

Jeff Starr wrote:
This "important subject" has been discussed many times, already.
Nothing gets solved, the pro helmet people state their position, the
anti helmet group then counters, and very little is ever agreed on.
Then there is the third position, which is mine, that it be a matter
of choice for adults.

What makes you think this is a third position? That would suggest that the
anti-helmet group want to ban their use, which as far as I know is a
complete straw man.
--
David Damerell Distortion Field!