A case for making cycling helmets mandatory — in the States! by Andre Jute

[leftpoole]

No I'm not talking rubbish. Its physics... As you had not said there was compression previously I was working on flawed data. That being said the compression abilities of polystyrene is limited, and bicycle helmets are only designed to reduce forces generated by a crash below 12mph onto a flat surface to a level where head trauma is less likely (there's a specific joule requirement but I cant remember it) and the more you exceed these design requirements the less benefit helmets give you.

I'll grant you that if the helmet is fitted correctly then it'll also protect your head from cuts and grazes as well.

Hello,
The best thing that you could do to prove your point, is to fall of a wall or your bike whilst bare headed, making certain that you land on your head on concrete at approx 12 mph.
Let us know how you get or, or tell your next of kin to let us all know?
It is very frustrating but at least I know I feel happy with my choices.
Regards, I am not going to post further contribution.
John

[Andre Jute]

Ok. Straight from your words. 33 saved from death because they were wearing helmets. This is 74% of 13% of 333. Either your numbers are wrong or your trying to obfuscate your logic with fluff and denial.

No, this won't do. You're off on another tangent. You put words in my mouth, and I asked you to prove that I said them with a direct quotation. You can't do that because I never wrote those words, so you blow more smoke. This is a method of obfuscation that I remember from the Marxists of my youth, since deposited in the wastebasket of history.

This is what you have to do before I'll answer any further points from you:

I did not, repeat not, state that 74% of the dead cyclists died of head injuries. You made that up. I most certainly did not "seem to take this to mean" — god forbid that I should write so ineffectually.

If, despite being told twice now that I didn't, you still claim I said so, prove it. And not from vapid suspicions but from my actual words.

Nor did I say "13% of the serious injuries were saved from death because they were wearing helmets" as you claim. If you think I did, prove it, again, from my actual words.

"Guff"... "logic fail"... Before you start slinging abuse, let's see you prove your claims with actual facts rather than potstirring and smoke.

[honesty]

No, this won't do. You're off on another tangent. You put words in my mouth, and I asked you to prove that I said them with a direct quotation. You can't do that because I never wrote those words, so you blow more smoke. This is a method of obfuscation that I remember from the Marxists of my youth, since deposited in the wastebasket of history.

This is what you have to do before I'll answer any further points from you:

So your saying because you didn't type the exact words, even though you used that exact method to generate you numbers, that the point is invalid? Amazing double talk there. Not sure what Marxists have to do with bicycle helmets?

[Andre Jute]

Two of these points below are just plain wrong, the result of a failure to comprehend the source material, and two are based on a misunderstanding of how this kind of statistics is done plus an unwillingness to grasp connections between the available data sets.

I shall be happy to explain each once you withdraw the words you tried to put in my mouth and now can't prove I said.

Andre's article has a number of problems with it all around the assumptions he used.
1. That 74% of head injuries were the cause of fatalities. Looking at the report a large proportion of those are marked down as "head and other injuries". We just don't know the cause of death. It could have been body trauma with a head graze for all we know.

2. That 33 (see above for bad assumption 1) had their lives "saved" by their helmet. We don't know that. We don't know how severe their injures were, and we don't know that the helmet changed the injury from death to only serious. All we know is that 43 people with serious injuries wore helmets.

3. That the spread of helmet use was distributed across the injured population. We don't know this, as its never stated. All we get is total numbers for helmet use, head injuries etc.. For all we know all helmet users had leg injuries. The report never states this.

4. That the ratios of lives saved by helmet use (see bad assumption 2) for serious injuries is applicable to those that died. Again we don't know this. There are other factors that could have just as big an affect that are not recorded or taken into account. Alcohol use, reckless cycling, etc. could all be confounding factors in the deaths but we've not normalised for them in any way.

It would be useful if Andre were to put up how he derived the 57% figure as well, as I just cant work out where he got that one from.

[honesty]

You said through your maths, the very numbers your whole argument is based on, that 74% of deaths are caused by head injuries. This is quite obvious to everyone reading it, and trying to deny you said this, because you did not explicitly state it is a bit silly really.

[triaesthete]

  You done it all on purpose Mr Jute      Were you a Maoist?

"The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist."  Mao Zedong Wikipedia

Some would say you need to wear a  helmet before banging your head against this issue.

[honesty]

To go at this in a slightly different way... Andre wrote this:

• It looks like wearing a helmet saved roundabout 33 cyclists or so ?(of the 333 seriously injured for whom helmet use is known) from ?dying.

Show how you derived the figure of 33

[Andre Jute]

 You done it all on purpose Mr Jute      Were you a Maoist?

"The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist."  Mao Zedong Wikipedia

Some would say you need to wear a  helmet before banging your head against this issue.

A Maoist! (VOICE RISING IN OUTRAGE) Good god, no! I'm an economist of the Chicago School; I'm not likely to support a philosophy that leads to such mismanagement that the Head of State has to announce that he uses only one sheet of toilet paper.

On the present subject, you're right, I need a hat, but not a cycling helmet (those are very poor protection, as has been repeatedly said above) but a pickelhaube of good, solid, German steel. There are enough imperonderables in bicycle accident numbers not to add people who try to put words in my mouth that I never spoke. Dan is right, this subject is toxic, a fast way to lose your friends. The hell with it, like John, now revealed as a smart guy, I'm out of it, and back to work.

See you elsewhere. Ciao.

[triaesthete]

  If not a Maoist, then definitely an AP.

Only joshing 

[Danneaux]

Hi All!

Given no real forward progress is being made on the helmet discussion and bad feelings are rising among members, I'm locking it for a week or so and then will open it on an experimental basis.

The basics of the discussion are distilled in the following:

"A man convinced against his will remains unconvinced still".

In the absence of mandate, helmet wear seems a personal choice. Where helmet use is mandated, avenues exist for political action to overturn or maintain it, as the majority of voters prefer.

This is a hot-button topic for which there is no universal right answer and strongly held feelings can make for bad feelings. Let's give it a rest for a bit, go out for a ride or three, take deep breaths and enjoy what Nature has to offer those who choose to enjoy it on two wheels.

Best,

Dan.