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

[Andre Jute]

Look you can post your long "articles" as much as you like, but the basic statement you made at the start is plain wrong. You state 74% of deaths had head injuries. You then seem to take this to mean died from head injury. If you cannot see the difference then there really is no point.

Reading your guff again, bonus logic fail - that 13% of the serious injuries were saved from death because they were wearing helmets. No attempt at removing other causes.

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]

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.

[Danneaux]

Hi All,

With a topic proven so divisive on so many Fora, I'm monitoring closely. Please continue to keep your discourse gentlemanly and passionate about the ideas, rather than personal.

All the best,

Dan.

[leftpoole]

Hello,
In my day to day life experience I have personally discovered that mostly those who shun helmets do so because of a number of factors.
Firstly these people who shun helmets are people who don't want helmets made compulsory because they want to 'decide'. So they decide against usually with a pig headed attitude.
These people have never fallen and whacked their head whilst doing so.
Or indeed they simply look stupid wearing a helmet!
I say that in all the instances of people objecting, that I see the particular point of view. But I still say that the day I changed my mind was eye opening.
Yes, I came off and it frightened me into helmet wearing.
A helmet only saves lives if worn. A helmet only saves lives if riders fall on there upper body/head area. A helmet will not save a life if the rider is crushed under a heavy vehicle OBVIOUSLY!
People who do not wear a helmet, do so out of choice. Personally I wish helmets had been around when I was a child as I bear the scars....
Think you people who write describing how helmets don't work. I fell of on a slippery road, my head hit a fence post with a horrendous whack. My helmet split! I am alive...I am not brain damaged.
Regards,
John

[honesty]

The problem I have with all those "the helmet saved my life" stories is you just don't know. You are inferring an outcome based on your perception of the events. As most people don't understand this they over ascribe safety benefit to the helmet.

The safety benefits of helmets are murky at best, with various studies going either way. There are 2 problems with focusing on the helmet though.

1. head injury use with cyclists is on par with walking and being a passenger in a car. If helmets are beneficial for cyclists therefore they have to be beneficial for walking and car passengers. The require them for one group and not the other is therefore inappropriate.

2. Its a massive red herring, placing the blame of the injury on the victim rather than the cause. Somewhere in the region of 70% of vehicle accidents are caused by the driver. Rather than looking at protection for the victim (which is along the lines of blaming people for not wearing stab vests when they get shivved up in a mugging) we should be looking at why the driver felt it ok to mow down cyclists.

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.

[leftpoole]

Hello,
Statistics?!!??
Use your brain whilst you can!
Anyone can use excuse after excuse not to wear a helmet.
I whacked my head whilst wearing a helmet. The sound is echoing in my head whilst I write. My helmet split!!
I am alive, I have no brain damage.
I am not saying that in 'all' instances that helmets save lives..But helmets save lives sometimes. I would rather be alive 'sometimes' than dead 'once'. How about you?
Compulsion NO.
I would rather that other people saw how clever I am to be wearing a helmet. It is after all 'common sense' to protect!
Even Cricketers wear helmets and they are not on the busy roads. Before anyone mentions a cricketer dying when struck by a ball recently.....
Regards,
John

[honesty]

Hello,
Statistics?!!??
Use your brain whilst you can!
Anyone can use excuse after excuse not to wear a helmet.
I whacked my head whilst wearing a helmet. The sound is echoing in my head whilst I write. My helmet split!!
I am alive, I have no brain damage.
I am not saying that in 'all' instances that helmets save lives..But helmets save lives sometimes. I would rather be alive 'sometimes' than dead 'once'. How about you?
Compulsion NO.
I would rather that other people saw how clever I am to be wearing a helmet. It is after all 'common sense' to protect!
Even Cricketers wear helmets and they are not on the busy roads. Before anyone mentions a cricketer dying when struck by a ball recently.....
Regards,
John

Perfect example of anecdote overriding evidence. If the helmet split it gave you no benefit. The point impact force was so much that it overrode the helmets ability to absorb damage and fractured. If it had compacted then the helmet would have absorbed some of the impact force. If it was a straight split it basically did nothing. On top of that, you don't know if the impact would have been fatal without the helmet. Going by the report Andre highlights 213 people had head injuries that did not kill them...

[Slammin Sammy]

My point is that, while helmets may or may not save some lives or injuries in certain instances, (John obviously feels his accident was one), they are shown time and again to be really peripheral to bike safety. Unless someone can show me how helmets actually prevent accidents, from Andre's quoted statistics we can assume that no more than 13% of the cohort were wearing helmets. Thus, the vast majority of cycling trips made (by people in that study, at least) were perfectly normal with no traumatic events.

My assertion is that, by dissuading people from riding (for whatever reason, be it obstinacy or fear of "helmet hair" - a particular reservation amongst female would-be cyclists), compulsory helmets can actually have a far worse effect on personal and public health.

As I mentioned before, this debate often boils down to the effectiveness of helmets, when that is really not the issue. Since there are numerous ways to die in a bike accident, should we be made to wear Kevlar jackets, gloves, anti-skid pants, shin and knee guards, eyewear and other PPE? A few more injuries may be prevented, but MANY more people would be dissuaded from cycling. This is the basic error in these government initiatives.

[Kuba]

If the helmet split it gave you no benefit. The point impact force was so much that it overrode the helmets ability to absorb damage and fractured. If it had compacted then the helmet would have absorbed some of the impact force. If it was a straight split it basically did nothing.

Not exactly true. The helmet would absorb way more energy if it crushed rather than fractured, but it must have absorbed something - otherwise it wouldn't have split! 

But generally agree with you, and in with what Sammy wrote above. The numbers presented above show a correlation between wearing a helmet and safety at best, but any quantification of this correlation is pure guesswork and I cannot see any causality here whatsoever. Second, using figures from NYC to argue for helmet compulsion in the US is dubious. Three, don't see how he the leap from supposed benefits of wearing helmet to mandatory helmet wearing is made (side-effects include fewer cyclists, resources needed for policing helmets etc. - the impact of which is not discussed at all). Finally, it's not so much about wearing a helmet or not but about wearing a good one, correct size, and correctly fastened. If you don't replace your helmet every time you drop it, and every 3-5 years anyway, its effectiveness is questionable.

To me it's not about my personal freedoms but, unlike in the case of seat belts or tobacco smoke, about the complete lack of conclusive evidence.

[leftpoole]

Perfect example of anecdote overriding evidence. If the helmet split it gave you no benefit. The point impact force was so much that it overrode the helmets ability to absorb damage and fractured. If it had compacted then the helmet would have absorbed some of the impact force. If it was a straight split it basically did nothing. On top of that, you don't know if the impact would have been fatal without the helmet. Going by the report Andre highlights 213 people had head injuries that did not kill them...

You are talking rubbish. The plastic cover split but the interior was indeed crushed. It makes no odds I am still living to tell the tale.
But of course I am knowledgeable and because of real incidents not just Bar room chat! Hypothesise as much as you wish.
I know how hard my head hit. I know because I am alive.
John

[leftpoole]

As an aside:- Of course Horse riders wear helmets (usually)

[triaesthete]

Did anyone break up any polystyrene packing for the bin over xmas? Not very strong is it! Noisy though.

If ALL the people I hear of who had helmets break during accidents had not been wearing them, bicycling would be about as dangerous as a summit attempt on Everest!

I think our consumer society leads some people to believe that safety can be purchased by preying on basic human fears. It can be upsetting to have this belief challenged.

Would you feel any safer playing Russian Roulette in a polystyrene hat?

Correlation is not causation!

Making policy from one! single study is a little obtuse??

Helmets address a symptom. Motor vehicles are the root cause. IIRC only about 7 of the deaths in the NY stud did NOT involve another vehicle! ie almost no one died of "falling off a bike"!!

Cycling casualties are but one of the externalities of current levels of vehicle usage  http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-externalized-costs.htm   A systems approach clearly shows helmets to be a side issue.

Honesty and Sammy summed up the rest better than I could.

[honesty]

You are talking rubbish. The plastic cover split but the interior was indeed crushed. It makes no odds I am still living to tell the tale.
But of course I am knowledgeable and because of real incidents not just Bar room chat! Hypothesise as much as you wish.
I know how hard my head hit. I know because I am alive.
John

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.

[leftpoole]

Did anyone break up any polystyrene packing for the bin over xmas? Not very strong is it! Noisy though.

If ALL the people I hear of who had helmets break during accidents had not been wearing them, bicycling would be about as dangerous as a summit attempt on Everest!

I think our consumer society leads some people to believe that safety can be purchased by preying on basic human fears. It can be upsetting to have this belief challenged.

Would you feel any safer playing Russian Roulette in a polystyrene hat?

Correlation is not causation!

Making policy from one! single study is a little obtuse??

Helmets address a symptom. Motor vehicles are the root cause. IIRC only about 7 of the deaths in the NY stud did NOT involve another vehicle! ie almost no one died of "falling off a bike"!!

Cycling casualties are but one of the externalities of current levels of vehicle usage  http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-externalized-costs.htm   A systems approach clearly shows helmets to be a side issue.

Honesty and Sammy summed up the rest better than I could.

Actually, landing on your head actually hurts and can kill!
Cars are not the whole problem. A cyclist can be killed simply by falling off and hitting his or her head or landing so as to break his or her neck!
I wear a helmet and am a sensible person. Those who choose not to are their own worst enemy in my opinion.
If I ignore my Doctors advice and not take my Warfarin, my Beta blocker or my Ace inhibitor pills today am I being sensible?
When I woke up in the intensive care unit of hospital I wondered where I was. I am alive but it was ' apparently' because it cannot be proven, very fortunate because I had been (or so I was led to believe) by the doctors within inches of death!
I actually did believe them and I do take my medication. The reason being is that I believe that if I do not take these pills I would very likely die within a few days. I have no proof but I am grown up and have a daughter who I love. I will not take risks that I need not, because I care. Do you care for your own wellbeing or your loved ones? Perhaps not!
Always those whose ignorance costs and those who trust. Which one are you?
Helmet issue always causes dispute. Why oh why?
See the future it may not be rosy.
Regards,
John
John

[Andre Jute]

Hi All,

With a topic proven so divisive on so many Fora, I'm monitoring closely. Please continue to keep your discourse gentlemanly and passionate about the ideas, rather than personal.

All the best,

Dan.

Can't tell you how sorry I am that I posted this as an extension to Bikewaser's "why we shouldn't cycle with helmets".