mconlonx

Ease up there, Kimosabe -- I was saying/agreeing the Bell study is hypocritical, not you.

You just quote things out of context and are not tight with your language, especially modifiers/qualifiers you should use. <-- but I've said that before and backed it up with examples...

Helmets aren't supposed to help in situations where death from head injury might occur, so this bit of data is pointless... kind of like your MHL list. How many miles does an average cyclist have to travel before they crash and sustain a minor to moderate head injury where a helmet might help?

njkayaker

https://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/almanac-safety.html

"Deaths per distance traveled" is likely a bad way to report the risk.

The "2% of fatalities and injuries" (in the US) indicates that cyclists are over represented considering that many more people spend much more time in motor vehicles than they do on a bicycle.

The irony here is that people often point to driving as being more risky.

Note that many cyclist fatalities (and injuries) occur in collisions with motor vehicles and it's likely that "non-traffic" cycling injuries are under-reported (fatality numbers are likely much more accurate).

350htrr

Helmets ... good or bad? Seat belts, good or bad?... Airbags, good or bad?... Driving 10 MPH over the speed limit, good or bad? Are you guys who think any these are bad... Really thinking? While there ARE downsides to everything, there is/are statistics that PROVE, some things are better or at least not as bad as you would think... I would think walking with untied shoelaces can be hazardous to your health, but I am sure after reading this thread there are people out there that would think, and say NOT SO, it would depend on how co-ordinated you are whether walking without tying your shoelaces is dangerous...

Six jours

Well, no. More like a bunch of folks who've been led to believe that untied shoelaces are a near-guarantee of horrific injury and/or death, and who feel comfortable calling names and predicting/hoping for the deaths of people who dare walk with untied laces. And then a minority of folks who think untied laces probably aren't that big a deal and are kind of annoyed that American society apparently deems the insults and death threats as acceptable and appropriate.

350htrr

Bwaa I would be willing to bet that there are/have been people who died because they didn't tie their shoelaces...

prathmann

I'm sure there have been some - still won't stop me from just slipping into my shoes without tying them if I'm just going a few feet outside to pick up the paper although I'd certainly tie them before going on a hike. Similarly I'll just put on a cap when riding a couple miles to the grocery store but wear a helmet if on a rocky mountain bike trail.

beezaur

Hey, knock yourself out (literally).

I just had a crash a month ago that left me with serious injuries from my head impacting pavement. Wasn't even going very fast. Had I not been wearing a helmet most likely I would have died and almost certainly would have been paralyzed and had severe brain damage.

Something funny about heads contacting pavement - even if you fall from a bike at a standstill, pavement wins.

As it was, my helmet took the brunt of the force and distributed the load across my cranium so that I did not have a broken skull.

I am visiting this forum so that I can increase my safety (which already was far above average). But encountering comments like this I wonder what is the point - obviously the site suffers significant influence from people who believe they are somehow immune to basic physics and make a hobby of intentionally misrepresenting math (like accident statistics) that they obviously don't understand anyway.

By the way, I am healing fast with the doctors saying I will make a full recovery in a couple of months. Again this is due to my wearing a helmet. If I was wearing your stylish cap I would probably still need help feeding myself, maybe permanently. As it is I am planning my return to cycling. I had the courage to mess my hair up by wearing a helmet, I guess.

So again, knock yourself out. I'm off to find a more reliable source of safety information.

350htrr

Sounds good in "theory"... But remember, when you play the odds, sometimes you still loose. Head bouncing of the pavement for any reason is going to hurt...

scottspeedster

Sometimes you feel like wearing one and sometimes you don't.

Closed Office

This seems to be a new Canadian study in the news. It seems to be straightforward and one sided.

Not wearing a helmet while riding was associated with 3.1 times higher risk of dying from a head injury

njkayaker

Another interesting piece in that is the following (somewhat weak). (The percentage of fatalities due to head injuries and the percentage increase in cycling is not reported.)

Since it contradicts the following.

It doesn't appear people reporting the decline as an argument against MHLs ever followed-up by looking at newer data (since their argument against MHLs would be stronger with a continued decline, the lack of any updates is interesting too).

Of course, "MHL laws causing declines" data is not relevant because no one here is arguing for MHL's and it's not clear if the helmets or the law provoked the decline (I didn't bring that data into this argument, by the way).

njkayaker

You are making an error by equating things that serve to mitigate the consequences of accidents with things that cause accidents. That's an error because the value of preventing accidents is much higher than mitigating them. Also, if you can reduce the cause of accidents, you reduce the need to mitigate the consequences of them (if the likelihood of an accident is very, very small, it does not make much sense to mitigate the consequences).

And, with respect to shoelaces, there are real benefits to tying them beyond reducing the possibility of an accident (that is, people would tend to tie them regardless).

350htrr

That's correct, I used the shoelace thing just to try and show how people will try to "get away" with things, and you can get away with a lot of things... But when you bounce off the pavement for whatever reason, it's USUALLY BETTER to have a helmet on than not. And I used the seat-belt, airbag examples as the same thing happened when they first came out and became mandatory, some people were hurt by them so right away some people used that to not wear them, totally discounting the many other people who were saved by them...

njkayaker

You can't protect against every possibility for which something is "usually better" in a particular case.

Since you can't do everything, you really have to measure the benefits of something against the costs of that thing. That way, you avoid choosing to do one thing instead of something else that is more efficient (better benefit/cost ratio).

One problem with helmets is that many people think they are more effective than they are.

If you were really concerned with "bouncing off of the pavement", donning a helmet really doesn't go far enough: you should really stop riding. That you don't stop riding indicates that (for you) the benefits of riding outweigh the costs of riding (eg, the risk of "bouncing off of the pavement").

The other thing that makes this issue complicated is the difference between the social benefits/costs and the individual benefits/costs. It's possible that there are more efficient causes than helmets at the social/overall-population level.

skye

Well, no, not at all. The study calculated the odds ratio (OR), not relative risk. The two are often conflated by non-statisticians. To quote Wikipedia:

In short, the authors of that paper did not even understand the statistics they were using.

Additionally, while the study did include 129 cycling fatalities, nearly half of those were inapplicable to the study, as they did not involve a head injury. There were 129 cycling fatalities in total for those years.

The number of cycling fatalities actually involving head injury or head injury plus other injury was 71. The number of cycling fatalities due to head injury alone was a vanishingly small 38.

To that I would add that the cause of death was based on coroner's report. Now, how many coroners are going to see any form of head injury and go one step further to investigate whether the actual cause of death was abdominal hemorrhage? They may note its existence, but 9 times out of 10, the cause of death will be listed as head injury, despite the possibility of other causes. We're not talking CSI here, we're talking harried civil service workers. Tick off the head injury box and move on to the next one.

In short, I would rate this study as a D-, beginning with the authors' own inaccuracy in reporting their findings, and the subtle inflation of the study's figures. Not to put to fine a point on it, this study is a piece of ****e and the authors should be spanked and sent to bed without their pudding.

To me, the only thing that this study points out is how goddamn hard it is to actually get killed while riding a bike in Ontario.

bandit1990

Colors added for effect. Dude's a troll.

curbtender

And some people decorate thier houses so Santa doesn't miss them.

350htrr

Well now... Come on... Of course a helmet would be better than no helmet when you bounce of the pavement, that's a no brain-er... If you want to play the "numbers" game and take the odds that you will not bounce off the pavement ever then that is a different discussion... But saying that a helmet won't be of any use when you bounce off the pavement is just silly/wrong... I know when I bounced off the pavement 5 years ago I got some good use out of my helmet. I was out of it for a week, dislocated jaw, crossed eyes for 10 months and that's WITH a helmet on... Now what would have happened without a helmet? I don't know, but I'm sure/prety sure it would have been worse, and I wouldn't be here typing this out...

bandit1990

Well played, Sir.

skye

Do you wear a helmet in the shower? If you do not, you are PLAYING WITH DEATH!!! You are more likely to suffer a head injury in a shower than on a bike. Therefore, if you are so confident in the helmet's ability to protect you, and so afraid of the bicycle's danger to your head, then logic dictates thate you should wear the helmet during both activities.

Do you?

skye

Actually, you are wrong. Multiple studies have shown that wearing helmets increase your risk of injury.

Don't ask me to post them, I already have.

bandit1990

In the shower? I broke my leg in the shower...thank goodness my wife was there to catch me. If not for her, I would have smacked my noggin on the tile, and without a helmet I'd be toast. Of course, the reason I was in the shower was BECAUSE of her...can I sue? This thead is hopeless.

350htrr

No I don't wear a helmet to the shower, when walking, or even when running... But yes I CERTAINY wear a helmet when I ride my bike. Why? not because I fear the dangers of bicycling but because it makes sense to me, just like seat-belts, airbags, anti-lock brakes etc... ALL of these things are in the same category and I would not buy a car without these things... Would you?

350htrr

So if I started to wear my helmet in the shower I would increase the chances of getting injured in the shower too?

WOW, good thing I stopped myself from wearing my helmet in the shower...

njkayaker

You didn't read what I wrote. I did not say any of this!

You have to consider the "numbers" game. People are notoriously bad at estimating risk: they often worry about stuff that isn't very risky and discount things that are risky.

Since you can fall and hit your head in other cases, it would make "sense" to wear a helmet all the time! It might be better to wear a helmet in those other cases than it is to wear it while cycling!

You do since you don't wear a helmet in situations where it's fairly common for head injuries to occur!