wphamilton

You have been resolute in limiting your scope to fatalities. Yet you have made general statements about "high speed car-bike interactions" and absolutes about any car-bike impact at high speeds. You conflate the two, that is an error, and that's why I keep bringing it up.

Six jours

I don't believe that is the case. I think you are seeing what you expect to see, rather than what I have presented.

howsteepisit

I call for a cage match!

Six jours

Am I allowed to wear a bicycle helmet? I hear they can protect me from anything!

But seriously, this is just two people disagreeing without really making it personal. Hard to believe that can exist on this thread, I know...

wphamilton

You could wear one in the car, since traumatic brain injuries are almost as likely in a car on car crash as with a car-bike collision. (.65 times as likely). And, given that slip and falls are the most common cause of TBI, wearing one while walking on a sidewalk -again, the most likely of the slip and fall scenarios - might be a good idea.

That's if you're really worried about that level of risk. It's not enough for me to wear one driving, or walking, and not enough to worry about while riding if I'm not wearing one. But, in fast traffic, like the other guy says, preventing any injury in a high-speed interaction with cars is a good thing

Six jours

If we're really concerned about serious head injury, we'd be wearing motorsports helmets in our cars - most of us spend more time in our cars and thus have more exposure, and motorsports helmets are demonstrably effective by any yardstick. But we wouldn't want to cramp our style...

As for being worried about the level of risk on the bike, for most of my life I wasn't. But then several things conspired to make me worried, and because I truly don't believe bicycle helmets offer serious protection, the only real solution was to stop riding with cars.

rydabent

six

Faulty analogy on your part. Unlike cars bikes do NOT have seat belts and shoulder harrness plus air bags. All cyclist have is a helmet, and some mountain bikers wear arm pads.

wphamilton

The analogy is not faulty. It's not even an analogy - it's comparing risk directly. Even with the seat belts, airbags and other safety features considered you're still ~ .65 times as likely to suffer traumatic brain injury in a collision driving a car.

I-Like-To-Bike

How did you come up with that stat for "car crashes"? Does it derive only from ER data? Are you including "car crashes" that do not involve any trip to the ER or morgue trip for the car occupants, where they walk away uninjured?

I doubt that the percentage of all cyclists involved in a "crash" with a car and don't take a ER/morgue trip afterwards is anywhere near as low as that for the occupants of vehicles involved in all auto crashes.

wphamilton

Iowa University study Traumatic Brain Injuries Caused by Motor Vehicle Crash (MVC) - 2007-2009 which I first brought up in the last thread, post 7924

I-Like-To-Bike

As I suspected, the statistics are based only on accidents involving hospital cases, not on total number of crashes that includes those that do not involve hospital treatment.

Do you think that the percentage of all cyclists involved in a "crash" with a car and walk away uninjured or with insignificant injuries is anywhere near as low as that for the occupants of vehicles involved in all auto crashes?

wphamilton

Possibly, but you and I don't know either way.

We're talking about a conditional probability to begin with. "When you have a collision", the chances of suffering TBI. You can add "and hospitalized" to be precise.

rydabent

A great point is being made here. All of the wonderful "studies" DO NOT include crashes that are never reported. IMO they are probably a huge majority. Helmets did their job, and no big fuss was made about the accident.

wphamilton

Yes, I've been harping on in along those lines. Restrict the scope exclusively to fatalities doesn't give you the full picture of risk. Fatalities occur in a very small portion of crashes, very small even in comparison to hospitalizations even further paired down to brain injuries. Who really knows how many more there were that weren't serious enough for the hospital, even hit from behind incidents? But just from the sheer size of the ratio of just the recorded accidents and all fatalities, chances are overwhelming that you would say, "a lot of them". And in those cases, there is no convincing rationale to say that helmets did not provide some protection.

I-Like-To-Bike

Nor any evidence that helmets were a factor at all in those cases.

rydabent

I like

But that is the point. If helmets did their job, the riders never went to an emergency room and their accident never showed up in the "studies".

In a true life adventure when I was knock down by a pick up and hit my head, since no injury occured, it was not reported to the police. I didnt go to the emergency ward, and of course I was never included in studies.

The bottom line here is the fact the anti helmet crowd can quote "studies" and "research papers" till they are blue in the face. But the fact is they are totally flawed since they dont include unreported accidents like mine where a helmet prevented injury.

I-Like-To-Bike

Your idea that only cyclists who wear helmets are unscathed/uninjured and not in need of medical care after a bicycle accident/fall/crash is ludicrous.

Your construct that helmeted riders are unscathed/uninjured and not in need of medical care after a bicycle accident/fall/crash at any different rate than unhelmeted riders is just that: guesswork.

wphamilton

That's a bit of an exaggeration. The point of a statistical study is to be able to generalize to the larger population.

Six jours

I have absolutely no doubt that the overwhelming majority of bicycle accidents go "unreported". I also have no doubt that that has always been the case, though. Trying to attribute it to helmet use is incredibly inane.

Six jours

I understand that you truly believe your helmet prevented injury. But it's similar to a belief in God, in the sense that you can be firmly convinced of a thing without any real evidence, and also that trying to convince other people to believe the same thing is annoying to just about everyone.

Beyond that, it's interesting that you now dismiss all studies and statistics on the matter. That's fine - I'm in essentially the same place - but now you're left using your own personal experiences to justify telling everyone else what they should do.

Good luck with that.

Six jours

And again, I don't think anyone is arguing that helmets cannot mitigate injury, even the occasional serious or fatal one. WRT to the data, there's enough wiggle room in it that we all get to see what we want to. That in itself reveals that the data does not point to any clear outcome.

And so again, nobody is telling anyone not to wear a helmet. Some of us are just pointing out that the protective benefit of helmets is not nearly as large as some of you would have us believe, that it's perfectly possible to ride in ways that negate the need for protective gear (and that some of us have decades of cycling experience without ever suffering a strike to the head/helmet), and that obnoxious helmet-nannying is unproductive at best.

mr_bill

Some are just pointing out that the protective benefit of helmets is not nearly as small as some would have folks believe, that it's not perfectly possible to ride in ways that negate the need for PPE, and that obnoxious helmet-nay-saying is unproductive at best.

-mr. bill

I-Like-To-Bike

What statistical study ever recorded, measured or provides a clue on the type of equipment worn/not worn when cyclists were NOT injured "seriously" enough in bicycle accidents/falls/crashes to require a hospital visit?

mr_bill

Is there *any* study that I-L-T-B would ever be satisfied with? (Rhetorical question.)

-mr. bill

Mark Stone

He has a valid point. Unless there is serious injury, many bicycle crashes don't get reported to any kind of authority, making a lot of studies biased. Whenever I've crashed (which is a few times in my 40+ years riding) unless there was serious injury (once) I don't report it to anyone. Bike crash studies/statistics cannot be accurate unless every crash was reported. Real world studies on the effectiveness of helmets in actual crashes are laughable, unless (maybe) they are based on surveys.