Originally Posted by Excelsius

I will assume you did not understand what I meant. When I am talking about head injuries, I am specifically referring to neurotrauma. I have no doubt that you are dealing with fractures or rashes, whether they be on the legs or on the scalp, just as a dermatologist will be consulted if a patient has a stye in the eyelid, even though the eyelid is located on the head. Scalping or any other injury you might deal with is unrelated to neurotrauma. Furthermore, I would propose that because you are dealing with injuries on the surface and are not really following up with the injuries to the brain itself, your assumption as to what type of injuries the brain might have sustained can be clouded by the damage you see on the outside. I still stand by what I said earlier - if there is any possibility of brain damage, the patient will be outside your domain. As far as the initial, basic assessments go, even nurses have some of these skills. That does not give them any expertise. Finally, my second point specifically concerned bench research, or at least clinical research. If you are not involved in either, I would hope you can concede that your expertise is limited to anecdotal evidence.

My last point then should address your concern about why in some cases legislation is not congruent to decrease in fatalities. In addition, you still did not provide a single paper that shows bicycle helmet falls result in such significant torsional injuries that they case neurotrauma and therefore, obviously, are not recommended. Again, just a single study. A lot of people here are just talking nonsense about helmets and it's not even really worth to address those claims. But what makes you different is that as a surgeon, I would expect your opinions to be the result of scientific fact (or flawed papers, which is still fine). I am hoping that you will oblige and provide a full citation to a paper(s). If you cannot, then it is only logical for you to admit that you might possibly be wrong.

P.S.: Even if a single paper did exist on torsional injuries of bike helmets, it is highly unlikely that the recommendation would be to not wear helmets. Why? Because to achieve torsional injuries, the the fall must be almost perfect in one particular set of requirements, such as high rotational inertia, the probability of the helmet grabbing the ground, the angle at which the head strikes the ground, etc. This still leaves out a large number of cases where bicyclists have a simple impact with the ground and hence it would take a lot of conviction and scientific data for someone to seriously suggest that one type of a fall that might result in injury from a helmet disqualifies the protection offered by it for the rest of the myriad types of falls.