Originally Posted by
Six jours
Then I pointed out that sometimes helping and sometimes hurting are not mutually exclusive,
This is
useless. It's true of everything!!
Originally Posted by
Six jours
and now you're shifting to "whether they help more than they hurt".
Again, it's not that they
can hurt, it's whether they help more or not than they hurt.
Originally Posted by
Six jours
So let's keep our eye on the ball here: I'm still looking for you to back up your claim that some people here have stated that helmets cannot prevent injury.
I made no such claim! Saying that helmets can hurt
isn't an argument against them!
Originally Posted by
Six jours
I have never said that helmets are not useful.
I didn't say that you did.
Originally Posted by
Six jours
I have pointed out that they are not very useful when struck by high-speed motor vehicles, and in support of that argument I have noted that helmets used for high-speed motorsports are much heavier and stronger than bicycle helmets.
The existance of better helmets doesn't establish that bicycle helmets are not very useful (especially since "high speed" isn't clear)! Bicycle helmets might still be very useful compared to no helmets. Better helmets suggests that they could be better (but there are trade-offs that make those heavier helmets impractical for bicycling).
Originally Posted by
Six jours
Originally Posted by
njkayaker
Who is claiming that helmets are "adequate protect" against extreme collisions?
Wphamilton, in the post to which I was responding, which you then attacked. Don't you think it would be a good idea to read before responding?
Let's look at that again. I doubt that wphamilton was talking about "
car racer" speeds! (Talking about "
car racers" is moving the goal posts, by the way.)
Originally Posted by
Six jours
Originally Posted by
wphamilton
I don't see the helmet as less useful with bike-auto collisions. The helmet is primarily for hitting the ground and that's generally going to happen regardless of how the accident occurs. Unless we're thrown up in the air we'll hit the ground with the same impact whether we're hit by a car, or riding 30 mph, or fall over at a light. So it's not really true that the helmet is useless when high-speed autos are involved - at most we can say that it's sometimes superfluous, if the collision itself causes critical injury. But that doesn't always happen.
The helmet is less useful in bike-auto collisions because fatal bike-auto collisions usually involve multiple massive injuries. That doesn't, of course, mean that no one has ever had his life saved by a helmet in a bike-auto collision. I just don't see significant objective evidence that it happens very much.
If bicycle helmets really were effective in such scenarios, then why would motorcyclists and car racers wear such big heavy helmets?
You make two mistakes in your reply
here: 1) you are saying the bicycle helmets and heavy helments have be equally effective (
they don't) and that the scenarios each is addressing are the same type and frequency (
that doesn't appear to be true at all, especially since bicyclists or car traffic aren't really travelling at the speeds that "
car racers" do).
Again, the existance of better helmets doesn't contradict wphamilton's comment at all. If you read what he wrote, you didn't understand it. "High speed" is too vague anyway and with your "
car racer" comment, it seems you are talking about a much higher (and irrelevant) "high speed".
Originally Posted by
Six jours
Originally Posted by
njkayaker
The existance of helmets heavier than bicycle helmets suggest (one or more and not limited to):
* That collisions they are expecting to be useful for are different.
* That they are practical where they are being used and impractical where they are not.
Yet another strawman, based entirely on arguments that no one here has presented, except for you.
No, it describes why what you said
above is wrong.