Originally Posted by slvoid
Maybe you also missed my obviously easy to answer question since you're mr. helmet testing guy.
And I'll ask again, out of curiousity, you know, from one testing guy to another, how did you "personally" test the helmets, what equipment did you use, and how did you sample and record the data? Just out of curiosity, since you seem to know oh so much about medical injuries and have all kinds of fancy terms for what defines a serious injury or not and have a lot of insight on the effectiveness of helmets, you know, through your "personal" testing. You weren't using yourself as the test subject in these helmet tests were you?
You previously claimed that you were familiar with testing procedures. Perhaps you can explain to us something - let us assume that I did NO tests at all (since my claim was that my testing showed that helmets couldn't reach their claimed levels of protection).
Using the PUBLISHED data on helmet design available from Bell Sports and the Snell Memorial Foundation you could easily see why Dr. Shively, the original driving force at the Snell Foundation, said, "... it is impossible to build a helmet that will offer significant impact protection"
So, why would my data be important at all when the data published by all of the helmet manufacturers and SIMPLE MATHEMATICS would demonstrate a few truisms:
1) A helmet can't be made significantly more protective. In order to do so they'd have to be larger in diameter. And they are already too large in diameter and the helmet now tends to hit in many falls in which the bare head would never had struck.
2) Helmets SHOULD BE HEAD SHAPED but such helmets are considered ugly and don't sell. The "aero" shape in fact causes twisting moments in the head in crashes and actually increases the chance of rotational injuries which are many times more dangerous than linear impacts. Because of 1) above this implies that there are now head injuries being CAUSED by helmets.
3) The level of protection of a helmet is pitifully small. I don't really understand why someone would believe that a 160 lb man falling on his head could be protected by 6 ounces of foamed plastic but perhaps you could explain this physical impossibility with enough verve to give us a good laugh.
The heart of this matter is that you are attempting to discredit the real information about helmets by implying that I don't know what I'm doing. That's fine - but try explaining helmets themselves by the rules of the testing laboratories that you are relying upon.