Originally Posted by
John C. Ratliff
It's kinda like me working with the contractor groups at work, and seeing everyone on a job site wearing reflective vests, hard hats, and safety glasses...
These are now taken for granted in the construction industry by nearly all people (we still have one guy who won't wear a hard hat, but he's a difficult person). If these rather basic measures are used in the workplace, why not on the roadways too where they would do bicyclists some good?
Possibly because there is credible evidence that the safety equipment for construction workers WORKS and there is NONE for the 300g foam baubles sold to cyclists?
Really: show some integrity and engage with the actual argument instead of a strawman. That seat belts and construction workers' hardhats - and motorcyclists' helmets - work has nothing to do with whether bike helmets are effective. That matter can be settled only by empirical testing and analysis of helmets that are found at crash sites. (I note that you're so ignorant of the basics of this subject that you quote split helmets, which will have failed to absorb shock, as evidence of helmets working!)
To be justified to either recommend or compel, a safety measure must pass a minimum test of effectiveness. There's good evidence - decades of empirical testing and court accepted testimony by neurologists and engineers who have looked at data - that cycle helmets do not work. Now it's certainly possible to debate this evidence, but to ignore it and to expect other people to do so merely because you rant at them is intellectually incompetent.
I'm trying to convince them to wear hearing protection too because of all the noise and alarms being generated by the equipment in the building.
Possibly people have problems trusting you because the arguments you use aren't credible, well-researched, or intellectually honest? "Gee, I was gonna wear ear protectors, but then this mook tells me about this study, and when I look it up at home I found that it's paid for by a lobby group for the Ear Muff Makers Of America and there was no control group, and so I smells a rat..."
Simply pretending that your opponents are saying
"There is compelling evidence that helmets work but I won't wear one because it will mess up my hair" when they are actually saying
"Unfortunately, the studies showing effective helmet use are either empirical but methodologically invalid or predictive (and therefore not evidence at all). Empirical testing of real helmets has shown that the models sold are much less effective than the studies you quote assume; and testing of helmets found at crash sites has shown a very high rate of failure to operate."
I really can't see why you won't actually look at evidence that runs counter to your opinion, but you won't. (Note I say LOOK - not accept.) You simply try to
pretend that evidence you don't like is not there. For someone who claims to be training as at least a borderline scientist, this is amazing behaviour. The only explanation I can think of is Dubya Syndrome: you've put your self esteem on the line, and thereafter reality be damned.