Six jours

Moral of the story: always wear protective gear when smacking into big, obvious, easily avoidable objects.

MMACH 5

sudo bike, I clarified my point. Changing from "you shouldn't where a helmet" to "don't make a helmet law" is a shift of goals. Perhaps if the poll that shows up at the top of every page in this thread even mentioned mandatory helmet law, then it would be a pertinent goal in the argument and not shifting to a different goal.
The examples you cited of "no reason not to wear a helmet" changing to "your reasons are not invalid" could be taken as shifting. To me, it's a fairly silly reason for wearing a helmet so I've not tried to defend it.

sudo bike

That isn't what all but one of the comments you posted even came close to saying, so I think you're being a little disingenuous here. So hey, credit where credit is due: You're 1 for 9 (even then it's a stretch... in most contexts I can think of, that's a red herring, but I'll give it to you as plausible). And I think this was dumb luck, considering your next comment...

See, this is why you make me think you don't really get what shifting goalposts is...


There's no "could be" about it...

A: There's no reason not to wear a helmet.
B: Yes there is, they are inconvenient and uncomfortable for some.
A: Well, there's no true reason not to wear a helmet.

That's pretty much out of the textbook definition... it almost perfectly matches the silly extreme of No True Scotsman. The same person who forwarded a point, changed it's definition when it came under fire. That isn't the same thing as off-topic discussion, or red herrings used to divert an argument.

Good for you... I don't think my original comment was aimed at you.

John C. Ratliff

RazrStutr,

When I had posted above, I had not read the studies, as they are just out this month. I have been able to get them, and will discuss some of the points in a later post. But I'm pretty sure from your post above that you also have not read them either.

John

mconlonx

Yes.

I used to go along with the helmet party-line: helmets save lives!

Thanks to the kind and considered responses () of the helmet naysayers, I have a more focused view of helmets: helmets may provide injury mitigation in the rare event that a bicycle crash leads to head-strike where helmet coverage is provided, which might otherwise have led to a greater degree of less than serious head injury.

Not quite as catchy, but a bit more nuanced, thought out, and correct.

mconlonx

Saved you from what...?

MMACH 5

I'm thinking that you might have missed post #5011. You seem to still be debating what I said in post #4994.

While I hadn't defended the inane argument of "there's no reason not to wear a helmet," what you are using to discredit it is not a textbook definition. It is a stretch and here's why:

Figure 1.
A. No Scotsman would murder people.
B. A Scotsman just murdered some people.
(Whether the murderer is from Scotland is not a debatable point)
A. No true Scotsman would murder people.

Figure 2.
A. There's no reason to not have a dog.
B. Because dogs are dangerous
(This is a debatable point.)
By your 1:1 comparison between Figure 1 and Figure 2, if someone disagrees with point B, then they must be shifting the goalpost. That makes this not a true "moving the goalpost" situation.

Figure 1 and Figure 2 are not the same. There is no debate that in Figure 1, the man doing the murdering is a Scotsman. Clearly, whether or not dogs are dangerous is a debatable point. The "no reason" dog debate is closer to the "no reason" helmet debate than the "no Scotsman" debate. And I called it an inane argument because it is.

If you'll look back at post #4994, you'll see that I wasn't debating you're point when replying to it. I pointed out that this occurs on both sides. I then clarified it (and narrowed it down) in post #5011.

RazrSkutr

You really are extraordinary. Shamelessly claiming that something you can not even read supports your argument.

350htrr

Since reading this thread for the last 6+ months I have lowered my expectations of what a helmet can/might do in the event of head bouncing off the pavement, that said I still think having a helmet on is much better than not having a helmet on, when said head bounces off the pavement... As for the chances of said head hitting the pavement being soo small that not wearing a helmet is thought to be OK and even better by some because you would take less chances, I do agree that statistically you can improve the chances of not bouncing your head off the pavement by riding skills and even falling skills, and it can be small, but, the fact remains that there will ALWAYS be the chance that said head could end up bouncing off the pavement. Thus I still think its better to have and not need than to need and not have... Probably nothing will ever convince me that not wearing a helmet is just as safe as wearing a helmet to answer your question...

Six jours

You're welcome!

Six jours

I like this post a great deal. I think it shows that this thread has not been completely useless.

I personally believe that cyclists are safer with a helmet than without. But I also believe the benefit varies widely: some people (see post at top of page) appear to be much more likely to suffer low-speed falls and land on their heads than others. So for some people, helmets are much more useful than for others, which is why it's a mistake to tell any given individual that he should or should not wear a helmet.

Beyond that, people do each other a disservice by perpetuating the myth that a helmet "makes you safe". Many cyclists attribute far too much protective capability to their helmets, which I believe ties in closely with the "risk compensation" theories. As I have been saying right from the first version of this thread, "Wear a helmet if you want, but ride as though you weren't."

MMACH 5

All this civil, reasonable discussion is going to ruin the ankle-biting, butt-hurt we've all grown accustomed to around here.

John C. Ratliff

Ah, but "...what is good for the goose is good for the gander." I could say the same for you and your assertions here.

I've now read one of the studies, and will discuss it further later today. The other is more complex (longer), and I need to digest it.

John

I-Like-To-Bike

Fear not, Monday is right around the bend. Expect the normal hot air cloud from the usual suspect.

proileri

I really don't understand the whole "..but it's not proven!" thing.. Really? It shouldn't take much to figure out a hard hat might add to safety, when compared to wearing nothing. I understand that sometimes it's not practical or comfortable to have one, but I find it strange to actually argue against it working. Personally, I don't have a problem with saying that I might had been safer with a helmet, yet chose to leave it at home.

I actually felt bad when I went on a short test run with my "fancy" new road bike last summer, and passed a young kid without wearing my helmet. Thought I wasn't showing much of an example, being a guy with a cool bike and all. I wouldn't dare to say to anyone that a helmet might not protect them that much.

I don't mind a helmet during the summer. It's pretty practical actually: I need something to protect my scalp and I like to have a visor of some sort, plus it needs to be pretty well ventilated. A helmet has those things, and also functions as a bit of safety insurance. Not that I feel I need one, really, but why not.

RazrSkutr

Dude, *you* are the one who claimed that these two studies support your position and then had the gall to admit you hadn't read them! It's especially funny as even the abstract which you posted suggests all sorts unbelievable things.

When I say "Here's science that supports my position" and then admit to not reading it we'll be at the same abysmal level. Until then I remain a reasonably intelligent and moderately honest human.

(pedant note: the proverb is "sauce for the goose")

John C. Ratliff

RazrStutr,

Take a look at my first post on this later thread:
I didn't say here's the science which supports my position; I simply posted these two new studies, and some of the abstracts. The words you objected to are not mine, but the authors' words.

The two studies are very interesting. You talked about this quote as invalidating the study:
In the study itself, this was mentioned:
In a later discussion section, he stated:
Leaving these dead people out allowed them to look at the injury situation, and who died later, but not the immediate mortality.

The conclusions of this study, Yilmaz P., et. al., are:
That was their conclusion, but there was some very interesting discussions in the study about bicycle facilities, and the differences in injury profiles between the different groups.

More later...

John

sudo bike

Sure, but that isn't really in question. Just like pretty much nobody but the occasional passerby in here is pushing MHL's, nearly nobody is claiming helmets don't do anything. The debate mostly surrounds how much they do, and is it enough to be significant for most people. Obviously it will offer protection against some minor injuries... but I don't think that's why most people wear helmets (or at least it hasn't been my experience). Most people wear them with the idea of preventing/mitigating brain damage or death, and this is much murkier water due to a bunch of factors like helmet design and the way the scalp may function to protect the brain (not even to mention the issues that arise with data collection that may be a bit more unique to cycling... it's harder to draw firm conclusions). There is the point that they may increase chances of rotational injury, but this is a tangent and I think most people accept they are able to mitigate minor injury on the whole.

It's also worth pointing out that this is not necessarily just the nature of the beast; most of the criticisms are leveled against current bike helmet design in particular. In other words, I don't think it is really being argued you can't have effective bike helmets, just that what we have ain't it.

In contrast, the summers here are hot enough that I've always been noticeably more sweaty and hot when wearing them (and the more one tries to counter this problem, I wear a hat if I need sun protection, and with all the riding around I do between errands, it would be a big pain in the butt to lug around a helmet to campus, the store, the watering-hole, etc. In other words, people have different variables that lead to their different decisions, and that's OK.

sudo bike

I was hoping they would be up on EBSCO host, but they aren't yet.

I'm always cautious when groups try to do data analysis between largely different countries... aside from the data reporting issues with cycling due to its way unregulated nature, you run into data collection issues between two countries that can be very difficult to account for. I've seen this get really ugly in many ranging debates, from violent crime to... well, bikes ! I'd like to take a look at it though and see how they broke it down. I'll try and keep an eye out for it on the research database.

proileri

I think this reminds me of the motorcycle helmets causing neck injuries discussion, something that has nowadays been shown not to be too much of a concern. It took a large study of accidents, which studied trauma locations and seriousness in helmeted vs. non-helmeted riders, of course. Surprisingly enough, helmeted group had less serious head trauma.

Oh, I have a personal anecdote to share, that really doesn't add anything to the discussion, but: I haven't been "saved" by a cycling helmet yet, but a couple of years back I was driving a taxi on a friday night, and found this older chap lying in a pool of blood in the suburbs. He'd been riding home from the pub, hit a curb and smashed his head open on the sidewalk. He woke up after a moment, I took him to the hospital and he was ok later. So the moral of the story? Wear a helmet, so the taxi guy doesn't have to go home and change his bloodied clothing in the middle of a well-paying weekend night shift! The whole thing took almost an hour, I think I lost like 30-40 eur in pay and tips

mconlonx

"...rotational injury,... tangent..." hahaha -- very well played, sir.

Except Skye posted a study where it was shown that a study of skateboard helmets found that they help mitigate rotational injury during skateboard crashes. No, not bike helmets, but it would not be too far off base to assume the same for them. Especially the ones constructed like skate helmets; especially ones designed specifically with rotational injury in mind, like the POC MIPS system.

Different helmets provide different levels of protection. There's no industry-wide way of telling which those are, aside from marketing copy, because any certification only reflects that a helmet has passed minimal testing, which has limited real-world application; testing is not done for how well a helmet protects. Although Consumer Reports recently did testing like that.

rydabent

I notice that as of yet none of the anti helmet crowd has accepted my challenge to post an actual verifiable case where "rotational stiction" caused injury to a cyclist. It would include the name of the cyclist, and the doctor and or hospital.

BTW I still claim that the anti helmet crowd is made up of mainly hairy chested pretty boy wanna be road racers. I suggest they are more worried about their looks, than they are about bike safety. The fact remains that once a helmet is on you head it is out of site and out of mind. The bottom line remains that in at least some accidents a helmet will provide at least a minimum amount of protection. And I do freely admit that a helmet will NOT provide much protection from a car hitting a cyclist at 60mph.

Keep those cards and letters comming in about "stiction" causing additional injury.

rydabent

I notice that as of yet none of the anti helmet crowd has accepted my challenge to post an actual verifiable case where "rotational stiction" caused injury to a cyclist. It would include the name of the cyclist, and the doctor and or hospital.

BTW I still claim that the anti helmet crowd is made up of mainly hairy chested pretty boy wanna be road racers. I suggest they are more worried about their looks, than they are about bike safety. The fact remains that once a helmet is on your head it is out of site and out of mind. The bottom line remains that in at least some accidents a helmet will provide at least a minimum amount of protection. And I do freely admit that a helmet will NOT provide much protection from a car hitting a cyclist at 60mph.

Keep those cards and letters comming in about "stiction" causing additional injury.

rekmeyata

First off let me correct you, those hairy chested pretty boy types you refer to is an incorrect description, their Neanderthals, they attribute road rash to the face and brain damage as a badge of honor.

rydabent

rekmeyataWell-----------what ever trips their trigger I guess. Scabs on your head aint pretty tho.