rekmeyata

Thanks for pointing that out, but even your charts show a 20% decline in mortality since helmet wearing increased. The problem with your seatbelt charts is that their skewed! How's that you scream? Simple, as the cars get newer they have been crashing better thus protecting the occupants better, plus air bags began to be more common place and that's why the big decrease in fatalities starting in 91, belts were required in cars long before 91 or 88, so the decrease is due to air bags and car safety crash or crumple zones. So I don't buy those charts for seat belts. Like I said, I wear seat belts so I'm not trying to champion the cause of not wearing them, but your charts don't prove the worthiness of seat belts.

Six jours

The trend began decades before and actually started to level off once the helmet law was enacted. So your post is either the worst kind of cherry-picking or simply more evidence that you are completely out of your depth here.

rekmeyata

Cherry picking? Ok, so even though more cyclists are on the roads then decade ago, and more riders wear helmets then decades ago doesn't mean a damn thing right?

And of course you didn't seem to have an answer for the seat belt issue, I guess you cherry pick too.

sudo bike

OK, so you're just going to ignore the ongoing downward trend and presume that it would have magically stopped had helmets not been put into use, so why not attribute them with a 20% decline. Gee, no wonder helmets are so effective.

Seat belts have a much stronger correlation. Fatalities decrease at the same rate belt use increases, which is entirely what you would expect of an effective life-saving device. Meanwhile exponential increases in helmet use led to arguable effects on a continuing downtrend in cycling fatalities.

Six jours

Ridership declined in Australia following the helmet law. And more riders wearing helmets should have accelerated the downward trend, not slowed it - if helmets were effective life-saving tools.

Not responding to every detail of every harebrained thing you write =/= cherry-picking. Moreover, I have responded to the seatbelt issue, repeatedly and in detail. Apparently you're so good at ignoring things you don't want to see that you forget you ever did.

rekmeyata

Really, see this that's me ignoring this subject.

RazrSkutr

Pedestrian fatalities also declined during the same time. Obviously due the wearing of helmets by bicyclists. Duh.

https://www.vehicularcyclist.com/fatalsnz.html

RazrSkutr

This seems more up your alley:
https://imgur.com/gallery/0UN0T

rekmeyata

No, the reason pedestrian fatalities are falling is because newer technology running shoes are making the peds get out the way of cars faster. So DUH right back at ya!

Grumpytroll

I personally have not ever worn a helmet, but have not ridden a bike since 1999 so now I have just started riding again will be getting a helmet next week, I'm dumb enough without bouncing what little brains I have left on an inanimate object. IMO.

chasm54

The British Medical Journal has today published some research into the impact of Mandatory Helmet Laws in Canadian Provinces. Their conclusion is that making helmets mandatory has had "minimal" impact on the rate of cyclists being admitted to hospital with head injuries.

Bizarrely, the authors quote without qualification the widely discredited Thomson and Rivara study that claimed helmets were 88% effective in reducing head injuries, and go on to express puzzlement as to why, in that case, they can't find any real-world evidence for this. Thye conclude that other factors relating to road safety may be more important in reducing the rate of injury, and (surprise surprise) In other words, helmets are good at saving you from bumps and scrapes, but are unlikely to save your brains, or your life.

RazrSkutr

You beat me to it! Was just about to make exactly the same comment about them citing TRT2000. Some researchers take the Cochrane reviews as "the truth" in the medical literature, the fact that TRT are citing their own work and conducting the review makes me skeptical of Cochrane reviews.

It is an interesting but largely unsatisfactory paper, not least due to the fact that "[d]ata on exposure to cycling are desirable, yet were unavailable for Canada at the time helmet legislation was implemented." I also very much doubt that they have accurate data on real cycling exposure rates now.The authors also mention the confounding presence of multiple other effects which can not be accounted for, i.e. CAN-BIKE programs and other educational efforts.

To some extent I sympathize with the authors as it's hard to say anything that is meaningful in this area due to the paucity of data.

DX-MAN

Do what you like, it's your bike ride; but a point A LOT of people make here is that the lack of helmet does NOT equal brain splash.

Seeing as how you're from Florida, and since I still have flashbacks to the terroristic way drivers operated down there, I'd be more concerned about your brains being splashed by the careless CAR TIRE. So that may be the better choice, after all.

rydabent

Since Im old and dont want to wade back thru 211 pages, could the anti helmet cult refresh my memory on what they get out of trying to keep people from wearing helmets????

mconlonx

Dismissing moderate head injury as "bumbs and scrapes" really doesn't capture the severity of moderate injury. Sure, I'll wear a helmet to prevent having to have road rash scrubbed out at ER, or stitches in my scalp...

RazrSkutr

Keep wearing your helmet. Just don't lie about what it's capable of doing.

That's what makes the paper Chasm54 just cited interesting: even given a reading of the literature which is apparently skewed towards accepting that helmets do something besides stopping scrapes and cuts it's seems probable that in Canada widespread helmet use has not decreased concussions, death, and mental impairment.

You can start whining when you get a cop coming up to your daughter and telling her to take her helmet off. Until then it would be prudent for you to zip it up unless you want to be taken for anything other than a troll.

rydabent

I dont understand why the police would tell a daughter I dont have to take her helmet off??

Your last statement sounds like a threat!!!

RazrSkutr

So, as usual you have nothing to say about the interesting, substantive point: in yet another country (Australia and N.Z. being already established) it appears that despite widespread helmet use there is no discernible decrease in exactly the types of head injuries from which most helmet wearers believe they are protected.

mconlonx

My, what a lot of qualifiers you have going on there...

RazrSkutr

Beware of people that don't use qualifiers.. they're usually trying to sell you a a helmet.

Interesting that you, too, are interested in moving to the personal and avoiding the central point that yet another country fails to show that helmets prevent concussions and other brain damage.

350htrr

BUT what if 90% + of the bicyclers in the country were already volentarially wearing helmets? How would that change the ultimate outcome? (Hint, it wouldn't.)Just because it becomes a law that you "must" wear a helmet...? What was the difference in the helmet wearing or not wearing numbers before and after the law came into effect?

Jseis 

I read through the last 10 pages. Interesting. I wear a helmet always and hope none of you non-helmet wearers are in my health insurance pool and if so..I've some DNR's you can happily sign. Otherwise...I could care less if you wear/don't wear. One exception is kids under 16, maybe 18.

Six jours

fify.

Jseis 

Proved my point.

RazrSkutr

That's true for the "what if?". But helmet use has been estimated prior to this and generally pre-legislation most people do not bother. In general we see (e.g. pp22-23 [1]) a doubling across age cohorts with initial values ranging from 30 to 50%. So we would expect a halving of head injuries, which is not shown.

This all neglects actual exposure rates to cycling.

1. https://era.library.ualberta.ca/publ...32ec921.../DS1