Only if you tighten the chinstrap too tight...which, like a necktie, may cut off the blood flow to your brain and make you do stupid sht. :D

hagan

I notice you attack me and my very straight forward question. But you dont answer the question. So I will ask you directly----do you wear a helmet so you can partisipate in rides races or rallys that require them, or do you sit home and pout????

Ryda, look at my avatar. Should answer your question.

Would you mind telling us what use you may possibly think you can find for an answer?

"Yes, in that case, I wear a helmet" will mean what?
"No, in that case, I don't participate" will mean what?

I don't get it. It's 100% irrelevant to the discussion.

closet

Will I ride in a rally or ride that states helmet are optional-----of course. As I have stated many time I AM NOT FOR laws that make helmet mandantory. I really dont care what other people do. My position remains that there is a whole number of logical reasons to wear a helmet. I also still have seen no logical reason why you and a small cell of posters try to talk people out of wearing a helmet. Why do you and others care if the majority of us chose to wear a helmet? You and this small cell of anti helmet types do most certainly qualifty as trolls here.

hagan

Thank you for admitting that. Some wont.

one study does not make a solid case, particularly when there are other studies that show different results.

if what seems to be shown in that study was legitimate, Australia, New Zealand, and BC would have had far different outcomes than they did.

Contradictory evidence about the effectiveness of cycle helmets

If you would take off your helmet for a second, perhaps the fact that nobody cares whether you wear a helmet or not might be able to sink into that purdy widdle head. You've been told countless times that nobody is trying to talk you out of wearing your helmet. Heck, I think many others would join me in ENCOURAGING you to wear your helmet!

and after calling posters anti-helmet, he's been asked to show who is against helmet use, and he doesn't.

He's in his own world, with his own rules.

This is not to say there aren't those who are against helmet use for their own reasons.

Here's an article that appeared in the Globe and mail this morning from a rider celebrating (?) his 50 years of riding in Hog Town

The more bicycling becomes the “right thing to do,” it seems, the more that doing it becomes a dangerous provocation. Everybody is angry. Half the people who say “Good for you” at the sight of a bike helmet actually mean, “Bully for you, you planet-saving prig.” And once behind the wheel, they get their revenge.

That's one reason I rarely wear a helmet any more, which is bound to be the second thing newscasters will mention in the event that my legs are crushed under the wheels of a 12-tonne truck. When the Toronto Sun begins referring to cyclists as “helmet heads,” de-personalizing individuals to make them easier to hate, the uniform becomes uncomfortable.

and another individual that posted a blog on helmets made his point clear

Ethical Consumer has a feature called Love this, ban that! which asks an assortment of the green and the good which saintly products they love and which evil ones they’d ban...

Inexplicably, Ethical Consumer didn’t contact me to take part in their survey but I’d like to nominate the bicycle as my favourite “ethical consumer product” and the cycle helmet for an immediate, total ban backed up with the full force and violence of the criminal justice system....

Cycle helmets are the most visible and potent symbol of all that’s wrong with Britain’s (anti-)cycling culture. Cycle helmets say we cannot cycle without the right precautions, the right equipment, the right infrastructure, the right training. Cycle helmets say there must be more to cycling than a person, two wheels and the surface of the Earth. Cycle helmets say that cycling is more dangerous than not cycling. Let’s ban them now before it’s too late. Let’s lock up all the people who buy them, who sell them, who use them. Let’s drag them off to jail in handcuffs, in tears.

Me, I don't mind if someone wants to wear a helmet, I wore one myself for decades, but I can see how some people have some issues with their use.

Ah, but you miss my point :)

I think one can safely say that helmets DO work as intended (though not as claimed in some campaigns), but that the effect is nowhere as large as, say, "safety in numbers" (or cycling infrastructure). I think that the Australian example tells us more about "safety in numbers" than about helmets. To me, it seems to be the only logical outcome of the available evidence.

You so funny.

He is.

:)

Awww, come on, guys, here I bring you The Compromise of Our Age, and all you can do is laugh :(

Give me a bit of time. I'll have something on it.

:thumb:

Actually, good on you for making an informed choice. Your basic reasoning is very much along the same lines as mine.

The part of your response I quoted? Well... it's a good thing you qualified it with "To me..." because otherwise, them's fightin' words 'round here...

It still makes me laugh how people miss the real question, which is: Is bicycling dangerous enough for me to have to put up with the uncomfortability of wearing a helmet? The answer for me is no, and as an adult I have the right to make that decision, just as others have the right to make the decision that it is. I don't understand it, but they have that right and I would not take it away.

Now, is the public cost of bicycle related head injuries, wether they could have been mitigated by helmet use or not, high enough to force helmets on the entire cycling public? The answer again is no. There is a higher rate of head injury in auto accidents, in showers, and just walking down the street, and even in those cases, the cost is not high enough to require helmets in those cases, either.

How any intelligent person cannot grasp that, wether one chooses their level of head protection or not, it is a basic right to be able to make an informed decision. That right should not be taken away based on flimsy evidence. The cost is just too low.

It also makes me laugh how everyone, myself included, who chooses not to wear a helmet suddenly becomes "anti-helmet". I'm not anti-helmet, I just find no reason to adorn my head with one personally. I really don't care wether you wear one or not. I do care, however, when insults and self-rightiousness makes you think you are "more intelligent" than someone who makes an educated deciosion to not wear one.:notamused:

Here's some rabid pro-helmet postings from another thread...:

Any y'all want to chime in with a helmet debate DC is hell bent on starting in another thread...? So much pro-helmet nonsense...

rabid pro-helmet postings?

If saying a helmet “may have”, “probably did”, or even absolutely did save someone from injury or death in a specific incident makes one Pro-Helmet, then wouldn’t saying the opposite (that a helmet didn’t help or save the wearer) make one Anti-Helmet? Posters here tell us that almost every time someone posts that a helmet protected or saved them. Using the same reasoning, these posters are now Anti-Helmet. Heck, Rabid Anti-Helmet even, by your definition.

Maybe DC is a rabid pro-helmet supporter, I really don't know. But nothing in the posts above show that to be the case.

I believe DC stated that he is neither rabidly pro- or anti-helmet, but his presumptions and statements betray a pro-helmet sentiment. Especially in the case of this thread where, before he interjected with a pro-helmet statement, there was no one discussing helmets. At all. Probably because there was no mention of helmets in the OP or the article therein linked.

What would have happened to that guy in the first sentence if he wasn't wearing a helmet? And why should DC care to bring up such a blatantly pro-helmet push question in the first place, in a thread that had nothing to do with helmets...?

Because he was trolling a pro-helmet agenda.

I would suggest there are actually a number of interrelated questions, such as:

Is bicycling dangerous, specifically in posing a potential for head injury?
Can wearing a helmet prevent or mitigate head injuries? If so, how effectively/often?
Does the protection afforded by helmets outweigh their perceived drawbacks? By whose standard?
Can helmets be designed to better serve their purpose and reduce or alleviate perceived drawbacks?
Does society, through government, have a right to dictate universal safety precautions, such as wearing bike helmets? If so, on what philosophical and practical grounds?

Regarding the last, you say that you have the right as an adult to make your own decision regarding personal safety. Do you therefore advocate that government relinquish all claim on you in that regard? I.e., rescind all laws/regulations regarding consumer product safety, automobile seat belts or airbags, motorcycle helmets, etc.?

Lots of people seem to think it fine and reasonable to have government enforce the use of car child seats or locks on handguns in a home with minors, for example. Do you, as an adult, have the right to choose the level of apparent safety when a third party, like a child, becomes involved? Where does one draw the line? Why? What level/type of evidence is required to approve one but not the other?

No...unless I choose to make it so.

chip

And your grand assumption that people that wear helmets choose not to ride safely is just plain goofy. The fact that we choose to wear a helmet proves we are thinking safety first.

I'm not sure accidents work like that :) Cycling, like any athletic activity, necessarily poses some risk of physical injury, unless you just sit at home on your bike in a refrigerator box filled with packing peanuts. Of course, then you'd die of boredom.

If the CDC is to be believed, "Each year, more than 500,000 people in the US are treated in emergency departments, and more than 700 people die as a result of bicycle-related injuries."

http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreation...einjuries.html

And then there are the scrapes, cuts, strains, etc. that don't get any ER visit.

The only person making that "grand assumption" is you. :lol:

I merely stated that, for me, cycling is not dangerous unless I choose to make it dangerous. That you read your own fantasies into it is a personal problem that I can't help you with. I can understand why you wear a helmet...I BEG you to wear a helmet, you clearly need one!

chip

And your grand assumption that people that wear helmets choose not to ride safely is just plain goofy. The fact that we choose to wear a helmet proves we are thinking safety first.